Starving-Polar-Bear Photographer Recalls What Went Wrong

One year after Cristina Mittermeier took that gut-wrenching polar bear image later, she explains what she and her team were trying to accomplish. This story appeared in the August 2018 issue of National Geographic magazine.

Climate change kills slowly and by proxy: through fire, drought, cold, and starvation. The connection between an individual animal’s death and climate change is rarely clear—even when an animal is as emaciated as this polar bear.

Photographer Paul Nicklen and Cristina Mittermeier were on a mission to capture images that communicate the urgency of climate change. She admits they were naive. The polar bear picture went viral—and people took it literally.

When Paul posted the video on Instagram, he wrote, “This is what starvation looks like.”  But he did not say that this particular bear was killed by climate change.

National Geographic picked up the video and added subtitles. It became the most viewed video on National Geographic’s website—ever. News organizations around the world ran stories about it; social media exploded with opinions about it. Cristina estimated that an astonishing 2.5 billion people were reached. But they lost control of the narrative.

The first line of the National Geographic video said, “This is what climate change looks like”—with “climate change” highlighted in the brand’s distinctive yellow. In retrospect, National Geographic went too far with the caption.

Perhaps we made a mistake in not telling the full story—that we were looking for a picture that foretold the future and that we didn’t know what had happened to this particular polar bear. I can’t say that this bear was starving because of climate change.

Cristina Mittermeier is a contributing photographer, speaker, and explorer for National Geographic. She is the co-founder, executive director, and vision lead of SeaLegacy, a nonprofit organization working to protect the oceans. 

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/08/explore-through-the-lens-starving-polar-bear-photo/ 

Shadow Politics: Meet the Digital Sleuth Exposing Fake News

      You all may not want to read this whole WIRED article (see the link at the end of this post).  I would like to post it on my blog, but it is copyrighted.  It illustrates how pervasive and dangerous the Russian interference and hate groups have become.  Today’s TV Press Shows also reminded me how naïve (or incompetent) many political mouth pieces are as they spread misinformation.  A Republican politician appeared on Face the Nation and claimed Russian infiltration in our political system did not result in one fake vote.  I thought “he can’t be that stupid, but then he is taking his lead from the President.”

Hypocrisy vs Reality and Jerry Brown

Remember this
Jerry Brown in China with a climate message to the world: Don't follow America's lead http://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-brown-china-20170607-story.html#
Is this guy that clueless or just stupid?

Miracle Cancer Cure

Center for Inquiry Sues CVS for Fraud

      The Center for Inquiry has filed a lawsuit in the District of Columbia on behalf of the general public against drug retailer CVS for consumer fraud over its sale and marketing of useless homeopathic medicines. CFI, an organization advancing reason and science, accused the country’s largest drug retailer of deceiving consumers through its misrepresentation of homeopathy’s safety and effectiveness, wasting customers’ money and putting their health at risk.

Click here to access the official complaint (PDF).

     Homeopathy is an 18th-century pseudoscience premised on the absurd, unscientific notion that a substance that causes a particular symptom is what should be ingested to alleviate it. Dangerous substances are diluted to the point that no trace of the active ingredient remains, but its alleged effectiveness rests on the nonsensical claim that water molecules have “memories” of the original substance. Homeopathic treatments have no effect whatsoever beyond that of a placebo.

Check this out at https://centerforinquiry.org/press_releases/cfi-sues-cvs/ 

Seeking CREDIBLE Internet Sources

      The WIRED article, The Complexity of Simply Searching for Medical Advice, highlights the importance of seeking credible sources when doing an Internet search.  Often it's the noise associated with pseudo-science that perks to the top of a simple search engine listing.
https://www.wired.com/story/the-complexity-of-simply-searching-for-medical-advice/?CNDID=48648177&mbid=nl_070818_daily_list3_p5

      It is what Michael Golebiewski at Bing calls a "data void," or search void: a situation where searching for answers about a keyword returns content produced by a niche group with a particular agenda. It isn’t just Google results. It is happening on social media and YouTube too.
      There’s an asymmetry of passion at work. Which is to say, there’s very little counter-content to surface because it simply doesn’t occur to regular people or credible experts that there’s a need to produce counter-content. So much of the information on the first few pages of search results repeats false claims  of the hyper-culture. Their message looks like it represents a widely-held point of view. But it doesn’t. It can be wrong, dangerous, and potentially deadly.
      The best advice on to handle this problem is -- always chase down the source of the information.  If the result in the Internet search does not provide references to claims, treat it as not worth forwarding or repeating to friends. Then checkout the source.  Is it credible?

Climate Change Debate