Opinion: I'm a climate scientist. If you knew what I know you'd be terrified too

https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/07/opinions/climate-scientist-scare-doom-anxiety-mcguire/index.html

by elleferrer • 2 years ago

8 11 2 years ago

paulpauper2• 2 years ago

I am agnostic on this issue. Not a partisan. Yet these experts for the past 20+ years have told us of impending doom and yet nothing much has happened. Winters are still cold, summers are warm, etc.. Cities have not been rendered uninhabitable due to flooding as was promised decades ago would happen. Maybe these experts need to try a different strategy instead of scaremongering.

stephenr• 2 years ago

Sure, nothing much has happened except the last 9 years are the hottest on record, and weather events are becoming more extreme around the globe

repelsteeltje2• 2 years ago

I think GP means he personally doesn't feel the difference, where he lives — which makes perfect sense. Temparture a tiny bit higher then same day a year ago (or 9), that kind of thing.

I don't think GP "doesn't believe" in climate change, she/he simply points out that no one is acting on the Cassandra's trying to get attention.

repelsteeltje2• 2 years ago

Where I live in western Europe there are clear signs of change. Dry, hot summers, yet more flooding, sky resorts closing shop.

But I fully agree that scaremongering doesn't help. Evidently: with COVID gone roads are more crowded than ever, air traffic on pre pandemic levels, no less meat consumption.

It's not that no one is scared, is just that most people don't know how to change.

loa_in_• 2 years ago

There's no authority to trust anymore. We know dirty stories about every government, every institution, every celebrity, about our parents and friends. People are more lost than ever because it's become normal to feel that everything is trying to exploit you. And so people forwent reaching out and creating a collective civilization, despite being more enabled in terms of communication and connectivity than ever.

tuatoru• 2 years ago

Impending, for values of impending that started out "in the 2080s...", and went to "no, wait, in the 2060s ...", to "no, wait, in the 2040s ...".

AtlasBarfed• 2 years ago

THis is what you should fear:

Climate change compounds with ecosystem destruction compounds with species mass extinction compounds with ocean acidification:

And something in the "web" of species interdependence breaks and we get a total collapse of the biosphere in some functional way. Something like "no more crops will grow".

Or more ominously: oxygen-generating microorganisms in the sea go extinct.

This stuff is on the table.

Because all climate variation in previous generations occurred within a timeframe that evolution could adapt to, and without barriers to species migrating to new zones as they moved. Humans are destroying species and changing ecosystems faster than evolutionary adaptation can adapt to, probably by several orders of magnitude.

Fundamentally, modern human civilization is playing russian roulette with itself.

smt88• 2 years ago

Saying you're "not a partisan" on climate is actually admitting that you are a partisan skeptic of very well-established science.

Huge regions have burned, flooded, fallen into the ocean, or been destroyed by hurricanes in "once in 100 years" events.

The predictions were never that the whole world would be affected at once. They said that "impossible" and "rare" disasters would become commonplace and resources would become scarce. Those things have happened.

EchoChamberMan2• 2 years ago

Are scientists expected to be PR experts as well?

paulpauper2• 2 years ago

no but calling it catastrophe over and over not working. comes off as crying wolf

Opinion: I'm a climate scientist. If you knew what I know you'd be terrified too

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