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Comment by ChrisMarshallNY | Hacker News Reader

I remember in Africa, in the late 1960s/early 1970s, being taught in social studies, that Ethiopia was at risk for famine. They discussed that many farmers raised sheep and goats, which have a drastically different impact on the environment, than cattle (it has to do with how they eat grass -they pull it out by the roots, while cattle clip it).

Not long after that, Ethiopia was in the news for... anyone?

Lots and lots of ignoring scientists. Nothing new here.

Cassandra

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>Lots and lots of ignoring scientists.

But do you have a statistics on how often these predictions are wrong?

No. Please provide them.

Heh. Just to explain.

I mentioned a personal anecdote, and a personal observation that things people think are new; are not, in fact, new. Us old people do that a lot. We've seen a lot of stuff.

The usual HN rude demand for "statistics," which almost certainly exist; both pro and con my observation, was made. Basically "Do a whole lot of work I don't feel like doing, and if you don't, you're wrong! (Nyah-Nyah)"

I said no. You show me yours (I know they can, if they look). It was a casual statement, on my part, and I really don't care about being right. It's not worth it, to me. If someone else has something to prove, go for it. I won't defend my position. I left (dropped out of, actually) High School, a long time ago, and what other people think of me, doesn't really drive me, anymore. I'll happily cede the point. If I decide they're right, I may even admit it.

In any case, exchanges like this get quite amusing.

That burden is on you since you placed a blame on the people "ignoring" the scientists. You should have understood how reliable these warnings are before blaming people for ignoring them...

Since you don't have them, I have to suppose you just like being on a high horse...

Go for it.

I’m not losing any sleep over it.

Have a great day!

You too!

This isn’t to refute your point… but do you also remember when scientists in the 1970s were panicking about global cooling and an impending ice age?

"As reported in the press" - yes.

"As placed in the press by the same think tanks upselling tobacco" - yes.

Paid for and spun as media confusion by powerful oil and resource extractors, such as but not limited to the Koch brothers, yes.

As a reaction to the late 1960 papers on CO2 impacts being taken seriously by world forums - yes.

But an actual significant number of atmospheric scientists and global modellers "panicking" about glacial expansion of the ice age we're currently in (you know, an ice age being any era during which ice covers the poles) ... uhhh, no.

Mainly as that didn't happen.

This is a common misrepresentation that deniers use to rationalize their unscientific position. The vast majority of the science, even in the 70s, stated that global warming was our future, not global cooling.

Source?

I remember them referencing global cooling on science Friday on NPR as late as 2005

Some scientists, amplified by journalists. Other scientists at the time were predicting warming.

https://www.reddit.com/r/skeptic/comments/1hajzg9/here_is_th...

They were in a sense correct, because the aerosol cooling they were worried about did in fact (and continues to) have a fairly significant cooling effect... one that is offsetting the rapid warming that CO2 is causing presently.

Media outlets were driving panic. Scientists were always saying warming is a problem

https://skeptoid.com/episodes/876

No. I heard global warming.

The cooling was from nuclear war.

Actual cooling was from industrial emissions, but that was over by the 1970s. It being something to panic about at that point was a media amplification or a contrarian position, precisely because it was contrarian, not representative of scientific opinion at the time.

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