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We deal with similar fallout here every time climate change comes up for discussion and someone trots out the claim that scientists in the 70s were worried abou

We deal with similar fallout here every time climate change comes up for discussion and someone trots out the claim that scientists in the 70s were worried about global cooling. A few interesting papers got wildly over-covered and, well, here we are 50 years later. Ultimately I think this is not a solvable problem because people want to believe. If a story seems to confirm or support a belief that is exciting or emotionally charged, it can stick in the heads of some people and really affect them. Information we take in is not just stored for later retrieval, it is interlinked with what we already think. If you have lots of other physics in your head, a weird physics story has a chance to get linked with that and kept in its proper context. If you don’t have much physics, a weird physics story might get linked elsewhere: to religious views, political ideology, science fiction stories, etc.

BlueTemplar 4y ago
Depends how that claim is trotted out, isn't it ? Weren't we in a cooling period in the decades up to the 80s (?) ? Aren't we overdue for the end of this interglacial (give or take a few thousand years) ? Now the issue seems to be that while the end of this interglacial would be unpleasant, with Canada / Great Britain / Scandinavia / Siberia becoming uninhabitable because covered in glaciers, at least we would be in "known" territory, since Homo roughly dates back to the beginning of our Ice Age, and has already lived through half a hundred glacials/interglacials (and several of them for Sapiens), we're at the risk of "overshooting" towards the end of our Ice Age, which would be a much more normal climate for the Earth, but also barely even known by Austrolapithecus (~first "human"), where we risk to only have the poles left habitable (for land mammals in general?), which would also be particularly unpleasant due to their months-long days and nights ?

BlueTemplar 4y ago

Depends how that claim is trotted out, isn't it ? Weren't we in a cooling period in the decades up to the 80s (?) ? Aren't we overdue for the end of this interglacial (give or take a few thousand years) ? Now the issue seems to be that while the end of this interglacial would be unpleasant, with Canada / Great Britain / Scandinavia / Siberia becoming uninhabitable because covered in glaciers, at least we would be in "known" territory, since Homo roughly dates back to the beginning of our Ice Age, and has already lived through half a hundred glacials/interglacials (and several of them for Sapiens), we're at the risk of "overshooting" towards the end of our Ice Age, which would be a much more normal climate for the Earth, but also barely even known by Austrolapithecus (~first "human"), where we risk to only have the poles left habitable (for land mammals in general?), which would also be particularly unpleasant due to their months-long days and nights ?