Forewarned is forearmed
Doomsday predictions are funny things. We are predisposed to pay attention to bad news, and the news industry thrives on disasters. Yet our fascination is fickle. If the warning is too scary or distressing, we attack the messenger as a doom-monger. Take the 1972 book The Limits to Growth, one of the first efforts to predict the future using computer models. It found that if trends in population, industrialisation, pollution, food production and resource depletion continued unchanged, resources would eventually run out. (Editorial)