4 ms·
You are correct that doomerism is bad and wrong but your examples of scientific uncertainty are iffy. The 13b year estimate for the age of the universe is abou
by jl6 3y ago
You are correct that doomerism is bad and wrong but your examples of scientific uncertainty are iffy.
The 13b year estimate for the age of the universe is about right. A better estimate is 13.8b, which is not way more.
The ozone hole didn’t “turn out” to be patched. We identified a problem, took specific actions to address it (migrate off CFCs), and that repair project is still ongoing.
The occasional cold winter doesn’t negate the overall trend of polar ice melting. Only Hollywood is predicting that we’ll all be underwater by 2040.
Volcanic CO2 emissions are 1/60 that of human activities: https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/which-emits-more-carbon-dioxide-volcanoes-or-human-activities https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/which-emits...
- nec4b 3y agoFor how long have volcanoes been erupting and for how long have humans been burning fossil fuels?
- jl6 3y agoVolcanoes do change the climate - especially large eruptions. But they are part of the natural carbon cycle which operates over million-year timescales. Their CO2 doesn’t build up monotonically - it is also absorbed. So it would be fallacious to draw an equivalency between volcanic emissions (small emission times large duration) and anthropogenic emissions (large emission times small duration). The rate matters. Anthropogenic CO2 will also be reabsorbed over millions of years. But the rate of emission is so high that our challenge is to survive the next few hundred years.