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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

#31

Post by maxerickson »

rainyMammoth wrote: post #17
0xdada wrote: 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.

Unfortunately climate change became a political stance more than a science. It is now extremely difficult to get straight facts from both sides of this debate. Both sides feel like thy need to completely overstate and exaggerate the facts in order to create fear, urgency and hate for the other side.

There's not really 2 sides to the debate over on the science side.

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

#32

Post by shadowgovt »

bregma wrote: post #8
deith wrote: 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.

It's sad when people underestimate the amount of work that was done both to find a path through the threat of MAD-style militarization and the pressure of human population on the global food supply.

Neither of these worst-case-scenarios were avoided by chance. They were avoided by the hard work of decades of politicians and scientists.

The world was a single soldier executing a single order away from a superpower-scale nuclear launch at least one time (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-24280831).

Farming process improvement nearly tripled the yield of existing land in the past half-century (https://ourworldindata.org/exports/global-land-spared-as-a-r...).

We do people a disservice to assume that just because we didn't personally solve a problem, the problem either didn't need to be solved or wasn't solved by human effort.

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

#33

Post by Johnny555 »

zamadatix wrote: post #15

Was hoping for more detail on the predicted vs actual change beyond what the headline could tell me. Or even if they have a new prediction. Edit: This table is helpful https://www.usgs.gov/data-tools/area-named-glaciers-glacier-...

Apparently the new date is 2030:

The original estimates of the timing of glacier melt were based on two things: modeled projections of the glaciers’ response to warming, and direct observations of glacial retreat. A 2003 report was based on modeling a scenario of doubling pre-industrial atmospheric CO2 levels by 2030, which would have melted the park’s major glaciers – and presumably the minor ones, too – by 2030.

https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2019/09/fact-check-no...

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

#34

Post by minikites »

rainyMammoth wrote: post #17
0xdada wrote: 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.

Unfortunately climate change became a political stance more than a science. It is now extremely difficult to get straight facts from both sides of this debate. Both sides feel like thy need to completely overstate and exaggerate the facts in order to create fear, urgency and hate for the other side.

Both sides are not equally responsible for politicizing the issue and both sides of the "debate" are not equally valid.

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

#35

Post by Karunamon »

ljm wrote: post #21
0xdada wrote: 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…

I'd say this goes beyond being "slightly wrong" and into being outright fearmongering.

If the science doesn't support a deadline, then you don't pull one out of thin air while passing it off as a scientific conclusion. To do otherwise is dishonest, even if you think you're doing it for noble ends.

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

#38

Post by ravenstine »

0xdada wrote: 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.

Repeatedly telling people that the sky is falling in N years, only for it to not happen(perhaps in that time scale), doesn't help at all. I've heard some say that people need to be scared in order to convince them to do something, but clearly it hasn't worked. It just comes off as the doomsday that cried wolf.

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

#39

Post by throw_14JAS »

SlipperySeaCow wrote: post #28
bureaucrat wrote: post #16

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

It's less obvious that the high temps are caused by climate change. Directionally, it makes sense -- but how much of the delta temp is variation?

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

#40

Post by Mountain_Skies »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #24
0xdada wrote: 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.

You could nail it every time and they'd still deny it. Look at flat Earthers.

It's 2020 and the glaciers are still there. Do you deny they still exist? Making predictions for things like climate on a year to year basis is a recipe for failure. The scale of the entire system is too large for predictions of such accuracy and do far more harm than good. "Soon" would have been a fine word to use here. Going with 2020 was just asking for a hit in credibility.
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