6 ms·

Climate change is one of the long term predictions that has been consistently confirmed with each passing year. I do understand what you’re saying about old pe

Climate change is one of the long term predictions that has been consistently confirmed with each passing year. I do understand what you’re saying about old people being tired of apocalyptic predictions that come to pass. Even I remember being taught about Peak Oil and how the world would grind to a halt as we ran out of oil in the very near future. I remember being very worried about it as a child and wondering why none of the adults were equally concerned. I wish there was a better way to convey the difference between widely corroborated, slow-moving concerns like climate change with the overly sensationalized short-term apocalyptic concerns that crop up every few years.

themihai 4y ago
I think that after a certain age what will happen in the next 5-10 years is vastly more inportant than what will happen in 50-100 years for obvious reasons.
- pojzon 4y ago
  Dont quote me on that but it feels like we will have a war in Iran or somewhere else to bring the world economically back from recession. Europe is silently happy about UA war because it will in the end stimulate economy. Qnd if few mil more ppl leave UA for Germany perm, they will be happiest than ever… World is ugly and how elites treat normal ppl is ugly.
  - radford-neal 4y ago
    War is not good for the economy. This should be completely obvious based on common sense, but if you want more evidence, consider the widespread hunger in Europe after World Wars I and II, even in the countries on the winning side. Sure, if you're away from the areas of destruction, you can perhaps make money selling weapons to the belligerents, but I think today one would be foolish to think that a major war can't possibly affect you, where ever you may be.
Petersipoi 4y ago
> Climate change is one of the long term predictions that has been consistently confirmed with each passing year. While this is true, you're dismissing that the claims around climate change have been wildly wrong. The world should have ended a dozen times by now if we look at past predictions by "experts". I'm not denying climate change at all, and we definitely need to take actions to curb it. But I understand where the skepticism is coming from.
- yodsanklai 4y ago
  > The world should have ended a dozen times by now if we look at past predictions by "experts". Can you give some references where international panels of scientists have predicted the end of the world? We can't put entities such as IPCC at the same level as some random doomsayers.
  - junofan 4y ago
    I mean that’s exactly why the IPCC was created in the 80s. People were tired of random experts doomsaying.
- rcxdude 4y ago
  A lot of such "predictions" tend to have come from non-experts, either misunderstanding experts or working on their own (and some deliberately misrepresenting experts in an attempt to discredite them). Usually when you look into them they were not expert consensus at the time. (That said, we are doing better than some of the 'worst case' predictions made previously, as those predictions assumed a rate of growth of emissions which did not happen).
- cafeinux 4y ago
  There's also the fact that many of those predictions were made with, in mind, the world as it was at the time. The truth is we have made great advances in reducing our CO² emissions, among other things, and have thus set back Doomsday. There's still a lot of work to do, but it just means that there's hope, and that we should not end our efforts just because "we are doomed anyway". Just as we shall all die one day, there's no reason to not try to take care of our bodies and lives.
rippercushions 4y ago
In the 1970s, everybody was freaked about "global cooling". Anybody who lived through that era will be skeptical about current predictions saying precisely the opposite. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling
- XorNot 4y ago
  Literally from the article you linked: > 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. That entire article makes it very clear that at the time the only little pushing it were charlatan media orgs, and one guy who very obviously made a career of opposing every single scientific consensus[1] [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Singer https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Singer
  - rippercushions 4y ago
    If you lived through the 1970s, you saw "charlatan media orgs" pushing global cooling, and now you see the same orgs pushing global warming. Hence the skepticism, despite the science behind warming being far more established than cooling ever was.
- jbay808 4y ago
  Everybody? From your own citation: > Concern peaked in the early 1970s, though "the possibility of anthropogenic warming dominated the peer-reviewed literature even then"
- tzs 4y ago
  Others have already pointed out that it was only a small fraction of experts. But even if it had been a majority (or even "everybody") your point still completely fails because you are not taking into account why they predicted global cooling. The predictions were not "we will have global cooling no matter what". They were "we will have global cooling if the amount of particulate pollution in the atmosphere gets too high, which if current trends continue will happen". Particulate pollution has a cooling effect. But we undertook a massive effort to reign in particulate pollution. We not only stopped their rise but actually greatly reduced their level.
foverzar 4y ago
> Climate change is one of the long term predictions that has been consistently confirmed with each passing year. Has it though? What was even the prediction? It seems to me that at some point people just gave up at pinpointing the specifics of the problem and basically decided that the fact that the climate is changing (never really stopped since the ice age) is the problem that needs fixing. I really fail to see real consistent confirmation that isn't some indirect measurement using unproven models, or stuff like "we found some random farmers journal, compared temperature and crop harvesting dates and it's totes different from now" Were there any real predictions from the past that came true on this topic?
- cafeinux 4y ago
  A comic may not be the best source out there. But I tend to trust Randall Munroe on his research work and claims. Here's his graph: https://xkcd.com/1732/ https://xkcd.com/1732/
- snowwrestler 4y ago
  Sure, Svante Arrhenius predicted that burning coal would increase the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere and lead to warming. Both of those things have happened in the 120 years since he made that prediction.

themihai 4y ago

I think that after a certain age what will happen in the next 5-10 years is vastly more inportant than what will happen in 50-100 years for obvious reasons.

pojzon 4y ago
Dont quote me on that but it feels like we will have a war in Iran or somewhere else to bring the world economically back from recession. Europe is silently happy about UA war because it will in the end stimulate economy. Qnd if few mil more ppl leave UA for Germany perm, they will be happiest than ever… World is ugly and how elites treat normal ppl is ugly.
- radford-neal 4y ago
  War is not good for the economy. This should be completely obvious based on common sense, but if you want more evidence, consider the widespread hunger in Europe after World Wars I and II, even in the countries on the winning side. Sure, if you're away from the areas of destruction, you can perhaps make money selling weapons to the belligerents, but I think today one would be foolish to think that a major war can't possibly affect you, where ever you may be.

Petersipoi 4y ago

> Climate change is one of the long term predictions that has been consistently confirmed with each passing year. While this is true, you're dismissing that the claims around climate change have been wildly wrong. The world should have ended a dozen times by now if we look at past predictions by "experts". I'm not denying climate change at all, and we definitely need to take actions to curb it. But I understand where the skepticism is coming from.

yodsanklai 4y ago
> The world should have ended a dozen times by now if we look at past predictions by "experts". Can you give some references where international panels of scientists have predicted the end of the world? We can't put entities such as IPCC at the same level as some random doomsayers.
- junofan 4y ago
  I mean that’s exactly why the IPCC was created in the 80s. People were tired of random experts doomsaying.
rcxdude 4y ago
A lot of such "predictions" tend to have come from non-experts, either misunderstanding experts or working on their own (and some deliberately misrepresenting experts in an attempt to discredite them). Usually when you look into them they were not expert consensus at the time. (That said, we are doing better than some of the 'worst case' predictions made previously, as those predictions assumed a rate of growth of emissions which did not happen).
cafeinux 4y ago
There's also the fact that many of those predictions were made with, in mind, the world as it was at the time. The truth is we have made great advances in reducing our CO² emissions, among other things, and have thus set back Doomsday. There's still a lot of work to do, but it just means that there's hope, and that we should not end our efforts just because "we are doomed anyway". Just as we shall all die one day, there's no reason to not try to take care of our bodies and lives.

rippercushions 4y ago

In the 1970s, everybody was freaked about "global cooling". Anybody who lived through that era will be skeptical about current predictions saying precisely the opposite. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling

XorNot 4y ago
Literally from the article you linked: > 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. That entire article makes it very clear that at the time the only little pushing it were charlatan media orgs, and one guy who very obviously made a career of opposing every single scientific consensus[1] [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Singer https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Singer
- rippercushions 4y ago
  If you lived through the 1970s, you saw "charlatan media orgs" pushing global cooling, and now you see the same orgs pushing global warming. Hence the skepticism, despite the science behind warming being far more established than cooling ever was.
jbay808 4y ago
Everybody? From your own citation: > Concern peaked in the early 1970s, though "the possibility of anthropogenic warming dominated the peer-reviewed literature even then"
tzs 4y ago
Others have already pointed out that it was only a small fraction of experts. But even if it had been a majority (or even "everybody") your point still completely fails because you are not taking into account why they predicted global cooling. The predictions were not "we will have global cooling no matter what". They were "we will have global cooling if the amount of particulate pollution in the atmosphere gets too high, which if current trends continue will happen". Particulate pollution has a cooling effect. But we undertook a massive effort to reign in particulate pollution. We not only stopped their rise but actually greatly reduced their level.

foverzar 4y ago

> Climate change is one of the long term predictions that has been consistently confirmed with each passing year. Has it though? What was even the prediction? It seems to me that at some point people just gave up at pinpointing the specifics of the problem and basically decided that the fact that the climate is changing (never really stopped since the ice age) is the problem that needs fixing. I really fail to see real consistent confirmation that isn't some indirect measurement using unproven models, or stuff like "we found some random farmers journal, compared temperature and crop harvesting dates and it's totes different from now" Were there any real predictions from the past that came true on this topic?

cafeinux 4y ago
A comic may not be the best source out there. But I tend to trust Randall Munroe on his research work and claims. Here's his graph: https://xkcd.com/1732/ https://xkcd.com/1732/
snowwrestler 4y ago
Sure, Svante Arrhenius predicted that burning coal would increase the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere and lead to warming. Both of those things have happened in the 120 years since he made that prediction.