Reuters: 100 mln will die by 2030 if world fails to act on climate - report

[caraher]

14. I've heard a few "doomers" hazard guesses at dates

Steve Hallett calls it for sometime in the 2030s. Guy McPherson thinks he's an optimist and we'll be extinct before that decade ends; presumably that means the whole economic house of cards falls much sooner than that!

Not that it would be fair to hold GG to these timetables. And in any event, it's a bit of a pointless exercise, for suppose he says something like "everything collapses in 2025." If the actual data of a collapse is 2030 or 2035 I'd say the prediction was awfully good (what difference does a decade or two make if something that cataclysmic happens)? Yet in 2026 you'd be saying the prediction was flat-out wrong (and you would; the whole idea is that this is something like a phase change, where there's a sudden discontinuous change, not some gradual slide).

I think there's plenty of room to challenge the rigor of his analyses, but this particular flavor of "put up or shut up" challenge misses the point entirely. If he's ever proven right in the way you demand, we won't be in a position to have any further discussion at all!