tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7506249.post7227925137691130997..comments2023-11-05T04:43:31.501-05:00Comments on Kenneth Anderson's Law of War and Just War Theory Blog: Peggy Noonan on the TNR Scott Thomas scandal and the bigger issue of journalists' backgroundsUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7506249.post-43917581242521614822007-10-28T03:07:00.000-05:002007-10-28T03:07:00.000-05:00Here are a pair of figures that, in a numerically ...Here are a pair of figures that, in a numerically literate journalism universe, would make the character of certain perennial stories far different from what it is: 0.07 degrees Celsius and 6.5 percent. <BR/><BR/>0.07 degrees Celsius is the amount of warming that the Kyoto treaty, if fully implemented by all nations and honestly adhered to, would avert by 2050 (given the IPCC's accepted model). That is minuscule, only about 4% of projected warming - and will have no material affect on the problem. Presuming the IPCC's science is correct, if you understand orders of magnitude, the only way of averting a significant amount of warming is pretty much to end industrial society. Or we could go nuclear and electric on a massive scale. Yet, in much reporting on the issue, overwhelming and unquestionable moral onus attaches to US ratification of a treaty that will do effectively nothing.<BR/><BR/>6.5% is the amount of US gasoline consumption that we could displace were the nation's entire corn crop devoted to ethanol. Think about that one for a moment. <BR/><BR/>National policy debates would be so much more sane if journalists were numerically literate, expected their audience to be as well, and approached officialdom accordingly.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com