[SiempreViernes]

They put out a title with such poor statistical reasoning that they might as well have said "Forget about the Syrian civil war, the number of violent deaths globally have gone down!". I hope it is clear from this second example that the headline is just putting two pretty unrelated things next to each other and hope it gives clicks.

You can mount a coherent critique of the media hype cycle without resorting to bascialy false reasoning.

[jamesrcole]

> They put out a title with such poor statistical reasoning that they might as well have said "Forget about the Syrian civil war, .."

The correct analogy here would be "Forget the hype about the Syrian civil war" if there was inaccurate information being spread about that war.

That has nothing to do with downplaying the actual severity of the war.

[SiempreViernes]

What? The title you are defending is downplaying ("forget the hype") the severity of the amazon fires by including fire rates in completely different parts of the world. This is exactly like downplaying the severity of a civil war by pointing out that the rest of world is not taking part.

[jamesrcole]

[EDIT: any of the people downvoting this care to say why you think its points are wrong or irrelevant to what is being discussed? The article is literally about the world-wide situation, and it's misleading to present the current discussion, and what I've been arguing about, as about the title in isolation. The headline is clearly just using the Amazon fires has a shorthand for the overall situation.]

Did you read the article? It's literally about the world-wide situation, and the reporting there has been on the world-wide situation.

[mistersquid]

Not a downvoter, but my guess is that despite the article (by your description) being concerned about the "world-wide situation" it actually misrepresents what is implied by the word "global" headline. (Connotation, not denotation). More specifically, "world-wide situation" and "global" appear to mean the number/size of fires, a quantitative measure versus a more "holistic" meaning of the world "global" (in the sense of world-wide significance or relevance).

In other words, downvoters may be interpreting what you call the "world-wide situation" as a misleading representation of the relevant context for understanding fires. World-wide, people are concerned about the Amazon rain forest burning and a headline about fires globally declining seems to be in bad faith when the article goes on to explain that part of the decline is because forests are being converted into cities insusceptible to forest fires.

EDIT: change "susceptible to insusceptible.

[abernard1]

> the article goes on to explain that part of the decline is because forests are being converted into cities susceptible to forest fires.

That isn't what it says at all. It says that the amount of forest being burned to create farms (deliberately) is going down because the farms are more economically productive.

From the article.

> That's because the amount of land being converted into ranches and farms has been going down, not up, and because more of it is being done with machines than with fire.

> For the last 35 years, the world has been re-foresting, meaning new tree growth has exceeded deforestation. The area of the Earth covered with forest has increased by an area the size of Texas and Alaska combined.

[mistersquid]

> That isn't what it says at all.

I beg to differ. Quoting from the article (and with all due respect):

> And against the picture painted by celebrities and the mainstream media that fires around the world are caused by economic growth, the truth is the opposite: the amount of land being burned is declining thanks to development, including urbanization.

(emphasis added)