4 ms·

Except, people have been saying exactly this with the same unshakable confidence, literally since the beginning of recorded history. In the 70s, it was said tha

Except, people have been saying exactly this with the same unshakable confidence, literally since the beginning of recorded history. In the 70s, it was said that we would have experienced all of those things by 2000, and yet, life continued to get dramatically better for everyone, particularly for the poorest. So, no. Life will continue to get better despite global warming. Or, not doing so is an extraordinarily claim for which there is no real evidence.

tetris11 5y ago
They rang the alarm bells because they saw the trend and tried to curb it. They knew things would get bad, not neccesarily at an exact date. We are only now experiencing the contributions to the atmosphere made at the dawn of the last century. This delayed effect is worrying to say the least.
- parineum 5y ago
  They're not talking specifically about climate change. Doomsayers have always existed, warranted or not. Previously, it seemed inevitable that the cold war would end in a massive nuclear exchange and yet here we are. That was a very real threat, just like climate change, but it was avoided. We also have AI/Singularity doomsayers right now and, previously, Bird flu, SARS, Ebola, etc. and where the doom actually came, humanity has survived just fine. Through all of that, everything has gotten better.
  - rendall 5y ago
    Speaking as a former doomsayer, people like my former self who are committed to the "everything is terrible" outlook really dislike hearing that it's not true. For me, I was committed because my life sucked, and it was much easier to point at objective, outer reasons than to do the hard work of digging in and digging myself out. I was pretty smugly insufferable. I still am, just, from a different perspective.
- native_samples 5y ago
  No, in the 1970s they were ringing alarm bells about global cooling, not global warming. If you read newspaper archival articles from that period you'll see that they sound exactly like articles written last week, except with the word warming inverted to cooling. Scientists back then, or at least the ones being interviewed by journalists, were communicating an absolute certainty that an ice age was coming and the world needed to prepare. There was scientific consensus, etc. This whole thing has long since been memory holed, but it happened. Here's Spock in 1979 with a whole documentary about about how politicians are ignoring the scientist's warnings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQSBn50o_8M&t=21s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQSBn50o_8M&t=21s "What scientists are telling us now, is that the threat of an ice age is not as remote as they once thought. During the lifetime of our grandchildren, arctic cold and perpetual snow could turn most of the inhabitable portions of our desert into a polar desert". They also had plans for how to stop it. They wanted to, amongst other things, cover the arctic in black dust to make it absorb more heat. IMHO one of the major reasons teenagers suffer mentally is because they are way too sensitive to social pressures to never question claims about future destruction of the world. They're told the world is ending and that anyone who claims otherwise is an unspeakably evil conservative who must not be listened to under any circumstances. But it's not ending, even decades after global cooling scientists still don't really understand the climate at all and the people who claim otherwise aren't evil or bad. They're actually the level headed ones. Teenagers should listen to them a lot more - they'd realize there's a lot to live for.
  - tstrimple 5y ago
    You're spreading misinformation. The scientific concern was always global warming, despite what media was saying. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling > Some press reports in the 1970s speculated about continued cooling; these did not accurately reflect the scientific literature of the time, which was generally more concerned with warming from an enhanced greenhouse effect.
    - native_samples 5y ago
      It's the opposite I'm afraid. You're the one spreading misinformation, though it's not really your fault. The idea journalists simply made up the whole thing is what modern scientists like to say, but it's not true. The reason the media "speculated" about a new ice age is because scientists were telling them it was going to happen. Do you really believe US TV would make up an entire episode about non-existent scientific beliefs? Maybe you do. Then please explain how the following can be squared with Wikipedia's explanation. Scientists believed global cooling so much they held international conferences to debate it and even told the US President to prepare America for the new ice age: "Dear Mr President, aware of your deep concern with the future of the world, we feel obliged to inform you on the results of a scientific conference held here recently. The conference dealt with the past and future changes of climate and was attended for 42 top American and European investigators ... the main conclusion is that a global deterioration of climate, by an order of magnitude larger than any hithero experienced by mankind, is a very real possibility and may indeed be due very soon. The cooling has a natural cause and falls within the rank of processes which produced the last ice age. This is a surprising result based largely on studies of recent deep sea sediment. ... With the efficient help of the world leaders, the research could be effectively organized and could possibly find answers to this menace ... it seems reasonable to prepare the agriculture and industry for possible alternatives and to form reserves. With best regards, George L Kukla, Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory & R. K. Matthew, Chairman, Department of Geological Sciences (Brown University)" https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/outreach/CDPW40/CD&PW_reeves_denver.pdf https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/outreach/CDPW40/CD&PW... July 1970, New York Times: "The United States and the Soviet Union are mounting large-scale investigations to determine why the Arctic climate is becoming more frigid, why parts of the Arctic sea ice have recently become ominously thicker and whether the extent of that ice cover contributes to the onset of ice ages. The projects, which involve nuclear submarines, earth satellites, aircraft and numerous manned and unmanned stations on the drifting ice, are being pressed with special urgency in view of recent discoveries of important resources in the Soviet and the American Arctic." https://www.nytimes.com/1970/07/18/archives/us-and-soviet-press-studies-of-a-colder-arctic-us-and-soviet-press.html?_r=0 https://www.nytimes.com/1970/07/18/archives/us-and-soviet-pr... Again, do you believe that these reports are false, that these large-scale investigations never happened? That this was all made up by the press even as the poor scientists were saying the opposite? There are many more documents like these. They make it very clear that back then global cooling was treated in exactly the same way global warming is today. Scientists were quite clear about what they believed back then.
sofixa 5y ago
I wasn't alive then, so can't judge on that. I can however see the obvious changes that are happening, and the trends. Nobody serious is saying the planet will become uninhabitable, but swathes of it will. Wildfires, heat domes, massive floods are events that are getting more frequent. Texas's "once in a hundred years" winter that now has occured twice in 10 years; the massive floods in China and Germany; the heat and now cold waves that have hit Europe in the past few years. Burying your head in the sand won't make all that go away.

tetris11 5y ago

They rang the alarm bells because they saw the trend and tried to curb it. They knew things would get bad, not neccesarily at an exact date. We are only now experiencing the contributions to the atmosphere made at the dawn of the last century. This delayed effect is worrying to say the least.

parineum 5y ago
They're not talking specifically about climate change. Doomsayers have always existed, warranted or not. Previously, it seemed inevitable that the cold war would end in a massive nuclear exchange and yet here we are. That was a very real threat, just like climate change, but it was avoided. We also have AI/Singularity doomsayers right now and, previously, Bird flu, SARS, Ebola, etc. and where the doom actually came, humanity has survived just fine. Through all of that, everything has gotten better.
- rendall 5y ago
  Speaking as a former doomsayer, people like my former self who are committed to the "everything is terrible" outlook really dislike hearing that it's not true. For me, I was committed because my life sucked, and it was much easier to point at objective, outer reasons than to do the hard work of digging in and digging myself out. I was pretty smugly insufferable. I still am, just, from a different perspective.
native_samples 5y ago
No, in the 1970s they were ringing alarm bells about global cooling, not global warming. If you read newspaper archival articles from that period you'll see that they sound exactly like articles written last week, except with the word warming inverted to cooling. Scientists back then, or at least the ones being interviewed by journalists, were communicating an absolute certainty that an ice age was coming and the world needed to prepare. There was scientific consensus, etc. This whole thing has long since been memory holed, but it happened. Here's Spock in 1979 with a whole documentary about about how politicians are ignoring the scientist's warnings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQSBn50o_8M&t=21s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQSBn50o_8M&t=21s "What scientists are telling us now, is that the threat of an ice age is not as remote as they once thought. During the lifetime of our grandchildren, arctic cold and perpetual snow could turn most of the inhabitable portions of our desert into a polar desert". They also had plans for how to stop it. They wanted to, amongst other things, cover the arctic in black dust to make it absorb more heat. IMHO one of the major reasons teenagers suffer mentally is because they are way too sensitive to social pressures to never question claims about future destruction of the world. They're told the world is ending and that anyone who claims otherwise is an unspeakably evil conservative who must not be listened to under any circumstances. But it's not ending, even decades after global cooling scientists still don't really understand the climate at all and the people who claim otherwise aren't evil or bad. They're actually the level headed ones. Teenagers should listen to them a lot more - they'd realize there's a lot to live for.
- tstrimple 5y ago
  You're spreading misinformation. The scientific concern was always global warming, despite what media was saying. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling > Some press reports in the 1970s speculated about continued cooling; these did not accurately reflect the scientific literature of the time, which was generally more concerned with warming from an enhanced greenhouse effect.
  - native_samples 5y ago
    It's the opposite I'm afraid. You're the one spreading misinformation, though it's not really your fault. The idea journalists simply made up the whole thing is what modern scientists like to say, but it's not true. The reason the media "speculated" about a new ice age is because scientists were telling them it was going to happen. Do you really believe US TV would make up an entire episode about non-existent scientific beliefs? Maybe you do. Then please explain how the following can be squared with Wikipedia's explanation. Scientists believed global cooling so much they held international conferences to debate it and even told the US President to prepare America for the new ice age: "Dear Mr President, aware of your deep concern with the future of the world, we feel obliged to inform you on the results of a scientific conference held here recently. The conference dealt with the past and future changes of climate and was attended for 42 top American and European investigators ... the main conclusion is that a global deterioration of climate, by an order of magnitude larger than any hithero experienced by mankind, is a very real possibility and may indeed be due very soon. The cooling has a natural cause and falls within the rank of processes which produced the last ice age. This is a surprising result based largely on studies of recent deep sea sediment. ... With the efficient help of the world leaders, the research could be effectively organized and could possibly find answers to this menace ... it seems reasonable to prepare the agriculture and industry for possible alternatives and to form reserves. With best regards, George L Kukla, Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory & R. K. Matthew, Chairman, Department of Geological Sciences (Brown University)" https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/outreach/CDPW40/CD&PW_reeves_denver.pdf https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/outreach/CDPW40/CD&PW... July 1970, New York Times: "The United States and the Soviet Union are mounting large-scale investigations to determine why the Arctic climate is becoming more frigid, why parts of the Arctic sea ice have recently become ominously thicker and whether the extent of that ice cover contributes to the onset of ice ages. The projects, which involve nuclear submarines, earth satellites, aircraft and numerous manned and unmanned stations on the drifting ice, are being pressed with special urgency in view of recent discoveries of important resources in the Soviet and the American Arctic." https://www.nytimes.com/1970/07/18/archives/us-and-soviet-press-studies-of-a-colder-arctic-us-and-soviet-press.html?_r=0 https://www.nytimes.com/1970/07/18/archives/us-and-soviet-pr... Again, do you believe that these reports are false, that these large-scale investigations never happened? That this was all made up by the press even as the poor scientists were saying the opposite? There are many more documents like these. They make it very clear that back then global cooling was treated in exactly the same way global warming is today. Scientists were quite clear about what they believed back then.

sofixa 5y ago

I wasn't alive then, so can't judge on that. I can however see the obvious changes that are happening, and the trends. Nobody serious is saying the planet will become uninhabitable, but swathes of it will. Wildfires, heat domes, massive floods are events that are getting more frequent. Texas's "once in a hundred years" winter that now has occured twice in 10 years; the massive floods in China and Germany; the heat and now cold waves that have hit Europe in the past few years. Burying your head in the sand won't make all that go away.