4 ms·

I think one of the challenges that the movement faces is that since the 1960's, there have been many disaster claims - sometimes bordering on the fantastical -

by eej71 4y ago

I think one of the challenges that the movement faces is that since the 1960's, there have been many disaster claims - sometimes bordering on the fantastical - and they simply don't come to pass. Not sure why this go-around should be given more credibility.

giraffe_lady 4y ago
you know how in the boy who cried wolf, there is a wolf.
- pc86 4y ago
  If that's your takeaway I don't think you're getting from the story what you're supposed to.
  - giraffe_lady 4y ago
    I mean if we're going for snarky takedowns how about "if you identify most strongly with the attention-seeking liar in the story I don't think I need your advice." But more seriously you can take more than one lesson from a tale. "A threat may be real even if the one relaying it lacks credibility" is not a neat or satisfying morality lesson to feed to children, but it remains true in my experience.
Sharlin 4y ago
For the past 20 to 30 years, the climate science community has been consistently nothing but EXTREMELY conservative in all their predictions in order to not being labeled as alarmist. Newsflash: they were STILL labeled alarmist AND also ignored because whatever happens in 50 years is Someone Else's Problem, can't be bothered to think beyond the next quartal or election cycle. Look! A shiny new thing! Consume! Consume! Now it's becoming clear that almost everything is happening way faster than the conservative models estimated. Humanity just. can't. win. against itself.
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  > conservative in all their predictions in order to not being labeled as alarmist. Newsflash: they were STILL labeled alarmist It doesn't matter how reasonable you try to sound, some people will still hate what you stand for. They don't require logic to hate you, and they don't require the claims against you to be true. And if you compromise your principles to appeal to these people, you will loose support from both sides. So you might as well stick to your guns and put these people on blast.
felixmeziere 4y ago
https://www.amazon.fr/Black-Swan-Impact-Highly-Improbable/dp/0141034599 https://www.amazon.fr/Black-Swan-Impact-Highly-Improbable/dp... Using the past to try and predict the future, in particular unusual and impactful events is a reliable way to constantly miss the main events of history. Also there is no equivalent to the current disaster claim… and contrary to previous ones you can already observe the beginning of the effects of the current one… even though we are just at the beginning of its exponential-driven effects. Long story short: that’s fine if you are still skeptical we’ll start working on it and in 5-10 years the people who are still skeptical will join us once they are more convinced by what’s happening in the world, down to their neighborhood.
PheonixPharts 4y ago
Maybe we because we can observe these disasters happening in real time? I find it absolutely wild that you can claim not to see climate disasters that are actively unfolding around us. The first thing that really woke me up was the sudden loss of global sea ice in 2016. Take a look at the arctic death spiral if you aren't familiar already [0]. In 2012 if you mentioned that the response was "well yea but the antarctic is growing!!". There were good explanations for why that what happening during global warming, but that's no longer necessary since the antarctic is also declining rapidly [1]. Then there's lake Mead. I can't imagine you haven't been paying attention to what's happening there but we're on the path to reaching dead pool in a few years [2]. And yes, this is also due to poor resource management, but it is exacerbated by climate change and desertification of the region. Then there's the amazon rain forest, which was once a carbon sink, becoming a net carbon emitter [3] But the most important part of all of this, is that these events (which represent just a few examples of the impacts of climate changes) are not the new normal. Because the rate co2[4] and ch4[5] are being emitted is accelerating we're no where near a new stability point. All of the things we see now are just the beginning of a process that will only continue to accelerate each year for the rest of your life. And that's just what we can observe and predict. Thwaites glacier, for example, will very likely collapse at some point in the next 100 years. We have no idea when, but when it does it will cause massive and near instant sea level rise. Far more concerning is that this tons of geological evidence that there are feed back triggers that cause rapid rise in GHGs and temperature and we don't know exactly when we might cross these. The book Under a Green Sky, by paleontologist Peter Ward lays out rather convincing evidence that the majority of extinction events have been caused by rapid climate change triggered by changes in CO2. I'm not sure why you don't give these things more credibility. 0. https://www.arcticdeathspiral.org/ https://www.arcticdeathspiral.org/ 1. https://twitter.com/ZLabe/status/1540742236807213058/photo/1 https://twitter.com/ZLabe/status/1540742236807213058/photo/1 2. https://mead.uslakes.info/level.asp https://mead.uslakes.info/level.asp 3. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/14/amazon-rainforest-now-emitting-more-co2-than-it-absorbs https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/14/amazon-r... 4. https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/ https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/ 5. https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends_ch4/ https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends_ch4/
yongjik 4y ago
Let me give you an example. Back in the 1990s the ozone hole was considered a serious problem. Scientists argued that with unchecked emission of CFCs the hole will grow larger and cause serious harm. Limits on CFCs were implemented, the hole stopped growing. Pfft, scientists, warning against a disaster, which never comes because we worked to prevent it. What do they know?
actually_a_dog 4y ago
Because climate models have largely delivered accurate predictions since the 1970s. > In general, past climate model projections evaluated in this analysis were skillful in predicting subsequent GMST warming in the years after publication. While some models showed too much warming and a few showed too little, most models examined showed warming consistent with observations, particularly when mismatches between projected and observationally informed estimates of forcing were taken into account. We find no evidence that the climate models evaluated in this paper have systematically overestimated or underestimated warming over their projection period. The projection skill of the 1970s models is particularly impressive given the limited observational evidence of warming at the time, as the world was thought to have been cooling for the past few decades (e.g., Broecker, 1975; Broecker, 2017). https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2019GL085378 https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2019GL08...

by eej71 4y ago

giraffe_lady 4y ago

you know how in the boy who cried wolf, there is a wolf.

pc86 4y ago
If that's your takeaway I don't think you're getting from the story what you're supposed to.
- giraffe_lady 4y ago
  I mean if we're going for snarky takedowns how about "if you identify most strongly with the attention-seeking liar in the story I don't think I need your advice." But more seriously you can take more than one lesson from a tale. "A threat may be real even if the one relaying it lacks credibility" is not a neat or satisfying morality lesson to feed to children, but it remains true in my experience.

Sharlin 4y ago

For the past 20 to 30 years, the climate science community has been consistently nothing but EXTREMELY conservative in all their predictions in order to not being labeled as alarmist. Newsflash: they were STILL labeled alarmist AND also ignored because whatever happens in 50 years is Someone Else's Problem, can't be bothered to think beyond the next quartal or election cycle. Look! A shiny new thing! Consume! Consume! Now it's becoming clear that almost everything is happening way faster than the conservative models estimated. Humanity just. can't. win. against itself.

ClumsyPilot 4y ago
> conservative in all their predictions in order to not being labeled as alarmist. Newsflash: they were STILL labeled alarmist It doesn't matter how reasonable you try to sound, some people will still hate what you stand for. They don't require logic to hate you, and they don't require the claims against you to be true. And if you compromise your principles to appeal to these people, you will loose support from both sides. So you might as well stick to your guns and put these people on blast.

felixmeziere 4y ago

https://www.amazon.fr/Black-Swan-Impact-Highly-Improbable/dp/0141034599 https://www.amazon.fr/Black-Swan-Impact-Highly-Improbable/dp... Using the past to try and predict the future, in particular unusual and impactful events is a reliable way to constantly miss the main events of history. Also there is no equivalent to the current disaster claim… and contrary to previous ones you can already observe the beginning of the effects of the current one… even though we are just at the beginning of its exponential-driven effects. Long story short: that’s fine if you are still skeptical we’ll start working on it and in 5-10 years the people who are still skeptical will join us once they are more convinced by what’s happening in the world, down to their neighborhood.

PheonixPharts 4y ago

Maybe we because we can observe these disasters happening in real time? I find it absolutely wild that you can claim not to see climate disasters that are actively unfolding around us. The first thing that really woke me up was the sudden loss of global sea ice in 2016. Take a look at the arctic death spiral if you aren't familiar already [0]. In 2012 if you mentioned that the response was "well yea but the antarctic is growing!!". There were good explanations for why that what happening during global warming, but that's no longer necessary since the antarctic is also declining rapidly [1]. Then there's lake Mead. I can't imagine you haven't been paying attention to what's happening there but we're on the path to reaching dead pool in a few years [2]. And yes, this is also due to poor resource management, but it is exacerbated by climate change and desertification of the region. Then there's the amazon rain forest, which was once a carbon sink, becoming a net carbon emitter [3] But the most important part of all of this, is that these events (which represent just a few examples of the impacts of climate changes) are not the new normal. Because the rate co2[4] and ch4[5] are being emitted is accelerating we're no where near a new stability point. All of the things we see now are just the beginning of a process that will only continue to accelerate each year for the rest of your life. And that's just what we can observe and predict. Thwaites glacier, for example, will very likely collapse at some point in the next 100 years. We have no idea when, but when it does it will cause massive and near instant sea level rise. Far more concerning is that this tons of geological evidence that there are feed back triggers that cause rapid rise in GHGs and temperature and we don't know exactly when we might cross these. The book Under a Green Sky, by paleontologist Peter Ward lays out rather convincing evidence that the majority of extinction events have been caused by rapid climate change triggered by changes in CO2. I'm not sure why you don't give these things more credibility. 0. https://www.arcticdeathspiral.org/ https://www.arcticdeathspiral.org/ 1. https://twitter.com/ZLabe/status/1540742236807213058/photo/1 https://twitter.com/ZLabe/status/1540742236807213058/photo/1 2. https://mead.uslakes.info/level.asp https://mead.uslakes.info/level.asp 3. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/14/amazon-rainforest-now-emitting-more-co2-than-it-absorbs https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/14/amazon-r... 4. https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/ https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/ 5. https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends_ch4/ https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends_ch4/

yongjik 4y ago

Let me give you an example. Back in the 1990s the ozone hole was considered a serious problem. Scientists argued that with unchecked emission of CFCs the hole will grow larger and cause serious harm. Limits on CFCs were implemented, the hole stopped growing. Pfft, scientists, warning against a disaster, which never comes because we worked to prevent it. What do they know?

actually_a_dog 4y ago

Because climate models have largely delivered accurate predictions since the 1970s. > In general, past climate model projections evaluated in this analysis were skillful in predicting subsequent GMST warming in the years after publication. While some models showed too much warming and a few showed too little, most models examined showed warming consistent with observations, particularly when mismatches between projected and observationally informed estimates of forcing were taken into account. We find no evidence that the climate models evaluated in this paper have systematically overestimated or underestimated warming over their projection period. The projection skill of the 1970s models is particularly impressive given the limited observational evidence of warming at the time, as the world was thought to have been cooling for the past few decades (e.g., Broecker, 1975; Broecker, 2017). https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2019GL085378 https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2019GL08...