I went to Glacier National Park a while ago and stood before a sign that said "The glaciers you see will be gone by year 20xx" or something like that. The year was 20xx and I was looking right at the glaciers and they were decidedly not gone. I understand the motivation. The reality is that an action of strength A is required to create outcome X, but if one expresses this need, it's likely one achieves only an action of strength A- < A and consequently the outcome X- != X. This encourages us to say "we need an action of strength A+ or we will get the outcome X-". The hope is that the discount that people apply on the prediction results in an action of strength A' ~ A and an outcome X' ~= X.

But public exhortation is a repeated game and unless you're Heaven's Gate the success of your popularized predictions has a significant effect on the discount that the public applies to your predictions. Failed predictions have an effect on the discount rate asymmetric to the direction. It is likely that a successful public authority allows some number of people to experience catastrophe pour encourager les autres. Attempting a zero error rate by biasing to zero catastrophe is likely to cause repeated discounting until true catastrophe cannot be averted.

I'm reminded me of the short story The Wandering Earth. Spoilers to follow so don't read if you care. In the story, a group of scientists determine that the Sun is going to flare enough to kill everyone, so all of humanity mobilizes to install massive engines to move the Earth far enough to survive while creating technology that survives the dark. After years of traveling to past Pluto, no Sun catastrophe materializes, resulting in a massive Earthwide revolt that eventually takes control of the control center and the scientists and government officials are sentenced to death by walking into the cold waste. Just as the last of them dies, the Sun flares as predicted, just a little later.

In a democracy, credibility is an important resource. To avert actual existential catastrophe, it is better to err on the side of local under-predicted disaster. It is probably best to let Rancho Palos Verdes fall into the ocean without compensating the homeowners. It is probably best to let the Texan flood plains flood and people to lose their homes entirely. It is probably best to let the Californians lose their homes to the wildfires.

Thwaites mass loss rate is 500% what it was in 1990. 500%, that is 2026 study. It is accelerating very rapidly as well.

I don’t give a damn, to be perfectly honest, what some sign posted god knows when with who knows what information, says. This is a man made global catastrophe. Information and research is very clear and very robust.

Ice loss in just 202x, from JUST thwaites, contributes to several centimeters of ocean rise. It’s going to be much much higher in 203x and 204x. It’s just one (unusually big) glacier of many.

We can all sit here and Reee Reee about the things that were overly reductive, overstated, wrong, even a lie. What I wrote above this is none of those and it’s actually psychotic how little we talk about the cryosphere collapse, given how badly it’s going to fuck us, not 1000 years from now, not 100 years from now, but 10 years from now. I played a video game twice that age on my computer yesterday.

The year predicted for the glacier's collapse was an extrapolation based on data and models available at the time. While the timing was off, the thing is going away visibly for everyone!

In hindsight they shouldn't have set the date, but contrast the fast decline with the long existence. Maybe even let people guess or bet the exact year to involve them and make them think.

You can also visit a glacier in Canada that has signs showing where it was 30 years ago and it's about a quarter mile hike to where it is now. One poorly placed sign doesn't invalidate anything.

> The year was 20xx and I was looking right at the glaciers and they were decidedly not gone.

They just shrunk by 40% in ~50 years, no biggy

On a few other climate related topics scientists are actually surprised at how fast it's getting out of hands.

> In a democracy, credibility is an important resource.

We got Trump... Twice... so clearly not. What matters is selling a dream, and nobody want to hear about the dream of reducing growth, buying less, consuming less, etc.

I find it weird that the credibility is only called from the side of the science. No one who already wasn't alarmed is concerned that fossil fuel companies knew all about global warming, and only started to campaign against any action that would hurt their profits.

focussing on the messaging is a particularly weak way to steer the conversation away from the real issue. just as in your story, that glacier may take an additional decade or two to disappear completely, but it will surely be gone.

we can't seriously believe that if we just adjusted the story a little bit this way or that, that the message would actually click and people would begin to try to minimize the tragic cost to future generations.

this is happening now. blaming the messenger for not being appropriately fawning, or curt, or amusing is kind of irrelevant at this point. maybe we can learn to do a better job next time there is an issue that's going to radically effect everyones lives for the foreseeable future.

> went to Glacier National Park a while ago and stood before a sign that said "The glaciers you see will be gone by year 20xx" or something like that. The year was 20xx and I was looking right at the glaciers and they were decidedly not gone.

Why is it OK for Elon Musk to blow up spaceship after spaceship and everyone says well that’s the way you get it right, but a couple of Climate scientists put up a sign that is maybe a decade or two too early and all hell rains down on them?

What does Elon get credibility yet? Climate scientists don’t? It’s because we choose who we give credibility to. And as a species, we are stupidly optimistic or willing fully blind.