This topic also deserves its own thread, but I think this is unfairly implicating scientists studying climate and associated geosciences in a cabal that just doesn’t exist. Despite decades of study of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS), modeling and understanding climate feedbacks with respect to glacial drawdown is still highly speculative with a lot of unknowns. What has become evident is that the melting of marine ice shelves which buffer and stabilize terrestrial glaciers is progressing much faster than ocean circulation models would predict for reasons that are not really understood, and this is causing glaciers to migrate to and collapse into the ocean much faster than expected. Among scientists studying the cryosphere (glaciers, frozen tundra, mountain ice fields) there is strong concern verging on panic over just how much faster climate change and the loss of persistent ice and permafrost fields has become versus even the reasonable worst-case projections from models and how little can be done to stop, much less reverse, this melting and thawing even if all atmospheric carbon emissions were magically stopped today.
Without going into details, I’ll note that there is a distinct difference between the policy statements and metastudy summaries which make up “the consensus” that are widely published in the popular press versus the observations and tentative conclusions in technical literature. That the UN Climate Change Conferences (“COP Summits”) have essentially been co-opted by energy and globalized trade interests tells you everything you need to know about the agendas and biases of those organizing these conferences, but if you read the actual detail reports or even listen to the UN Secretary General’s address, it is clear that the consensus of scientists working fields associated with climate science and those who are actually listening to them is that the consequences are going to be catastrophic without radical global change and adaptation (and likely even with it).
I’ll avoid further disrailing the thread with this particular discussion but I do not think it is fair to malign scientists working in these fields with not being sufficiently honest or forthright when in fact if you delve into their conclusions the dire consequences and uncertainties are laid out very clearly.
Stranger