"We've got climate deniers on the one hand but these climate exaggerators are just as bad since they discredit their own cause."
I haven't encountered climate exaggeration. The most "extreme" concerns about the climate situation come direct from climate scientists.
"What I hate most of all is how both sides have become heavily politicized. Not for scientists obviously but in the popular culture and in the minds of our policy makers (though I don't think politicians can help but think politically). Your average joe doesn't seem to understand that scientific outcomes aren't determined by politics. They don't even agree or disagree with climate change due to scientific analysis but simply due to whichever political tribes they happen to belong to.
It doesn't seem to matter too much anyway since even accurate climate models only token efforts are made to reduce greenhouse emissions and nothing will be done about the past centuries of industrial activity. Our not so mad scientists seem reluctant to use climate engineering. I guess they're too busy with their ethics committees.
So it seems nothing will be done except to create a pop science media storm. We'll just ride it out over the next few centuries and we'll probably survive. There's no need to see the glass as half empty. I'm optimistic that no more than a few million people will be killed and the rest of us will get off lightly with survivable levels of suffering.[/quote]"
Figure you'll be one of the lucky ones? Not likely.
We aren't actually only talking about an unthinkable 4 or 6 degree c rise in global average temperature. Because of the positive feedback loops in the climate system, larger, much more powerful greenhouse gasses than carbon are beginning, already, to seep out of the tundra and frozen clathrates in the oceans. By the time we've gone up to 4 degrees, you can bet your bottom dollar that the "methane clathrate bomb" will have "exploded" too (that is, substantially released into the atmosphere). From there, we can expect something more like a 12-14 degree c rise (paleoclimate data illustrates exactly how that worked in the most rapid extinction even our planet has ever seen (till this one)). So, bye bye humanoids. Pending finding another planet which we can get to in time, unforeseeable doable and effective geoengineering strategies, or some very technologically advanced dome civilizations, we are toast.
We are talking planetary war for resources which are required for survival. Carbon Dioxide, itself hangs out in the upper atmosphere for ~100,000 years. Hard to ride that out in a cave. I'm just sayin.
Wish I didn't know what I was talking about! Please scientists, get some new data or something! Make me look like a fool, I beg you. I've got four kids, and I so wanted to be a grandmother someday. *sigh* From the perspective of a human, its a pretty big deal. <---understatement
29 Jan 2014, 1:54 pm
