{"id":11540,"date":"2021-04-20T17:36:06","date_gmt":"2021-04-20T17:36:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/socialpanic.org\/?p=11540"},"modified":"2021-04-20T17:36:37","modified_gmt":"2021-04-20T17:36:37","slug":"changing-the-language-definition-in-order-to-make-a-point","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/2021\/04\/20\/changing-the-language-definition-in-order-to-make-a-point\/","title":{"rendered":"Changing the language definition in order to make a point"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This blog has mentioned previously that changing language itself is used as a method of propaganda messaging.<\/p>\n<p>Here is an example from climate science. A while back, the IPCC decided that it needed an easier to understand terminology than the usual &#8220;90% confidence&#8221; and came up with phrases like &#8220;More likely than not&#8221;, which means that something is guessed to occur more than 50% of the time. That is a very weak standard for science which usually prefers 95% to 99% probabilities.<\/p>\n<p>If we dumb down a definition far enough, eventually it encompasses all possible outcomes!<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Lowering the bar for climate &#39;evidence&#39;. &#39;More likely than not&#39; is a much better confidence assessment for most of the &#39;very likely&#39;, &#39;extremely likely&#39; judgments by the IPCC. How all this should be used in decision making and lawsuits is another matter.<a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/7TVdLnUyjA\">https:\/\/t.co\/7TVdLnUyjA<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Judith Curry (@curryja) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/curryja\/status\/1384170198219968519?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">April 19, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>I have <a href=\"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/category\/climate-communications\/\">written a lot on this topic in the past<\/a>, including my standard disclaimer on climate topics. See<br \/>\n&#8220;<strong>Standard Disclaimer Applies: How to Do Climate Communications \u2013 Never Cry Wolf<\/strong>&#8221; at the end of <a href=\"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/2020\/01\/29\/climate-communications-media-and-some-climate-researchers-misleading-the-public\/\">this post<\/a>, for example.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Another example of fiddling with language to make a weak conclusion with low certainty sound more impressive than it really is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-climate-communications"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11540\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}