Climate Change: What's your take?

[Locknuts]

RadiantDanceMachine said:

Locknuts said:

Appealing to an authority is fine. As long as that authority isn't a politician. They are authorities on their own agendas. Likewise, the media seem to sway quite strongly either one way or another, all the while looking for the most dramatic scenarios they can find to get viewership. They are certainly not authorities.

I appeal to authority that shows data, like climate scientists and their actual peer reviewed work. The IPCC certainly have their faults, but there is truly a huge amount of data in their reports and they are improving with each one. So I don't have too much of a problem with the IPCC as an authority, but they are not nearly as alarmist as some would have me believe.

For example they're natural disaster experts find no links between AGW and extreme weather events.

As others have pointed out, the scientific consenus is almost fraudulent. It includes works by Richard Lindzen and I believe Roy Spencer, who are known sceptics. Regardless, a consensus is a very unscientific way of 'proving' something. It only takes 1 paper to prove 100 wrong.

Speaking of which, I am yet to find anything definitive on this 'tipping point'. It seems like more of an hypothesis. One which seems very difficult to test.

Do you have any papers on the tipping point that come up with anything substantial? I would actually be very interested to read it (I'm not being a smart arse, I really would like to read it to educate myself).

I would never recommend taking anything a politician or a lay person said about anything unless their source was an expert. 

While it's true that 1 paper can dismantle 100 others, no such papers have accomplished this feat on this topic so a consensus is important on the papers which do exist.

I've not encountered anything definitive on the tipping point scenario, and I do not expect to. It's unknown territory and that is exactly why there is so much anxiety about what could occur. It's a concern because we lack the knowledge to predict the outcome. 

Well you and I appear to be the minority. Almost every single person I have spoken to on this subject has received their information from politicians and the media. They often tell me that the IPCC says the world is dying and it's all our fault. Then I show then the actual IPCC data and reports and if they're a somewhat neutral person (I tend not to speak with hard right/left people on the issue) then they often realise that they have been misled. The media have made an art out of implying catastrophe without actually stating that it will happen. It's really quite clever if you can admire something so deceitful.

On the consensus, an increasing number of papers (since about 2010 I believe) imply low climate sensitivity to Co2. This seems to be mostly due to the lower rate of warming seen since around 1998 despite higher carbon emissions. Others seem to think that the extra warming went into the oceans, but I have seen many other explanations.

So while there is a consensus on the scientific basics, the actual level of urgency for action is less clear.