Earth in the balance
Presents a comprehensive plan for saving the environment by addressing population, technology, and education.
Stats for nerds
0recommend
2mentions
2people
2020–2026years
100% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Links to an opinion piece by Kyle Smith, film critic and columnist in the Wall Street Journal. https://www.wsj.com/opinion/free-expression/al-gores-long-an... I don't know why his views are supposed to be that relevant?
The summary is "Al Gore predicted in 1992 that in the next few decades, Florida would lose 60 percent of its population due to climate change."
The text shows an image from the WSJ with two quotes put together: "in the next few decades," "up to 60 percent of the present population of Florida may have to be relocated."
What's missing is the text in between, or even a ellipsis.
The quotes come from Gore's 1993 book "Earth in the Balance". The more complete context, not given in the opinion piece, is, quoting https://archive.org/details/earthinbalanceec00gore_0/page/n1... :
"About 10 million residents of Bangladesh will lose their homes and means of sustenance because of the rising sea level, due to global warming, in the next few decades. Where will they go? Whom will they displace? What political conflicts will result? That is only one example. According to some predictions, not long after Bangladesh feels the impact, up to 60 percent of the present population of Florida may have to be relocated. Where will they go?"
"Few" is one of those words that doesn't have a precise meaning, but 3-5 is quite reasonable. (It can also be larger[1].) 1993 + "3-5 decades" is 2023-2043, or possibly 2023-2052 if you include the full decade.
That's the time for Bangladesh. Florida's predicted relocation time is "not long after" that.
Thus, the summary quote is wrong as Gore did not say that "in the next few decades, Florida would lose 60 percent of its population due to climate change." It would be "not long after a few decades", which would make it be "several decades" - another imprecise term.
In any case, 2026 is only the barest beginning of the possible range, so the response shouldn't be "it hasn't come true so we can discard the idea" but to look at the predictions of sea level rise, changes in building policy, etc. to update the evaluation.
Nor should it be to remove relevant context from the disputed claim.
[1] "Few" is also used in a comparative sense, so Job 14:1 has “How frail is man, how few his days, how full of trouble!” uses "few" for something measured in the tens-of-thousands of days.
- Apple's eco-talk is bullshit
Apple's hypocrisy is overwhelming.
Don't forget that Al Gore, who Wikipedia calls an "environmentalist" in the very first sentence, has been on their Board of Directors for many years.[1] Twenty eight years ago he wrote the book Earth in the Balance to warn us about ecological problems.
He's taken millions of dollars from Apple, and together they've done jack-shit about repairability. There is some argument to be made for lower repairability in laptops, but WTF is their excuse for iMac desktops???
They're all Gulfsteam environmentalists, jetting off to places like Davos where they can cavort with others of their ilk while lecturing the rest of us on how bad things are.
