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The problem with predictions like this is that this prediction will look silly in 4 years when the Earth has not ended, similar to how wild predictions in the

The problem with predictions like this is that this prediction will look silly in 4 years when the Earth has not ended, similar to how wild predictions in the past have not borne fruit. I understand their desire to sensationalize, but people like AOC make the same predictions, and she is not seen as smart by a large portion of the public. I think if we just stick with the experimental science research, the general public will find more confidence in the sciences.

dagss 7y ago
Citations on wild predictions in past not being correct?
- charlieflowers 7y ago
  I'm not GP, but there are plenty of examples of doomsday prophets predicting the tribulation, or the rapture, or some other form of the end of the world.
  - KirinDave 7y ago
    Okay, but what reasonable level of evidence and plausibility hasn't been passed for global warming? At this point, what else would it take a reasonable person to see the danger of the situation we're in?
    - Kaiyou 7y ago
      If any of the predictions in regard to global warming for the last few decades affecting my personal life would have come true, that would have been a start. In reality, nothing much changed the last past decades, so I don't expect change for the coming decades, either. It's also a case where the disease seems easier to live with than the cure.
      - KirinDave 7y ago
        Several of them are in the process of coming through right now. The Arctic ice is going, and the Antarctic ice is getting smaller consistently. Sea levels are in fact rising although we're in the early phases of this. ocean temperatures are rising and that's leading to widespread climate instability. These were predictions, and they are now coming true. They've been verified via a variety of methodologies. You're insulated from the worst of the effects for now. That's because you are not at the very bottom of the human economic strata. but the hardships introduced by climate change will continue to climb up the chain of economic prosperity until only people who live like Pharaohs and ignore them. Most critically, if we act now we can avoid the worst outcomes. Given that it's a rather good time to consider over turning all of our infrastructure in the developed world, Why wouldn't that be enough motivation for you? there's so many problems that exist because we're all living collectively on infrastructure designed over the last 300 years. Legacy structural decisions have profound effects on our lives, not the least of which is a demand for centralized governance. By using climate changes an excuse to decentralize infrastructure, we can use it as an opportunity to decrease everyone's dependence on centralized control. It's rare that humanity has such a powerful motivating factor for both social and infrastructural change. The economic knock on effects of this are not to be underestimated either. We can create environment electricity costs 100ths of what it does today. We can make things more reliable, and we can let local communities have more control over what they want to do and how they want to live. Please think about this. It's a dangerous time, but it's also a time full of opportunity.
        Kaiyou 7y ago
        I've heard the same things two decades ago and I didn't notice anything bad happening to me in relation to global warming.
- assblaster 7y ago
  https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/why-didnt-first-earth-days-predictions-come-true-its-complicated-180958820/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/why-didnt-firs...
- shoes_for_thee 7y ago
  "the population bomb," eg
- goatlover 7y ago
  The Population Bomb by Paul Elrich back in 1968 predicted worldwide famine in the 70s and 80s because of overpopulation. There's been quite a few over the last few decades relating to overpopulation, environmental destruction and running out of vital resources to keep civilization going. So far, these dire predictions have not come true. Which doesn't men they can't, but they should give us some pause about predicting the collapse of civilization or the environment, particularly in the short run.
  - Frondo 7y ago
    There has always been a market for mass-market doomsday prediction material; whether religious or secular. A population bomb leading to famine has never been the result of prolonged scientific discussion, just one guy's theories (published in book form, which is subject to editorial review but not peer review), and saying "this is a prediction that someone made that was false" is true but unhelpful. Anyone can make a prediction, and a lot of dumb stuff gets published. Never made it meaningful or true. My father, before he succumbed to dementia, had this belief that if it's been published, it must be true. He'd read the weirdest stuff and ultimately decided that nothing is true; when really, it's because he was overly credulous at first, and in rejecting truth as a concept, he went too far the other way. I feel like that's a lot more common than we realize; the error is not in believing in a consensus reality, it's in believing in something that wasn't very good to begin with (a book about worldwide famine, the handful of "global cooling" articles in the 70s -- not even a book! just a handful of magazine articles!! why would ANYONE put stock in that??), and deciding that, because that was wrong, nothing is knowable.
    - goatlover 7y ago
      It's not that nothing is knowable, it's that predicting the future is hard and easy to get wrong, particularly with something as complex as civilization, since humans adapt and civilization changes. The same applies to the biosphere as well. Saying for example that polar bears will go extinct or coral will all die off is ignoring the possibility that some bears and coral will adapt to the warmer world. We can't be sure about such predictions. We need to see how life and civilization responds.
chapium 7y ago
> and she is not seen as smart by a large portion of the public. Seems like there is a lot of that going around.
SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
They aren't making that claim - they are saying that if we don't adjust things before 4 years we're going to have a problem. You're basically arguing that if you don't have skin cancer when you come in for the afternoon, it can't be the sun causing it.
- assblaster 7y ago
  No, it's more like someone saying "the sun causes skin cancer, it's been proven. You've been exposed to the sun. You will get skin cancer unless you electively remove your entire skin with surgery. Trust me, I'm an expert." This alarmism does nothing but alienate. We should be sticking to the science, not dramatizing.
  - SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
    The scientist describes the current rate of change, the projected rate of change, and what the earth looked like when that was last here. While the headline is sensationalist, I don't see the expert making an argument based solely upon their own credentials.
resoluteteeth 7y ago
> The problem with predictions like this is that this prediction will look silly in 4 years when the Earth has not ended, similar to how wild predictions in the past have not borne fruit. Please don't misrepresent claims that "we have X years to stop global warming before it becomes irreversible" as "the earth will be uninhabitable in X years."
- toyg 7y ago
  To be honest, it’s obvious that we’re already too late for “reversing” anyway: there is no practical way to dramatically change how 7.5bn people live and work, in just 4 years. Even if we all dropped what we’re doing this very minute and started looking for other ways to live, in 4 years we would’ve barely scratched the surface of the problem. At that point, whether we have 4 or 2 years before the tipping point, is fundamentally irrelevant. Maybe we should just accept that change is coming, and brace for it.
  - bryanlarsen 7y ago
    A significant portion of "bracing for it" would involve trying to minimize the level of damage; that's basically the same effort as trying to avoid it, so...
    - toyg 7y ago
      The scale is different, and when it comes to societal acceptance, scale is everything. “We need to stop all industry tomorrow or ice will melt!” Vs “Ice will melt. We need to close a few of the worst-impacting plants so it melts a bit slower and gives us time to figure out where we might need dams. Everybody else, as you were.” The first proposition has no chance whatsoever to be taken seriously. I understand Overton but I admit a certain tiredness on this particular falling-sky topic.
      - mcv 7y ago
        The problem is: the second one is not going to be enough. Closing a few plants won't do it. We need to dramatically change how we generate our energy. Figuring out where we might need dams may be enough for the next couple decades, but if ice caps continue to melt, dams are never going to be able to stop 60 m of sea level rise. Melting slower is not enough. And at the moment, it's only going to melt faster because we're still producing way too much CO2.
KirinDave 7y ago
> The problem with predictions like this is that this prediction will look silly in 4 years when the Earth has not ended Can you explain why people like you who come here to post "the world won't end in 4 years" consistently do not read the article, and consistently set the bar at "literally the oblate sphereoid we are on explodes" as opposed to "the climate is so radically different it threatens every aspect of human society and triggers even more mass extinctions?" I don't understand your mentality at all. It seems an awful lot like you're meticulously moving the goalpost of a bad outcome. But surely you have got your own internal reasoning.
- assblaster 7y ago
  You're not understanding the article, and you are making the same dramatic predictions ("even more mass extinctions". The prediction is that we're heading for catastrophe, something that we'll never be able to handle. It ignores the geologic temperature record (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/65_Myr_Climate_Change.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/65_Myr_C...). You mention mass extinctions, but you don't mention that previous mass extinction events were due primarily to asteroid impacts and volcanic eruptions.
  - KirinDave 7y ago
    > The prediction is that we're heading for catastrophe, something that we'll never be able to handle. It ignores the geologic temperature record (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/65 https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/65 It is indeed a chart, but no one here is ignoring it. Is the argument, "Don't worry we could just trigger another ice age and after a few tens of thousands of years the fallen bodies of our families and plants will re-sequester an appropriate amount of carbon?" That seems to be small comfort, and it further reinforces the idea that the only threat to the biosphere you're willing to consider is a movie-style asteroid impact or something else that would shatter or at least significantly deform the planet's shape, as opposed to a change in climate dramatic enough to cause massive problems for human society all over the world. > You mention mass extinctions, but you don't mention that previous mass extinction events were due primarily to asteroid impacts and volcanic eruptions. No, I didn't mention it because it wasn't in scope. You dodged my question and instead tried to introduce a bunch of chaff questions to raise the notion that maybe, just maybe the science hasn't come to a broad consensus about the bad outcomes we're facing. But the consensus is obviously there. Hell, your own diagram is from an article about said consensus, debating the finer details within the parameters if said consensus. Why? You obviously aren't stupid. Why do you cling to ideas that are so obviously and verifiably false? It's like talking to someone who believes the earth is flat, only instead of being able to be calm and detached about someone's curious religion I have to be terrified because they're advocating for practices that cause climate destruction.
mcv 7y ago
These are extremely slow processes that take centuries to stop. Ever seen large ocean going tankers making turns? They need to start making their turn 15 minutes ahead of time, and once they finally start turning, you can't easily stop them anymore. They respond very slowly. Our climate is like that: it takes ages to respond. We've been building up excess CO2 in the atmoisphere for over a century now, and we're finally starting to notice the effects. Even if we were to completely stop producing CO2 now, there's still enough CO2 in the atmosphere to continue to increase heat absorption. Even if we could remove all excess CO2 from the atmosphere somehow (we can't), it would still take time for the excess heat to disappear. (The quickest way to lose the excess heat is if we could somehow block the sun, which we can't and would be harmful in a dozen other ways.) The problem is that this concept is really hard for most people to wrap their heads around, so people tend to simplify it in ways that emphasize the urgency but exaggerate the timeline of the effect, or at least sound like they do, because that's how most people tend to interpret that urgency. So no, the Earth is not going to end in 4 years, but it will be 4 more years of accumulated damage that will have repercussions for centuries.

dagss 7y ago

Citations on wild predictions in past not being correct?

charlieflowers 7y ago
I'm not GP, but there are plenty of examples of doomsday prophets predicting the tribulation, or the rapture, or some other form of the end of the world.
- KirinDave 7y ago
  Okay, but what reasonable level of evidence and plausibility hasn't been passed for global warming? At this point, what else would it take a reasonable person to see the danger of the situation we're in?
  - Kaiyou 7y ago
    If any of the predictions in regard to global warming for the last few decades affecting my personal life would have come true, that would have been a start. In reality, nothing much changed the last past decades, so I don't expect change for the coming decades, either. It's also a case where the disease seems easier to live with than the cure.
    - KirinDave 7y ago
      Several of them are in the process of coming through right now. The Arctic ice is going, and the Antarctic ice is getting smaller consistently. Sea levels are in fact rising although we're in the early phases of this. ocean temperatures are rising and that's leading to widespread climate instability. These were predictions, and they are now coming true. They've been verified via a variety of methodologies. You're insulated from the worst of the effects for now. That's because you are not at the very bottom of the human economic strata. but the hardships introduced by climate change will continue to climb up the chain of economic prosperity until only people who live like Pharaohs and ignore them. Most critically, if we act now we can avoid the worst outcomes. Given that it's a rather good time to consider over turning all of our infrastructure in the developed world, Why wouldn't that be enough motivation for you? there's so many problems that exist because we're all living collectively on infrastructure designed over the last 300 years. Legacy structural decisions have profound effects on our lives, not the least of which is a demand for centralized governance. By using climate changes an excuse to decentralize infrastructure, we can use it as an opportunity to decrease everyone's dependence on centralized control. It's rare that humanity has such a powerful motivating factor for both social and infrastructural change. The economic knock on effects of this are not to be underestimated either. We can create environment electricity costs 100ths of what it does today. We can make things more reliable, and we can let local communities have more control over what they want to do and how they want to live. Please think about this. It's a dangerous time, but it's also a time full of opportunity.
      - Kaiyou 7y ago
        I've heard the same things two decades ago and I didn't notice anything bad happening to me in relation to global warming.
assblaster 7y ago
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/why-didnt-first-earth-days-predictions-come-true-its-complicated-180958820/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/why-didnt-firs...
shoes_for_thee 7y ago
"the population bomb," eg
goatlover 7y ago
The Population Bomb by Paul Elrich back in 1968 predicted worldwide famine in the 70s and 80s because of overpopulation. There's been quite a few over the last few decades relating to overpopulation, environmental destruction and running out of vital resources to keep civilization going. So far, these dire predictions have not come true. Which doesn't men they can't, but they should give us some pause about predicting the collapse of civilization or the environment, particularly in the short run.
- Frondo 7y ago
  There has always been a market for mass-market doomsday prediction material; whether religious or secular. A population bomb leading to famine has never been the result of prolonged scientific discussion, just one guy's theories (published in book form, which is subject to editorial review but not peer review), and saying "this is a prediction that someone made that was false" is true but unhelpful. Anyone can make a prediction, and a lot of dumb stuff gets published. Never made it meaningful or true. My father, before he succumbed to dementia, had this belief that if it's been published, it must be true. He'd read the weirdest stuff and ultimately decided that nothing is true; when really, it's because he was overly credulous at first, and in rejecting truth as a concept, he went too far the other way. I feel like that's a lot more common than we realize; the error is not in believing in a consensus reality, it's in believing in something that wasn't very good to begin with (a book about worldwide famine, the handful of "global cooling" articles in the 70s -- not even a book! just a handful of magazine articles!! why would ANYONE put stock in that??), and deciding that, because that was wrong, nothing is knowable.
  - goatlover 7y ago
    It's not that nothing is knowable, it's that predicting the future is hard and easy to get wrong, particularly with something as complex as civilization, since humans adapt and civilization changes. The same applies to the biosphere as well. Saying for example that polar bears will go extinct or coral will all die off is ignoring the possibility that some bears and coral will adapt to the warmer world. We can't be sure about such predictions. We need to see how life and civilization responds.

chapium 7y ago

> and she is not seen as smart by a large portion of the public. Seems like there is a lot of that going around.

SketchySeaBeast 7y ago

They aren't making that claim - they are saying that if we don't adjust things before 4 years we're going to have a problem. You're basically arguing that if you don't have skin cancer when you come in for the afternoon, it can't be the sun causing it.

assblaster 7y ago
No, it's more like someone saying "the sun causes skin cancer, it's been proven. You've been exposed to the sun. You will get skin cancer unless you electively remove your entire skin with surgery. Trust me, I'm an expert." This alarmism does nothing but alienate. We should be sticking to the science, not dramatizing.
- SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
  The scientist describes the current rate of change, the projected rate of change, and what the earth looked like when that was last here. While the headline is sensationalist, I don't see the expert making an argument based solely upon their own credentials.

resoluteteeth 7y ago

> The problem with predictions like this is that this prediction will look silly in 4 years when the Earth has not ended, similar to how wild predictions in the past have not borne fruit. Please don't misrepresent claims that "we have X years to stop global warming before it becomes irreversible" as "the earth will be uninhabitable in X years."

toyg 7y ago
To be honest, it’s obvious that we’re already too late for “reversing” anyway: there is no practical way to dramatically change how 7.5bn people live and work, in just 4 years. Even if we all dropped what we’re doing this very minute and started looking for other ways to live, in 4 years we would’ve barely scratched the surface of the problem. At that point, whether we have 4 or 2 years before the tipping point, is fundamentally irrelevant. Maybe we should just accept that change is coming, and brace for it.
- bryanlarsen 7y ago
  A significant portion of "bracing for it" would involve trying to minimize the level of damage; that's basically the same effort as trying to avoid it, so...
  - toyg 7y ago
    The scale is different, and when it comes to societal acceptance, scale is everything. “We need to stop all industry tomorrow or ice will melt!” Vs “Ice will melt. We need to close a few of the worst-impacting plants so it melts a bit slower and gives us time to figure out where we might need dams. Everybody else, as you were.” The first proposition has no chance whatsoever to be taken seriously. I understand Overton but I admit a certain tiredness on this particular falling-sky topic.
    - mcv 7y ago
      The problem is: the second one is not going to be enough. Closing a few plants won't do it. We need to dramatically change how we generate our energy. Figuring out where we might need dams may be enough for the next couple decades, but if ice caps continue to melt, dams are never going to be able to stop 60 m of sea level rise. Melting slower is not enough. And at the moment, it's only going to melt faster because we're still producing way too much CO2.

KirinDave 7y ago

> The problem with predictions like this is that this prediction will look silly in 4 years when the Earth has not ended Can you explain why people like you who come here to post "the world won't end in 4 years" consistently do not read the article, and consistently set the bar at "literally the oblate sphereoid we are on explodes" as opposed to "the climate is so radically different it threatens every aspect of human society and triggers even more mass extinctions?" I don't understand your mentality at all. It seems an awful lot like you're meticulously moving the goalpost of a bad outcome. But surely you have got your own internal reasoning.

assblaster 7y ago
You're not understanding the article, and you are making the same dramatic predictions ("even more mass extinctions". The prediction is that we're heading for catastrophe, something that we'll never be able to handle. It ignores the geologic temperature record (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/65_Myr_Climate_Change.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/65_Myr_C...). You mention mass extinctions, but you don't mention that previous mass extinction events were due primarily to asteroid impacts and volcanic eruptions.
- KirinDave 7y ago
  > The prediction is that we're heading for catastrophe, something that we'll never be able to handle. It ignores the geologic temperature record (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/65 https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/65 It is indeed a chart, but no one here is ignoring it. Is the argument, "Don't worry we could just trigger another ice age and after a few tens of thousands of years the fallen bodies of our families and plants will re-sequester an appropriate amount of carbon?" That seems to be small comfort, and it further reinforces the idea that the only threat to the biosphere you're willing to consider is a movie-style asteroid impact or something else that would shatter or at least significantly deform the planet's shape, as opposed to a change in climate dramatic enough to cause massive problems for human society all over the world. > You mention mass extinctions, but you don't mention that previous mass extinction events were due primarily to asteroid impacts and volcanic eruptions. No, I didn't mention it because it wasn't in scope. You dodged my question and instead tried to introduce a bunch of chaff questions to raise the notion that maybe, just maybe the science hasn't come to a broad consensus about the bad outcomes we're facing. But the consensus is obviously there. Hell, your own diagram is from an article about said consensus, debating the finer details within the parameters if said consensus. Why? You obviously aren't stupid. Why do you cling to ideas that are so obviously and verifiably false? It's like talking to someone who believes the earth is flat, only instead of being able to be calm and detached about someone's curious religion I have to be terrified because they're advocating for practices that cause climate destruction.

mcv 7y ago

These are extremely slow processes that take centuries to stop. Ever seen large ocean going tankers making turns? They need to start making their turn 15 minutes ahead of time, and once they finally start turning, you can't easily stop them anymore. They respond very slowly. Our climate is like that: it takes ages to respond. We've been building up excess CO2 in the atmoisphere for over a century now, and we're finally starting to notice the effects. Even if we were to completely stop producing CO2 now, there's still enough CO2 in the atmosphere to continue to increase heat absorption. Even if we could remove all excess CO2 from the atmosphere somehow (we can't), it would still take time for the excess heat to disappear. (The quickest way to lose the excess heat is if we could somehow block the sun, which we can't and would be harmful in a dozen other ways.) The problem is that this concept is really hard for most people to wrap their heads around, so people tend to simplify it in ways that emphasize the urgency but exaggerate the timeline of the effect, or at least sound like they do, because that's how most people tend to interpret that urgency. So no, the Earth is not going to end in 4 years, but it will be 4 more years of accumulated damage that will have repercussions for centuries.