Thread by @davelevitan

Yes, it was the scientists who were wrong. They have doomed us all.

Woof. Okay, I have some thoughts.

nytimes.com/2019/11/08/opi…

The basic premise of this lengthy piece is that the rapidity of many climate change processes and impacts has shocked -- shocked! -- many scientists, and that their failure to predict well has helped lead us to our current predicament of fucked-ness. But. BUT.

The piece seems to take as a given that all the estimates of climate change's pace were wrong until recently. But they weren't! Here, look at this graphic they include:

But was the consensus from the 60s --> 80s really that it would take "centures or millenniums" for impacts to arrive? Nope!

Here's what the intro to the landmark 1979 National Research Council report had to say:

"A wait-and-see policy may mean waiting until it is too late."

Or how about the 1983 EPA report -- the Reagan EPA! Not exactly enviro radicals! -- that essentially predicted the same amount/timing of warming predicted today: potentially 2 degrees C by 2050.

(See this thread on that report from earlier this year:

https://twitter.com/davelevitan/status/1100141281332940802

)

"Substantial increases in global warming may occur sooner than most of us would like to believe," wrote scientists in 1983. "Our findings call for an expeditious response."

But also! The NYT piece upends its own argument with the examples it itself cites!

1993 was 26 years ago! How does this mean that scientists were caught by surprise by like the last two years of extreme weather or something??

Or this one! 2002 was still a while ago. Scientists may have used relatively staid language in IPCC reports but that is not the same thing as being WRONG about impending catastrophe!

The public's delays in getting up to speed are somehow the SCIENTISTS' fault?? (Let alone that these data have nothing to do with public understanding of RAPID climate change specifically.)

Where has this writer BEEN??

I am using so many capitals and exclamation points!!

Then it goes through some of the updated and yes-very-scary estimates. It is not a fucking SCANDAL that scientists like, do some science and learn more stuff as we go. YES sea level rise estimates have gotten more dire, and so on, but this is absurd.

For all the... for all... wut?

Honestly I don't even understand where the argument goes.

Scientists did not "lowball" anything. They communicated what they knew, when they knew it, and were not in charge of who built what power plants or the explosion in SUVs or whatever.

They did, in fact, offer some fairly dire warnings as far back as the 70s, if not earlier.

That the NYT is publishing long pieces, in 2019, blaming SCIENTISTS for our failures to act, is INSANE.

There is no debate about why we didn't act! It wasn't because we thought it might not be that bad! It was because of evil people who wanted more money! I am done yelling now!

Anyway, NYT, hire me to write the piece that refutes all of that one, I'm available.

I should have gone back farther. The 1965 report to LBJ on the "greenhouse effect" had some VERY dire warnings. Like, that the entire Antarctic ice sheet could melt in 400 years. Or that seas could rise 40 feet/century. Or that we could see up to FOUR deg C of warming by 2000.

Still trying to imagine the pitch that led to this piece. "I'm arguing that scientists are at fault for the climate crisis, because they didn't warn us that it would get this bad this fast."

"Great. I have absolutely no follow-up questions whatsoever. Give me 2500 words."

I know there's a wall between the op-ed pages and the newsroom, but the NYT climate reporters and editors are SO good! Any one of them could have probably seen this and been like "Uh, hang on a sec."

I mean, this was from just last year!!!

nytimes.com/interactive/20…

Okay so as a few people have pointed out, the author of this dumbshit NYT op-ed is currently employed by a hedge fund, which is odd but I don't know what to do with that.

He has also, however, written some books. About which I have a couple more thoughts.

Specifically, his 2006 book "The Winds of Change: Climate, Weather, and the Destruction of Civilizations," which seems to do a bit of a Guns Germs and Steel thing where he blames previous climatic changes for various civilizations' collapse. Which, fine, whatever.

In this book, toward the end he includes an ENTIRE TIMELINE of scientists calling attention to the possibility of rapid climate change, dating back into the 1950s.

13 years ago he provided the entire refutation of his future op-ed. It's glorious.

AND. He notes numerous times about policymakers and others IGNORING the warnings from scientists. Again, just the pure opposite of what he published in the Times!

It is BAFFLING to me how you can go from this -- policymakers are dumb and should listen to scientists -- to arguing that scientists were way off and are at fault for not sounding the alarm, over the course of 2006-2019.

Anyway, he should go read his own book or something.