No reasonably reliable source says it. That's why I called it absurd. It's a "kids these days" thing (parent post was about scientists and politicians -- this isn't off topic, as politicians are involved, but kids account for the numbers). They call themselves "doomers," and though some of them base their predictions of doom firmly in reality, there's a large faction that doesn't. "Human extinction by 2030" (or its predecessor, "human extinction is inevitable by 2030") are memes in that circle. They cross-pollinate, as memes do, so you might have seen a few, but may not have internalized that a double-digit percentage of kids believe wholeheartedly in them.
Back when I was in high school, the eco-panic 10 year prediction was that oil would run out and the world economy would collapse. It didn't. I see some of my classmates on facebook from time to time. They remembered this instance of crying wolf and updated their priors accordingly. Now they ignore legitimate climate worries. It's unfortunate.
I think the "Human extinction by 2030" is a confusion of what is being claimed by serious people.
If the current trend continues and nothing done by 2030 the repercussions will be so severe to the environment they threaten future organized human existence.
So basically we still have time to avoid the worst outcome, the loss of the ability for organized human existence. Not that we will all be dead by then.
Congresswoman Cortez said that the world would end by 2030 if we did nothing. Later, she said only a sea sponge would believe her.
Presumably, she is arguing that hyperbolic proclamations are a valid way to get people to listen and engage in political discourse.
Of course, I presume that by "serious people" you are referring to scientists, but it definitely creates a mixed message from politicians- you know, the ones setting government policy.
At what point is it not hyperbole, but actual serious discussion? Should we treat everything as hyperbolic? All this does is confuse the problem (making it more or less drastic than it actually is).
In my lifetime, "serious people" have often made predictions about drastic things and were completely wrong- and they had models to support them! This is true about many things beyond climate change as well. Why should this be any different? Why should I believe that I should act, or believe that there is still time to do so? Is this a new hockey stick graph?
If you don't invest a lot of time sorting through all the BS, most people I think end up flipping a coin, picking a side and just going with it.
You were talking about Kids in your comment, Doomers I guess you said. So by serious people I mean not that.
"The world would end by 2030", like obviously there is no way this can be true. No matter what happens the world will not end in a biblical sense.
"People made predictions and were wrong in the past" is a great point.
Why should you believe you should act or that you can and do something about it? I don't know great question! I'm sure someone has explored the morality of avoiding the worst case scenario caused by human induced climate change.
I'm not the person you responded to originally (about the kids and doomers bit). That said, they come from somewhere and what AOC said (or the way she said it) don't help. Sorry if that threw you off.
Anyway, my point was that we are better off avoiding such hyperbole and overstating the case; it biases people towards inaction, especially when the worst case is consistently promoted and consistently fails to occur.
We could (theoretically) end global warming this instant by turning off every electrical appliance and not burning a single molecule of fossil fuel. How many people would die in an hour, without life saving medical equipment or heat in their homes? A day? A year?
When you discuss the morality of avoiding the worst case scenario, you still have to weigh the consequences of the actions (or inactions).
If the doom-and-gloom worst case scenario is consistently wrong, and that is the one that gets talked about most frequently, then people are going to avoid the most serious consequences that would occur by drastic action to head off the worst case scenario- especially when that means putting off personal sacrifices.
I don't see that you've really responded to what I've said beyond repeating the previous poster.
I'm not American, climate change is not an American problem it's a global one. It's completely out of the scope of the conversation to require me to explain how you are deficient in your understanding of the nuance of what was actually said by the Congresswoman.
The conversation of Climate Change, Global Warming, whatever has been going on long before AOC even ran for Congress so I really don't see the point you and the original poster I was responding to are actually making by invoking her as some boogie man.
Yes sure talking hyperbolic doesn't help and can turn people off. Ok agreed. Excellent points all aroud.
> "The world would end by 2030", like obviously there is no way this can be true. No matter what happens the world will not end in a biblical sense.
Cortez said exactly that though. You could argue that she isn't a serious person, but lots of people do take her seriously, she is a very public figure.
Exact quote from 2019: "The world is going to end in 12 years if we don't address climate change".
That's not an exact quote. From the article you linked:
"Millennials and Gen Z and all these folks that come after us are looking up, and we're like, 'The world is going to end in 12 years if we don't address climate change, and your biggest issue is how are we gonna pay for it?' " she said.
Even a very middlebrow newspaper like USA Today was able to figure out that she was characterising a political viewpoint rather than making a straight scientific assertion, as shows by the use of single quotation marks.
It's misleading to strip away that context, just as it would be accurate-but-misleading if I trimmed her quote down further to say 'Ocasio-Cortez: 'Don't address climate change.''
She's clearly characterizing a viewpoint that she finds valid, even if it was intentionally hyperbolic (which I know it was).
The thing is, she put it out there. It put the notion in people's minds. If we don't fix it by then, we'll be unable to avoid a mass extinction event. That was the whole point of the green new deal (along with a grab bag of other social justice items).
When we are talking about how people can become overly distressed, and then jaded when their fears don't come to pass, that is exactly the kind of rhetoric that makes the situation worse, not better.
I get your point, but we should stop trying to get buy-in from the slowest and/or least cooperative people out there. If it's over-simplified, they'll dismiss it. If it's too complex, they'll dismiss it. If it's not certain enough they'll dismiss it. If it's too specific they'll dismiss.
There is always going to be some % of the population saying something is a terrible idea and their concerns aren't bein treated seriously enough, like the minority of people alleging that wearing face masks and social distancing is tyranny. One should certainly make a few good faith efforts to get them on board, but after the 3rd or 4th irrational or bad-faith rejection, it's OK to sideline them.
When I was 11 (that was 1971) I did a school project on climate change. At the time the coming Ice age was all the rage. All pop science magazines I read wrote about it and it was also mentioned regularly in newspapers and in documentaries.
Apparently scientists had been seeing temperatures dropping for quite some time.
(I also remember winters having more snow than they do now).
Congratulations, that's called science. I don't get where so many people forgot the point of science. Create a falsifiable hypothesis, test said hypothesis over and over again with new techniques and data. When said hypothesis is invalidated, create new hypothesis. Our techniques and data collection and quality are orders of magnitude better today.
A problem is that public figures don't make a difference between scientific theories based on how likely they are to be valid. They just take some theory, say it is "science" and then go on with "science is on my side!". This abuse of science is why we have so many science denialists today. And not just on the right side, so many on the left denies things like biological factors of IQ.
> When I was 11 (that was 1971) I did a school project on climate change. At the time the coming Ice age was all the rage. All pop science magazines I read wrote about it and it was also mentioned regularly in newspapers and in documentaries.
> Apparently scientists had been seeing temperatures dropping for quite some time. (I also remember winters having more snow than they do now).
> Later all that changed to global warming.
The thing is, "global cooling" was almost exclusively a phenomenon of the popular press. It was a minority view among climatologists all along. wikipedia has a good summary: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_coolingp
Science is testable predictions about the universe. Archimedes, Newton, Einstein made right predictions in their domain.
There would be Ice Age if not human activity. Needed specific data to see the trend, not available to layman. Today we do not need to get far away to see climate change. This is science, believing your eyes.
If you're going to pretend yelling that people thinking the world will end by 2030 is reasonable, the burden of proof is on you to prove that credible organizations are actually saying that. Otherwise, you're just putting up a strawman of "lots of crazy people saying the world will end by 2030".
I agree, but given that nobody with any real-world credibility is saying that, the person making the claim that the "world enders" are evidence that scientists are crazy has to prove that they exist.
