A widely circulated headline from Policymic says a NASA study concludes we are doomed. The headline is misleading. The report was a NASA-funded study written by Safa Motesharrei, an applied mathematician at the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center. I bet you never heard of them or him. There’s a good reason for that. SESYNC, a small think tank, has been in existence for just 18 months. Motesharrei, according to SESYNC, is a graduate research assistant. And I can not find his article on their own website.
Look at the screenshot. Motesharrei is reading a book by es-NASA head James Hansen who, most would agree, is an extreme believer in the we’re-all-doomed theory of climate change. How cozy is that?
The real problem here is such gloomy predictions are counterproductive. If you want to rally people to join your cause, you must give them hope. If instead, you say civilization will end soon, they will probably just give up.