6 ms·

What makes this group of scientists and their warning more legitimate than these previous “imminent tipping points” https://cei.org/blog/wrong-again-50-years-o

What makes this group of scientists and their warning more legitimate than these previous “imminent tipping points” https://cei.org/blog/wrong-again-50-years-of-failed-eco-pocalyptic-predictions/ https://cei.org/blog/wrong-again-50-years-of-failed-eco-poca...

bigbaguette 5y ago
It's been thirty years the IPCC is warning humanity about this. Should be about time to listen, nah?
bmat 5y ago
Comparing a few dozen cherry-picked headlines over 30+ years to a specific warning by 14,000 scientists is hardly apples to apples. Also, CEI claims the ozone hole was climate alarmism and nothing bad actually happened, but that’s because scientists warned us and we took action. Even the chart CEI cites shows the hole stopped growing and leveled off. But apparently because it didn’t disappear completely, our actions were futile?
andrepd 5y ago
I didn't expect climate change denialism and the most base and idiotic and tabloid-tier cherry picking of facts, here on hn.
- spicymaki 5y ago
  HN is a public forum. Even with heroic moderation efforts you find idiotic tabloid-tier rants for every topic.
probably_wrong 5y ago
I would be suspicious abount anything published by "one of the Conservative think tanks funded to overturn the environmentalism of the 1960s, central to promoting climate change denial"[1]. The article is also clearly written in bad faith, with their so-called "counter-arguments" being a case of selectively choosing the information that supports their agenda and discarding everything else. Having said that: that article cites about one scientist a year, while we are currently getting one warning a week. No scientist in their right mind would deny that global warming is real and it's here [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competitive_Enterprise_Institute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competitive_Enterprise_Institu...
- CodeGlitch 5y ago
  > environmentalism of the 1960s, Unfortunately is was those very environmentalists who fought hard to stop the nuclear industry - and now it may be too late even with the explosion of green-technologies. > global warming I believe "climate change" is a better term to use these days.
  - Delk 5y ago
    Many environmentalists have been wrong about nuclear power and nuclear industry, and still are. That doesn't really make the opponents of environmentalism any more right. If the opponents had focused on pointing out e.g. contradictory or irrational goals (e.g. nuclear power) or on genuinely questioning environmentalist claims without having an agenda of their own, you could say they were right in some cases. But that certainly doesn't describe most of the opponents of environmentalism, and definitely not the staunchest ones.
- ghufran_syed 5y ago
  No, more of an existence proof - the fact that people have been saying similar things since at least the 60’s should make us at least consider the possibility that the reason for the current warnings are similar to the reason for the previous warnings. Sure, maybe all those other warnings were in good faith and happened to be wrong, while the current warnings are also in good faith and might turn out to be correct. But if you can’t even consider the possibility, then we’re in the realm of religion, not science. Here’s a climate scientist who agrees about climate change, but disagrees about the urgency and nature of the actions justified, hopefully that doesn’t define him as “not in his right mind” - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bj%C3%B8rn_Lomborg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bj%C3%B8rn_Lomborg
  - tsimionescu 5y ago
    More realistically, all of those warnings were actually quite right, and catastrophic global warming is well on its way, with almost all recent years being the hottest that we know of. And about this Lomborg individual, I have no idea why anyone would listen to economists (people whose entire field is predicated on models which assume no major changes in the world) about what is necessary to combat catastrophic climate change - this what his think tank is all about.
fit2rule 5y ago
Time. This is the current call to arms. Unless you've got a time machine and can go back to those previous incidents and tell everyone they are wrong, of course ..
spicymaki 5y ago
The CEI article cherry picks sensational headlines with failed predictions, but that does not prove that climate change is not having disastrous effects on the environment.
papaf 5y ago
> What makes this group of scientists and their warning more legitimate than these previous “imminent tipping points” Better models and more computing power?
moistly 5y ago
Josh, why would you post such a fundamentally dishonest blogpost?
fouc 5y ago
Those predictions are only "failed" because they were too soon. We're good at seeing the signs of things to come, but we're bad at predicting the when.

bigbaguette 5y ago

It's been thirty years the IPCC is warning humanity about this. Should be about time to listen, nah?

bmat 5y ago

Comparing a few dozen cherry-picked headlines over 30+ years to a specific warning by 14,000 scientists is hardly apples to apples. Also, CEI claims the ozone hole was climate alarmism and nothing bad actually happened, but that’s because scientists warned us and we took action. Even the chart CEI cites shows the hole stopped growing and leveled off. But apparently because it didn’t disappear completely, our actions were futile?

andrepd 5y ago

I didn't expect climate change denialism and the most base and idiotic and tabloid-tier cherry picking of facts, here on hn.

spicymaki 5y ago
HN is a public forum. Even with heroic moderation efforts you find idiotic tabloid-tier rants for every topic.

probably_wrong 5y ago

I would be suspicious abount anything published by "one of the Conservative think tanks funded to overturn the environmentalism of the 1960s, central to promoting climate change denial"[1]. The article is also clearly written in bad faith, with their so-called "counter-arguments" being a case of selectively choosing the information that supports their agenda and discarding everything else. Having said that: that article cites about one scientist a year, while we are currently getting one warning a week. No scientist in their right mind would deny that global warming is real and it's here [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competitive_Enterprise_Institute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competitive_Enterprise_Institu...

CodeGlitch 5y ago
> environmentalism of the 1960s, Unfortunately is was those very environmentalists who fought hard to stop the nuclear industry - and now it may be too late even with the explosion of green-technologies. > global warming I believe "climate change" is a better term to use these days.
- Delk 5y ago
  Many environmentalists have been wrong about nuclear power and nuclear industry, and still are. That doesn't really make the opponents of environmentalism any more right. If the opponents had focused on pointing out e.g. contradictory or irrational goals (e.g. nuclear power) or on genuinely questioning environmentalist claims without having an agenda of their own, you could say they were right in some cases. But that certainly doesn't describe most of the opponents of environmentalism, and definitely not the staunchest ones.
ghufran_syed 5y ago
No, more of an existence proof - the fact that people have been saying similar things since at least the 60’s should make us at least consider the possibility that the reason for the current warnings are similar to the reason for the previous warnings. Sure, maybe all those other warnings were in good faith and happened to be wrong, while the current warnings are also in good faith and might turn out to be correct. But if you can’t even consider the possibility, then we’re in the realm of religion, not science. Here’s a climate scientist who agrees about climate change, but disagrees about the urgency and nature of the actions justified, hopefully that doesn’t define him as “not in his right mind” - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bj%C3%B8rn_Lomborg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bj%C3%B8rn_Lomborg
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  More realistically, all of those warnings were actually quite right, and catastrophic global warming is well on its way, with almost all recent years being the hottest that we know of. And about this Lomborg individual, I have no idea why anyone would listen to economists (people whose entire field is predicated on models which assume no major changes in the world) about what is necessary to combat catastrophic climate change - this what his think tank is all about.

fit2rule 5y ago

Time. This is the current call to arms. Unless you've got a time machine and can go back to those previous incidents and tell everyone they are wrong, of course ..

spicymaki 5y ago

The CEI article cherry picks sensational headlines with failed predictions, but that does not prove that climate change is not having disastrous effects on the environment.

papaf 5y ago

> What makes this group of scientists and their warning more legitimate than these previous “imminent tipping points” Better models and more computing power?

moistly 5y ago

Josh, why would you post such a fundamentally dishonest blogpost?

fouc 5y ago

Those predictions are only "failed" because they were too soon. We're good at seeing the signs of things to come, but we're bad at predicting the when.