Manipulating data to "hit you in the gut" amounts to propaganda, of which people can be (rightly) wary, regardless of the veracity of the ultimate message.
A lot of things are propaganda. Showing a crying immigrant child is propaganda. Showing a picture of mourning fireman on the day of 9/11/2001 is propaganda. In each case we may want to debate what the picture is trying to say and whether it is appealing more to the emotions than rational debate. Or not. It depends.
On the other hand, when someone sees the firefighter and says "What a propaganda. These pictures never bother to present a concrete evidence that two planes hit WTC," then we kind of know rational discourse is over, which is what's happening with climate denialism.
> “On the other hand, when someone sees the firefighter and says "What a propaganda. These pictures never bother to present a concrete evidence that two planes hit WTC," then we kind of know rational discourse is over, which is what's happening with climate denialism.”
Let me state first that I do believe climate change is real and urgently needs to be given increased attention to find a solution.
But, secondly, your comment falls completely flat, and in my personal view, you are espousing something that is truly far, far more dangerous than even climate denial.
You’re attempting to say that a rational analysis of entire patterns of propaganda is equivalent to no longer participating in the rational debate. You’re trying to say that anyone who does not agree there is intrinsic credibility to the data-eliding emotional appeals must themselves no longer have credibility in the discussion.
This essentially lobotomizes our best and only chance to solve problems like climate change long-term, which is to use science as a constraint on political gamesmanship.
When you say, “... then we know rational discourse is over” you’re just falling right into politicians’ hands, who want to continue politicizing the issue while not actually doing anything about it that doesn’t happen to also serve their short-term profit interests, and figuring that if younger generations have to inherit a wasteland and figure out how to live in it, that’s not their problem, and they’ll happily consume now, while the getting is good.
Your type of meta-comment is the most frustrating to me in this whole debate, because you seem self-aware enough to know better.
Who says it’s manipulated? The complaint was that there wasn’t sufficient detail. Are we just assuming that any chart that doesn’t live up to the standards of a scientific paper must be manipulated?
Omitting sufficient detail to understand the scale and significance of a result is one of the most common types of manipulation in statistical data presentation. Not saying that this post was specifically trying to be manipulative, but it is very reasonable to presume the goal is manipulation and work back from there, since it is so, so common in published academic literature, newspaper infographics, etc.
Why is it contradictory? I don’t have special knowledge to confirm if this was manipulative. But since manipulating the presentation of data is so common in academic papers, newspaper infographics, etc., it’s a reasonable prior belief. Generally being skeptical of data presentations is reasonable.
