This thread isn’t about “climate campaigners”(whatever that is) and/or “climate believers”(whatever that might be)-The thread title and the OP specifically mentions Climatologists which is a specific profession that requires specific training. Got any problems with climatologists?
Shall we have a debate about what the thread is about? Perhaps you would like to start a new thread?
Not necessary-I’m still waiting to hear about those horrible predictions from climatologists.
Do you know of any?
That’s a very good graphic, and it’s no mere cartoon – it’s scientifically accurate. I’ve seen it before but forgot about it. The bottom part is essentially the famous hockey stick shape first put into the public consciousness by the paleoclimate reconstructions of Michael Mann et al. This is the sort of stuff that has climate deniers getting all their shorts in a knot, but unfortunately for them, it’s factually accurate.
“If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but 11 degrees colder by the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us in an ice age.” – ecology professor Kenneth E.F. Watt at the University of California in 1970.
“By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people. If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000 and give ten to one that the life of the average Briton would be of distinctly lower quality than it is today.” – Stanford University Professor Paul Ehrlich, 1971.
“Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climate change, or even to allay its effects,” – Newsweek, “The Cooling World,” 1975, which claimed that Earth’s temperature had been plunging for decades due to humanity’s activities.
“By 1995 the greenhouse effect will be desolating the heartlands of North America and Eurasia with horrific drought, causing crop failures and food riots. By 1996 the Platte River of Nebraska will be dry, while a continent-wide black blizzard of prairie topsoil will stop traffic on interstates, strip paint from houses and shut down computers.” – Princeton professor and lead UN IPCC author Michael Oppenheimer, 1990, while working as “chief scientist” for the Environmental Defense Fund.
“Within a few years snowfall will become a very rare and exciting event in Britain. Children just aren’t going to know what snow is.” – senior research scientist David Viner, Climatic Research Unit (CRU), March 2000.
“Imminent sea-level rises, increased hurricanes, and desertification caused by man-made global warming will lead to massive population disruptions. By 2010, some 50 million “climate refugees” will be frantically fleeing from affected regions of the globe.” – the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), 2005.
I cannot in good conscience leave out Algore:
“The entire North Polarized [sic] cap will disappear in five years. Five years is the period of time during which it is now expected to disappear.” – 2009, speaking to an audience in Germany.
Out of those seven comments, how many were made by climatologists…and how, in good conscience, could you include Mr. Gore?
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Not a climatologist.
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Not a climatologist.
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A quote by a news magazine attributed to unnamed climatologists. However, the quote itself - that climatologists are pessimistic that action will be taken - was true then and is true now.
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Oppenheimer works mainly in policy, not in climate science himself. I would like to see the quote in context. Oppenheimer says he was talking about possible consequences, not definite predictions.
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Trained as a hydrologist. Again, he’s talking about possible outcomes, not definite predictions.
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Again, I would like to see the quote in context. I expect it is referring to some specific scenario, not making an absolute prediction.
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Obviously not a climatologist.
I won’t deny that some people, and sometimes even climatologists, have made extreme claims. However, this list illustrates the tactics of climate-change deniers - taking quotes out of context, or not recognizing that the predictions are based on particular trends continuing.
And part of the problem with that is exactly how journalism talks about science. Scientist almost never speak in absolutes, neither making nor dismissing claims entirely.
So, when a reporter asks, “What is the worst case scenario?” and they reply with one of the quotes above about droughts and refugees, well, the context that was in was worst case scenario, not likely, not possible if we do some mitigation, but, well, worst case.
To then say that that worst case scenario has not happened, and to discredit a scientist because the worst case scenario has not happened is more than just a little bit disingenuous.