There has been a very visible string of reports in which data emerges that suggests: well so and so is actually much worse. Say the forests are even less healthy than we thought, or the glaciers are melting much faster than we thought, or the coral is in more trouble than we thought, or the lead in the water problem is worse than we thought, or the infrastructure is more crumbly than we thought, or the plastic waste crisis is worse than we thought, or our estimates of the speed of warming were a bit conservative, or...
Yeah, anyway, something happens in our daily thought in which anecdotes and stories and common oral observations can sort of grab our imagination for a moment, and then we shrink back in doubt and embarrassment and hold tight until the reams upon reams of written data come in, which then evoke a more enduring certainty, whatever those reams happen to say.
But then we have to start asking: what sort of resolution is this data really capable of? How long does it take for the proper resolution to emerge, which sufficiently provides a sense of reality to base one's confidence on? And what are the instincts, desires, and interests of the institutions producing this data, and what is the health of these institutions? What other forces and desires are at work to obscure and distort this data, and otherwise divert our efforts from its conclusions? How long do we have to keep hearing: oh, it's actually much worse, before we collectively do something about it?
