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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   23603 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 20, 2026

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That's the gishiest gallop I've seen in some time. You've got stuff that's not related to climate change, like the quotes about ozone depletion or the Ehrlich quotes at the beginning or what have you. You have obvious intentional misinterpretions: if you have a quote like "2015 is only six years away, but many experts say that if the world has not reached an agreement to massively reduce greenhouse gases by then, we could pass a point of no return", it obviously doesn't mean that we're at the point of a full-scale visible apocalypse in 2015, just that it would eventually show up if there's not agreement by then without a timescale given for visible events.

You've got misquotes and missing context: the full context for "In relation to the first Earth Day event, quote: "Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind"." is "Nobel-winning Harvard biochemist George Wald articulated the fears in a speech later that year at the University of Rhode Island, warning that civilization would end within 15 to 30 years unless immediate action were taken against threats facing mankind, including pollution, overpopulation, and potential nuclear war", and we did indeed take action regarding a potential nuclear war (and other stuff there) after 1970. You've got "could happen" scenarios interpreted as predictions. And so on.

it obviously doesn't mean

It obviously DOES mean to cause distress and prompt significant actions right away.

It's not a gish gallop, it's a collection of hysterical failed doomsday predictions. Of course doomsday predictions don't come to fruition, they never do. The point is to remind everyone how long the same kind of tactics have been used, and how false every manipulative claim really is.

There's no way for you to sweep this away in that manner. Just read it:

The earth has entered a period of climatic change that is likely to cause widespread economic, social and environmental dislocation over the next century if emissions of heat-trapping gases are not reduced, according to experts advising the world's governments.

We're there. We're in a period of climatic change. No hedges, no if-only. We're there, we're in the middle of the period of change.

Except....they go on to describe some of the problems:

At the most likely rate of rise, some experts say, most of the beaches on the East Coast of the United States would be gone in 25 years. They are already disappearing at an average of 2 to 3 feet a year.

Balderdash. Complete phooey. Made up out of whole cloth. No beach has lost sixty feet in the intervening thirty years.

Or this one predicting an ice free Artic well over ten years ago:

How long do we have before the Arctic summer sea ice disappears?

Given present trends in extent and thickness, the ice in September will be gone in a very short while, perhaps by 2015. In subsequent years, the ice-free window will widen, to 2-3 months, then 4-5 months etc, and the trends suggest that within 20 years time we may have six ice-free months per year.

And yet, what do we actually see? Over ten years later and we're still waiting for the first ice free day.

and we did indeed take action regarding a potential nuclear war (and other stuff there) after 1970.

But taking measures against overpopulation only made things worse. How should you count the entire list when the list has an item like that?

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