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How alarming does something have to get before talking about how alarming it is is no longer "alarmist nonsense"? At this point seeing the word "alarmist" in re

How alarming does something have to get before talking about how alarming it is is no longer "alarmist nonsense"? At this point seeing the word "alarmist" in reference to climate change is indistinguishable from parody, because it's become painfully obvious that the claims made were real, the effects we're seeing are real, and we have done very little to put the brakes on what we've been told is probably a runaway process.

brutusborn 3y ago
That's why it's nonsense: there is no limit to when a "worrying" problem becomes "alarming" or global "warming" becomes "boiling", it's just language designed to induce fear with no link to anything tangible. Calling climate change an "emergency" does nothing to help, it merely stokes pointless political discussions over what adjectives are best. I think the opposite about climate claims being 'real.' The majority of climate claims I see are merely conjecture that often turns out to be exaggerations. We definitely see real effects, but nothing near the catastrophes most activists predict or attribute. Listening to this debate [0] really opened my eyes. Take for example the claim that "Climate change will cause worse storms and infrastructure damage." Most of the increasing damage from storms is from humans building in environments like flood plains, a minor part of that effect is from climate. Or take the claim that "Climate change will cause food shortages." Some models predict warming poles will increase available farmland! [1] I'm not saying that the current situation is good, but I think the downsides are overblown and the accuracy of the models used for these predictions are overstated. The amount of resources redirected to climate change are huge, so I reject the idea that we are doing very little. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Gk9gIpGvSE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Gk9gIpGvSE [1] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0228305 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

brutusborn 3y ago

That's why it's nonsense: there is no limit to when a "worrying" problem becomes "alarming" or global "warming" becomes "boiling", it's just language designed to induce fear with no link to anything tangible. Calling climate change an "emergency" does nothing to help, it merely stokes pointless political discussions over what adjectives are best. I think the opposite about climate claims being 'real.' The majority of climate claims I see are merely conjecture that often turns out to be exaggerations. We definitely see real effects, but nothing near the catastrophes most activists predict or attribute. Listening to this debate [0] really opened my eyes. Take for example the claim that "Climate change will cause worse storms and infrastructure damage." Most of the increasing damage from storms is from humans building in environments like flood plains, a minor part of that effect is from climate. Or take the claim that "Climate change will cause food shortages." Some models predict warming poles will increase available farmland! [1] I'm not saying that the current situation is good, but I think the downsides are overblown and the accuracy of the models used for these predictions are overstated. The amount of resources redirected to climate change are huge, so I reject the idea that we are doing very little. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Gk9gIpGvSE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Gk9gIpGvSE [1] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0228305 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...