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Scientists didn't get climate change wrong. Once modelling began in earnest, the results of the models were so extreme and alarming that scientists were ignored

Scientists didn't get climate change wrong. Once modelling began in earnest, the results of the models were so extreme and alarming that scientists were ignored/silenced and only the milder scenarios were made visible to the general public. Now evidence is making it impossible to pretend any longer that those mild scenarios are playing out. The opposite is happening, the most pessimistic models have turned out to still fall short of the mark due to the number of positive feedback loops involved in global warming. Scientists didn't underestimate anything, they were told to shut the fuck up and stop inciting mass panic if they wanted to keep their jobs. The fact that mass panic might have been justified didn't cross the minds of the politicians involved. Climate change is a hard, perhaps fatal, lesson that society cannot be governed by career politicians. Opinions don't matter, election cycles don't matter, personal beliefs don't matter, 'this will ruin the economy' doesn't matter. What matters is an existential threat has presented itself and the scientists best placed to address it have been suppressed by the political technically ignorant ruling class so that it can continue its existence unimpeded for just a little bit longer.

CorruptedArc 7y ago
Do you have a reliable source to backup such alarming claims?
- missosoup 7y ago
  https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/ https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/ I'll do an eli5 summary: Even if all greenhouse emissions ceased overnight, global temperatures would continue climbing for another century before hitting equilibrium. We are already past the point of no return unless we start actively pulling carbon back out of the atmosphere.
  - larnmar 7y ago
    And this would be a net bad thing because?
    - wolph 7y ago
      Rising of the sea levels is problematic for nearly all coastal areas of the world. Another problematic result is more extreme weather scenarios. There are many more, but let's start there.
kgwgk 7y ago
> only the milder scenarios were made visible to the general public. The public has been given all kind of predictions, some were quite extreme ( “Children just aren’t going to know what snow is”) and have failed to materialize.
- missosoup 7y ago
  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/19/iceland-holds-funeral-for-first-glacier-lost-to-climate-change https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/19/iceland-holds-... https://climate.nasa.gov/climate_resources/4/graphic-dramatic-glacier-melt/ https://climate.nasa.gov/climate_resources/4/graphic-dramati... Children aren't going to know what snow is. Permafrost is now melting. The perma means 'permanent'. The only question is whether it'll be your grandchildren or their children.
  - kgwgk 7y ago
    > some climate change experts predict that the Scottish ski industry will cease to exist within 20 years. Five years to go... Is that a mild prediction? Last year was bad, but a few seasons in this decade have seen lots of snow (and of course global warming was also blamed for that). https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2004/feb/14/climatechange.scotland https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2004/feb/14/climatechange.sco...
    - missosoup 7y ago
      > and of course global warming was also blamed for that "Global warming" has been a poor choice of name because people lacking sufficient educational background expect there to literally be uniform warming. And then you get the 'we had an early cold snap, so much for global warming!' crowd. What global warming actually means is that additional energy is being added to the weather system, which will amplify both low and high temperature maxima as well as causing more frequent high-severity weather anomalies like hurricanes. But on average, the global mean temperature trend will continue to go up and eventually those local minima will cease to exist. Maybe this will help understand: https://climate.nasa.gov/climate_resources/139/graphic-global-warming-from-1880-to-2018/ https://climate.nasa.gov/climate_resources/139/graphic-globa...
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
fungicide 7y ago
They've been repeating the same message of doom now for 30 years and it always fails to materialise. Eg 1989 "The most conservative scientific estimate that the Earth’s temperature will rise 1 to 7 degrees in the next 30 years, said Brown" https://apnews.com/bd45c372caf118ec99964ea547880cd0 https://apnews.com/bd45c372caf118ec99964ea547880cd0 Actual temperature anomaly is 0.8 degrees. https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/ https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/ So we're doing better than the best models predicted and we've massively increased co2 output beyond what those early modelers anticipated; Apparently those early climate modelers had not heard of China.
- yodsanklai 7y ago
  > They've been repeating the same message of doom Who are they? you're citing "A senior U.N. environmental official". It is common rhetoric but it as no value. What is important to know is not what a single person said, but what the scientific consensus back then was. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [1] in 1990 "global mean temperature will increase by about 0.3 °C per decade during the [21st] century". It seems 0.8 degrees is close enough to the 0.3 * 3 °C they predicted. Personally, I believe the most accurate prevision we can make today, based on current knowledge, is the one made by the GIEC. I don't see any reason to think that someone else knows better. And I also think that 30 years of research gives us more reliable prediction today than before. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intergovernmental_Panel_on_Climate_Change#First_assessment_report https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intergovernmental_Panel_on_Cli...

CorruptedArc 7y ago

Do you have a reliable source to backup such alarming claims?

missosoup 7y ago
https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/ https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/ I'll do an eli5 summary: Even if all greenhouse emissions ceased overnight, global temperatures would continue climbing for another century before hitting equilibrium. We are already past the point of no return unless we start actively pulling carbon back out of the atmosphere.
- larnmar 7y ago
  And this would be a net bad thing because?
  - wolph 7y ago
    Rising of the sea levels is problematic for nearly all coastal areas of the world. Another problematic result is more extreme weather scenarios. There are many more, but let's start there.

kgwgk 7y ago

> only the milder scenarios were made visible to the general public. The public has been given all kind of predictions, some were quite extreme ( “Children just aren’t going to know what snow is”) and have failed to materialize.

missosoup 7y ago
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/19/iceland-holds-funeral-for-first-glacier-lost-to-climate-change https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/19/iceland-holds-... https://climate.nasa.gov/climate_resources/4/graphic-dramatic-glacier-melt/ https://climate.nasa.gov/climate_resources/4/graphic-dramati... Children aren't going to know what snow is. Permafrost is now melting. The perma means 'permanent'. The only question is whether it'll be your grandchildren or their children.
- kgwgk 7y ago
  > some climate change experts predict that the Scottish ski industry will cease to exist within 20 years. Five years to go... Is that a mild prediction? Last year was bad, but a few seasons in this decade have seen lots of snow (and of course global warming was also blamed for that). https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2004/feb/14/climatechange.scotland https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2004/feb/14/climatechange.sco...
  - missosoup 7y ago
    > and of course global warming was also blamed for that "Global warming" has been a poor choice of name because people lacking sufficient educational background expect there to literally be uniform warming. And then you get the 'we had an early cold snap, so much for global warming!' crowd. What global warming actually means is that additional energy is being added to the weather system, which will amplify both low and high temperature maxima as well as causing more frequent high-severity weather anomalies like hurricanes. But on average, the global mean temperature trend will continue to go up and eventually those local minima will cease to exist. Maybe this will help understand: https://climate.nasa.gov/climate_resources/139/graphic-global-warming-from-1880-to-2018/ https://climate.nasa.gov/climate_resources/139/graphic-globa...

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

fungicide 7y ago

They've been repeating the same message of doom now for 30 years and it always fails to materialise. Eg 1989 "The most conservative scientific estimate that the Earth’s temperature will rise 1 to 7 degrees in the next 30 years, said Brown" https://apnews.com/bd45c372caf118ec99964ea547880cd0 https://apnews.com/bd45c372caf118ec99964ea547880cd0 Actual temperature anomaly is 0.8 degrees. https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/ https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/ So we're doing better than the best models predicted and we've massively increased co2 output beyond what those early modelers anticipated; Apparently those early climate modelers had not heard of China.

yodsanklai 7y ago
> They've been repeating the same message of doom Who are they? you're citing "A senior U.N. environmental official". It is common rhetoric but it as no value. What is important to know is not what a single person said, but what the scientific consensus back then was. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [1] in 1990 "global mean temperature will increase by about 0.3 °C per decade during the [21st] century". It seems 0.8 degrees is close enough to the 0.3 * 3 °C they predicted. Personally, I believe the most accurate prevision we can make today, based on current knowledge, is the one made by the GIEC. I don't see any reason to think that someone else knows better. And I also think that 30 years of research gives us more reliable prediction today than before. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intergovernmental_Panel_on_Climate_Change#First_assessment_report https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intergovernmental_Panel_on_Cli...