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Been hearing this for 40 years now. Will we be reading this in another 40 years? Call me a skeptic, get angry at me, but I'll believe it when I see it.
by logicslave 6y ago
Been hearing this for 40 years now. Will we be reading this in another 40 years? Call me a skeptic, get angry at me, but I'll believe it when I see it.
- vekker 6y agoHow can you not have noticed any changes in 40 years time? I take you don't live in an area with extreme summers/winters? Or don't you go skiing and notice the rapidly melting permafrost? Also, regardless of your opinion and what you "see", what happened to trusting the scientific method & looking at the actual numbers? As Gates said "We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten."
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Udik 6y ago> How can you not have noticed any changes in 40 years time? I take you don't live in an area with extreme summers/winters? Or don't you go skiing and notice the rapidly melting permafrost? I think that any personal observation about climate on such a timescale is almost always unreliable. By the way, a common cliche' phrase at least a century old in Italian is "there are no mid-seasons any more", and another one is "there are no more winters like there used to be". In "Dictionnaire des idées reçues", a satirical dictionary of cliches compiled in the 1870s, Flaubert lists for both summer and winter the same cliche: "always exceptional".
- tartoran 6y agoActually these cliches seem only to confirm these personal observations, why else would people hold on to them? And the figure you mention and the industrial revolution seem to coincide. I too remember playing in a few feet of snow only to barely reach below freezing point a few times a winter. The last couple of winters were actually barren of any snow where I live
- Udik 6y agoThe cliches about summer and winter being "always exceptional" are from the 1870s. The effects of climate change surely weren't visible then (though I believe the climate was still warming from the "little ice age"). What these cliches suggest to me is that there is a human tendency to either mis-remember the climate of our youth or to misjudge the exceptionality of the current weather (similar somehow to how old people tend to grumble about the "new generations" and how they'll ruin everything- and it's been like that for millennia). Or alternatively, that weather patterns always change, slowly enough to be assumed as stable, but still quickly enough to be noticeable on a long human timescale. In either case, the fact that remarks on the exceptionality of the weather and its difference from the past existed before any CO2 - induced climate change was happening, says that we cannot rely on that type of impression to confirm the scientific measurements about the climate. It's strange we think otherwise, because one of the fundamental tenets of science is that subjective observation is biased and unreliable, and rigorous measures need to be taken to remove that subjective bias from observation.
- maccard 6y agoWhat changes do you want to see to believe it?
- ethanbond 6y agoCatastrophe* * More violent hurricane seasons, more lively wildfire seasons, longer droughts and shorter winters do not count because reasons.
- throwaway_pdp09 6y ago"I don't know if this plausible catastrophe will happen, but I'd best wait and see". Not angry, just tired of people like you.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- tobltobs 6y ago"but I'll believe it when I see it." And what will do you do then?
- me_me_me 6y agoLie down and die. Not much choice there really.
- freen 6y agoThe coronavirus was the trial run for climate change. If you thought in February that it wasn’t a big deal, if you listened to folks who said “the cases will go to zero soon”, well, perhaps you should check your epistemology and listen to folks who know what they are talking about.
- Cerium 6y agoWhat is bothering me now, is that the coronavirus response provides damning evidence against our ability to act on climate change, but it is also stealing our time to act.
- gremlinsinc 6y agoI think it's maybe slowing it down. The more we lockdown, the less emissions we're using. It's kind of a win/win...except for the economic fallout.
- loopz 6y agoReducing air pollution actually accellerates external input leading to global warming. Also, pollution is back higher than before in China "after" Corona. Latest development is rising infection rates in countries opening up. There's a balancing act how much we "open up", vs what measures have most impact. The last part should be solvable.
- dqpb 6y agoWell, It may be that the only solution to the climate problem is for all the people to die.
- rayiner 6y agoThe coronoavirus economic impact is multiples of the projected economic impact of "business as usual" scenarios with respect to climate change. I found the whole process quite heartening actually.
- pfkurtz 6y agoWhat's happening now in American politics (and lots of places) must be the trial run for attempting to address this problem.
- baq 6y agowe're already seeing it, you just choose to ignore the signs.
- ClumsyPilot 6y agoBeen reading about nuclear weapons for 60 years. Will believe it when I see a warhead in my living room.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoI mean, the analogy holds. Doomsayers were quite sure from 1950 to 1990 that there would inevitably be a civilization-ending war between the US and USSR, but the unavoidable disaster ended up being avoidable after all.
- fifticon 6y agoI seriously doubt we have seen the last of nuclear bombs. We just haven't re-triggered the case where someone somewhere concludes they'll solve their local problem.
- ClumsyPilot 6y agoThe point is about refusal to take the threat seriously untill its too late. The doomsayers were very nearly right, twice, once during kuban crisis, and once in 1983. There is no afterall, we still have 100x more nukes than there are cities in the world. We are a buttonpress away from extinction.
- spacemark 6y agoAgain, just a bit of hyperbole. 2000+ nukes have already been detonated on earth. The idea that humans would become extinct after a few hundred are dropped on cities is unfounded.
- me_me_me 6y ago40 years? 20 years ago in Poland I used to go and play in snow with my brother. Building snow forts etc. And that was well before Christmas. Nowdays its a miracle if there is 'a snowfall' once before Xmas. We might as well drop term 'White Christmas' in mainland Europe. You are not a skeptic, just ignorant (I am well pass getting angry at people like you, since its pointless).
- tartoran 6y agoYou’re not hallucinating, I remember the same thing and not necessarily in a good light a la nostalgia. We were having some really cold and unbearable winters and the fact that they’re warmer make it momentarily nicer. I am not making the claim that this is due to global climate change but simply that a noticeable change took place. Denying it makes one look untrustworthy
- me_me_me 6y ago> I am not making the claim that this is due to global climate change That's by definition change in a pattern. One could argue if that's humans fault or not. But saying its natural so we should do nothing, is like doing nothing because a totally natural meteorite is going to hit the earth.
- tengbretson 6y agoGosh, if only the last thing people were freaking out about, peak oil, had actually happened. Then there'd be nothing to make all this CO2!
- DonHopkins 6y agoSo you also don't believe in electromagnetic energy waves below 380 nanometers in length, or above 740 nanometers in length either, because you can't see them, even though a majority of professional scientists insist they exist?
- ryandrake 6y agoThanks for having the guts to share an opinion that's going to definitely be really unpopular here. Every decade, there is some new 'impending doom' prediction. I've lived through pollution, smog, acid rain, ozone holes, Y2K, probably more. They may be right about Climate Change, but at this point people are suffering doom-fatigue and I can totally understand the skepticism. Additionally, I believe it is pointless to constantly worry about something you don't have the power to change. Even if you are a believer, the only thing you're going to get out of reading these articles will be stress and anxiety. There's no clear call to action for the average joe. The sun will explode one day too, but it's needless to have articles about it every week warning us of the dire consequences, because we can't do anything about it. Exactly like my inability to stop climate change, I offer my single drop of upvote into the torrent of downs that you're going to get.
- DonHopkins 6y agoI deny that you're getting any downvotes, no matter how light your text is faded.
- ryandrake 6y agoNote that I never even claimed to deny climate change (I don't). The mere act of trying to understand where the skeptics are coming from is enough to bury one's comment. Major groupthink red flag IMO.