Worthy Nigelton 1,063 Posted March 17, 2023 On 16/03/2023 at 11:25, king canary said: For once Cambridgeshire isn't wrong here. There are definitily on those on the 'climate change is real' side of the debate who have a habit of catastrophising and painting extremely unlikely scenarios as the likely outcome. Tom Chivers (a science writer and certainly not a climate change denier) has written some good pieces on it, hidden under awful headlines. https://unherd.com/2021/11/the-great-climate-change-fallacy/ https://unherd.com/2019/09/why-climate-change-isnt-the-end-of-the-world/?=refinnar While I think it is important people are studying and aware of worse case scenarios, it is important not to overstate their liklihood otherwise it can become a bit 'boy who cried wolf' and give ammunition to those on the denial side. Part of the reason for exaggerations or doomerist predictions on climate, is that it's difficult to gauge the way the climate will react as the changes are not linear. So if one degree of warming is 10x as bad, two degrees is 20x, three degrees is 30x... it doesn't work like that or it would be very easy to predict. If one degree is 10x as bad, two degrees might 50x as bad or it might 1,000x as bad and three might 100x or it might be 50,000x as bad. It's why you will always get those who think the worst and say we'll all be dead in 5 years, in the same way as those who underplay it and make it out like it's not really happening and it's just 'weather'. The reality is it very much is happening and you only need to have been alive for the past 30 years or so to realise that, and it's going to get worse. How much worse, that is something we can debate, but I'd rather we were being cautious than thinking everything will just be fine because before you know it things have really started going wrong and there's nothing we will be able to do about it. 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
