Upsilon Andromedea's Journal: "greenies"--meta-moderation

I meta-moderated unfair on a moderation of interesting.

This article is interesting and it is flame bait, employing name calling and casting aspersions. So one cancels the other.

Regardless of moderation the author accomplishes the objective of mating flame with info and gaining notice on that point.

The name calling is accomplished by triangulation: "greenies" (classification), "doom-mongers" (characterization) and "pushing their own agenda" (accusation). Another agenda lies behind that triangulation--to paint a picture by negative space, by suggestion, about anyone taking a certain point of view. Two of those suggestions could have scrinched by as some combination of frustration and brevity. (Actually, accusation would have been implied effectively were only classification and characterization used. The two known points defining the third.)

But the author preferred the empahsis of stating the third point.

The fact is, we are all "somethings or others," "doom-mongers" and "pushing our own agenda," to those who believe us to be wrongly opposing what they believe to be right, and visa versa. Sadly, this aspect of the post really dulls otherwise interesting distinctions, causing one to wonder if those distinctions will remain clear upon investigation.

Re:Stop naming tropical storms...

by - on Saturday December 31, @03:05PM (#14372206) This is what the "greenies" forget. they get all up in arms about there being more storms in a hurricane season when we never used to record storms. we only used to record hurricanes.

If you only count hurricanes, you will see this is a milder season than any we've had in the last 25 years except for some late 1990s years.

It's called changing the definition, and it doesn't wash. A government might do the same when they say Unemployment has fallen from 10% to 2% in 5 years

Yet unemployment might have counted the entire pool of people who were capable of working 5 years ago, where the current unemployment figures might only count the people ACTIVELY LOOKING FOR WORK.

So the numbers are bogus. It's the same with this situation.

What will happen next I fear is they will start counting "tropical depressions" and name them too. Once they're named they'll contribute to the total, and we will have 40 or 50 in a year. What happens then is the doom-mongers will claim the world is quickly getting worse.

Pushing their own agenda.

Original Discussion: Tropical Storm Zeta Forms in Atlantic Rating: Insightful.