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Comment by stackola | Hacker News Reader

I remember Al Gore saying we got 10 years in 2006.

In fact this type of rhetoric has been going on for centuries. [1]

[1] https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/10/08/the-ever-receding-cli...

1. Al Gore didn't say this, James Anderson did. James Anderson is a "Harvard University professor of atmospheric chemistry best known for establishing that chlorofluorocarbons were damaging the Ozone Layer."

2. You're right about the rhetoric - it has been around for centuries but so have major ecological disasters. The Dust Bowl alone forced tens of thousands of poverty-stricken families to abandon their farms, unable to pay mortgages or grow crops, and losses reached $25 million per day by 1936 (equivalent to $450,000,000 in 2018).[0] I can hardly fathom the true cost of something that impacts the entire planet.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl

Al Gore has made the claim multiple times:

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ice-caps-melt-gore-2014/

e.g. in 2007:

Their latest modelling studies indicate northern polar waters could be ice-free in summers within just 5-6 years. Professor Wieslaw Maslowski told an American Geophysical Union meeting that previous projections had underestimated the processes now driving ice loss.

Could, not would. Like smoking can kill you, not smoking will kill you. It is a common and fundamental English language pattern, clearly indicating doubt and should never be misinterpreted as certainty.

Fair enough, but could is enough to play on people's fears. Immigrant X could be a terrorist. Food additive Y could cause cancer. You can't then claim you didn't say "would".

Note that things like tobacco cancer warnings use use can/could not will/would, and the intent of the message is still clear.

"SURGEON GENERAL WARNING: Cigar Smoking Can Cause Lung Cancer And Heart Disease."

"WARNING: This product can cause mouth cancer."

That's the downside of boys crying wolf... when the actual wolf comes we don't listen.

Except nobody was crying wolf. If we took the problem seriously back then, we wouldn't be fucked now. The reality is that we're living through a mass extinction driven by climate change. Over 60% of animals have gone extinct since the 70s.

The fact that people are looking at the world today and asking where's the problem is beyond belief.

It's not beyond belief; it's that it's happening so slowly that it's not perceived by the common person. And the "crying wolf" that people upthread were referring to was the "this will be irreversible in N years" specifically, not the broader threat of climate change generally.

"Over 60% of animals have gone extinct since the 70s" Citations?

Might be referring to this [1], but it concludes population sizes have gone down 60%, which doesn't sound good either, but is still a different story.

[1] https://www.wwf.org.uk/updates/living-planet-report-2018

We kinda had 10 years back in the 80s. Just saying.

They are an apocalyptic death cult. The end is nigh submit to the elite or forever perish. How is submitting to the 1% going to save earth? They used to say by the end of the century. Year after year their predictions fail and the cult marches on.

Show us where these predictions fail or that's beneficial to elites who actually want status quo.

No, no. You're the crazy one for thinking the world might not be ending. Remember?

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