The story received immediate criticism from the climate change community along two fronts: the piece is too pessimistic, and it contains some factual errors. The non-governmental organization
Climate Feedback summarized reviews by dozens of professional scientists as follows:The reviewers found that some statements in this complex article do misrepresent research on the topic, and some others lack the necessary context to be clearly understood by the reader. Many other explanations in the article are correct, but readers are likely left with an overall conclusion that is exaggerated compared to our best scientific understanding.
Jason Samenow referred to it as a "climate doom piece" because Wallace-Wells presents some of the worst-case scenarios without admitting that they are "remote" possibilities, and without exploring the more-likely outcomes, which are still very serious. With reference to factual errors,
Michael Mann and several others specifically criticized the description of
Arctic methane emissions. In his conversation with Mann at
NYU, Wallace-Wells noted that he would not include comments on methane release if he were to write the piece again. Robinson Meyer of
The Atlantic called it an "unusually specific and severe depiction of what global warming will do to the planet." Susan Matthews, writing in
Slate, said "The instantly viral piece might be the
Silent Spring of our time". The major criticism is that David Wallace-Wells was trying to scare people. For example,
Eric Holthaus said that "scaring the shit out of [people] is a really bad strategy" for getting them to want to
address climate change. In a later interview, Wallace-Wells said that "it didn't seem plausible to me that there was more risk at scaring people too much than there was at not scaring them enough... my feeling was, and is, if there's a one percent chance that we've set off a chain reaction that could end the human race, then that should be something that the public knows and thinks about." ==References==