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Comment by killion | Hacker News Reader

It took me a while to find out why locals were saying solar farms cause dust storms. The locals claim solar farms destabilize the soil. Dust isn’t in the interest of the energy producer because it lowers efficiency so my assumption is that they would do everything to limit dust.

I guess I’m surprised that the LA Times would publish a claim like that without comment or caveat.

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They’re just reporting what each side is saying without arguing against their claims. They leave it to the reader to make of it what they will. In my personal opinion, this is how reporting should be. Don’t do my thinking for me and don’t lead me in a particular direction.

I doubt most people actually believe dust has anything to do with it. They don’t want these infrastructure projects near them, plain and simple.

There are plenty of readers who aren't sophisticated enough to judge for themselves. This is exactly analogous to the vaccine debate. Journalists can and should add context where one side's argument is not supported by evidence.

Have you ever seen any heavy equipment operate before in a dry area? It churns up dust, this isn’t rocket science guys. It’s so obvious you shouldn’t need evidence.

How far does the does spread? How long until it settles?

This is a combine in a dry soybean field.

https://youtu.be/PKBENzzEluY

Now imagine a lot more vehicle traffic in a desert. I know lumber companies will spray water on dirt roads to keep the dust down, not sure if that’s a viable option out in a desert though.

That might explain the dust during construction.

What about a week after construction finishes. How about 10 years later?

> It’s so obvious you shouldn’t need evidence.

And that's how we end up with things like "obviously, we cannot have a climate change, I mean it's cold on the outside!!".

An experiment you can reproduce in a vehicle driving on a dirt road is a bit easier than measuring global climate change.

Experiment?! We don't want to hear about experiments!

You can have it both ways. Have a section of facts and statistics along with links. And have a section of opinion.

Media companies are heavy on opinion, and shockingly short on full facts. The vast majority of articles never do much work to explain where they get their information - usually its "a study shows this" or "Jane said that" without linking the study or the FULL statement and context in which Jane said what she said.

The thing that is frustrating is because of this we all just read from news sources we agree with. It's impossible to show people how they're wrong if you don't link original sources and I just have to take it on your word that it meant exactly what it meant.

I say this as someone who actually engages with people who disagree with me but with the quality of most news articles it's basically impossible to convince people of something against their current views using them.

There is something that rather confuses me about this logic. If somebody is not "sophisticated" enough to come to an informed opinion, are they truly in a better place parroting what they read from a newspaper instead of simply being informed of the choices? There seems to be an increasingly pervasive view that people must have opinions on things they have no clue about. I don't think a society full of opinionated people whose basis of argument stems from 'I read it online' is really in a better place than one where fewer people may have an opinion one way or the other, but those who do tend to be substantially more informed.

You might appeal to the nature of democracy mandating 'your' view, yet I would argue that this view is precisely what's causing a deterioration of our democratic processes. This push towards trying to encourage people who have no basis for taking a stance on issues, to take a stance, waters down the views of the informed and returns us to Socrates critique of uncredentialed democracy. Who ought choose the captain of a ship, everybody including those who've never sailed, or experienced sailors? I think this is mostly self evident to the point of being rhetorical.

In times before the internet people were less inclined to form an opinion on every single issue and so, in practice, we ended up with the self evident choice. But as that has changed, we're now having the butcher vote for Richius as captain because of an opinion he heard from the Town Crier. That crier just happens to be best friends with the son of of one particularly influential Senator. That son's never once sailed in his life, though he thinks 'it sounds like a lot of fun!' Of course that son's name - Richius.

In my view, this is a problem if each side is making claims without any attempt at quantifying or disclosing the relative magnitude of effects. That's a case where a reporter could do a little digging and fill in those details. For instance, how much dust? How is it stirred up? And so forth. You can still make of it what you will, but with better information.

I encounter the same thing dealing with engineers. They will list a variety of objections to an idea, or "risks," without any attempt at quantifying the issues involved. Managers do this too. If I ask for details, it becomes my job to research it.

Exactly. Can the dust be mitigated? Maybe via replanting afterwards? Or maybe the panels need to be farther apart to encourage regrowth of plants? Is a square field of panels more destructive than a longer line of panels? Are there construction vehicles that can cause less damage to the existing plant life?

If journalism can't be bothered to do research maybe the rise of AI created factuals is well deserved.

The article reports on the conflict between and claims of two parties. Doing research into claim validity has its place (investigative journalism) but not in an article that is just reporting on a conflict, in fact including such research would very likely be unethical.

You're going to have to explain how a journalist doing fact checking is unethical.

In a court of law, the judge isn’t allowed to do independent research unlike what you might have seen in the movies, they are simply allowed to listen to arguments on both sides and make a decision based on law.

A news article is like that in a court of public opinion where the public is the judge and the reporter is merely there to report on both sides of the argument, not supposed to be doing research on their own, it is up to the other side to fact check and add that to their argument, it isn’t the reporter’s job or even their place ethically.

There is definitely room for reporters doing fact checking and more involved investigative journalism, just not in that kind of article.

Like come other commenters here, I don't think it's a journalist's job to _do_ the research. However, the journalist can quite accurately report "X claims Y but says they haven't performed any research to quantify this claim".

The key is to ask the question.

> I don't think it's a journalist's job to _do_ the research.

Then who's job is it?

A suitable domain expert with a vested interest or funding from someone with a vested interest.

If there isn't such a person, then the research doesn't get done. I think this is fine, because by definition nobody cares. It's possible that only poor people care and they can't provide the funding, but then their political representatives should be able to find the funding. I accept that's not perfect, but it's generally how things work unfortunately.

Already you're assuming that the dust problem is truthful to begin with.

An investigative piece should actually look in to that claim rather than just repeat it. How can solar farms cause more dust than agriculture?

This seems to be one of the most common logical fallacies, especially in politics. I dont know if it has a name, but I call it "qualification without quantification".

It creates a logic chain that could happen, without any discussion of actual probabilities or costs.

For example banning of assault rifles, discusses how it could save lives. People are surprised to learn that there are less than 200 deaths per year from any type of rifle.

The same goes for universal background checks.

John McCarthy had a slogan for that: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_McCarthy_(computer_scient...

I don’t know whether the claim that solar farms cause dust storms is true or not, but it isn’t a matter of opinion. I want journalists to find experts and scientific evidence and tell me which side is telling the truth.

Like many issues there is not going to be a black and white yes or no answer. It's going to depend on the exact locale, the nature/type of terrain in the region, the type/specification/quantity of panels being installed, and a million other variables. When newspapers start getting into topics like this it invariable just ends up with corruption and bias as the conclusion is often whatever the executive team decides the newspapers' stance should be, which is going to be driven by politics, advertising, etc.

Ask somebody who wants to claim that solar farms can cause dust storms and he'll be able to make a sound logical case for it. Ask somebody wants to claim that solar farms do not cause dust storms and he'll be able to make a sound logical case for it. Even if the person reporting genuinely wanted, and was able (e.g. - not prevented by the newspapers 'official' stance on an issue) to do that, they simply would be grossly unqualified to do so. Reporters rarely have any sort of scientific background whatsoever.

Sure, issues can be complex and journalists can get things wrong even when they’re acting in good faith. But how is the average reader in a better position to evaluate the facts?

If the facts are genuinely not well-known or agreed-upon by experts, then absolutely report on that. Not so readers can “make up their mind” (since that shouldn’t be the goal, if experts can’t even agree), but so readers can understand the complexity of the issue.

That's not how journalism is supposed to work. One of the first lessons in Journalism 101 is if one source says the weather is sunny and another source says it's raining then a competent reporter should look out the window!

https://amp.economist.com/democracy-in-america/2012/08/08/th...

And when one source says they think it will rain in 20 days, and another says it they think it will not rain in 20 days?

Then source's credentials, data or other factual bases for the opinion can help the reader/listener/viewer decide (e.g. source1 is a 25y veteran meteorologist, source2's data is based on postings from 4chan).

Without facts and common assumptions, opinions are noise.

And when what was posted on 4chan was links to a series of meteorological studies and reports? I'm not being obtuse - I think this is actually a perfect example of one of the many problems here.

It's difficult to get (and in turn, give) a fair assessment of an issue without actually genuinely understanding the nuances of arguments on all significant sides. But issues are not simple and journalists are, in general, not qualified to meaningfully interpret the things they're reporting on. I think we've all probably experienced the pain that is reading an article that we happen to be experts on, yet we turn the page to something we're not experts on and suddenly expect it to be better?

Ideally providing 'context' would simply be that, but in practice 'context' can be, and frequently is, framed to cast an assessment on an issue - even when not intentional! Even your example here would be a perfect example of the inadvertent. Meteorological forecasts are pretty much meaningless at the 20 day level. Should our journalist mention this? Is failing to omit it misleading? There's just a lot of tricky issues like this. By contrast, if you simply report plain falsifiable facts directly driven by the story at hand, which would include things such as 'x' said 'y', you avoid all of this and simply have good, impartial reporting. That reporting could then be analyzed by more qualified parties to provide 'context'.

Then that factors into the reporter's evaluation of the source.

You're arguing a straw man of not checking out the sources sufficiently and just going off of surface impressions, when GP is arguing that digging into the sources is their job.

> But issues are not simple and journalists are, in general, not qualified to meaningfully interpret the things they're reporting on

The general public is even less qualified to interpret things being reported on.

Jouralists who just repeat the press releases that each party gives are I believe a net negative. They set themselves up to be propaganda mouth pieces.

> Meteorological forecasts are pretty much meaningless at the 20 day level. Should our journalist mention this? Is failing to omit it misleading?

At some point certain topics are maybe just not worth reporting on at all. If there's no way to make a 20 day prediction beyond a wild guess, then why bother reporting that there's even a disagreement? The report at this point is "Two people make different guesses as to the value of a random variable."

It serves no purposes to report, and only creates a debate on a topic that there shouldn't be a debate about.

I’d far rather read journalism that tells me what each side claims, regardless of how crazy it may sound, and allow me to decide for myself. I’m not an expert on journalism—it’s just my personal preference.

Chances are most readers aren't qualified to judge competing statements without further research and don't have time to do it. That's a reason newspapers became a thing in the first place.

> They leave it to the reader to make of it what they will. In my personal opinion, this is how reporting should be.

If one side lies out their ass or states "opinion" that is easily disproved as untrue, then it shifts the conversation without having facts.

In my view, proper journalism needs to reaffirm basic facts in their coverage so viewers/listeners don't have to put up with obvious bullshit or crazy opinions.

People are entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts.

This is a type of enlightened centrism. Journalists should report but aldo be fact finders for the viewers. There is something about actual facts that I find newsworthy.

> In my personal opinion, this is how reporting should be. Don’t do my thinking for me and don’t lead me in a particular direction.

That's the type of reporting that leads to false equivalence and IMO wastes my time.

I don't need to hear "both sides" of every argument. I don't have enough time to understand every complex issue in detail. What I do need is a smart journalist I trust to investigate the issue, determine the truth and than share that with me along with the evidence that lead them to that conclusion.

That's actually useful to me. Currently reporting of just "Person A said blah, Person B said foo" doesn't help me, it leaves the power with whether A or B are more eloquent, deceitful or experienced, not who is more truthful or accurate. It can still be misleading based upon which pieces are chosen to be reported, and the parts left out people will naturally fill in with their personal biases about how they believe the world works.

The locals here cite dust coming from construction not some bizarre Solar Panel dust bowl. If you’ve ever driven through a desert or farm where there is heavy equipment operating it churns up a ton of dust. Not saying it’s a reason to block this but it’s a real thing.

https://www.sbsun.com/2019/02/28/san-bernardino-county-board...

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