Pretty much.

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.

Unfortunately though, the politicians choose to engage themselves into the scientific aspect of global warming. 

The media's interest is ratings, so it's not surprising they attempt to generate as much hysteria as possible by reporting violent crimes and catastrophes for the most part.

I can't really comment on the climate sensitivity to CO2, since I've not bothered to read much on the topic recently. I do recall reading about the oceans warming, but an even better explanation discovered by the University of Colorado Boulder in that the natural CO2 *sinks* have doubled their uptake, which explains the lack of a runaway effect. 

The urgency I think is to simply instill a sense of responsibility, the earlier we implement conscientious steps toward lessening our impact upon the environment, the more likely we are to succeed. If we wait, drastic measures may have to be taken.

Again I ask, what emails are you referring to?

I would have preferred SocialistSlayer answer my question but thanks. So far, I suspect SocialistSlayer was just towing the party line when making his original post.

In other words, you were making assertions without any substantive evidence, on the basis of incomplete understanding of what you're talking about.

Basically, the exact same thing you accuse them of.

You are referring to the "assessment report" - what you have to realise is that, while it's being informed by scientists, it's a political report. It's a report that is released in order to influence policy, on the basis of science. And after 10 years of them saying "major catastrophe if we don't act" and getting no real reaction from policy-makers, it shouldn't surprise you that they stop wasting space in the report with the part where they try to emphasise the importance in that way. They instead leave it all in more scientific terminology, and let scientists within the major governmental science organisations explain it.

The IPCC, which I have no doubt you're thinking of when you refer to "assessment report", isn't a scientific research body. It's a scientific aggregation body. They take research from other sources, and combine them into a report.

Here's an experiment for you - go to Google Scholar (scholar.google.com.au) and search for "climate model prediction". Then restrict the search to "Since 2015". At the time of my posting this, there's "about 63,600 results". Of course, many of these aren't quite what we're looking for - predictions of impacts of climate on cotton yields in Greece, for instance. But there's more than enough to demonstrate, even at a glance, that they're most certainly still doing it.

The reason you don't know about it is that the news isn't going to go "This just in, the predictions haven't changed". And as I recall, the main change in the IPCC report was aligning their reported numbers to the more standard reference confidence levels, rather than the more arbitrary levels they were previously using (it's standard to use 95% confidence, representing approximately two standard deviations, but they were using 90% confidence, which is something like 1.8 standard deviations). A higher confidence level produces a larger confidence interval, so the resulting lower bounds were lower (still showing warming, though).

The fact that you keep throwing phrases like "alarmism" and "activism" shows me, though, that you're not going to listen to what I'm saying. Note that I'm more of an expert on this topic than most here, having a PhD in mathematical physics specialising in fluid flow and heat transfer. I haven't actually done climate modelling, so I wouldn't actually call myself an expert, but I have the tools necessary to completely understand the models at a fundamental level. But I'm sure you're confident in your understanding, on the basis of having read two or three abstracts and a heap of articles by anti-science people arguing that the climate isn't changing because it was hot yesterday where they live.

1) Well yeah there's always the possibility that an unknow variable will play a role and mitigate CO2 effect. But we know whats is the effects of co2 alone and we know that it will cause global warming. Hoping for another factor that will mitigate the effect when we do not know what it will be or if it actualy exist is little like playing lottery and hoping to win. That's something we should not do with our planet. Not to mention there's the possibility of factors that will accentuate the effects.

2) Well like someone else pointed out  this graphics have no data higher than 300ppm and we are far beyond this point. But still this graph shows a strong correlation between co2 and temperature with only few anomalies.

3) Actualy they are way more precise than this. This argument is only supported by nickpicking models or parts of them that were innacurate but averall, models are way more accurate than this and underpredict more than they overpredict results. 
http://www.wunderground.com/climate/facts/models_are_reliable.asp

4) Now you're the one being alarmist. What if not? In one scenario with act and cause harm but we would be able to take action to mitigate those effects. In another scenario we do nothing until it's to late and we will not be able to do anything about it. In the end, sooner we act and the smoother those actions can be applied.

5)We kind of agree on this. 

6) CO2 is the primary factor we have a direct impact on. We do know exactly how co2 act. what is left unknows are the others factors that will mitigate or accentuate the effects of it. see #1. 

Wow you're making some big assumptions about where I sit on this issue. I am more than happy to listen to what you are saying if you hold the qualifications you claim to. Physicists are exactly the types of people I try to learn from. Just so you know I don't claim to be an expert either, but I certainly don't listen to 'anti-science' people, whatever they are.

I don't just read the assessment report by the IPCC, I also try to read as many actual papers on the subject as possible. My understanding is obviously limited, but the easiest sources of information on climate change are proving to be the least accurate (media whether right or left wing, politicians etc).

The reason I use the term 'alarmism' is due to the alarmism that is present in the media, previous IPCC assessment reports and from politicians. It appears intended to alarm people, and maybe people should be alarmed. I don't use alarmism in a negative context unless it's unjustified. I'm not sure that they realise the millions of deaths that could result from energy poverty in the developing world as a result of demonising coal, and that has me quite alarmed. 

Activism on the other hand implies bias. If you are writing a paper on something, people will want to know that you are as politically neutral on the subject as possible. Otherwise they will see only your bias and not your data. The same thing happens to people who take funding from Exxon Mobil and write a paper about the solar influence on climate. Nobody will take them seriously, even if their data is good. I don't listen to the likes of Willie Soon for this very reason. His data might be good - I don't know, I haven't read it because the bias is implied and I'm not qualified to test it. So being a member of an activist organisation should disqualify you from being part of the IPCC assessment report process, because you are advising people essentially about how alarmed they should be. I think the IPCC are realising that their credibility is at stake and are taking the necessary measures to fix the problem.

Your last sentence was particularly sarcastic, so I'm assuming I somehow hurt your feelings, but I can assure you that you are wrong. All I am after is the truth, but on this issue people tend to get emotional. Will AGW likely kill more people than energy poverty? Then we should focus our efforts on reducing emisisons. Will energy poverty likely kill more people? Then let the developing world use their fossil fuels until  they are strong enough to withstand a transition to renewables. By then renewable technology should be far more advanced anyway, so long as there are people left to enjoy it.

I don't consider myself left or right wing, conservative or liberal. I consider myself pro-human. If it's good for people, I'm for it. Just so you know that's about the only thing I am unwavering on.