Comment by anonym29
6 hours ago
>Nobody really ever said the world will end in 5 years.
You mean besides the most recognizable / well known climate activist on earth?
"A top climate scientist is warning that climate change will wipe out all of humanity unless we stop using fossil fuels over the next five years."
- Greta Thunberg (June 21st, 2018)
https://web.archive.org/web/20230307215203/https://twitter.c...
I believe the OP was talking about scientists, not social media influencers.
Also the statement was not “we will all be dead in 5 years.” It was “this could wipe out humanity if we don’t make huge changes in 5 years.” Time frame was not stated.
I think it’s hyperbole, and that the realistic take is “if we continue to make this problem worse the cost will compound until it becomes an existential risk to civilization.” That’s not extinction, but it’s very bad.
It’s a bit like running up credit card bills, except that we don’t even know the interest rate.
The influencer was citing a scientist, and the hyperbole (delivered seriously) is the root cause of the "boy who cried wolf" effect that caused large swaths of the population to now dismiss basically all climate science, including the valid, rational, non-hyperbolic findings.
It's also not just influencers, it's scientists and the leadership of scientific institutions directly, too.
"If there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late."
- Rajendra Pachauri, head of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) [August 19th, 2008]
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-economist-debat...
"We cannot now afford to put off change any longer. We have to get on a new path within this new administration. We have only four years left for Obama to set an example to the rest of the world."
- James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies [January 17th, 2009]
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/jan/18/obama-cl...
Valid counterpoint. There's an incredibly widespread belief in those circles that if you don't crank up the hyperbole nobody will pay any attention at all.
Unfortunately there's some truth to it, especially in the mass media age. We have a President who became the most powerful person on Earth by more or less eating his own boogers, because it got attention, and "any attention is good attention as long as they spell your name right." It works, unfortunately.
But it's damned if you do, damned if you don't. If you crank up the hyperbole you discredit yourself. If you don't, you're ignored. Rational measured opinions get no press and have no "virality."
Some of the AI doomers are, I think, genuinely kind of nuts (the Rationalists), but I suspect that some of them (especially actual scientists like Hinton) are doing this. They think if they don't make bombastic claims nobody will listen.
Unfortunately it means everyone will dismiss the entire issue when, in a few years, AI has not destroyed humanity.