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Comment by feketegy | Hacker News Reader

Yes, the climate change has in some cases catastrophic effects.

I'm not a climate change denier nor skeptic, but I think the general population are too pessimistic regarding this change. Pessimistic in a sense that we always extrapolate the future with present technologies.

People in 1950 predicted the same pessimistic doomsday by the year 2000; and what happened? People adapted and overcame the situation. Of course if technology hadn't changed since 1950 we would all be "doomed" by the year 2000.

So by saying that we only have 10 or 15 or 30 years more before we all die as a species, because of what we did to the Earth is non-sense. People will always come up with new technologies and they will adapt to the situation.

Pessimists have a very unreliable track record, I'm not saying don't worry about the climate now, but I would love that everybody would recognize the danger, face it and have a more optimistic outlook for the future.

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> So by saying that we only have 10 or 15 or 30 years more before we all die as a species, because of what we did to the Earth is non-sense.

Who specifically is saying this? I’ve read a lot of predictions and speculation by climate scientists, but never anything remotely like “less than 30 years before we die as a species”.

> People in 1950 predicted the same pessimistic doomsday by the year 2000

I haven’t seen these supposed pessimists’ reports from 1950 predicting “doomsday” by 2000. Maybe you can link to the specific prediction you are referring to?

This historical summary from the American Institute of Physics might help, https://www.aip.org/history/climate/public.htm

Most of the work in the 50s–70s led the experts in the field to say, paraphrased, “there’s something serious going on here, and we’d better study it carefully ASAP and figure out how to mitigate our impact, or things could get bad.” The topic wasn’t really a serious concern to the general public until the 1980s, by which time there was starting to be broad agreement among experts. Since then, we’ve filled in a lot of additional details, and there is a strong “scientific consensus” that global warming is a real effect, caused by humans, which will have dramatic consequences if we continue down our current path.

> > So by saying that we only have 10 or 15 or 30 years more before we all die as a species, because of what we did to the Earth is non-sense.

> Who specifically is saying this?

In this thread, madaxe_again: 'Our extinction is coming, and the only tragedy is all the other life we'll take with us.'

> I haven’t seen these supposed pessimists’ reports from 1950 predicting “doomsday” by 2000.

The so-called 'Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists' has been predicting Doomsday since 1947: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_Clock

My prediction? In twenty years we'll look back on global warming like we do on D&D suicides, satanic ritual abuse and militias: just another instance of mass hysteria.

"Who specifically is saying this?" "In this thread, madaxe_again"

He probably meant which scientist (s), not "which random guy on the internet".

- madaxe_again said that "our extinction is coming", not that it would happen within 30 years - nobody is, I believe, saying that.

- The doomsday clock thing wasn't unfounded paranoia, there was real danger of nuclear war in the 1950's.

> In twenty years we'll look back on global warming like we do on D&D suicides, satanic ritual abuse and militias: just another instance of mass hysteria.

Then, are you saying that there is no climate change and temperatures are not raising?

You're missing the point, it's not that the world will end within 30 years, although I believe some people truly believe that.

Of course climate change is real; my point was that people tend to overreact to it. They don't see that new technologies and especially new policies are coming up daily just to fight climate change.

Technology is not stagnant in this area, just as how it wasn't stagnant in the 50s 60s 70s 80s etc.

People always come up with new ideas and will adapt to changes.

Nop, I'm not missing any point, D&D has been compared to climate change. That comparison can be only done if someone thinks that climate change is not real or it is not a problem.

> Of course climate change is real; my point was that people tend to overreact to it.

How is people overreacting?

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