Yes, they are alarmist. I base this on the fact that most people here seem to agree that climate change will not be catastrophic. So the recent alarmism from John Kerry is just that: alarmism.
How much should we spend on a problem that is not going to be serious? Wouldn't we be better solving the actual problems we have at the moment and not waste money on trying to prevent ones that may not even happen?
Gary F: "... but it would be more interesting is you tried to avoid the really stupid lies."
You are the one quoting outdated statistics from AR4. AR5 has no central estimate. The more research there is the less they seem to know - and the more confident they get.
Also, professor Myles Allen has been know to quote the 11 degrees figure. There is a YouTube of it.
We also agreed here that the models are not accurate and should be ignored as their relevance is not great.
I certainly think the media presentation of the problem is alarmist. They'll quote stuff and of context and put the most sensational sound bytes in their headlines and news reports. And there are people out there who will say all sorts of things for the publicity. By and large though, I personally haven't found climate science itself unduly alarmist. But then I am not by nature the type of person to get all worked up about things. You know, like predictions of asteroid strikes and other natural disasters. Nor do I buy into the political conspiracy theories. That stuff can get pretty alarmist too.
Every day when the sun goes up above the Earth and shines, its rays make the carbon hot and that makes the weather bad. People need to wake up to this FACT. There was no carbon until people started driving cars. Science proves it, and it is a FACT.
The weather has never been this bad in the millions of light-years since the dinosars and even before the dinosars when there was no life except for amebas. Amebas lived in water, before there was carbon. Now the Amebas are going extinct because of man.
You should do your part to make less carbon.
They certainly put their own spin on empirical data when it doesn't agree with their agenda.
for example do a little data mining from the facts included in this recent news report & compare it to their conclusions.
http://news.yahoo.com/shifts-rainfall-no...
From 1994 to 2002 sea levels rose @ the rate of 3.4mm per year.
From 2003 to 2011 sea levels rose @ the rate of 2.4mm per year.
Conclusion," there has been no change in the rate of sea level rise" ???????
Their hypothesis for why there has been a reduction in the rate of rise during the 2 concurrent 8 year periods(rain on land) could very well be true but the statement that there has been no change is counter factual to put it politely.
This kind of consistently slanted reporting can only lead to a general lack of confidence in all climate change reports & questions of "why would they bother doing this?". What do they hope to gain? .
Incidentally "Dr"? Price. In the link you can see sea levels have rose 7& 3/4 inch in the past 113 years. not 9'' in 80 years.
They are over the top alarmist, it is a political tool, everytime something goes wrong, obamacare not working, they ramp up global warming as a distraction, me I am scared of global cooling, warming is conducive to life and productivity, with seven billion people on this planet if it starts to cool we are in serious trouble.
No. If anything, most warnings about AGW are overly conservative. "Skeptics" love to talk about how climate models are not perfect. And I don't claim they are perfect. But, the fact that they are not perfect does not mean that global warming is not a problem, as denialists love to claim. Uncertainty cuts both ways. And we know that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and will cause warming, not from climate models, but from the laboratory.
Therefore, since climate models are not perfect, global warming could be worse than what the models project.
Raisin Caine
Can you guarantee that they won't speed up. I thought so.
Why not 500 times. Albedo is a powerful feedback. And sea level isn't proportional to temperature. Rate of heat transfer to the leading edge of the glaciers, and therefore, the amount of ice melting is proportional to temperature above freezing.
That is a serious accusation. And since your question has not been deleted, I am obviously not a top reporter.
< And your pretense that it could be worse than the models is nothing but scare-mongering BS.>
Either you trust the models a lot more than I do, or you are a bloody idiot to think that we can trust the upper bounds of the models but not the lower bounds.
Computer models work, or they don't. If they work, the upper levels are indeed possible. If they don't, their upper bounds can absolutely be exceeded.
But, since you denialists love to cherry pick, why should I be surprised that you would cherry pick from model results?
The article is talking about poison ivy in places such as New York, which was not warm enough for much poison ivy. before. You will probably find less poison ivy in places like Texas and Oklahoma, which are getting hotter and drier because of global warming. Global warming does cause plant life to move poleward. Surprise, surprise.
And what makes you think I'm lying? Do I have a crystal ball, that I would know that Earth will warm less than the models, even if that were true?
During the Cretaceous period, " Ice sheets and glaciers were almost entirely absent except in the high mountains, so, although the end of the Cretaceous was coolest, it was still much warmer than it is today."
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topi...
Can you name one climate model that even approaches, never mind exceeds such warming? I thought so.
No – and anyone who claims that it is some kind of natural cycle is either an idiot and/or a liar. BY itself, claiming that it is a cycle or natural warming-cooling is the same thing as saying the Easter Bunny is responsible.
Climate cycles – or more specifically, cyclical factors that affect climate (like solar cycles and Milankovitch cycles) have specific definitions and known scientific patterns. No Denier ever has – or ever will – tell you exactly what cycle they are talking about because they are just making it up - and they cannot name a cycle that has not already been scientifically tested and shown not to be the cause of current temperatures.
And, if you pay attention to their answers, you will see that almost every single one of them is scientifically illiterate. They are stupid by choice and they refuse to learn anything,
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Raisin Caine --
>>Your uncertainty in your models do not even have within them the LINEAR warmign that we have seen over the past 60 years.<<
Let’s try to see how much stupidity you jam into once sentence.
1) The models are based on the empirical data from the last 60 years – or longer.
2) The last 60 years of data – both in total and/or parts that sum to the total – are used in validation tests to evaluate the model fit.
3) Uncertainty is determined as some function of the empirical mean and variance and, by definition therefore, includes the historic data.
>>At the same time the upper limits of your models have 11 degrees of warming… Your models conveniently keep the upper bound … I am pretty sure that you know you are lying. <<
We know that you are the liar – liar.
“Analysis of models together with constraints from observations suggest that the equilibrium climate sensitivity is likely to be in the range 2°C to 4.5°C, with a best estimate value of about 3°C. It is very unlikely to be less than 1.5°C. Values substantially higher than 4.5°C cannot be excluded, but agreement with observations is not as good for those values.“
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data...
Everyone expects Deniers to lie, but it would be more interesting is you tried to avoid the really stupid lies.
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graphicconception --
The difference is verbiage - an attempt to mitigate the confusion of people too stupid to understand central tendency.
In any case, I have always argued that those specific values are both unknowable and irrelevant.
The planet has warmed and cooled for billions of years , with the most extreme changes in climate long before man ever walked the planet .
Molten rock , glaciers , floods and mass extinctions , all before man ever even harnessed the power or fire .
The changes we've seen in the past 100 years are quite mild compared to what mother nature has proven herself capable of .
They want you to be happy paying 5 dollars for a loaf
of bread store brand and high fuel prices to save the Earth .
That is carbon taxes a value added tax .
Meanwhile your hard earned cash will be redistrubited to other countrys claiming damage .
Its corprate welfare to the nth degree
They must be if they are going to sensationalize the issue enough to scare people into adopting their geopolitical agendas. That is why the AAAS has doubled down, make that triple downed the rhetoric into utterly embarrassing lunacy.
and why or why not??
Absolutely. Look at Robert's answer for an example. He likely believes this garbage. The IPCC report have the increases in the next 50 years and around 30 cm, not 22 feet, and its not like the IPCC is some conservative group trying to downplay AGW. If climate change is not a problem they don't have a job. This would automatically lead to them being biased towards CAGW.
So where does all of this scare-mongering come from??? Clearly people like Robert are not just making this stuff up. He actually believes that he is reporting factual information, when indeed he is just scare-mongering.
I can produce links to 100 sites that report all sorts of things from the end of mankind to global floods to desertfication of most of the planet. In most cases they are taking the VERY extremes of the models and discussing that possibility. This is not lying, but it is rather disingenuous. The average person looks a the headlines and the first paragraphs and is scared out of their mind. They rarely notice the source and that the article uses the most extreme of the models. Other times, they have actually projected out the sea rise for 2000 years!
Robert, The seas are rising 3 mm/year. That is 1 tenth of an inch, not 6 inches. And it is not just the "deniers" who say this.
Climate realist,
Speed up you say??? What double in speed? Triple? That barely gets you to the IPCC belief, let alone the "facts" that Robert is spewing. And if you warmers were constantly spouting IPCC rhetoric and correcting people like Robert here, you would not have me constantly badgering you about absurd scare-mongering.
You just demonstrate the truth of what I say. You warmers would rather say "it might get faster." to me, than to tell someone who is saying the sea is rising by 6 inches a year that he is wrong.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environ...
http://www.scientificamerican.com/articl...
Love this one. Poison ivy growing more and bears coming out more, oh my.
http://www.takepart.com/article/2013/07/...
In fact, aside from a "denier" article, I would like to see you produce one article that takes a moderate view of AGW that is not strictly and science journal.
Fact is that you know very well that there is a difference betwen the crap that gets reported in the media and what the IPCC is actually saying.
Further, lets talk about uncertainty cutting both ways because that is a LIE. Your uncertainty in your models do not even have within them the LINEAR warmign that we have seen over the past 60 years. You know, the linear warming that you warmers love to do LINEAR regression on to show warming is actually occurring??? At the same time the upper limits of your models have 11 degrees of warming that has not been seen throughout the history of the Earth even when the CO2 in the atmosphere has been more than 5 times its current amount. Your models conveniently keep the upper bound, even the impossible ones while dropping the linear growth models that we have seen for the last 60 years. SO NO!!!! The uncertainty does not cut both ways. It only cuts both ways when the modelers are not so obviously biased. And your pretense that it could be worse than the models is nothing but scare-mongering BS. What is more, I am pretty sure that you know you are lying. Are you going to try to honestly claim that the upper bounds of the models are even possible, let alone ones greater than those upper bounds?
Climate realist.
You don't want to be accused of lying, then don't lie. The fact that we have not in the history of the earth seen the upper bound of the models and you still defend them???
And you seemed to have missed the point about the poison ivy. Picking out poison ivy of all plants that grow is beyond bias.
So you tell me. Are you too stupid to see this bias, too engrained in the religion of AGW to ever be seen as a heretic, or lying??? It has to be one of the 3. You come across as too intelligent to not inherently understand that upper bounds containing what has never been seen on earth already border absurdity. Assuming greater than that, well... you tell me what that is.
Edit:
Gary F,
For all your bluster about the IPCC report, I have yet to hear you attack warmers who use articles that have higher predictions than the IPCC. As soon as you start attacking the alarmists (note in my book alarmists claim higher than IPCC, while I reserve warmers for those that claim no higher than IPCC) as fervently as you attack "deniers", that will be the moment I start treating you like a scientist. Until then, your lies are too obvious to need a rebuttal.
No. Last week scientists in Greenland reported that the glacier there has receded 27 feet in one year, They estimate the whole thing will melt in another 50 years. It was on CNN this week. The Athabasca Glacier in Canada has been retreating 30 metres a year, a pace thwe Tornoto Star says is well beyond normal and definitely accelerated by global warming. 12 other ice fields and 347 Canadian glaciers are also meling more than expected since the 1880's. Screw the IPCC. The UN can't do anything competently anyhow except fight with each other. then sea level will go up worldwide 22 feet. NASA reports that Canada's Athabasca Glacier is shrinking 48 feet per year now. Polar Bears are drowning. Half the major cities will be under water. They already have pumps in downtown Miami and Key West because the high tide comes into the streets every day. Opponents of global warming correctly point out that sea level is only rising a few inches a year, but in 50 to 200 years, New York, Miami, Amsterdam, and New Orleans and the whole country of Bangladesh and much of Thailand will be under water because not that much of the water from the glacier has melted yet. I don't see our politicians making any attempt to tell people they will have to relocate inland, and when they do, especially in third world countries there will be lots of wars and famine. All the livestock that lives near the coast will drown too. no one likes to think 50 years ahead, and the way China, India and emerging countries are burning up oil and coal and emitting greenhouse gases so that current levels are higher than they have been in 800,000 years. This alone has killed off dozens of species of Salamanders and Tropical Frogs who are the most sensitive as they can absorb all the heat and gases through their skins.Even if the USA cleans up, it will have little effect.
Albert Gore has nothing to do with it. He just repeated what scientists told him. Who are you going to believe NASA or Rand Paul? No one can predict an exact date yet for a global catastrophe, but scientists agree it's coming. On March 24, 2014, downtown Fort Lauderdale and parts of Miami Beach flooded according to Huffington Post. Sea level has risen 9 inches in the past 80 years. That's a fact, nothing made up. Of course the planet has warmed up before. But have you ever looked at map of the continents back then. What do you think caused the inland sea that used to cover the American West during the age of the dinosaurs? Global warming caused it, but now the global warming will be much worse as happen faster. Don't listen to people with doctrinaire political agendas and stupid people. 46% of college graduates believe God created the earth less than 10,000 years ago, and 25% with graduate degrees believe that dinosaurs and people lived together before the Great Flood!
By the way, I'm not a "liberal." I ran for Congress in the Republican Party primary against Peter King. The US Council of Bishops called for action on climate change in 2001, the Pontifical academy at the Vatican in 2011, and Pope Francis belives in global warming and has said "Nature does not forgive"! The logistics of the current global warming and climate change is not liberal or conservative although ignorant Congresspeople would like you to think so: it is simply the produce of overpopulation and the addition of 5+ billion people since the Industrial Revolution started. They reproduce too much, eat too much and burn up the world's resources far too fast.
"I believe with great certainty... that the climate change we are experiencing is human-caused, and if we don't do something about it, the world is going to enter a stage of great chaos and human misery" - James Cameron. All sensible persons agree: the thing I find so alarming is the preponderance of humans who are still living in a Biblical self centered reality. remember, the people who wrote the gospels also thought the earth was flat. No matter, when half your progeny all drown or die in famines and wars, nature will correct the problem on its own. The Pope is right!
ps.Ride On makes a good point. We have had several massive climate change events millions of years ago. The problem is, that during the Permian and Cretaceous extinctions, we didn't have most of the reptiles and dinosaurs living in shore ports near sea level where a small rise in sea level will kill off their food or drown them!
It depends on who you listen to. What has happened in the global warming debate is what has happened in every other sphere of human life - people will use it to promote whatever agenda they want. For example, the way-out greenies will exaggerate the effects, the way-out conspiracy theory nuts will use it as yet another example of how government is lying to you.
In my opinion, the basic science is now no longer debatable. Our planet is warming and we're responsible. That is the view of every national academy of science, every organisation representing the geosciences, and every organisation representing climatologists. That doesn't mean the planet wasn't warmer in the past or that 'natural' factors don't play a major role, as some other answerers have, irrelevantly, argued. What it means is that we've added an additional factor into the mix, and that factor will skew things slightly away from what we'd 'naturally' expect. And, since we live on the planet we're skewing, it will have consequences that we need to plan for.
Some of those impacts are difficult to predict, not least because we can't predict what we humans will do! It is already the case that we have sufficient evidence to argue that precipitation patterns will change. In Ireland, where I live, our winters are becoming more mild based on 150 years worth of data taking. The east coast is drier and the west coast wetter. Dublin, our largest city is on the east coast. That's also where our reservoirs are to supply water to the 1.5 million people living there. There have been water shortages in recent summers. So we're going to have to think about building additional reservoirs and where to put them. Other nations will have to do the same, and that costs time and money. In the third world, aid agencies are already seeing effects of desertification and changes in rainfall. We're already starting to see impacts on crop production. We'll have reductions in some areas and increases in other areas. So those are the main concerns of the IPCC - food production and water distribution.
I don't believe the truly alarmest predictions but I think it'd be a rather stupid nation that doesn't start to plan for the future based on what we think and what we observe happening. For me, though, the biggest threat from global warming is to the ecosystem of our planet. We're altering the climate slightly, we're doing it in record time. And the ecology of our planet is infinitely more complex than the climate, so we really have no idea what impact global warming will have.
Many animals migrate based on temperature of the oceans. They need to be in specific places at specific times of the year to feed (for example, sharks, dolphins, seals, birds all converge for about 1 or 2 weeks off the coast of South Africa to feed on fish that are, themselves, migrating). Change temperature and these sorts of complicated interplays of life might start to unravel in ways we haven't even considered. Many species of animals hatch or even change sex depending on water temperature which obviously has an impact on population numbers. This is the bit of AGW that really worries me, yet it seems to take a back seat in the rising sea levels, increased storms, how much will it all cost debates.
We're only just beginning to see what nature can offer us. Many of our medicines and new technologies have been created by 'back engineering' things we find in nature. Any loss of ecological diversity is, directly, a loss to us in terms of new discoveries, new technologies, and a dollar value loss in economic terms as a result.
Yes.
Global Warming is natural, and it is our friend. It actually saved us from the ice ages. However, Gore's Warming is fake, and it is based on the demonic rantings of that liberal lunatic and fat pig (that were originated from voices within his head). His wild claims have been debunked by many prominent scientists.
We are sadly in danger of Barack Hussein Obama wasting our country's time and resources on this utter nonsense, at the desire of his brainwashed liberal supporters. Our economy and our military might (that is necessary to protect freedom) could suffer. It is vitally important for all sane people to stand against this.
Tough to answer this. Because we really don't have enough information yet on natural long term climate cycles
"Alarmist" describes the Chicken Little fossil fuel industry duped anti-science kooks who think the sky will fall, if we stop subsidizing oil and coal companies with taxpayer money.
