# Obama calls for urgent action on climate change
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-calls-for-urgent-action-on-climate-change/687806
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [May 6, 2014, 2:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-calls-for-urgent-action-on-climate-change/687806 "2014-05-06T14:09:42Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 8
### Author:  [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)
#### Post date: [May 25, 2014, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-calls-for-urgent-action-on-climate-change/687806/141 "2014-05-25T19:38:44Z")
> [@Magiver](#):
>
> And the heat from volcanoes underwater goes where?
I once looked at the numbers for this, though I don’t have them at hand right now. The answer was that the total heat output was negligible and the effect on net ocean temperature wasn’t even measurable.
---
### Author:  [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)
#### Post date: [May 25, 2014, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-calls-for-urgent-action-on-climate-change/687806/142 "2014-05-25T19:51:38Z")
> [@Magiver](#):
>
> Yes, do you really truly not understand what I just said? If you raise the cost of heating someone’s house they will switch to a cheaper fuel. Which is going to be more efficient, a million people burning wood or a million people getting their energy from a power company burning coal? Which creates more co2?.
For the record, those are not equivalent – not that I think we should go around burning wood for energy, but it’s one of the somewhat logical arguments for biofuels (though there are lots of arguments against them). The difference is that wood and biofuels release carbon that’s been recently sequestered and is part of the active carbon cycle. Whereas burning coal and oil releases carbon that’s been permanently sequestered for hundreds of millions of years from an entirely different climate era. This is why CO2 levels are now off the chart relative to the regular ups and downs of the glacial cycles.
But it’s also true that excessive deforestation can – and does – skew the active carbon cycle, too. We’re doing it to ourselves from all sides – releasing massive amounts of net new carbon from ancient sequestrations, reducing biological carbon sinks, and saturating the oceans.
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### Author:  [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)
#### Post date: [May 25, 2014, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-calls-for-urgent-action-on-climate-change/687806/143 "2014-05-25T19:52:06Z")
> [@Magiver](#):
>
> And the heat from volcanoes underwater goes where?
In the same place as usual, in the background, as a commenter at Skeptical Science pointed out: "there’s no indication that the level of undersea volcanism has changed in the last 100 years or so - and geothermal inputs are on the order of ~1% those of greenhouse gas effects. So changes in undersea volcanism are not driving oceanic warming. "
Now, I have seen that misleading point coming from Tim Ball and WUWT before, as we are dealing with falsification one has to wonder **when** will be the ones consuming that kind of misinformation will apply the falsification tool they claim to use and will **finally** dismiss the ones that continue to repeat the misleading information.
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### Author:  [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)
#### Post date: [May 25, 2014, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-calls-for-urgent-action-on-climate-change/687806/144 "2014-05-25T20:09:37Z")
> [@wolfpup](#):
>
> Of course it’s wrong.
Here we see the difference between evidence based science, and rhetoric and belief.
1997 [In December the parties conclude the Kyoto Protocol in Kyoto, Japan, in which they agree to the broad outlines of emissions targets.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyoto_Protocol)
[December 1997 to December 2013](http://woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1997.92/plot/rss/from:1997.92/to:2013.92/trend) (last December we have data for) No warming. In fact, slight cooling.
Certainly [one could argue that the RSS data is bogus](http://www.ssmi.com/msu/msu_data_description.html). Or that using the date the Kyoto concluded as the start date is bogus.
But just saying “it’s wrong” means nothing.
[You can use a different data analysis](http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1997.92/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1997.92/to:2013.92/trend), and complain it’s not fair. Just as the Kyoto concluded in 1997 the global mean to present show either no warming, slight warming, or actually slight cooling, depending on which data analysis you choose.
But none of them show the rapid steady global warming that happened from 1970 to 1990.
Even worse, there is a clear trend of [colder temperatures for the NH winter](http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/nmaps.cgi?sat=4&sst=3&type=trends&mean_gen=02&year1=1997&year2=2014&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=250&pol=rob), or even [the NH cold season](http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/nmaps.cgi?sat=4&sst=3&type=trends&mean_gen=1106&year1=1997&year2=2014&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=250&pol=rob).
This is observation. Using the NOAA data we can see that the NH winter trend is much worse when you look at the NH land only. - ,58C per decade. That is - 5.81C a century.
This is something [anyone can verify for themselves](http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/time-series/global).
Does it mean climate change isn’t happening? Of course not. That actually is sure evidence that the climate is changing.
It’s just super ironic that since the Kyoto in 1997, the winters have become colder (much colder as some people in Chicago know), and the global mean stopped rising like it had been. (some data analysis show it is cooling)
Ain’t that a kick in the old belief system?
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### Author:  [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)
#### Post date: [May 25, 2014, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-calls-for-urgent-action-on-climate-change/687806/145 "2014-05-25T20:12:21Z")
But scientific studies have actually shown, that when somebody has a strong belief in something, facts are the last thing that will change their mind. Facts actually will not matter.
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### Author:  [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)
#### Post date: [May 25, 2014, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-calls-for-urgent-action-on-climate-change/687806/146 "2014-05-25T20:49:38Z")
> [@FXMastermind](#):
>
> [December 1997 to December 2013](http://woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1997.92/plot/rss/from:1997.92/to:2013.92/trend) (last December we have data for) No warming. In fact, slight cooling.
>
> Ain’t that a kick in the old belief system?
[http://www.woodfortrees.org/](http://www.woodfortrees.org/)
> [@](#):
>
> Beware sharp tools
>
> However, with sharp tools comes great responsibility… Please read the notes on things to beware of - and in particular on the problems with short, cherry-picked trends. Remember that the signals we are dealing with are very, very noisy, and it’s easy to get misled - or worse, still to mislead others.
Stop making irresponsible cherry picked trends, [woodfortrees.org](http://woodfortrees.org) and NASA/GISS disagrees with what you claim and what you do with their data, until you can show all that you convinced them about your very simple beliefs and that they will report otherwise you are only spewing misleading platitudes.
[http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20140121/](http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20140121/)
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### Author:  [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)
#### Post date: [May 25, 2014, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-calls-for-urgent-action-on-climate-change/687806/147 "2014-05-25T20:55:25Z")
> [@FXMastermind](#):
>
> But scientific studies have actually shown, that when somebody has a strong belief in something, facts are the last thing that will change their mind. Facts actually will not matter.
As anyone can see, I posted a link to what researchers are reporting about what the trend really is, the evidence then is that the facts really do not matter to you.
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### Author:  [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)
#### Post date: [May 26, 2014, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-calls-for-urgent-action-on-climate-change/687806/148 "2014-05-26T18:13:49Z")
> [@wolfpup](#):
>
> Of course it’s wrong. Everything I’ve ever seen him post on this subject has been wrong. I don’t know why you even bother responding.
> …
>
> That article in turn has some good links to related news, in case anyone missed it:
> [Huge Antarctic ice sheet collapsing](http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/huge-antarctic-ice-sheet-collapsing-1.2639989)
I have a couple minutes before Memorial Day dinner so I thought I’d ease the boredom checking in here…
Ok, I just picked one article from your list at random to educate myself, and it neatly illustrates why the whole AGW catastrophism marketing drives me nucking futs.
(Underlining for emphasis by CP)
**Title:**
“Huge Antarctic ice sheet collapsing”
**Body:**
“The huge West Antarctic ice sheet is starting a glacially slow collapse in an unstoppable way…”
“Scientists are talking hundreds of years…”
“The system is in sort of a chain reaction that is unstoppable…”
“Curbing emissions from fossil fuels to slow climate change will probably not halt the melting but it could slow the speed of the problem…” (by CP: The “speed” is "hundreds of years, remember, for this “unstoppable” problem)
"Joughin’s study uses computer simulations and concludes “the early-stage collapse has begun.”
“Climate change studies show Antarctica is a complicated continent in how it reacts. For example, just last month Antarctic sea ice levels — not the ice on the continent — reached a record in how far they extended. That has little or no relation to the larger more crucial ice sheet, Scambos and other scientists say.”
I’m not even gonna bother detailing what’s wrong with this picture. But it comes as no surprise to me that people worried about tomorrow’s meal or living a little better than they do now are just not moved to action over the AGW crisis. So many articles with headlines like this turn out to sound like the headline writers either took handwringing 101, Exaggeration 202 or Misplaced Frets 303.
Yeah;\*\* IF **the mathematical modeling is correct, and IF it turns out that over the next five hundred years rising sea levels become a more primary concern than feeding/enriching 9 Billion-plus people, and IF slowing down an unstoppable process from 5 hundred to 15 (?) hundred years seems like a priority for people who are going to live 90 years, and IF**\*\* it turns out that increasing sea ice is not a harbinger that some of the models just might have a few erroneous parameters, then
**A HUGE ANTARTIC ICE SHEET IS COLLAPSING,** and
**WE NEED TO GET ON IT RIGHT NOW!** and
\*\*ANTI-SCIENCE DIMWITS NEED TO GET ON BOARD. RIGHT NOW. \*\*
Otherwise, we’ll just have to muddle through.
I do not disagree with the general science nor with efforts to take potential consequences seriously. But neither am I so naive as to think the current catastrophic paradigms–given our history of being wrong about long-term predictions and our predilection to let the glory of catastrophe prediction color every perspective–are not a wee bit tiresome to the masses.
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### Author:  [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)
#### Post date: [May 26, 2014, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-calls-for-urgent-action-on-climate-change/687806/149 "2014-05-26T18:25:13Z")
> [@wolfpup](#):
>
> We’re doing it to ourselves from all sides – releasing massive amounts of net new carbon from ancient sequestrations, reducing biological carbon sinks, and saturating the oceans.
As for example, Germany [(p 13 and elsewhere)](http://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/news_docs/pbl-2013-trends-in-global-co2-emissions-2013-report-1148.pdf)burning up forests b/c biofuels are OK and nuclear is not. So when solar can’t meet the need, you burn coal and firewood, and your CO2 emissions go up despite billions invested in your green energy efforts…
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### Author:  [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)
#### Post date: [May 26, 2014, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-calls-for-urgent-action-on-climate-change/687806/150 "2014-05-26T18:25:44Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#):
>
> I do not disagree with the general science nor with efforts to take potential consequences seriously. But neither am I so naive as to think the current catastrophic paradigms–given our history of being wrong about long-term predictions and our predilection to let the glory of catastrophe prediction color every perspective–are not a wee bit tiresome to the masses.
No, your point is silly for the simple reason that you do not apply it to the skeptics.
What it is clear is that for several years it was suspected that the Antartic was going to lose ice. We had a a few scientists and contrarian (and usually conservative) media that toll us the scientists were wrong as there were reports of ice builting inland.
\*\*
What the latest reports show is that the process is already being observed in coastal areas of the Antarctic\*\*. (These are not IFs as you are mistakenly telling us in your post)
So, it will drive you nuts, but rejecting that with no supporting evidence is indeed what denial is all about.
What it is clear to me is that the predictions from contrarians that claimed that tipping points like the ice loss were not going to take place were failures, can you explain now why it is that all that is not a good reason to dump those contrarian ideas and accept what the vast majority of experts are telling us will happen if we do not do a better effort at controlling our emissions?
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### Author:  [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)
#### Post date: [May 26, 2014, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-calls-for-urgent-action-on-climate-change/687806/151 "2014-05-26T18:32:21Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#):
>
> As for example, Germany [(p 13 and elsewhere)](http://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/news_docs/pbl-2013-trends-in-global-co2-emissions-2013-report-1148.pdf)burning up forests b/c biofuels are OK and nuclear is not. So when solar can’t meet the need, you burn coal and firewood, and your CO2 emissions go up despite billions invested in your green energy efforts…
As usual you miss a lot to make simple and incomplete points.
> **[Germany's Solar Development Continues](https://cleantechnica.com/2014/05/19/germanys-solar-development-continues/)**
>
> Germany's Solar Development Continues it started in 2000 and now contributes 5% of the nation's energy. That is already 1/5 of the Renewables contribution
> [@](#):
>
> Critics claim that this renewable energy growth has not brought about lower CO2 emissions because Germany has been phasing out its nuclear reactors at the same time. This called for a greater reliance on coal, the dirtiest of all fuels, which provided 45.5% of the nation’s energy in 2013. However, consider how much more coal and natural gas would have been used if Germany had phased out nuclear energy without the huge increase in solar and wind power!
>
> Development of solar energy is also said to come at a cost to consumers, who funded much of it through surcharges. Germany has some of the highest energy prices in the world and now plans to impose a green energy levy on retail consumers of green energy.
>
> Many nations provide their residential consumers electricity at a lower cost, but the reverse is true in Germany. Industry is charged less, to ensure it is competitive with other nations. Germany embarked upon its green revolution (Energiewende) in 2000 and still has the strongest economy in Europe.
>
> Solar and wind have driven down wholesale electricity prices, which has benefited industry customers exempt from renewable energy surcharges, but the surcharges and a lack of retail price decreases has resulted in consumers paying more for the renewable energy transition. In other words, industry has seen a cut in its electricity costs while consumers have seen an increase.
> [@](#):
>
> Germany’s solar development continues. By 2050, Germany hopes to derive 100% of its energy from renewable sources.( solar, wind, biogas & hydropower).
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### Author:  [@Knorf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knorf)
#### Post date: [May 26, 2014, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-calls-for-urgent-action-on-climate-change/687806/152 "2014-05-26T19:04:42Z")
> [@FXMastermind](#):
>
> Ain’t that a kick in the old belief system?
It’s your belief system that needs kicking. \>kick\<
> [@FXMastermind](#):
>
> But scientific studies have actually shown, that when somebody has a strong belief in something, facts are the last thing that will change their mind. Facts actually will not matter.
Your posts prove this more than any others I could name.
---
### Author:  [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)
#### Post date: [May 26, 2014, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-calls-for-urgent-action-on-climate-change/687806/153 "2014-05-26T19:11:36Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#):
>
> Ok, I just picked one article from your list at random to educate myself, and it neatly illustrates why the whole AGW catastrophism marketing drives me nucking futs…
>
> … I’m not even gonna bother detailing what’s wrong with this picture. But it comes as no surprise to me that people worried about tomorrow’s meal or living a little better than they do now are just not moved to action over the AGW crisis. So many articles with headlines like this turn out to sound like the headline writers either took handwringing 101, Exaggeration 202 or Misplaced Frets 303.
I don’t see anything wrong with the picture. The headline says a vast portion of the ice sheet in west Antarctica is collapsing, and the body provides more detail. And incidentally the subhead which says “Predictions of sea level rise will need to be adjusted upward” is also true.
Understand that my point wasn’t that polar ice melt is in itself the reason that we need to take urgent action to mitigate climate change – it isn’t the reason, it’s just a very clear symptom, and I posted those links to counter the ludicrous claim that the planet isn’t even warming.
The most persuasive **reasons** to take action are already laid out in such documents as the IPCC assessment of impacts and vulnerabilities and the US National Climate Assessment, which include the increasing incidence of severe weather, regional climate changes, loss of biodiversity and increasing risks to food crops, among many others. The fact that climate change has a huge momentum of its own that commits us to these continuing impacts for centuries after we stabilize emissions is an exacerbating factor, not to mention that we still have no idea when we’ll be able to do so. At this point we seem to be on track to another doubling of CO2, and there’s hardly any credible scientist who doesn’t believe that 800 ppm is well beyond the point of climate catastrophe. There is much, much more going on here than just looking at Antarctic ice melt and going, “so what?”
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### Author:  [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)
#### Post date: [May 28, 2014, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-calls-for-urgent-action-on-climate-change/687806/154 "2014-05-28T19:06:45Z")
> [@wolfpup](#):
>
> At this point we seem to be on track to another doubling of CO2, and there’s hardly any credible scientist who doesn’t believe that 800 ppm is well beyond the point of climate catastrophe.
None of that is true.
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### Author:  [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)
#### Post date: [May 28, 2014, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-calls-for-urgent-action-on-climate-change/687806/155 "2014-05-28T23:48:04Z")
> [@FXMastermind](#):
>
> None of that is true.
He said credible, and as usual FX is still listening to the ones that continue to be wrong.
> **[The shape of things to come.. CO2 at 800ppm by 2100?](https://watchingthedeniers.wordpress.com/2010/06/30/the-shape-of-things-to-come-co2-at-800ppm-by-2100/)**
>
> An interesting article by William D. Nordhaus from Yale University in the most recent Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS). The same PNAS who in the spirit of true debate deniers s…
> [@](#):
>
> The bulk of the paper is a fascinating discussion of the model developed by Nordhaus and the most likely outcomes of different policies designed to reduce CO2 and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
>
> The “baseline” projection in which we do nothing – the one the world is actually following at present – may see CO2 reach 800 parts per million (ppm) by centuries end.
> [@](#):
>
> Of course climate change sceptics deny the validity of any computer models (my response to that is here).
>
> The point of models is to evaluate possible outcomes, not make exact predictions such as “sea levels will rise by 10cm by June 2035″.
>
> No scientist has ever made such a claim, which makes the accusation “models are useless” chanted by the denial industry both facile and disingenuous.
>
> Models are designed to help us evaluate risk: there isn’t a major industry that does not do some form of modelling of future outcomes.
>
> Should we really be listening to people who want us to be blind to the future?
>
> My take away from the paper by Nordhaus: the longer we delay, the greater the risk.
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### Author:  [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)
#### Post date: [May 29, 2014, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-calls-for-urgent-action-on-climate-change/687806/156 "2014-05-29T02:27:03Z")
> [@wolfpup](#):
>
> I don’t see anything wrong with the picture. The headline says a vast portion of the ice sheet in west Antarctica is collapsing, and the body provides more detail.
Perhaps I misread it, then.
It appeared to me that body of the article indicated that use of the phrase “is collapsing” for something modeled to occur over hundreds of years is about on par with the Weekly World News trumpeting, “Sun Is Burning Out!”
(Except that the “is collapsing” is based on modeling, and “is burning out” is based on pretty good direct observation and calculation of how much fuel is left. So I guess the Weekly World News has the high ground there.)
I am reminded of the tale where the woman listening to the scientist about the sun’s eventual demise says, “Oh…did you say 5 Billion years? Thank God! What a relief. At first I thought you said 5 Million years.”
I predict that between now and said “collapse,” quite a number of more pressing problems will have taken the stage away from AGW.
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [May 29, 2014, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-calls-for-urgent-action-on-climate-change/687806/157 "2014-05-29T02:30:19Z")
> [@](#):
>
> (Except that the “is collapsing” is based on modeling, and “is burning out” is based on pretty good direct observation and calculation of how much fuel is left.)
You have mighty peculiar definitions for both of those words, given that we can see what the ice is doing directly, but eyeballs tend to melt in the core of the Sun.
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### Author:  [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)
#### Post date: [May 29, 2014, 2:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-calls-for-urgent-action-on-climate-change/687806/158 "2014-05-29T02:47:41Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#):
>
> (Except that the “is collapsing” is based on modeling, and “is burning out” is based on pretty good direct observation and calculation of how much fuel is left. So I guess the Weekly World News has the high ground there.)
That might work (and in reality it does not as a contrarian point\*) if it was only models what was used:
> [@](#):
>
> Joughin’s study uses computer simulations and concludes “the early-stage collapse has begun.” **Rignot, who used data that showed a speed up of melt since the 1990s** , said the word “collapse” may imply too fast a loss, it would be more the start of a slow-motion collapse and “we can’t stop it.”
>
> Several outside experts in Antarctica praised the work and said they too were worried.
>
> “It’s bad news. It’s a game changer,” said Ted Scambos, lead scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, who wasn’t part of either study. "We thought we had a while to wait and see.
So, once again, you were wrong and doubling down on your “IF”. What the researchers are talking is more than an IF, this research deals with what has been observed already. The take home lesson here is that it is more than way passed the time when sceptics should had been sceptical about the ones that claimed that this was not going to happen.
\*BTW about the models:
> **[TEDx talk: Should we trust climate models? | Serendipity](http://www.easterbrook.ca/steve/2014/05/tedx-talk-should-we-trust-climate-models/)**
>
> At the beginning of March, I was invited to give a talk at TEDxUofT. Colleagues tell me the hardest part of giving these talks is deciding what to talk about. I decided to see if I could answer the question of whether we can trust climate models. It...
> [@](#):
>
> So the way that modellers work, is they spend their time focussing on places where the model does isn’t quite right. For example, maybe the model isn’t getting the Indian monsoon right. Perhaps it’s getting the amount of rain right, but it’s falling in the wrong place. They then form a hypothesis. They’ll say, I think I can improve the model, because I think this particular process is responsible, and if I improve that process in a particular way, then that should fix the simulation of the monsoon cycle. And then they run a whole series of experiments, comparing the old version of the model, which is getting it wrong, with the new version, to test whether the hypothesis is correct. And if after a series of experiments, they believe their hypothesis is correct, they have to convince the rest of the modelling team that this really is an improvement to the model.
>
> In other words, to build the models, they are doing science. They are developing hypotheses, they are running experiments, and using peer review process to convince their colleagues that what they have done is correct:
> [@](#):
>
> Remember that we know fairly well what will happen to the climate if we keep adding CO2, even without using a computer model, and the computer models just add detail to what we already know. If the models are wrong, they could be wrong in either direction. They might under-estimate the warming just as much as they might over-estimate it. If you look at how well the models can simulate the past few decades, especially the last decade, you’ll see some of both. For example, the models have under-estimated how fast the arctic sea ice has melted. The models have underestimated how fast the sea levels have risen over the last decade. On the other hand, they over-estimated the rate of warming at the surface of the planet. But they underestimated the rate of warming in the deep oceans, so some of the warming ends up in a different place from where the models predicted. So they can under-estimate just as much as they can over-estimate. [The less certain we are about the results from the models, the bigger the risk that the warming might be much worse than we think.]
> [@](#):
>
> If we keep on increasing our use of fossil fuels — finding more oil, building more pipelines, digging up more coal, we’ll follow the top path. And that takes us to a planet that by the end of this century, is somewhere between 4 and 6 degrees warmer, and it keeps on getting warmer over the next few centuries. On the other hand, the bottom path, in dark blue, shows what would happen if, year after year from now onwards, we use less fossil fuels than we did the previous year, until about mid-century, when we get down to zero emissions, and we invent some way to start removing that carbon dioxide from the atmosphere before the end of the century, to stay below 2 degrees of warming.
>
> The models don’t tell us which of these paths we should follow. They just tell us that if this is what we do, here’s what the climate will do in response. You could say that what the models do is take all the data and all the knowledge we have about the climate system and how it works, and put them into one neat package, and its our job to take that knowledge and turn it into wisdom. And to decide which future we would like.
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### Author:  [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)
#### Post date: [May 29, 2014, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-calls-for-urgent-action-on-climate-change/687806/159 "2014-05-29T03:45:03Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#):
>
> Perhaps I misread it, then.
>
> It appeared to me that body of the article indicated that use of the phrase “is collapsing” for something modeled to occur over hundreds of years is about on par with the Weekly World News trumpeting, “Sun Is Burning Out!”
>
> (Except that the “is collapsing” is based on modeling, and “is burning out” is based on pretty good direct observation and calculation of how much fuel is left. So I guess the Weekly World News has the high ground there.)
In addition to the responses already made about that, I would ask you to scroll down to the third picture [in this article](http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-blogs/climatechange/instability-of-the-west-antarc/29997). You can see the massive extent of glacier calving. This is no model.
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### Author:  [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)
#### Post date: [May 29, 2014, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obama-calls-for-urgent-action-on-climate-change/687806/160 "2014-05-29T17:08:06Z")
Alarmists live in some strange world where ice sheets and glaciers never advance, which results in ice breaking off into the sea. What do they want to see instead? The ice just sitting still? If snow is falling on the source of a glacier, and it’s in Antarctica, where melting is out of the question, ice is going to move towards the sea, and break off.
If there was no ice moving forward, that would be far worse. The important thing is the mass of ice. How much snow is falling up glacier? Is the expanding sea ice decreasing coastal precipitation? What’s the radiocarbon dating on the ice? How old is it?
When did that ice that is breaking off fall as snow? What is the history of the ice?
> [@](#):
>
> The 30 km wide and couple of kilometers thick ice sheet is now moving at a rate of 3.5 kilometers per year. The scientists are now trying to figure out how the glacier moved in the long-term past.
Yes, that is the question. Is this unusual? Is it faster or slower? If it’s faster, does that mean more snow fell and the glacier is growing? Is something else causing it to speed up?
Or is that slower than in the past?
Jumping to alarmist conclusions based on very little data is so common, most people don’t realize how unscientific it is.
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