3 ms·

Citations on wild predictions in past not being correct?

by dagss 7y ago

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.

Citations on wild predictions in past not being correct?

by dagss 7y ago

Citations on wild predictions in past not being correct?

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.