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Glacier National Park to remove all 'glaciers will be gone by 2020' signs

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Re: Glacier National Park to remove all 'glaciers will be gone by 2020' signs

#41
post #21
post #5

I imagine this is perfect for climate change deniers. Climate change is very difficult to fight because both undershooting and overshooting your predictions can come back and hurt you.

It's a ridiculously uneven playing field that, like too many things, has practically become a sport with two sides supporting their own team. "If you're in any way even slightly wrong, we're right." Denial mixed with pride is a powerful drug and you see it in action everywhere; the amount of energy we expend on avoiding an uncomfortable truth, be it unrequited love, losing a loved one, or being found to be wrong in a…

"If you're in any way even slightly wrong, we're right."

I don't think that's what people like myself are saying. We're saying that if you can't make accurate predictions (which there's ample evidence of), to declare you "know" what will happen is folly and self-aggrandizing.

Re: Glacier National Park to remove all 'glaciers will be gone by 2020' signs

#42
post #5

I imagine this is perfect for climate change deniers. Climate change is very difficult to fight because both undershooting and overshooting your predictions can come back and hurt you.

Simple solution: stop making predictions with a degree of claimed accuracy that doesn't exist. There's no good reason to put a deadline such as 2020 on a prediction except as an attempt to imply a degree of certainty that doesn't exist. Climate change skeptics exist for many reasons and these poorly thought out predictions just feed into them.

I think the reason is to imply the sense of urgency that does exist - whether the 7000 year old glaciers melt in one decade or two, that's still a warning that the climate is warming.

Re: Glacier National Park to remove all 'glaciers will be gone by 2020' signs

#43
post #8
post #6

That's weird, I'm pretty sure in the 80s I read that by 2020 the Earth would be a giant ball of smoldering fire

I'm pretty sure in the '70s I read the Earth would be a big ball of ice, but it's OK since if we didn't nuke ourselves the overpopulation will have killed us all off.

I'm pretty sure you didn't:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/06/that-70s-myth-did-cl...

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/01/the-gl...

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11643-climate-myths-t...

>A survey of the scientific literature has found that between 1965 and 1979, 44 scientific papers predicted warming, 20 were neutral and just 7 predicted cooling. So while predictions of cooling got more media attention, the majority of scientists were predicting warming even then.

Re: Glacier National Park to remove all 'glaciers will be gone by 2020' signs

#44
post #8
post #6

That's weird, I'm pretty sure in the 80s I read that by 2020 the Earth would be a giant ball of smoldering fire

I'm pretty sure in the '70s I read the Earth would be a big ball of ice, but it's OK since if we didn't nuke ourselves the overpopulation will have killed us all off.

Hmmm, wasn't the overpopulation craze something from the 60s? It's funny how that turned out: exactly the opposite! I wonder if "climate change" will go that way.

Re: Glacier National Park to remove all 'glaciers will be gone by 2020' signs

#45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you seen what's going on in Australia and the Amazon right about now?

Yeah, fire because of arson? There were much bigger fires past due to lack of fire supplies. What's your point?

There is arson, but there isn't more arson today than in the past and the majority of fires were caused by lightning.

Re: Glacier National Park to remove all 'glaciers will be gone by 2020' signs

#46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, fire because of arson? There were much bigger fires past due to lack of fire supplies. What's your point?

The fires are obviously much worse due to high temps

That could be your imagination. Australia's temperature is quite in the normal range, similar to that of 1960s.

https://weatherspark.com/h/y/149434/2020/Historical-Weather-...

https://weatherspark.com/h/y/149434/1960/Historical-Weather-...

Re: Glacier National Park to remove all 'glaciers will be gone by 2020' signs

#47
post #6

That's weird, I'm pretty sure in the 80s I read that by 2020 the Earth would be a giant ball of smoldering fire

Have you seen what's going on in Australia and the Amazon right about now?

Fires were started by arsonists that lit up a poorly managed forest; add that to the fact that it is almost a crime to cut down trees next to your home for a firebreak. Their forestry management is terrible and they NEVER let fires burn....so well decades of underbrush are going to be hard to stop burning....and that is what is going on right now.

Re: Glacier National Park to remove all 'glaciers will be gone by 2020' signs

#48
post #5

I imagine this is perfect for climate change deniers. Climate change is very difficult to fight because both undershooting and overshooting your predictions can come back and hurt you.

Can we please stop this absurd idea of "climate change deniers". No one is denying that the climate is changing. It always have and it always will. The discussion is about how much, how big a problem it is, how much of it is because of us and to what extent we can/should do anything about it. That's the actual debate. Calling someone a climate change denier is a cheap and sloppy shot at trying to lump a much more com…

It's changing a lot, it's a big problem, it's almost entirely because of humans, and we should do everything we can.

https://xkcd.com/1732/

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