Reposted from Cliff Mass Weather and Climate Blog
During the recent presidential debate, a number of candidates suggested that global warming represents an existential threat to mankind, and thus requires dramatic and immediate action.
Governor Jay Inslee has been particularly generous in the use of this term, but he is not alone. Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have said the same thing, as have several media outlets and environmental interest groups.
Some of these folks also claim that the window for action on climate change is closing–Jay Inslee suggests that the next president will be the last able to take effective steps. Others suggest 10 or 12 years.
But are these existential threat claims true? That is what we will examine in this blog.
An existential threat is one that threatens the very existence of mankind. Something that is a simply a challenge or an inconvenience is not an existential threat. An existential threat must have the potential to undermine the very viability of human civilization.
As described below, global warming is a serious problem and its impacts will be substantial—but in no way does it seriously threaten our species or human civilization. And with reasonable mitigation and adaptation, mankind will continue to move forward—reducing poverty, living healthier lives, and stabilizing our population.
What do current climate models tell us? These models are run under specific scenarios of emission of CO2 and other greenhouse gases (see figure). In one, RCP8.5, we simply continue doing what we are doing, with escalating use of coal and oil. Not much renewable energy. Many believe this scenario is too pessimistic. Much more reasonable is RCP 4.5, which has modestly increased emissions through 2040, declining after 2050. I suspect this one will be closer to reality.
The implication of these emissions on global temperature is shown below based on a collection of climate models (CMIP-5). Under the extreme scenario, the earth warms by about 4C, but for the reasonable one (RCP4.5), global warming is about 2C (3.6F). This warming will not be uniform, being greater in the polar regions, less over the eastern oceans.
You will note the temperature rise in RCP 4.5 is relatively steady through around 2045 and then starts to gradually plateau out. No sharp transitions, no falling off of a cliff, no sudden catastrophes.
I have run a large collection of high resolution climate simulations over the Northwest, driven by the aggressive RCP 8.5 scenario. As shown for Seattle’s mean annual temperature below, there is a steady rise, again with no sudden changes that would be hard to adapt to. Most NW folks will want to purchase an air conditioner for summer, but there is no threat to our existence, and winters will be more pleasant.
But what do official international and national evaluations project for the economic future?
First, let’s check the conclusions of the highly respect Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which provides a consensus view of many scientists and nations. Their analysis (SR15, Chapter 3) quoted a paper by Yohe (2017) that found a U.S. GDP loss of 1.2% per degree of warming, So with a 2 C global warming associated with RCP4.5, we are talking about a 2.4% loss of national income in 2100. Not a 2.4% loss from today’s levels, but 2.4% less of the substantially greater income in 2100.
What about the recently released Fourth National Climate Assessment, a document heavily cited by the U.S. environmental community? Their analysis is that the damage to the U.S. economy in 2100 would be about a 1% loss (see below) This is not a 1% loss from the current U.S. gross domestic product (GDP), but a 1% loss of the substantially great GDP in 2100. We will be much richer in 2100, and will lose 1 % of our GDP because of global warming. Doesn’t sound like the end of civilization, does it?
W. D. Nordhaus, who won a Nobel Prize in economics for his study of the economic impacts of climate change, examined a large number of studies regarding the impacts of global warming on the world’s economy (see below). He and his co-author (A Moffat) found that a 2C increase in global temperatures would result in 0-1% damage to the world economy in 2100. Doubling the warming would only increase the damage to around 3%. Again, no existential threat.
Reading these numbers and considering the many reports backing them up, there clearly is no existential threat to either the U.S. or mankind from global warming, leaving one to wonder why are so many politicians, environmental activists, and lots of media are spreading this existential threat line.
And the above studies are not really considering the potential for major technical breakthroughs in energy generation (e.g., fusion), renewables energy sources, or carbon removal form the atmosphere (sequestration). I believe that such advances are inevitable, just as no one in 1950 expected that 2000 would bring personal computers, cell phones, and more.
You also have to wonder whether scientists, politicians, and environmental folks really believe the existential threat warnings they throw around. Many talk the talk, but most don’t walk the walk.
Presidential candidates with little chance of securing the nomination are flying back and forth around the country, resulting in enormous carbon footprints. Climate scientists fly more for work and pleasure than anyone. Many environmentalists oppose nuclear power, one of the technologies that could produce massive carbon-free energy. And several local Washington State environmental groups opposed a revenue-neutral, bipartisan carbon tax initiative (I-732).
Global warming is a real issue and we are going to slowly warm our planet, resulting in substantial impacts (like less snowpack in the Cascades, increased river flooding in November, drier conditions in the subtropics, loss of Arctic sea ice). But the world will be a much richer place in 2100 and mankind will find ways to adapt to many of the changes. And there is a good chance we will develop the technologies to reverse the increasing trend in greenhouse gases and eventually bring CO2 concentrations down to previous levels.
Global warming does not offer an existential threat to mankind, and politicians and decision makers only undermine their credibility and make effective action less likely by their hype and exaggeration. And their unfounded claims of future catastrophe prevents broad national consensus and hurts vulnerable people who are made anxious and fearful.
“An existential threat must have the potential to undermine the very viability of human civilization.”
Socialism and Democrats willing to undemine the U.S. Constitution are an existential threat to the United States.
The bottom line is, warming is good for humans, cooling is catastrophic for humans. It always has been, it always will be.
Global warming would be great if we could keep it going forever … unfortunately, cooling is coming. It is only a matter of when .. it could already be starting now.
The climate alarmists always refuse to consider the benefits of warming, they focus only on the miniscule negative effects of warming that only impact a handful of tiny segments of the biosphere.
Repeat after me: Warming is GOOD, cooling is BAD.
Well, that’s two-thirds of shat I have been saying for a couple of decades:
Warm, good. Cold, baf. Gore, idiot.
“leaving one to wonder why are so many politicians, environmental activists, and lots of media are spreading this existential threat line.”
Because they have no qualms about lying to further their political agendas.
… probably mostly because the word “existential” is a fancy BBC word, like “jingoistic” , “misogynistic”, and such. Elitists and phony-elitists can practice saying it for its use at cocktail parties, thereby sounding like they’re in the know.
From the article: “And several local Washington State environmental groups opposed a revenue-neutral, bipartisan carbon tax initiative (I-732).”
Revenue neutral. Right. I sense some gullibilty on this person’s part.
AGW IS an existential threat. Not the temperature rise, the politics and destruction that are masked by the claims of temperature rising. It does present a threat—to demand humanity devolved to the 14th century, millions die and the overlords live in comfort with their slaves providing everything they need. If overturning centuries of progress is not an existential threat, I don’t know what is.
It’s a behavior-based extinction mechanism.
Existential threat is just nonsense, of course. There’s nothing in the impact literature to support such a claim. The earth has already survived and thrived under much warmer conditions with much higher CO2; and given Antartica’s current location and physical limits on extracting fossil fuels there is no chance of getting there. Man adapts to a vast range of temperatures and climate, there is *no* plausible increase in temperatures that could be an existential threat.
That the warming is a “serious threat” is more plausible, but far from proven. We’ve already seen about 1C of warming from late 19th century levels, and the effect may be net beneficial even apart from the clearly positive CO2 fertilization effect. Not only has the warming not been catastrophic, it hasn’t even been mildly annoying. Even with the research heavily tilted towards looking for negative effects, the estimates show a future world much richer than our current one, just somewhat less rich than it would be without the additional warming.
The biggest danger from warming is actually growth-inhibiting policies supposedly designed to combat AGW. De-industrialization on the scale needed to achieve zero admissions would extract a terrible toll in human suffering, and would leave us much more vulnerable to the extreme weather that has *always* happened and will continue to happen.
We would be vastly worse off today if our predecessors had decided to leave coal and oil in the ground, fearful of sending demon CO2 in the atmosphere. They also would have been vastly worse off.
From the article: “Global warming is a real issue and we are going to slowly warm our planet, resulting in substantial impacts (like less snowpack in the Cascades, increased river flooding in November, drier conditions in the subtropics, loss of Arctic sea ice).”
The author has no evidence to backup any of those claims. They are pure speculation. That’s all CAGW climate science is: Pure Speculation. It’s pathetic!
CO2 will ALWAYs be a very, very minor player in any alleged warming. That is because it is invisible to 92% of what the earth radiates. Adding more CO2 will NEVER change that. CO2 will always just absorb in three different frequencies, only two of which are in the thermal range.
The point being CO2 is NOT the issue. Almost everything else we do is an issue, though. Adapt or die and we need to change
CO2 is the control mechanism that the government wants to have in order to tax everything that emits it both living and non living objects. If you control CO2 you control everything.
I don’t care, I don’t worry. I enjoy life as it is. Although, life seems better in a warmer world.
Alarmist propaganda light – why?
But.. it is all just guesswork!
Were the great Mark Twain still alive he would have said that
“there are lies, damned lies, statistics and computer models”
Get rid of the models, just come out with the truth: Global Socialism is the goal. 10 years from now when we can’t plant until July, I guess we will still be hearing about the sky falling.
This is the kind of non-scientific BS the alarmist crowd pushes. RCP 8.5 is the worst case scenario, not the business as usual scenario. He needs to retract his blog in its entirety.
All of this talk about “warming” is based on an “average” global temperature. That average tells us absolutely nothing about what is happening in reality. If that increase in the average global temperature is due to higher nighttime temperatures it is very beneficial. It is higher maximum temperatures that hurt agriculture and human survival. And it is not obvious that maximum temperatures are going up at all, in fact much of the evidence shows that maximum temperatures are actually moderating. Higher nighttime temperatures means less heating required, i.e. lower emissions. Lower maximum temperatures means less air conditioning, again lower emissions. Those are *good* things!
Supposedly July 2019 was the hottest month ever. Yet, when I took the data for the 991 GSN stations from NOAA and averaged out all of the July temperatures for all 991 stations, only 52 of them showed July 2019 as the hottest month. That’s just a tad over 5% of the stations. In France, where The Great Heat Wave of the Century occurred, none of the stations recorded July 2019 as the hottest month, and only one had it even at #2. A couple of stations had it all the way down around 8th place.
There more analysis to be done with that data set.
Did a little more work with the data yesterday. Rather than fiddling about with anomalies, I calculated the average July temperatures for each station since 1900, and ranked each year for each station. Since I’m only comparing a station to itself, there’s no need of any anomaly calculations.
I used the GSN stations again, with gave me 993 for the world. Of those, only 104 stations, or 11% of the total, showed July 2019 as its #1 warmest year. Almost as many showed July 2018 as its warmest year, which lead me to check to be sure these stations had data for 2019; they did. July 2006 was another really big year for warmth, at around 8% of stations reporting that as their hottest year.
The rest of the stations’ hot years were scattered over 70 years or so, making me even more skeptical of any global effect at all. The stations that did report July 2019 as their warmest year are scattered across the globe, with a noticeable concentration in SE Australia. Good on ya, BoM!
Looking at those results, I’d guess that a few stations had a good scorching heat wave, and the outlier temps were enough to push the global average up and over. I’ll take a deep dive on those stations’ temps later todayl.
So how many months can you find that were warmer than July 2019?
“All of this talk about “warming” is based on an “average” global temperature. That average tells us absolutely nothing about what is happening in reality. If that increase in the average global temperature is due to higher nighttime temperatures it is very beneficial. It is higher maximum temperatures that hurt agriculture and human survival. And it is not obvious that maximum temperatures are going up at all,”
We should use regional surface temperature charts instead of conjuring up a global average temperature, and we should use Tmax charts as the regional charts. Using Tmax regional charts it is obvious that temperatures in the recent past, within the lifetime of currently living human beings, were just as warm then as they are today. What this means is that there has been no unprecedented warming in the human-caused CO2 age, and this means there is no Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming, and therefore there is no climate crisis to worry about;
And with Climategate and the obvious manipulation of the official global surface temperature record, we cannot trust this fraudlent data and so we must fall back on unmodified regional surface temperature charts to find the real temperature profile of the globe. If all regional charts agree that it was just as warm in the past as now, and they do, then that’s all we need to know. We don’t need a global average temperature to determine if it is warmer today than in the past, especially a fraudlent one.
Regional Tmax charts:
US chart:
China chart:
India chart:
Norway chart:
Australia chart:
I’m not wondering at all.
“leaving one to wonder why are so many politicians, environmental activists, and lots of media are spreading this existential threat line.”
Global warming/ Climate change is like all other topics which get the lying zealots & hacks making up crap or parroting the latest bunk.
Environmentalists do so across the entire spectrum from forests to local street runoff. The climate crusade just happens to carry most all other enviro-movements.
But pick any topic and it’s off to the races to distort.
It’s the same with education, land use, transportation etc. It’s quite remarkable how much institutionalized deceit their is. No surprise it is more often than not the same people, or type of people, pitching the contrived hogwash.
Overwhelmingly it is the left, who by their nature, know it all and insist on making every issue a mission they must command.
One of the items I check frequently is the ENSO chart included in this site.
The rebound in the temp anomaly over the last year or so reached around +.75 early in the year.
Now it is at +.22 and as is said in the financial markets–seems to have rolled over.
Implying that this warming influence could be diminishing.
This is likely not included in the models of hysteria.
Which would include the talisman charts of dread that Lloydo relies upon.
The First Panzer Division advancing across Belgium and France was an “existential threat” and then we had to decide what we were going to do about it, Britain chose to fight to the death.
Modern day Politicians are totally useless. There is no threat, only in the minds of believers!
Warmer Is Better! More rain, longer growing seasons, more bio-productivity, more wealth, more happiness.
The most productive ag lands in the US are also the warmest. Doesn’t anybody know where their food comes from? Almost all our crops are tropical in origin. Heck, humans are tropical in origin.
Sea levels have been rising for 17.5 ky and yet that hasn’t cramped civilization one bit. Current rise rate is the least since the LGM passed. Big whoop.
Besides I thought existential meant beatniks all turn into cockroaches. When did the language change? Ridiculous inflammatory commie/fascist political rhetoric seems to be the main problem facing society today…
The CONCEPT of global warming is an existential threat, because if we take it too seriously, then we will screw ourselves as a developing civilization.
The real threat is from the false nature of the idea itself and the ill conceived translation of the falsehood into ill conceived actions, which could cause much degradation.
Robert, exactly. The question itself, Is Global Warming an Existential Threat? is a “leading question” as the lawyers say.
Warmist Robert Walker’s ‘Nature’ comment, dated 7/24/19, ‘Should IPCC Openly Challenge ‘Only 12 Years to Save Planet’ Deadline Rhetoric?’ was reprinted at science20.com. He makes a very good, if a bit prolix, case for CC/GW being a serious but not existential issue. Warmist politicians, especially, should read it.
I just stumbled across an article on Axios. The headline reads….”Scientists can’t agree on how fast our universe is expanding….
What the hell happened to the good old scientific consensus? I thought that’s how science was supposed to work? Does consensus based science only apply to climate studies and not astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, etc? If not, why?
Why not come to a consensus based upon what most physicists believe and demand that the “deniers” resign their positions, and if they don’t, fire them? Why isn’t the media up in arms demanding as much?
https://www.axios.com/space-hubble-c…b4efd9f78.html
I’m so confused….not really.
The IPCC general circulation models have a hundred different variables to tune which explains how the cult of CAGW can be 100% incorrect.
The scam started with the so-called one-dimensional back of the envelope calculation of how much warming to expect for a doubling of CO2 the cult opened with 1.5C and then countered with 1.2C due to an error.
The 1.2C for a doubling of CO2 assumed there is no increase in convection cooling which is done by freezing the lapse rate for the calculation. If the calculation is redone with a reduced lapse rate of only 3% the warming for a doubling of CO2 drops from 1.2C to around 0.2C.
Statistically the majority of CO2 molecules before they can emit a photon transfer their energy to the surrounding gas.
An increase in CO2 therefore increases the convection cooling in the atmosphere which in turn will cause a reduction in the so-called lapse rate which is the change in temperature with elevation in the atmosphere.
An increase in convection cooling due to a reduction in the lapse rate would of course offset the greenhouse gas warming.
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.ca/2015/07/collapse-of-agw-theory-of-ipcc-most.html
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B74u5vgGLaWoOEJhcUZBNzFBd3M/view?pli=1
Here are a few additional things that the presidential candidates should be aware of:
The AGW conjecture seems quite plausible at first but looking at it in more detail one realizes that the AGW conjecture is based on only partial science, is full of holes, and cannot be adequately defended. For example in Al Gore’s first movie he shows a chart of how CO2 has correlated with temperature over the past 600K years. His claim was that the chart shows that more CO2 causes warming. But looking at the data in more detail that temperature leads CO2 so that a warmer climate causes more CO2 to enter the atmosphere. The CO2 comes from the oceans. When the oceans warm up they cannot hold as much CO2 so they release it to the atmosphere. When the temperature of the oceans decreases they take up CO2. According to Al Gore’s chart, if CO2 were the climate temperature control knob it should really be much warmer than it actually is. The truth is that there is no evidence in the paleoclimate record that CO2 has any effect on climate.
For those that believe in greenhouse gas theory, the primary greenhouse gas in the Earth’s atmosphere is H2O and not CO2. Molecule per molecule, H2O is a stronger absorber of IR radiation than is CO2 and there is so much more of it in the Earth’ atmosphere than is CO2. H2O averages roughly 2% compared to CO2’s .04% H2O levels also rise much more rapidly in the Earth’s atmosphere than does CO2 on a regular bases. There has been concern that CO2 based warming will cause more H2O to enter the atmosphere which will in turn cause more warming because H2O is the primary greenhouse gas responsible for most of the radiant greenhouse effect. The H2O molecule in our environment does not care where the warming comes from and will increase in atmospheric concentrations as temperatures rise. We live in a water world. Most of the surface of the Earth involves some form of H2O so any global warming is going to cause more H2O to enter the atmosphere which causes more global warming which causes even more global warming and so forth until the oceans have boiled away and both the Earth’s surface temperature and surface pressure is greater than it is on Venus. Atmospheric H2O rate of change is much greater than that of CO2. CO2 will increase as the entire volume of the oceans warm but H2O increases as a function of ocean surface warming. So if greenhouse gases are capable of causing tipping points, situations where temperatures either increase or decrease catastrophically and out of control then just because of H2O we should see such catastrophes happening quite often in the paleoclimate record but that is not the case. It is not the case because, in reality higher concentrations of greenhouse gases do not cause warming. If they did then the real concern should be with H2O and not CO2. In terms of how greenhouse gases cause global warming, The AGW conjecture has got it wrong. The Earth’s climate system does not work that way.
The reality is that, based on the paleoclimate record and the work done with models, the climate change we are experiencing is caused by the sun and the oceans over which mankind has no control. Despite the hype, there is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate and there is plenty of scientific rationale to support the idea that the climate sensitivity of CO2 is really zero.
For those who believe in the radiant greenhouse effect caused by trace gases with LWIR absorption bands in the Earth’s atmosphere, the total radiant greenhouse effect is dominated by H2O so much so that changes in CO2 have virtually no effect on the total radiant greenhouse effect. But even if they could somehow stop the Earth’s climate from changing, extreme weather events and sea level rise would continue because they are part of the current climate. So there is no payoff. We do not even know what the optimum climate is let alone how to achieve it.
The AGW conjecture depends upon the existence of a radiant greenhouse effect in the Earth’s atmosphere caused by trace gases with LWIR absorption bands. A real greenhouse does not stay warm because of heat trapping greenhouse gases. A real greenhouse stays warm because the glass limits cooling by convection. It is entirely a convective greenhouse effect that keeps a real greenhouse warm. So too on Earth where instead of glass, gravity limits cooling by convection. As derived from first principals, the Earth’s convective greenhouse effect, which is a function of gravity and the heat capacity of the atmosphere, keeps the surface of the Earth on average 33 degrees C warmer than it would otherwise be. 33 degrees C is the amount of warming as derived from first principals and 33 degrees C is what has been measured. Additional warming caused by an additional radiant greenhouse effect has not been detected. The convective greenhouse effect has been found to exist on all planets with thick atmospheres. A radiant greenhouse effect has not been detected anywhere in the solar system. The radiant greenhouse effect is nothing but science fiction so hence the AGW conjecture is science fiction as well.
Supporters of the AGW conjecture use “scientific consensus” as an argument to support the AGW conjecture’s validity. In all the science related classes that I took in college, consensus was never given as a reason to believe in what we were being taught. There must be a lot of problems with the theory if consensus has to be one of the supporting arguments. But the reality is that there is no consensus as to the validity of the AGW conjecture.. It is all speculation. Scientists never registered and voted on the validity of the AGW conjecture, But if they had it would have been meaningless because science is not a democracy. The laws of science are not some sort of legislation. Scientific theories are not validated by a voting process.
The climate simulations that the IPCC makes use of are too flawed to have any credibility at all. They basically started with a weather simulation but increased both the spatial and temporal interval so that they could simulate climate in finite time. That increase in spatial and temporal may have made the simulations at least marginally unstable so that results may be much more of a function of the inherent instability rather then true climate physics. Based on only climate physics, the simulations failed to follow the past so parameterization, a form of fudge factors was added so the results may be much more a function of the parameterization then climate physics. No longer based on climate physics the simulations have become not much better than make believe. The simulations have hard coded in them that CO2 causes warming hence they beg the question as to whether CO2 causes warming and hence are quite useless. So all climate papers that involve use of these faulty climate simulations are of no value and should be withdrawn.
CO2 is not an energy source so the only way that it can cause warming is to increase the insulating properties of the atmosphere. If the thermal insulating properties of the atmosphere were increased from what they are today then temperature should decrease more rapidly with altitude than it does today. So if CO2 really affected climate, one would expect that the increase in CO2 over the past 30 years would have caused at least a measurable increase in the dry lapse rate in the troposphere but that has not happened. The increase in CO2 over the past 30 years has not caused a change in the thermal insulating properties of the atmosphere hence additional warming caused by an increase in CO2 has not been observed.
An initial calculation of the climate sensitivity of CO2, performed decades ago, based on radiametric considerations, came up with 1.2 degrees C which is for a doubling of CO2. not including feedback effects Most feel that 1.2 degrees C is not significant so they like to include H2O positive feedback which causes an amplification of roughly 3. They are not really sure what the feedback factor is so the IPCC publishes a wide range of possible for the climate sensitivity of CO2 when only one value can be true. The logic is that CO2 based warming causes more H2O to enter the atmosphere which causes even more warming because H2O is really the primary greenhouse gas. But what the AGW conjecture ignores is the fact that H2O is also a primary cooling agent in the Earth’s atmosphere moving heat energy from the Earth’s surface, which is mostly some form of H2O to where clouds form via the heat of vaporization. The over all cooling effects of H2O are evidenced by the fact that the wet lapse rate is significantly less than the dry lapse rate which is a cooling effect. Hence H2O must provide a cooling effect and hence provides negative feedback which means that H2O tends to retard any CO2 based warming. The negative feedback provided by H2O has made the Earth’s climate inherently stable as is has been for at least the past 500 million years, enough for life to evolve because we are here. Based on temperature measurements since 1850, if all the measured temperature change were caused by Mankind’s adding CO2 to the atmosphere, one group of scientists found that the climate sensitivity of CO2 could not be more than 1.2 degrees C including feedbacks which they regarded as not really significant. So 1.2 degrees C should be a worst case value. A researcher from Japan pointed out that the original calculations of the climate sensitivity of CO2 failed to include that fact that a doubling of CO2 would cause a slight decrease in the dry lapse rate in the troposphere which is a cooling effect and reduces the climate sensitivity of CO2 by more than a factor of 20, reducing the climate sensitivity of CO2 to less than .06 degrees C which is totally insignificant.
In summary there is plenty of scientific rationale to support the idea that the AGW conjecture and its possible consequences are all invalid. it is all a matter of science. So instead of wasting time and money trying to control something that mankind does not have the power to control, we should be instead concentration on problems that we do have the power to solve like population, the economy, and the over all betterment of Mankind and the Earth that live on.
Sorry, I don’t believe in the Tooth Fairy nor ‘high resolution climate simulations.’
Some threat!
– Agriculture yields are up- https://ourworldindata.org/yields-and-land-use-in-agriculture#yields-since-1960.
Poverty has decreased- https://ourworldindata.org/a-history-of-global-living-conditions-in-5-charts.
Life expectancy has increased- https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy.
Deaths from weather related disasters have declined- https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/natural-disaster-death-rates?time=1900..2018.
Oh and the planet and deserts are greening from the increase in CO2- https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fertilization-greening-earth/
Here is an additional question about which the presidential candidates should make us aware of their knowledge and/or opinions:
Does an existential threat IMPLY certainty?
IOW: is this “coming existential man-made disaster”, that is, one with some significant measure of magnitude, inevitable … at least, within some practical time frame?
Or, is there significant room for error in such predictions?
Note: I for one, when not seeing probability estimates presented with such claims … as quickly as possible, run away from these types. There is no discussing such uncertainty matters with zeolots and/or cultists.
In the meantime, for our readers [if there are any reading this post, haha]: please, if able, I for one would like to see some longer-term weather and/or climate predictions — for which, ahead of time, a “proper” theory had been made available — where such predictions actually did come true.
One example would be good — such would be a start — but, with the stakes which are said to be at risk; existential, in this matter — we MUST do better than the 1-off successful prediction; we must do much better.