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Comment by aero-glide2 | Hacker News Reader

News media being too alarmist (more than what the science says) could be one reason for rise of climate denialism. Can be fixed by more accurate reporting.

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I guess you're referring to media jumping too quickly to "bad science" for every single event of floods, drought, fires etc, therefore using fear and producing saturation in fellow citizens.

that said, I honestly have a bad time trying to figure out if there's such a thing as "too alarmist" re. claims like "one third of projected population by 2070 will live in a nearly unlivable earth" https://www.pnas.org/content/117/21/11350

In my country, newspapers publish alarmist articles every day, they find anywhere in the world, anything climate related, a flood, a fire, a hot or cold temperature somewhere, they put a stupid photo such as a cute polar bear on a small iceberg, and they publish an article that looks like plain propaganda, it's sickening because it's politics instead of science. Perhaps that's what they are referring to.

Or, they are referring to the IPCC reports themselves, for sure, the third and last working group who has the final words are not scientists indeed, which leads to all these "mistakes" in every final report that our politicians use (or try to) to create new taxes on the poor.

the third and last working group who has the final words are not scientists

I did a cursory check, and working group III seems to be headed by two academics (one of them a physicist), so not sure what you base that claim on...

Well, our global society is going to collapse very soon. What possible reason to not be alarmist could one have?

Seriously; our global civilization is in real danger of collapse in the next fifty years. I do see no reason not to panic or be alarmist?

I find it strange however that people are still able to actually ignore and deny the slew of icebergs we will be hitting in the next years; how can one be so delusional? Is it willful?

I think to a point it is. The idea that all of our oh-so-normal lives with hot showers that every human since the beginning of time enjoyed is coming to an end. And emotionally we just cannot deal with it; it's too big for us to grasp. And so we shut down that part of the brain and just suppress thinking about it.

> I find it strange however that people are still able to actually ignore and deny the slew of icebergs we will be hitting in the next years

Wasn't that due to happen back in 2000?

I mean yeah, what else is there to do? The problem is far too big for any one person to make a difference.

I could collapse in fear daily but it wouldn’t do any good. The only thing to do is enjoy the time you have.

This is unfortunately the right personal approach. Do as green as you can if you feel comfortable with it. But the ship has sailed.

The IPCC reports are a good contemporary equivalent of memento mori.

I for one try to convey how concerned I am about this to everyone in my vicinity.

One of my recent successes was to be able to get my grandparents to accept that there's a problem. We're still having our extinction booth at the local grocery store, once a month. There we present damages done to the eco system, current information about climate change.

Still; many people are not really getting the message.

You sound just like the hero of this story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nongqawuse

We know of many false prophets with huge charisma gathering crowds to commit senseless acts.

Here we're talking about unglamourous people gathering data, making projections, being wrong, gathering more data, updating their projections, being less wrong, gathering more data, making more updated projections, being less and less wrong, observing the reality becoming closer to their worst-case scenario, and being mocked by masses doing basically nothing.

Clearly, it's the same story.

> Nongqawuse was the Xhosa prophet whose prophecies led to a millenarian movement that culminated in the Xhosa cattle-killing movement and famine of 1856-7, in what is now Eastern Cape, South Africa.

Cool story. I don't see the parallel here though. Is anyone seriously suggesting that we destroy our civilisation to save the environment?

Define "very soon".

Next thirty to sixty years?

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