4 ms·

Do you have any examples?

Bantros 7y ago
I've been bombarded with this shit all my life. https://apnews.com/bd45c372caf118ec99964ea547880cd0 https://apnews.com/bd45c372caf118ec99964ea547880cd0 > June 30, 1989 Articles in a similar vain are trotted out constantly, they just change the timespan and a few details. See recent example from FT: https://biggerpicture.ft.com/global-risks/video/global-sea-level-rise-what-it-means-you-and-your-business/ https://biggerpicture.ft.com/global-risks/video/global-sea-l...
- eesmith 7y ago
  As far as I can tell, the information from the 1989 AP article is correct. I believe we are well past the point where anthropomorphic climate change is stoppable. All we can do is reduce the impact. It's clear from the article's text that the statement was not that the predicted problems would occur by 2000, since "UNEP is working toward forming a scientific plan of action by the end of 1990" would give an absurdly short timeline. It says "The most conservative scientific estimate that the Earth’s temperature will rise 1 to 7 degrees in the next 30 years, said Brown." Conveniently, that was 30 years ago. I went to https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/ https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/ . In 1989 the temperature anomaly was about +0.25°C. It's currently +0.82°C. A change of 0.57°C is just over 1°F. As predicted by the most conservative estimate. I have been unable to find the report. The only people who talk about that newspaper article appear to be climate change denialists, who don't link to the actual report, and misread the article to believe that there's a prediction of a 3 foot sea rise by 2000. The late 1980s is when the majority of scientists - and associated people like Isaac Asimov, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfB7Hzb7G2Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfB7Hzb7G2Q - were convinced of the evidence of global warming and its potential problems. That built upon earlier work. Eg, "In 1982, Exxon's environmental affairs office circulated an internal report to Exxon's management which said that the consequences of climate change could be catastrophic, and that a significant reduction in fossil fuel consumption would be necessary to curtail future climate change. It also said that "there is concern among some scientific groups that once the effects are measurable, they might not be reversible." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExxonMobil_climate_change_controversy#Early_research https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExxonMobil_climate_change_cont...
  - marcus_holmes 7y ago
    so by some dextrous fiddling with measurement scales (I believe the UN measure temperature in Celsius, but as the article doesn't mention a measure, I'll grant that they might have been talking fahrenheit), it literally only just squeaks past the absolute lowest boundary of the most conservative estimate. There's no way you can claim that this is vindication of that prediction.
    - eesmith 7y ago
      Point taken, and valid. However, 1) that's literally the only prediction in the paper that has a short time-frame, which is also well in-line with general consensus both then and now, and 2) my point was not to vindicate the prediction but to point out that it's not a good example of 'shit bombardment' as Bantros stated. Without knowing the original article context, it's really hard to know what the exact prediction is. It seems clear from looking around that most people who reference the article are global-denialists as I haven't found anyone verify that the newspaper reporter was accurate in the report. So, I looked for the report. I believe it's "The State of the World Environment 1989 - UNEP/GC.15/7/Add.2" dated April 1989 at https://wedocs.unep.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/28295/TSE89.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y https://wedocs.unep.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/28295/... . The prediction on p23./paragraph 68 is: > Even then, estimates of temperature increase vary widely—from 0.7°C to 9.6°C. Recent studies agree, however, that doubling the carbon dioxide concentration from the pre-industrial level of 270 ppmv will probably increase global mean temperature by 1.5°C to 4.5°C (47, 48, 49)—but most likely by 2°C. +0.82°C is larger than 0.7°C, so well within that predicted range - certainly on the low-end, but not enough to be rejected as "shit" given how the report explicitly states the uncertainty. The 1 degree could have been 0.82°C rounded (up) to the nearest degree, or 1.476°F rounded (down) to the nearest degree. I don't see an estimate of when, but figure 5 shows an estimate of 3°C rise by 2050, of which about 0.8°C come from CFC - CFCs weren't yet banned at that time. Which means Brown's prediction in the news article likely included a CFC component that didn't happen.
      - Bantros 7y ago
        The "shit bombardment" is the actual media coverage which has only gotten more and extreme over the past 30 years. Thanks for the link to the original paper, I've never seen it myself either
eesmith 7y ago
Cold War, H-Bomb, "duck and cover", nuclear winter, Threads. Red Scare (first and second), Communist takeover, "better dead than red". Ehrlich's The Population Bomb predicting world-wide famine by the 1980s, followed by the Zero Population Growth movement. The destruction of the ozone hole. For the more Biblical prophecy oriented, "The Late, Great Planet Earth", predicting the end of the earth by the 1980s or 1990s, sold 28M copies. I could probably come up with more with a bit of research.
- alexgmcm 7y ago
  The ozone hole and nuclear warfare/proliferation were fixed by new regulations based on the fear though. Perhaps if we'd never worried so much about the ozone hole, it'd be a lot bigger now. (it's still there by the way, just smaller)
  - eesmith 7y ago
    Based on your response, I wonder if the downvotes I got are because I was trying to give examples of being "told by mass media that we're all about to die at any moment" - which I thought was the question. Some of these were/are real concerns. Certainly the threat of nuclear war was a real concern, as were CFCs leading to the ozone hole, and the threat of mass starvation. These changes were based on the realistic fear that millions or more might die. (Continued illegal use of CFCs is not helping, btw.) Some were/are not. Biblical predictions of the end of the world come up every few decades, and have for over 1000 years. But aren't they all examples of being told by mass media that we're going "to die at any moment"? I can empathize that hearing about these for many decades can cause people to become inured.
  - kaybe 7y ago
    >Perhaps if we'd never worried so much about the ozone hole, it'd be a lot bigger now. Unless there was something else to stop the emission of CFCs, it would be huge by now, no question! If anyone wants to know about the current state of the ozone hole, here's the newest report: https://ozone.unep.org/sites/default/files/2019-05/SAP-2018-Assessment-report.pdf https://ozone.unep.org/sites/default/files/2019-05/SAP-2018-... I like the plots on ES.24 that show the effect the regulations have on global warming (the older replacement coolants were powerful greenhouse gases). See that curve? It's going down. If the regulations are followed (and we have good precedent that they will be) we've been spared several centi-degree in warming by 2100. This is the only really positive news I've heard so far in the context.
marcus_holmes 7y ago
the ones that spring to mind immediately: - Nuclear war. This was the biggy. I remember at 25 I honestly didn't expect to live to 40. We regularly asked each other what we will do when (not if) the alarm goes off and we have 15 minutes to do something before being simultaneously cooked and blown apart in the shockwave. - AIDS. When the AIDS epidemic broke, there were TV adverts with tombstones on them basically saying "stop having sex, it'll kill you". There were scientific articles explaining how the spread of AIDS was unstoppable and would destroy Western Civilisation within a decade. - The Hole in The Ozone Layer. This was going to fry us all and we'd be living in underground bunkers by 2020. - Y2K. Mass Media made a lot of this, painting pictures of planes falling out of the sky and distribution networks failing. It was very, very, anticlimactic (thankfully, and I played my part in that). - Peak Oil. There was a fairly popular sentiment in the 00's that the oil was going to dry up before we were ready for it to. It turned out that fracking could alleviate that concern, and then they found a ton of new oil fields. But again, you can find media articles explaining how Western Civilisation was going to be destroyed by Peak Oil, and preppers getting themselves ready to survive it. - Acid Rain. Less catastrophic, but still up there. I remember articles explaining how the delicate ecosystem of the English countryside was being destroyed by acid rain, and it would never recover, leading to the collapse of Western Civilisation. There's probably more. The common thread is always "if this continues at its current pace (and it will because we have no way of stopping it), X will happen and that will destroy Western Civilisation". Sound familiar?

I've been bombarded with this shit all my life. https://apnews.com/bd45c372caf118ec99964ea547880cd0 https://apnews.com/bd45c372caf118ec99964ea547880cd0 > June 30, 1989 Articles in a similar vain are trotted out constantly, they just change the timespan and a few details. See recent example from FT: https://biggerpicture.ft.com/global-risks/video/global-sea-level-rise-what-it-means-you-and-your-business/ https://biggerpicture.ft.com/global-risks/video/global-sea-l...

eesmith 7y ago
As far as I can tell, the information from the 1989 AP article is correct. I believe we are well past the point where anthropomorphic climate change is stoppable. All we can do is reduce the impact. It's clear from the article's text that the statement was not that the predicted problems would occur by 2000, since "UNEP is working toward forming a scientific plan of action by the end of 1990" would give an absurdly short timeline. It says "The most conservative scientific estimate that the Earth’s temperature will rise 1 to 7 degrees in the next 30 years, said Brown." Conveniently, that was 30 years ago. I went to https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/ https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/ . In 1989 the temperature anomaly was about +0.25°C. It's currently +0.82°C. A change of 0.57°C is just over 1°F. As predicted by the most conservative estimate. I have been unable to find the report. The only people who talk about that newspaper article appear to be climate change denialists, who don't link to the actual report, and misread the article to believe that there's a prediction of a 3 foot sea rise by 2000. The late 1980s is when the majority of scientists - and associated people like Isaac Asimov, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfB7Hzb7G2Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfB7Hzb7G2Q - were convinced of the evidence of global warming and its potential problems. That built upon earlier work. Eg, "In 1982, Exxon's environmental affairs office circulated an internal report to Exxon's management which said that the consequences of climate change could be catastrophic, and that a significant reduction in fossil fuel consumption would be necessary to curtail future climate change. It also said that "there is concern among some scientific groups that once the effects are measurable, they might not be reversible." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExxonMobil_climate_change_controversy#Early_research https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExxonMobil_climate_change_cont...
- marcus_holmes 7y ago
  so by some dextrous fiddling with measurement scales (I believe the UN measure temperature in Celsius, but as the article doesn't mention a measure, I'll grant that they might have been talking fahrenheit), it literally only just squeaks past the absolute lowest boundary of the most conservative estimate. There's no way you can claim that this is vindication of that prediction.
  - eesmith 7y ago
    Point taken, and valid. However, 1) that's literally the only prediction in the paper that has a short time-frame, which is also well in-line with general consensus both then and now, and 2) my point was not to vindicate the prediction but to point out that it's not a good example of 'shit bombardment' as Bantros stated. Without knowing the original article context, it's really hard to know what the exact prediction is. It seems clear from looking around that most people who reference the article are global-denialists as I haven't found anyone verify that the newspaper reporter was accurate in the report. So, I looked for the report. I believe it's "The State of the World Environment 1989 - UNEP/GC.15/7/Add.2" dated April 1989 at https://wedocs.unep.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/28295/TSE89.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y https://wedocs.unep.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/28295/... . The prediction on p23./paragraph 68 is: > Even then, estimates of temperature increase vary widely—from 0.7°C to 9.6°C. Recent studies agree, however, that doubling the carbon dioxide concentration from the pre-industrial level of 270 ppmv will probably increase global mean temperature by 1.5°C to 4.5°C (47, 48, 49)—but most likely by 2°C. +0.82°C is larger than 0.7°C, so well within that predicted range - certainly on the low-end, but not enough to be rejected as "shit" given how the report explicitly states the uncertainty. The 1 degree could have been 0.82°C rounded (up) to the nearest degree, or 1.476°F rounded (down) to the nearest degree. I don't see an estimate of when, but figure 5 shows an estimate of 3°C rise by 2050, of which about 0.8°C come from CFC - CFCs weren't yet banned at that time. Which means Brown's prediction in the news article likely included a CFC component that didn't happen.
    - Bantros 7y ago
      The "shit bombardment" is the actual media coverage which has only gotten more and extreme over the past 30 years. Thanks for the link to the original paper, I've never seen it myself either

eesmith 7y ago

Cold War, H-Bomb, "duck and cover", nuclear winter, Threads. Red Scare (first and second), Communist takeover, "better dead than red". Ehrlich's The Population Bomb predicting world-wide famine by the 1980s, followed by the Zero Population Growth movement. The destruction of the ozone hole. For the more Biblical prophecy oriented, "The Late, Great Planet Earth", predicting the end of the earth by the 1980s or 1990s, sold 28M copies. I could probably come up with more with a bit of research.

alexgmcm 7y ago
The ozone hole and nuclear warfare/proliferation were fixed by new regulations based on the fear though. Perhaps if we'd never worried so much about the ozone hole, it'd be a lot bigger now. (it's still there by the way, just smaller)
- eesmith 7y ago
  Based on your response, I wonder if the downvotes I got are because I was trying to give examples of being "told by mass media that we're all about to die at any moment" - which I thought was the question. Some of these were/are real concerns. Certainly the threat of nuclear war was a real concern, as were CFCs leading to the ozone hole, and the threat of mass starvation. These changes were based on the realistic fear that millions or more might die. (Continued illegal use of CFCs is not helping, btw.) Some were/are not. Biblical predictions of the end of the world come up every few decades, and have for over 1000 years. But aren't they all examples of being told by mass media that we're going "to die at any moment"? I can empathize that hearing about these for many decades can cause people to become inured.
- kaybe 7y ago
  >Perhaps if we'd never worried so much about the ozone hole, it'd be a lot bigger now. Unless there was something else to stop the emission of CFCs, it would be huge by now, no question! If anyone wants to know about the current state of the ozone hole, here's the newest report: https://ozone.unep.org/sites/default/files/2019-05/SAP-2018-Assessment-report.pdf https://ozone.unep.org/sites/default/files/2019-05/SAP-2018-... I like the plots on ES.24 that show the effect the regulations have on global warming (the older replacement coolants were powerful greenhouse gases). See that curve? It's going down. If the regulations are followed (and we have good precedent that they will be) we've been spared several centi-degree in warming by 2100. This is the only really positive news I've heard so far in the context.

marcus_holmes 7y ago

the ones that spring to mind immediately: - Nuclear war. This was the biggy. I remember at 25 I honestly didn't expect to live to 40. We regularly asked each other what we will do when (not if) the alarm goes off and we have 15 minutes to do something before being simultaneously cooked and blown apart in the shockwave. - AIDS. When the AIDS epidemic broke, there were TV adverts with tombstones on them basically saying "stop having sex, it'll kill you". There were scientific articles explaining how the spread of AIDS was unstoppable and would destroy Western Civilisation within a decade. - The Hole in The Ozone Layer. This was going to fry us all and we'd be living in underground bunkers by 2020. - Y2K. Mass Media made a lot of this, painting pictures of planes falling out of the sky and distribution networks failing. It was very, very, anticlimactic (thankfully, and I played my part in that). - Peak Oil. There was a fairly popular sentiment in the 00's that the oil was going to dry up before we were ready for it to. It turned out that fracking could alleviate that concern, and then they found a ton of new oil fields. But again, you can find media articles explaining how Western Civilisation was going to be destroyed by Peak Oil, and preppers getting themselves ready to survive it. - Acid Rain. Less catastrophic, but still up there. I remember articles explaining how the delicate ecosystem of the English countryside was being destroyed by acid rain, and it would never recover, leading to the collapse of Western Civilisation. There's probably more. The common thread is always "if this continues at its current pace (and it will because we have no way of stopping it), X will happen and that will destroy Western Civilisation". Sound familiar?