That's an odd list of catastrophes there. A couple of those, such as antibiotic-resistant bacteria and nuclear annihilation, turned out not to be catastrophes b

That's an odd list of catastrophes there. A couple of those, such as antibiotic-resistant bacteria and nuclear annihilation, turned out not to be catastrophes because efforts were taken to stop them from becoming catastrophes, not because scientists were wrong. In fact, the threat of antibiotic-resistant strains will never go away, but demands constant efforts to keep the problem in check. Let me add one to your list: Y2K. As we approached the year 2000, a lot of intelligent people noticed a problem, documented how it could adversely affect society and advocated fixing the problem. Millions of dollars were spent, and thanks to those efforts, the problems were almost entirely mitigated (at least, insofar as the general public was concerned-- many annoyances, inefficiencies and strange bugs remain due to the manner in which problems were dealt with). While some people took a religious bent on the problem and started stockpiling food and batteries, we were fortunate in that cooler heads prevailed and dealt with a major problem. Admittedly, Y2K never even threatened to be as large a problem as climate change is, but my point is that one can list examples all day long of times that society has faced a crisis and overcome it with lots of effort. That doesn't, however, mean that those who originally warned of the crises were wrong.