re: #223 LudwigVanQuixote

Because you know, if you discredit the scientist, mother nature will changer her ways…

This is not only an abuse of power and all the stone age nonsense we can call it from the GOP. This is disastrously dangerous. Taking down the people who know the most about a problem is the worst thing you can do to face a problem.

In this case, please let me reiterate.

We are due to hit 4 degrees by 2060-2070 at present course. It is now almost impossible to hold the world to only a two degree rise by 2100. To do so would require an 80% reduction in our emissions by 2050 starting NOW. We are not starting now or even next year. If the GOP has its way we will never start.

A three degree world is already intolerable and we will get that sometime in the 2050’s. If we have waited that long to change things, that almost guarantees a five degree world by 2100 and makes a six degree world quite possible.

To put this in perspective:

4 degrees is the loss of major cities and river deltas coupled with a drastic reduction in food supply and spread of contagion. Hundreds of millions of “climate refugees” will be displaced around the globe. The maps we know now will look significantly different.

5 degrees is the utter collapse of American agriculture and most of worldwide agriculture and significant loss of species. Climate refugees are in the billions. War over diminishing resources like food and clean water becomes inevitable. Civilization as we know it collapses.

6 degrees is mass extinctions - possibly including our on species.

Did somebody here link recently to the study by a psychologist and a sociologist that said that the worse people think things will be, the more they resist doing anything to prevent it and indeed the less they are inclined to believe it? It was possible to win arguments about, say, water pollution because the problem seemed manageable and one could demonstrate the effects of simple, practical behavioral changes. But when people here climate scientists say “the sky is falling” the instinct (even among liberals in this study) was to say “Begone, Chicken Little!”

Their conclusion: you can only tell people about limited problems and expect cooperation in finding solutions.

So the quandary for climate scientists is that while Ludwig is right in his facts (as the models now stand), you cannot effectively present this information to the public. You get disbelief at best, and you get Kevin Cucinellied at worst.

It is to know despair.