
Did Setting a Timeline Doom the Fight Against Global Warming? - 4mpm3
https://onezero.medium.com/did-setting-a-timeline-doom-the-fight-against-global-warming-35f9f18c7a2d?source=friends_link&sk=00d55144ada068d326a5f80f7a65186f
======
rayiner
Climate change was never going to be reversible with behavioral measures. Even
if everyone had followed the Kyoto protocol to the letter starting in 1992
that wasn’t going to avert climate change, because nobody contemplated how
quickly China and India would develop. There is no calculus where you can
significantly limit climate change through behavioral measures that also allow
the third world to have comfortable, modern lives. There will be 400 million
people in Nigeria by 2050 and there is no political regime to address climate
the change that’s workable unless it allows them to live a life at least as
decent as say Eastern Europe. The west could reduce GHG emissions to zero and
it wouldn’t do the trick.

People have viewed climate change as a political issue and its not. It’s a
scientific issue. It’s the astroid hurtling toward earth in the movie
Armageddon or the aliens in Independence Day. The solution to climate change
is not governments and politicians and lawyers. It’s engineers. It’s always
been engineers.

~~~
ridicter
It _is_ a political issue. The technology already exists--courtesy of the
scientists/engineers of course. Whether that technology is deployed is a
problem of politics.

For example, if the price of fossil fuels reflected its true cost to society--
think climate change, extreme weather, stronger storms, droughts, ocean
acidification, etc--then fossil fuels would be prohibitively expensive
compared to renewable or nuclear energy. This is what a carbon tax is, and
it's what many scientists and economists have been pushing for decades now.
But they've been fighting a losing battle against the oil and gas lobby, and
one party in particular that is wholly captured by them.

In fact, James Hansen, NASA scientist and head of the Goddard Institute, got
out of the science to focus specifically on the politics. He urges people to
join the Citizens Climate Lobby, which has lobbied for carbon pricing
legislation for over a decade now: the Energy Innovation Act has bipartisan
support in Congress right now
([https://energyinnovationact.org/](https://energyinnovationact.org/)). Many
other scientists are involved in the politics these day as well (Katherine
Hayhoe [atmospheric scientist], Michael Mann [climatologist]).

~~~
pathseeker
>This is what a carbon tax is, and it's what many scientists and economists
have been pushing for decades now. But they've been fighting a losing battle
against the oil and gas lobby, and one party in particular that is wholly
captured by them.

You missed the forest for the trees. As the OP pointed out, the US going to
zero emissions overnight will not even help. US politics will not solve
Nigeria's, China's, or India's populations from expanding to modern western
consumerism.

~~~
the_gastropod
Perfect is the enemy of good.

Of course we can't instantly solve global carbon emissions. But we can do our
(very large) part here in the U.S. By shifting where our dollars go. By moving
from carbon to renewable sources, we'll drop the price of renewables, helping
small economies afford to do the same.

Progress is virtually always incremental. We need to begin by stopping
dragging our feet.

~~~
rayiner
That’s like saying we should try to bail out the boat with spoons because
“progress is incremental.” It’s not only pointless, but actively dangerous,
because it’s a distraction.

The “Green New Deal” is a great example. A jobs program obviously won’t do
anything to seriously address climate change. Worse, it wastes money and
political capital on things that could have more utility. If you spent that
money on nuclear energy research and gave it away to developing nations, then
you could really move the needle.

~~~
TeMPOraL
But is it a distraction? To overuse the analogy, GP is proposing to yes, get
most of the crew to spoon, to buy some little extra time while the engineering
team is trying to fix the pumps. The alternative is to have the crew drink or
pray to deities for the pumps to be blessed and magically start working.

If the development of the developing world is a problem, you can't expect the
solution to come from developing world. On our end, like in the example of the
ship's crew, most people aren't able to contribute to a proper solution - they
lack the necessary skills and opportunities. Unfortunately (in this case), we
live in free market democracies, which means there isn't a body that can
reallocate huge amount of resources to retraining and retooling towards
mitigating climate change. The market doesn't care, so we have to do things
the hard way - we have to force our governments to force the market to start
allocating resources, so that engineers and scientists and logisticians can
deal with the problem directly.

------
Ensorceled
There was a lot of talk about how the world will be "uninhabitable by 2050" or
"civilization will crumble by 2050" and anecdotally, that really backfired for
all my elderly aunts and uncles. They happily admit that climate change is
real but don't care because they will be dead by 2040. Hell, I'll be in my
80's.

~~~
bureaucrat
Kek, in 1970 crude oil was predicted to run out in 2020. They also predicted
the world will be inhabitable by now because of intense pollution.

How are we? We breathe cleaner air and use more petroleum than 1970.

I will be 55 in 2050, and I bet my entire fortune that the world will be
better then.

~~~
redleggedfrog
Not sure that works. That's like telling a child, "Watch out for that car. Oh!
Lookout for that one, too." And the kid thinks, "Well, neither of those hit
me, why should I care?" And the next one flattens him.

Just because you can pick two things from the past that didn't turn out as
expected doesn't mean the next potential danger isn't valid. Now, maybe we
come up with some clever CO2 scrubbing technology and we start engineering the
atmosphere, but that doesn't mean the danger doesn't need to be addressed.
There was a lot of work that went into finding new ways to get oil and
regulation to improve the air. Without acknowledging the problem we could have
had those catastrophes.

~~~
mistermann
> Just because you can pick two things from the past that didn't turn out as
> expected doesn't mean the next potential danger isn't valid.

Correct, perhaps those issuing the warnings should accept the unfortunate
reality that this is how average people behave and adjust their messaging.
Rather than repetitive warning after warning, why not pool resources and focus
on building and improving one single large educational resource that tells the
whole story ( _including_ full disclosure of the uncertain and imperfect
aspects, rather than having people learn of those in conspiracy forums, in
order to build trust) from a variety of angles so it is approachable by people
from all different intelligence and economic levels?

More of the same isn't going to work.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Part of the problem is that there isn't a centralized Science Propaganda
Council issuing these warnings, which could be told to do better. Scientists
publish studies and sometimes strongly worded letters; journalists and authors
pick it up and twist into something that (then) sells publications / (now)
attracts eyeballs to advertisements; people mishear these reports further,
freak out and tell to each other (or, today, post on social media).

~~~
mistermann
> Part of the problem is that there isn't a centralized Science Propaganda
> Council issuing these warnings, which could be told to do better.

The layman listening to how this is covered could very easily come to the
exact opposite conclusion ("97% of scientists....!!"), and much of the
armchair experts seem to behave as if there was.

But this is my point: why _isn 't_ there something akin to a centralized
Science Propaganda Council where the very best science on the matter is agreed
upon by the experts, and open to criticism by those who disagree? Isn't this
how any large project would be organized (well, the "central" part of it if
not the openness to criticism)? Does having a bunch of splintered groups
arguing inconsistent viewpoints seem like the optimal approach to something
that may very well be an existential threat to life as we know it on the
planet?

> Scientists publish studies and sometimes strongly worded letters;
> journalists and authors pick it up and twist into something that (then)
> sells publications / (now) attracts eyeballs to advertisements; people
> mishear these reports further, freak out and tell to each other (or, today,
> post on social media).

Bingo. And intelligent people sincerely wonder why this isn't having success.
The situation is so utterly absurd to me, it boggles my mind that no one else
seems to notice any imperfections in our current approach (and this applies to
_all_ the issues facing the world, not just this one).

------
chiefalchemist
Wouldn't it be nice it it were something as simple as setting a timeline. The
reality is, it's a combination of two things (mainly):

1) We can't afford to undermind the economy. That is, any plan that cuts back
on consumption (even in the short term) is going to hurt an already hurting
economy[1]. However, there aren't any "leader(s)" who want to be pinned with
such things so the buck gets passed.

2) Along the same lines, we've convenience'd ourselves into a corner. At this
point, sacrifices (in the context of status quo lifestyles / cultural
expectations) need to be made; habits needed to be changed. But again, there's
no leader willing to disrupt that which needs to be disrupted. We talk a good
game when it comes to wanting change but then once the call comes in, we
whine. "Leaders" that cause people to whine don't get elected / re-elected. It
used to be, "at war" mean the POTUS (in the USA) had carte blanche to ask for
help and sacrifice. Now we live in a world where "at war" means to keep the
masses distracted by keeping up with the Kardashians.

[1] Not to get off topic (but to prove my point); there's a reason fracking
hocket-stick'ed under the previous POTUS. That reason is, the Fed had shot it
wad and keeping the cost of fuel down is a proxy for economic stimulation
(without having to say so). Ultimately, we tossed Mother Nature under the bus
to keep the economy from going tits-up. If that's what "green presidents" can
get away with, then that doesn't exactly raise the bar for the rest.

~~~
esotericn
> We can't afford to undermine the economy.

Heh. This is such a brilliant phrase that perfectly encapsulates everything
that is wrong.

We can't afford to not afford things. :D

~~~
TeMPOraL
No, it's actually very much right.

We can push the economy a bit. We can try to replace the more emission-
intensive aspects of it. But we cannot do it too hard - because if we break
the economy, that's quite literally game over. After humanity emerges from
ensuing wars, famines and starvation, the survivors will be left stuck with
medieval-era technology on a thoroughly broken planet.

I have this feeling that people forget that economy isn't just zeroes on the
accounts of bank executives; it's the food on the table of everyone, it's the
medicine and the running water, and everything that keeps civilization
together.

Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater, and even more so, let's not
replace the bathwater with gasoline and set it on fire.

~~~
esotericn
Sure, but the idea that it's untouchable is absurd.

Everything changes. The economy was different last year, in 2010, in 1950 and
so on.

The country I grew up in is very different to the one that exists today.

Change is constant. No-one is talking about burning it down, the idea is more
that the exceptional growth of the past few decades has likely overshot what
is sustainable.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I'm not saying it's untouchable, just that it needs to be handled with care.

Think of it as doing live repair on a running engine of your airplane, mid-
flight. You can do it if you're careful, but if you break it, we all die, and
the airplane isn't going to fly anywhere anytime soon.

In particular, ideas like "we need to halt _economic growth_ ASAP" I sometimes
see in climate change threads are essentially suicidal.

------
umanwizard
It annoys me when people act like Y2K was apocalyptic scaremongering. No, Y2K
was a _real_ threat, which the human race spent huge resources to meet and
thereby mitigated appropriately.

~~~
redleggedfrog
I remember my father, a mainframe programmer, spending _years_ correcting code
for Y2K for the bank he worked for. COBOL and assembly. At the rollover, it
went without a hitch, but there was a lot of sweat to make that happen

~~~
Ensorceled
My uncle (a COBOL programmer in the 60's) got together with some other retired
guys and made a lot of money doing exactly the same thing in the late 90's.
One of his contracts he landed because they found his name all over the code.

------
mannykannot
No matter how you put it, people will find tendentious excuses for ignoring
the issue, and when they are no longer tenable, they will switch to another,
without any concern as to whether it is consistent with their previous
position.

------
inlined
The part about divers crying into masks hit home. It was on my bucket list to
dive in the Great Barrier Reef but it’s now been declared dead. 95% of my
diving has been in the last 25% of my diving career because I know I have a
limited time.

~~~
radford-neal
What? "Declared dead?" Here's a BBC report from a few days ago that says that
it's in danger, but certainly "not dead yet".

[https://www.bbc.com/news/world-
australia-49520949?SThisFB](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-
australia-49520949?SThisFB)

Since the BBC is now officially a climate alarmist organization, I think one
can be sure that this report is as alarmist as one can be without blatantly
disregarding easily verifiable facts.

~~~
gjm11
> _now officially a climate alarmist organization_

What exactly does that mean?

(The BBC report is summarizing a report from the Australian government, and
unless it's just lying its level of alarmism will pretty much track those of
that report itself. So whether the BBC is "officially a climate alarmist
organization", whatever that means, matters less than whether the Australian
government is one. Regardless, it would be nice to know what you mean.)

~~~
radford-neal
See, for example, [https://www.carbonbrief.org/exclusive-bbc-issues-internal-
gu...](https://www.carbonbrief.org/exclusive-bbc-issues-internal-guidance-on-
how-to-report-climate-change)

Even when reporting on a report, it's possible to emphasize certain aspects,
or misleadingly paraphrase its conclusions. I haven't looked at the original
report to tell whether that has happened here.

~~~
gjm11
OK, I read it. I don't see anything there that _to me_ seems to justify
calling them "officially a climate alarmist organization". Could you elaborate
on what exactly about their position you're describing by those words?

~~~
radford-neal
Well, for instance, it says that the BBC has an official position that "there
is very high confidence that there will be more extreme events – floods,
droughts, heatwaves etc." (Presumably, by "more", they mean an increase of
substantial importance, not, say, 5%.) This seems more alarmist than the
scientific consensus.

Regarding the consensus, they say "The BBC accepts that the best science on
the issue is the IPCC’s position". Here, you have to read between the lines.
Do you think that this means they will "de-platform" people who are _more_
alarmist than the IPCC? I doubt it. In that respect, it's always, "the latest
research, too recent for the last IPCC report, shows that it's worse than we
thought...".

~~~
gjm11
It looks to me as if the comment about "extreme events" is an illustrative
example rather than a specific statement of BBC policy. Which is just as well,
because I agree that it seems to go beyond current consensus.

The BBC is not proposing to "de-platform" everyone less alarmist than the IPCC
so no, I wouldn't expect them to de-platform everyone more alarmist than the
IPCC either. Here are some things they do say:

> _As climate change is accepted as happening, you do not need a ‘denier’ to
> balance the debate. Although there are those who disagree with the IPCC’s
> position, very few of them now go so far as to deny that climate change is
> happening. To achieve impartiality, you do not need to include outright
> deniers of climate change in BBC coverage_

and

> _There are occasions where contrarians and sceptics should be included
> within climate change and sustainability debates. These may include, for
> instance, debating the speed and intensity of what will happen in the
> future, or what policies government should adopt._

all of which seems to allow for a considerable degree of variation away from
the IPCC's position before anything like "de-platforming" is on the table.

(I'd still like to know what exactly "officially a climate alarmist
organization" means. By "climate alarmist", do you mean the same as "believing
that climate change is real", or something else?)

------
m4gw4s
My takeaway is different: we are beyond the tipping point. Even if we
technically would not, our inability to make good decisions as a group dooms
us. The good strategy is to prepare to live through the extinction event, and
use that as the proof of need for better group decisions (a.k.a. politics). We
do have the scientific knowledge to design a much better system, but the same
knowledge hints that the momentums of the system, set by the current
motivational structure would not allow a change for better without a collapse.

------
snikeris
> The only rational path is a virtuous cycle of better politicians enacting
> better policies and promoting better public understanding of climate change.
> But as of today, there is no sign the world is moving in that direction.

Suppose my politicians fight the good fight and we enact the necessary
policies. What about the other countries, especially those that aren't as well
off?

~~~
CodeCube
A well off industrialized nation making progress on energy and pollution
reduction would a) demonstrate what things works, and b) provide investment
dollars into those technologies, which _usually_ results in optimizations and
lowering of costs ... so even if those "other countries" don't follow
immediately, their adoption could be enabled by earlier adoption by us

~~~
mola
We should thank Obama for pushing green energy initiatives

------
paulsutter
Would sure be nice if we spent those war trillions to solve the real problem.
Unfortunately most people seem to have discovered climate change in November
2016.

Good that they did. Better to see more focus on solutions. It would be great
and exciting to work on mass scale solutions and government can easily create
laws to incent it

------
WilliamEdward
What are the implications of 'irreversible'? Practically irreversible? Cannot
be reversed naturally? If we run out of ice, what's to say cooling down the
planet by halting carbon production won't recreate the ice caps?

~~~
sleepysysadmin
You will find that predictions of climate change have been 100% false. Nobody
has a crystal ball and nobody can predict what will happen in the future. So
lets look into the past.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record#/m...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record#/media/File:All_palaeotemps.svg)

About 20,000 years ago the earth was 10 celcius colder. For the last 20,000
years the earth has been warming pretty steadily.

About 100,000 years ago the world was 5celcius warmer than today.

If you look at the black/red dots from the IPCC predictions. All of those have
already been disproven as false and not going to happen. Overall on the graph
what's happening is that we are more or less exactly flat.

However look at those spikes:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eemian#/media/File:EPICA_delta...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eemian#/media/File:EPICA_delta_D_plot.svg)

Temperature on earth frequently rapidly spiked up in temperature.

So what happened to life on earth when it was 5+ celcius warmer? It was
fantastic for life. Frozen wastelands like Canada and Russia thawed and became
extremely livable. People moved into these northern places.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eocene](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eocene)

The Eocene 50 million years ago was 14celcius warmer and life thrived better
than no other time in history.

~~~
gjm11
> _predictions of climate change have been 100% false_

That statement is itself 100% false, so far as I can tell. Here's one example.
In 1982, some of Exxon's scientists wrote a memo for their management
containing a graph (figure 3, page 7, of
[http://www.climatefiles.com/exxonmobil/1982-memo-to-exxon-
ma...](http://www.climatefiles.com/exxonmobil/1982-memo-to-exxon-management-
about-co2-greenhouse-effect/)) saying that by 2020 CO2 levels would be in
roughly the range 400..430 ppm and global mean temperature would be up by
roughly 1..1.3 degrees C compared to 1960. Here we are in 2020 and the figures
are about 410ppm and +0.9 degrees C. That matches up pretty well, wouldn't you
say?

> _For the last 20,2000 years the earth has been warming pretty steadily_

What the graph you yourself linked to shows is something very different. There
are wild oscillations in the Pleistocene (i.e., _before_ 20k years ago),
ending up with temperatures much colder than the present. Then a rapid
increase from 20k to 10k years ago. Then near-flat temperatures for the last
10k years. And -- though it's over so short a period that it's hard to see on
that graph -- an extremely rapid increase over the last ~50 years.

> _All of those have already been disproven as false and not going to happen_

How? By whom?

> _we are more or less exactly flat_

This [https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-
temperature/](https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/) is not
what I would call "more or less exactly flat".

> _look at those spikes ... frequently rapidly spiked up in temperature_

You're looking at a portion of the Pleistocene, also known as the last Ice
Age. Glaciers came and went, and the Eemian "spike" is one of those periods in
which the glaciers melted. So, yes, indeed, temperatures "spiked up" and we
had a transition from a large fraction of the earth's land area being covered
in ice to hardly any of it being. Are you suggesting that we shouldn't be
worried about climate change because the consequences might not be any more
severe than those of _the melting of an ice sheet covering the whole of
Canada_?

> _it was fantastic for life_

Pretty good for life overall, yes, and the climate change we're causing might
be too. However, my own interests are parochial enough that I care much more
what happens to _our_ species and the others that we've grown to depend on,
which is any entirely different question. For instance ...

> _The Eocene 50 million years ago was 14 celsius warmer and life thrived_

... 50M years ago, sea levels were something like 100m higher than they are
now. There's a handy tool at
[http://www.floodmap.net/](http://www.floodmap.net/) that lets you explore the
consequences of a given increase in sea level (though it's a bit glitchy and
it looks like maybe it doesn't have data for anything too far from the
equator). At 100m, things we would lose include: about half of England and
Ireland; all of the Netherlands; half of Belgium; most of western France; all
of Senegal, the Gambia, and Guinea-Bissau; huge amounts of the eastern USA
including more or less all of Florida, Louisiana, Delaware and Rhode Island.

I'm sure _life_ would thrive. The human race would adapt too, no doubt; we're
a very adaptable species. But a whole lot of us would have our homes under
water, and large regions of what's now the inhabitable world would become
inhospitable to human life. E.g., a temperature rise of 14 degrees C turns San
Francisco into Death Valley.

~~~
sleepysysadmin
>That statement is itself 100% false, so far as I can tell. >the figures are
about 410ppm and +0.9 degrees C. That matches up pretty well, wouldn't you
say?

I certainly concede that not literally 100% of the predictions will be wrong.
In fact I bet I could go predicting and we'll be within similar error margins.

My assertion was more to do with consequence predictions. Sorry for being
unclear.

In 2001 the IPCC predicted that wildfires would be out of control because of
climate change. In that the increased temperatures would make the summers
dryer and make the fires worse. Which is a really bad prediction to start with
because smokey the bear is dead because the actual movement to prevent forest
fires resulted in the current situation where we have too many trees. Which
the IPCC in 2001 did know about fire ecology. They were creating a self-
fulfilling prophecy.

In 2012 they reiterated this flawed prediction:
[https://insideclimatenews.org/news/20120703/climate-
change-s...](https://insideclimatenews.org/news/20120703/climate-change-
scientist-ipcc-wildfires-global-warming-drought-pine-beetles-west-forests)

Except they are wrong:
[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/06/170629175502.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/06/170629175502.htm)
Fires declined 24% in their prediction period. Not only did they cheat in
their predictions, they were still wrong.

How about an even more wierd prediction:

[https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11555-global-
warming-...](https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11555-global-warming-will-
make-earth-spin-faster/)

[https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/dec/11/climate-
chan...](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/dec/11/climate-change-
longer-days-glaciers-north-south-pole)

Only a few years apart. The climate scientists are predicting days will get
longer and shorter at the same time because of climate change. Except in the
last 50 years the earth rotation has sped up and slowed down. These are
patently false.

>This [https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-
temperature/](https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/) is not
what I would call "more or less exactly flat".

The most common thing climate scientists like to do is show only the last 150
years. I provided much much better information showing far larger swings in
temperatures in history with no problems at all.

>You're looking at a portion of the Pleistocene, also known as the last Ice
Age. Glaciers came and went, and the Eemian "spike" is one of those periods in
which the glaciers melted. So, yes, indeed, temperatures "spiked up" and we
had a transition from a large fraction of the earth's land area being covered
in ice to hardly any of it being. Are you suggesting that we shouldn't be
worried about climate change because the consequences might not be any more
severe than those of the melting of an ice sheet covering the whole of Canada?

The point I was making is that climate change isn't a problem. It's a good
thing. The climate does change as I proved. That's not a problem.

>Pretty good for life overall, yes, and the climate change we're causing might
be too. However, my own interests are parochial enough that I care much more
what happens to our species and the others that we've grown to depend on,
which is any entirely different question. For instance ...

A couple degrees celcius isn't going to result in any problem to our
ridiculous species. We already regularly live in the hottest and coldest
places on earth. Winterpeg Manitoba Canada might become habitable soon if
climate change doesnt get lazy.

>... 50M years ago, sea levels were something like 100m higher than they are
now. There's a handy tool at
[http://www.floodmap.net/](http://www.floodmap.net/) that lets you explore the
consequences of a given increase in sea level (though it's a bit glitchy and
it looks like maybe it doesn't have data for anything too far from the
equator)

Very flawed tool with so many assumptions that make it appear far worse than
it really will be.

Furthermore, you are correct. 100 metres higher IF the world is 14 celcius
warmer.

I actually don't know of any climate alarmist who claims we are going to warm
the planet 14celcius warmer. In fact the graph I provided shows around 7
celcius warmer at the 8.5% increase per year rate. Which has been disproven.
Their 8.5% rate is more like 0.85%. Furthermore, fossil fuels are going to run
out long before their year 2100 prediction. The world is much greener today
than for a long time. It's actually quite unlikely we will see more than a
couple celcius increase at current predictions.

> huge amounts of the eastern USA including more or less all of Florida,
> Louisiana, Delaware and Rhode Island.

In fact Al gore's propaganda film the inconvenient truth predictions have
failed. This should have already happened:
[http://www.npr.org/programs/fa/features/2006/may/flaafter_lg...](http://www.npr.org/programs/fa/features/2006/may/flaafter_lg.jpg)
according to him Florida should be under water like this. Hurricane doesnt
count.

~~~
gjm11
I'm not sure I'm seeing the wrong predictions about wildfires; it looks to me
as if there are two separate things going on.

1\. Hotter drier summers make for more and worse wildfires in places like
Yellowstone (where a big wildfire in 2012 was the context for that 2012
article). If human activity makes the climate warmer, these will be worse.

2\. Increasing agriculture tends overall to lead to fewer fires, for
complicated reasons that differ from one environment to another.

The climate is warming, but at the same time the population is growing and
many parts of the world are getting richer and more "developed". So you get
both #1 and #2 happening.

The IPCC in 2001, and Steven Running in 2012, weren't (so far as I can see)
saying anything about #2. Quite possibly they never thought about the impact
of increasing population and development on wildfires, which seems fair
enough: that's not really their remit. I haven't seen anything to suggest that
#2 is wrong. (The 2017 _Science_ article mentioned by Science Daily reiterates
that warming climate tends to increase fires; it just says that over the
period they studied the effects of human activity have been larger and in the
other direction.)

What's the problem here?

> _an even more weird prediction_

Again, I'm not sure what the problem is meant to be here. One scientist tried
to model the effects of climate change on the length of the day. Some others
did the same and also measured what the effect actually is. It seems like the
first one got it wrong. Scientists in all fields get things wrong all the
time. I don't see that we can conclude anything from this other than that
oceanographers aren't all infallible, which is ... not a surprise.

> _far larger swings in temperatures in history with no problems at all_

Those are in _prehistory_ , which is relevant because we don't have the
records that would tell us whether there were "no problems at all".

The most recent of those "far larger swings" you identified is between ~20k
years ago and now. That time 20k years ago was the so-called "Last Glacial
Maximum", and at that point Canada was completely covered by an ice sheet, as
was much of northern Europe; sea level was ~125m lower than now.

I am curious about what you consider "no problems at all".

> _I actually don 't know of any climate alarmist who claims we are going to
> warm the planet 14 celsius warmer_

Sure. I used that figure because you were saying how fantastic everything was
when the planet was 14 degrees C warmer. It may have been excellent in some
sense, but I think it would be very bad for the human race if we returned to
those conditions. I'm not saying we _will_ (I doubt it), just disagreeing with
your apparent opinion about what it would be like if we did.

> _the graph I provided shows around 7 Celsius warmer at the 8.5% increase per
> year rate ... more like 0.85%_

Sorry, which graph? I guess you mean the one on the Wikipedia page, which is
mostly of (pre-)historical data, with IPCC projections for 2050 and 2100?

What is it that those projections assume an 8.5% increase of per year that's
actually more like 0.85%? (I haven't found anything for which that's accurate,
but I haven't looked very hard because presumably you can just tell me.)

> _This should have already happened_

Could you be more specific? What exactly did Gore say was going to happen by
when, and where did he say it?

I'll be frank: I _do not believe_ that Gore claimed that large fractions of
Florida would be underwater by now, and suspect you have been lied to. But I
could be wrong!

Here's the best match I can find for that claim. Gore said something (I can't
find his exact wording; it seems to have been vague, perhaps deliberately)
about a 20ft (~= 6m) rise in sea levels. If there were a rise that big, then
the southern part of Florida would look a little like that picture (though I'm
not convinced it's very accurate). But so far as I can tell he didn't put a
timescale on it, and I bet he never said or implied that it would happen
within 13 years.

Now, I'm pretty sure we won't in fact see a 6m sea-level rise this century,
and depending on exactly what Gore said he may have been badly wrong. But not
-- unless you have more detailed information to offer that says otherwise --
wrong in the specific way you say he was wrong.

~~~
sleepysysadmin
>The climate is warming, but at the same time the population is growing and
many parts of the world are getting richer and more "developed". So you get
both #1 and #2 happening. What's the problem here?

The problem is that they themselves have made predictions which contradict
themselves. This is pretty much the status quo for climate change science.
They predict everything to happen. When some route happens they claim success.

When you remove these nostradamus folks. You are left with virtually nothing
in climate science.

The climate is changing no question, the problem is that the hippies/commies
have taken over climate change and are using climate change to propose their
political positions as the fix to climate change. Except they have absolutely
no basis in their proposals. Go read the "new green deal" and find out why
there was unanimous support at crushing it. Yet the presidential candidates
are all pushing effectively the same thing in the name of climate change. The
new green deal has nothing to do with climate change, it has everything to do
with economic inequality.

>Again, I'm not sure what the problem is meant to be here. One scientist tried
to model the effects of climate change on the length of the day. Some others
did the same and also measured what the effect actually is. It seems like the
first one got it wrong. Scientists in all fields get things wrong all the
time. I don't see that we can conclude anything from this other than that
oceanographers aren't all infallible, which is ... not a surprise.

Point I am making is that climate scientists are rolling out the bullshit
train. Just to keep their government grants coming in.

>Those are in prehistory, which is relevant because we don't have the records
that would tell us whether there were "no problems at all".

Actually we do; whether you think geology and archaeology is a science or not
I guess would be the decider here. We know during these warmer periods we have
significantly more life on earth. In fact the areas near the equator became
more green. Which isn't a surprise, places like the congo or amazon or other
places at the equator arent deserts, they are more green than anywhere else.

If we are currently at "4 nuclear bombs a second" of climate change. Obviously
implying imminent and immediate death. Then the Eocene which was 14 celcius
warmer would have been a desert planet. Protip; it wasnt. What this 4 nuclear
bombs a second actually is... is doomsayers. It's climate alarmism that has
been ongoing for 30 years. They are saying we are doomed for 30 years and it's
no different than the Mayan Calendar folks.

>The most recent of those "far larger swings" you identified is between ~20k
years ago and now. That time 20k years ago was the so-called "Last Glacial
Maximum", and at that point Canada was completely covered by an ice sheet, as
was much of northern Europe; sea level was ~125m lower than now.

Do you also assert that warming since the LGM is manmade? Overall I'm not
seeing the problem at all.

>Sure. I used that figure because you were saying how fantastic everything was
when the planet was 14 degrees C warmer. It may have been excellent in some
sense, but I think it would be very bad for the human race if we returned to
those conditions. I'm not saying we will (I doubt it), just disagreeing with
your apparent opinion about what it would be like if we did.

How would it be bad for the human race? Even if the climate alarmists are
correct(which we know they are not) and it's suddenly mad max desert out
there. Humans will live just fine; we are planning to move to far more
inhospitable places like mars or space.

>What is it that those projections assume an 8.5% increase of per year that's
actually more like 0.85%? (I haven't found anything for which that's accurate,
but I haven't looked very hard because presumably you can just tell me.)

The report which is linked right in the graph with the 2050 and 2100
predictions literally explains itself. They predicted 5 different levels.
RCP0, RCP 2.6, RCP 4.5, RCP 6.0, and RCP 8.5

The predictions in the graph pretty much assume worst case scenario of 8.5.

Except this report has been out for over 10 years now. We now have the actual
data to say which of them is happening. The actual number? RCP 0.8

They were off by a multiple of 10. When you look at how bad RCP 0.8 is... the
2100 prediction is like 0.5celcius warmer. Virtually none of the predictions
like Al Gore's underwater florida can happen by 2100. This is from their own
data. They have been completely discredited.

>Could you be more specific? What exactly did Gore say was going to happen by
when, and where did he say it?

Al Gore in the Inconvenient Truth said Florida would be underwater by 2014.
[http://www.oprah.com/g/image-
resizer?width=670&link=http://s...](http://www.oprah.com/g/image-
resizer?width=670&link=http://static.oprah.com/images/tows/200612/20061205/20061205_108_350x263.jpg)

There's literally the picture of him standing infront of his prediction that
Florida would be underwater.

As far as I'm aware we have passed 2014 and he's wrong. Just plain wrong.

>But so far as I can tell he didn't put a timescale on it, and I bet he never
said or implied that it would happen within 13 years.

Actually he said it on video MANY times since the film released. To be fair,
he's not a scientist. He's just entirely financially dependent on pushing
climate alarmism. He was reiterating what the other climate alarmists were
saying.

Here's a more recent quote of his: These figures are fresh. Some of the models
suggest to Dr Maslowski that there is a 75 per cent chance that the entire
north polar ice cap, during the summer months, could be completely ice-free
within five to seven years.

>Now, I'm pretty sure we won't in fact see a 6m sea-level rise this century,
and depending on exactly what Gore said he may have been badly wrong. But not
-- unless you have more detailed information to offer that says otherwise --
wrong in the specific way you say he was wrong.

I actually believe we will see a sea-level rise. Not because of fossil fuels
but simply population and renewable energy.

When every house has solar panels and nuclear fusion is pumping out 1cent/kwh
electricity. People will use more electricity and this will result in even
more waste energy which will heat up the world.

~~~
gjm11
> _they themselves have made predictions that contradict themselves_

Some scientists have made predictions that contradict other scientists'
predictions. That happens all the time, in all fields. Eventually, with a bit
of luck, experimental evidence makes it clear who was right, or someone spots
the mistake one of them made. It doesn't mean that the branch of science where
it happens is bullshit. (That standard would make _everything_ bullshit.
People make mistakes and work with incomplete and imperfect information. No
getting around it.)

> _climate scientists are rolling out the bullshit train. Just to keep their
> government grants coming in._

Could be true, though frankly I see _much_ more sign of money-motivated
bullshit on the anti-climate-science side. But nothing you've said so far is
any evidence to speak of for it, because all you've done is find places where
scientists disagree about something. Again, that happens all the time, in
every field, and the most negative thing it actually tells us is that human
beings are fallible.

> _during these warmer periods we have significantly more life on earth_

Sure. But, as I already said, _total amount of life_ is not necessarily what
we want to optimize for. If every human being died and was replaced by a
million fruit flies and one elephant, that would be an enormous increase in
the total number, and the total size, of living things on earth, but I
wouldn't regard it as an improvement.

No one is saying that climate change is going to wipe out life on earth.
(Well, I dunno, you can find idiots saying pretty much _anything_ , but it's
not a common view anywhere that I know of.)

> _" 4 nuclear bombs a second"_

The thing I think you may be missing is that, in the context of weather and
climate, _nuclear bombs are pretty small_. A big hurricane is something like
three nuclear bombs per hour (depends on the size of the hurricane and the
size of the bombs, of course).

I haven't heard "4 nuclear bombs per second", for what it's worth, and if the
back-of-envelope calculation I just did is right the correct figure is more
like 5 x 10^-5 nuclear bombs per second. But "nuclear bombs per second" is a
stupid measure because our intuitions for how much energy a nuclear bomb puts
out are bad in this context.

> _Do you also assert that warming since the LGM is manmade? Overall I 'm not
> seeing the problem at all._

Then perhaps I'm not explaining it clearly. (But, first of all, no, of course
I am not saying any non-negligible warming earlier than, say, 1800CE is
manmade.) My point is that (1) something could be good for "life on earth" but
really bad for the human race, and (2) the _state that would result from 14
degrees of warming_ (or whatever other geologically-inspired figure you might
choose) might be entirely survivable, but that doesn't mean the _process of
getting there_ in a hurry wouldn't be a big disaster.

(You could live in many other places besides the house you currently live in.
But if I knocked it down, it would be a big deal for you.)

> _The report [...] literally explains itself. [...] RCP8.5_

It does, indeed, explain itself, and RCP8.5 _does not mean anything like "8.5%
per year". The "8.5" in RCP8.5 means that radiative forcing reaches 8.5 W/m^2
by the year 2100. It has nothing whatever to do with 8.5% of anything or with
anything per year.

There is no possible way we could "now have the actual data", because (to
repeat) the 8.5 in RCP8.5 is defined by a state of affairs in the year 2100,
and it's still only 2019.

Whoever or whatever told you that RCP8.5 means an 8.5% increase of something
per year and that we're only at 0.85% was _lying to you _. Sorry to be so
blunt, but I don 't think there's any alternative.

Incidentally, RCP8.5 isn't a prediction, it's one of several scenarios used by
the IPCC. That is, they say "if X happens, we expect Y to happen" for various
X and Y, and RCP8.5 is one choice of X, not of Y. I think it's the most
pessimistic of their scenarios. (It's rather early to say how reality compares
with those various scenarios; it's not that many years since RCP8.5 and the
rest were first defined.) I don't know why the graph you found on Wikipedia
chose to use RCP8.5 rather than one of the others, but given that the graph is
mostly about past rather than future temperatures I'm betting it wasn't anyone
on the IPCC :-).

I would still like to see where your "RCP0.8" figure comes from. I'd make a
sizeable bet that it's wrong.

> _Al Gore in the Inconvenient Truth said Florida would be underwater by
> 2014.*

I do not believe you. Again, I'm prepared to be proven wrong; I certainly
could be. But I will need more specifics than the unevidenced claim that
somewhere in his movie he said Florida would be underwater by 2014. Can you
give me his actual words? Can you tell me where in the movie he says them? (I
think I have a copy somewhere, though I haven't watched it; if you give me
something sufficiently specific I can check. I'm not going to sit through the
whole thing in the hope of finding what you're referring to, though.)

> _Actually he said it on video MANY times since the film_

OK. Tell me where to find him saying it on video and I'll check.

> _a more recent quote of his_

Saying something entirely different. (And without context I've no idea how to
interpret it. "Some of the models" could mean, for all I know, that they have
a range of 100 models, and one of them with parameters no one much believes
says the north polar ice cap is doomed in the very short term. Which could
perfectly well have been true; again, scientists make mistakes just like
everyone else.)

------
noobermin
>Did Setting a Timeline Doom the Fight Against Global Warming?

No.

I also see no evidence in the article it has hurt attitudes either way. In
fact, polls show general concern about climate change. Doing something is
another matter[0], but people are mindful of it. Nonetheless, the article
seems to be more about the author's personal feelings than whether it
influenced the movement around it either way.

[0] [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-
climatechang...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-
climatechange/americans-demand-climate-action-reuters-poll-idUSKCN1TR15W)

------
bregma
I was alive in the 1970s when folks like the Club of Rome declared we'll all
be dead form overpopulation and Malthusian collapse by the year 2000. Those
self-same folks told us this century the arctic will be completely ice free by
2013. In the 1980s, others predicted our total demise due to acid rain and
ozone depletion.

Mean time, people are making good progress on both feeding the masses and
curbing the exponential growth of humanity across the globe. At the same time,
clear progress is happening on the reduction-of-greenhouse-gas-emissions
front. Acid rain and ozone depletion have been curtailed.

We'll always have doomsayers, extremists, and prophets. They're so busy with
themselves they rarely get in the way of people who actually get work done.

~~~
fallingfrog
Except the people predicting climate change isn’t the club of Rome, it’s an
entire scientific community, who have been double, triple, and quadruple
checking every measurement and assumption for 50 years. This is not some
hysterical group of panicked hippies. We’re talking about broad consensus
among all the most educated and intelligent members of our civilization.
Please show a little respect and listen to them.

~~~
spaginal
You are missing the fact that the salesmen of climate change have been
politicians, and politicians lie, and politicians propose political solutions,
they want more and more of my limited money, and browbeat people who already
don’t like or trust them, and frankly that is a bad combination of tactics if
the solution is needed that badly across the broad spectrum of the population.

If climate change stops being sold as a one sided political problem with one
sided political solutions, you may see momentum on it, but speaking as a
conservative, when your pitch men and women are Bernie Sanders, Warren, and
Cortez, amongst others, people I don’t trust and disagree with already, people
who have tried framing me as a stupid person who doesn’t get it, you have
already lost me entirely on the pitch before it left their mouths.

Change the salesman and the tactic, because the current one doesn’t work, and
it is doomed to failure because of that.

~~~
fallingfrog
The conservatives will never support addressing climate change honestly,
because they are getting too much money from the fossil fuel industries. I
mean honestly, that’s like saying, I won’t believe that we are spending too
much money on the military until I hear it from Northrop Grumman. So you’re
going to be waiting a long time if that’s what you’re waiting for. None of
those people care _at all_ about you or your kids or the worlds future. Not
one single bit.

You are literally listening to the people who have the _greatest_ conflict of
interest on the subject and the _least_ competence in it. It’s no wonder
you’re confused.

~~~
Junk_Collector
Perhaps instead of assuming a position that he didn't actually state and
calling him "confused" you could have addressed his larger point that the
vocal proponents of climate action alienate large portions of the population
by painting them as ignorant or stupid instead of attempting to engage with
them.

~~~
fallingfrog
No, his central point was that he would never listen to anyone on the issue
that didn’t have specific ideological positions, which turn out to be the
least likely people in the world to accurately represent the science due to
blatant conflicts of interest. It’s in impossible request.

To my knowledge the only major political party anywhere in the world to deny
the science of anthropogenic climate change is the Republican Party in the
United States, and those are the only people he will listen to. It’s an absurd
situation.

------
4mpm3
With a few notable exceptions, the comments on this post really are a step up
from the Medium comments on the original article.

------
sunkenvicar
Climate change is already solved with nuclear power. You just don’t know it
yet.

------
ubertakter
I recommend the title be changed to the actual story title or something
_actually_ similar. The article is about how setting deadlines for action on
climate change came from more of an advocacy perspective rather than
scientific, which had an effect opposite what was intended.

------
magwa101
shaming people is a waste of time, this solution has to be economically
viable.

------
bjt2n3904
You know, there was this guy that made a fool of Christianity when he
predicted Jesus would return in 2011. When nothing happened, he said oops and
adjusted the date. (People fortunately paid much less attention to him then.)

Kinda getting tired of hearing "the sky is falling" all the time from
environmental folks. When you hear "the world is ending next year, it's gonna
be too late" every single year, it seems like a thinly veiled push for suckers
who want to make campaign donations and bad laws.

Ironic that the author makes this exact point, and then doubles down on it.

~~~
xamuel
How does a guy making a prediction make a fool of Christianity? That's like
saying if I read a science textbook and then incorrectly predict flying cars
by 2020, that I have made a fool of science.

Jesus Himself said: "No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels
in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. As it was in the days of Noah, so
will it be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood,
people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the
day Noah entered the ark. ... Therefore keep watch, because you do not know
the day on which your Lord will come. But understand this: If the homeowner
had known in which watch of the night the thief was coming, he would have kept
watch and would not have let his house be broken into." (Matthew 24:36-43)

~~~
bjt2n3904
Good point. I spoke too hastily. More specifically, brought great disrepute to
Christianity, and gave others cause to mock it.

~~~
xamuel
>cause to mock it

You _do_ realize you're talking about Christianity here, right? As in, people
who worship a homeless man who was rejected by his own people, tortured, spat
upon, and nailed to a cross beside common thieves. He died pitifully on that
cross, naked and exposed. And you are saying that what gives cause to mock
Christianity is ... some dude making idle predictions 2,000 years later???

"You will be hated by everyone on account of My name, but the one who
perseveres to the end will be saved." (Matthew 10:22)

