Trump and Trump supporters keep using the Y2K Fallacy, and it is driving me crazy

The West Side Highway prediction was from James Hansen, assuming a 100% increase in CO2.
Examining Hansen's prediction about the West Side Highway
There's been about a 30% increase (so far) and the sea level rise measured (so far) is in centimeters, not tens of meters.
Climate Change: Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide | NOAA Climate.govThe Maldives prediction was from the Environmental Affairs Director of the Maldives.
26 Sep 1988 - Threat to islands - TroveThe predictions of a snowless UK was from Dr. David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia.
Wayback MachinePage not found | The IndependentAs for the popularization of the issue by people you concede are "definitely not climate scientists", sure, if they get their facts straight. But the people I quoted above were, first of all, speaking from some position of authority (the environment director may or not have been a scientist, but the other two were) and, second, they got their facts (or, rather, their predictions) muddled.

So what?Some responsible people were wrong about some future predictions from 30 years ago.That triviality means nothing. There are more issues here than chasing fake internet points.

On some issues, maybe. The overheated predictions of imminent breakthroughs in fusion power by scientists (the joke is, "It's the power source of the future, and always will be") are one thing: cloudy crystal balls aren't likely to dry up research funding.But on an issue like Global Warming every would-be Paul Ehrlich is a problem. As you yourself noticed when you wrote "Some responsible people were wrong" those points are not fake. So they must be answered.Once you get into politics, issuing retractions makes you sound like Ron Ziegler saying "That statement is no longer operative." And we all know how that turned out.

No.The flame throwers who try to burn down the entirety of the science by finding fault in a few individuals, must be ignored.

Perhaps.But the real problem here concerns predictions of doom (in all caps with an exclamation or two) that haven't come true.Some of the projections dealing with Global Warming have been apocalyptic: famines (reminiscent of Ehrlich) and drowned cities and the disappearance of snow and the resurgence of epidemics and war. But other computer analyses have shown milder futures with some increase in erosion, changes in growing seasons (longer in Canada and northern Europe and Asia, ironically) and changes that bring some areas more rain, some less, some hotter weather and some colder weather (hence all the dithering about "Warming" or "Climage Change" or "Chaos" etc. etc. etc.)If scientists can't communicate the whole picture, complete with the unavoidable uncertainties, but instead rely on hyperbole, they're sacrificing what they must keep in order to be trusted. Look, seat belts save lives, of course. But if you were to claim that there is, say, a 10% chance you'll die every time you get in an automobile and forget to wear one (not that I'm saying anyone's actually made such an Ehrlichian prediction!) it would be counterproductive, wouldn't it?We've made amazing progress. Automobile engines emit fewer pollutants and may soon be replaced by electric motors. Airplanes get more miles to the gallon. Manufacturing everything from steel to toys uses lower carbon footprint technology every year. Power plants are cleaner, from retrofitting old tech like coal to using better fuels like natural gas to substituting renewables. It would be a shame if this progress was hindered by scientists in politics sounding like Millerites.

No, Sarah. The real problem is we are burning up the world big time and there are far too many obfuscators sidetracking the narrative with picayune trivialities.

A lot of folk simply have never learned how to think. We see that here quite often.They claim that the fact that some projection have not yet happened yet seem to totally misunderstand, seemingly intentionally misunderstand, that the projection were the very things that drove changes that have so far mitigated some of the direst predictions.Yet so far the trend actually continues to point towards those direst projections and what reality show is that human efforts have changed the timing but so far there is no indication that we have done anything more than postpone the consequences.

True, we are in deep doo-doo, but I have seen no studies indicating any mediation-caused delay in this scheduled funeral for our species. Quite the opposite. Target goals are falling farther behind, being missed altogether with tipping points rushing at us faster than we had forseen.My message Message 718In speaking of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation.

quote:

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And why, you might ask, is this happening now. Well, it seems we've been missing quite a few smaller target points on our environmental fix-it list and now, surprise, the problem has gotten worse and the flow from ice to current is increasing faster than expected. The tipping point is coming faster than expected and now there is no time left for mitigation since it is here, it is happening, right here in front of our faces ...and ... we can't stop it. Too late.

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Unfortunately, this same scene is being played out with ocean thermal gain, Antarctic ice melts and, the biggie, anthropic carbon emissions. It has all sped up these last few years. We're in worse shape than we thought. Our timeline to oblivion needs to be re-calculated to be well sooner that we thought.Edited by AZPaul3, : title

the thing you don't realize about the Y2K panic is that the reason nothing happened is the hundreds of thousands of hours many people put in to make sure nothing happened. The problem was there, but the effort to avert the problems was also there.

The improvements to computer systems were very important (the joke about computer programmers is that if carpenters built houses the way programmers program computers the first woodpecker would destroy civilization), but more for things like defences against hackers and catastrophes like 9/11 (all those offices had lots of computers and the systems had to be secure and securely backed up) than incorrect two-number dates.The Y2K problems that DID happen show what a meagre issue it all was: a 105 year old grandmother getting a notice about her first day at kindergarten, a plant employee binning an ingredient for a mixture because the computer told him it had expired 98 years ago. You know, disasters!

The company I worked for spent 2 years and several million dollars rebuilding their whole computer network to avoid Y2K. The university my wife worked at had a large team working for 2 years to avoid Y2K. World wide Billions of dollars were spent to avoid it!And it was a success!

And yet 21 years later those programmers have managed to connect all of civilization.I don't know what you were doing in the late 90s, but apparently it was not paying attention to a global threat to an already computerized world.You diminishing the problem to a 105 year old grandma, blah, blah, blah, is bullsht!

And I was one of the programmers not only dealing with the issue but working with state government IT people from all over the US to make sure that any Y2K crisis was only ripples on a summer pond. The Government Information Management Sciences group was active in identifying issues unique to each mainframe computer system and programming language as well as to the entirely different threats faced in the mini, micro and desktop environments.The threat was very, very real and the cooperation and information sharing that resulted in the very minor problems that did ensue put paid to the absurdity of your positions.

And the hundreds of billions $$ that wouldn't transfer bank to bank because some computers thought those transactions had already been processed, a hundred years ago. And the newly input rail traffic schedules that wouldn't get implemented because they were "old".Yes, we saw them coming, disasters! And we fixed them before they happened.Edited by AZPaul3, : No reason given.

We were talking about in in 1980. I was already being careful in code that I wrote at that time.Yes, it was a minor issue as we expected. And it was minor because we had prepared for it.Yes, it was over-hyped, but not much by those in the computer industry. It was over-hyped by the press. And it was enormously over-hyped by evangelical Christians who saw it as part of their absurd apocalyptic expectations.