SURPRISE!! Republican Congress Seated, Clock Moves Closer

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That's not an educating answer.

I found that by 2100, without change, the global temperature will rise by 4 degrees Celsius, and all the projected negative effects will affect us in the domain of comfort (harder to farm, for example, so food will be more sparse), albeit it won't stop us from being able to live here.

IT IS 3 MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT
DoomsdayClock_black_3mins_regmark.jpg
3 minutes to midnight
2015: "Unchecked climate change, global nuclear weapons modernizations, and outsized nuclear weapons arsenals pose extraordinary and undeniable threats to the continued existence of humanity, and world leaders have failed to act with the speed or on the scale required to protect citizens from potential catastrophe. These failures of political leadership endanger every person on Earth.” Despite some modestly positive developments in the climate change arena, current efforts are entirely insufficient to prevent a catastrophic warming of Earth. Meanwhile, the United States and Russia have embarked on massive programs to modernize their nuclear triads—thereby undermining existing nuclear weapons treaties. "The clock ticks now at just three minutes to midnight because international leaders are failing to perform their most important duty—ensuring and preserving the health and vitality of human civilization."

Funny thing is, people are willing to accept science without question in every category except Climate Change. Why is that?

Suddenly, lo and behold, science is flawed and it's a big fat hoax.

They're obviously not using "catastrophic" in the same way I would.

Nuclear war won't be catastrophic, other than lots of people dying (which would actually help global warming, especially if people rebuild destroyed cities in a more environmental way).

Global warming and nuclear war are far from devastating events for the planet.

Most Republicans only want to clutch their Bibles and holler thank you Jesus I know you are coming! A sign! A sign! They don't care if it all goes to hell it just means the return of Jesus.

Do you really want to bring religion into this?

People are less willing to believe the theory of anthropomorphic climate change (formerly man-made gobal warming) because of Climategate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_ ... ontroversy (a.k.a. the Climatic Research Unit email controversy) ...
The rapid and dramatic change in public opinion about anthropomorphic climate change comes from these disclosures, not an ignorant populace.

When we can't predict weather for a week I have problems with the projections despite all the assurances.

to doomsday!

Republicans are the last ones on earth prepared to confront the threats from climate change. We are as good as passengers on the Titanic, now. Been nice knowing you, Earth. Sorry my species ruined ya.

...It's incredibly selfish to assume everyone should follow your thinking and do what you want and call that religion along with a blatant disregard for what others may be thinking or wanting....

There is absolutely no need to panic.

...I think that it is no accident that mankind started on a path to civilization at a time when the Earth was 2 to 3 degrees C warmer than today. In a cooler earth, people have to work too hard to survive and have no time for such luxuries as civilization.

Instead of listening to the hallucinations of the panic-mongers, look at history to find out what really happens with a warmer Earth. You will be pleasantly surprised.

I found that by 2100, without change, the global temperature will rise by 4 degrees Celsius, and all the projected negative effects will affect us in the domain of comfort (harder to farm, for example, so food will be more sparse), albeit it won't stop us from being able to live here.

I am a climate lukewarmer. That means I think recent global warming is real, mostly man-made and will continue but I no longer think it is likely to be dangerous and I think its slow and erratic progress so far is what we should expect in the future. That last year was the warmest yet, in some data sets, but only by a smidgen more than 2005, is precisely in line with such lukewarm thinking.

...

I was not always a lukewarmer. When I first started writing about the threat of global warming more than 26 years ago, as science editor ofThe Economist, I thought it was a genuinely dangerous threat. Like, for instance, Margaret Thatcher, I accepted the predictions being made at the time that we would see warming of a third or a half a degree (Centigrade) a decade, perhaps more, and that this would have devastating consequences.

Gradually, however, I changed my mind. The failure of the atmosphere to warm anywhere near as rapidly as predicted was a big reason: there has been less than half a degree of global warming in four decades — and it has slowed down, not speeded up. Increases in malaria, refugees, heatwaves, storms, droughts and floods have not materialised to anything like the predicted extent, if at all. Sea level has risen but at a very slow rate — about a foot per century.

Also, I soon realised that all the mathematical models predicting rapid warming assume big amplifying feedbacks in the atmosphere, mainly from water vapour; carbon dioxide is merely the primer, responsible for about a third of the predicted warming. When this penny dropped, so did my confidence in predictions of future alarm: the amplifiers are highly uncertain.

Another thing that gave me pause was that I went back and looked at the history of past predictions of ecological apocalypse from my youth – population explosion, oil exhaustion, elephant extinction, rainforest loss, acid rain, the ozone layer, desertification, nuclear winter, the running out of resources, pandemics, falling sperm counts, cancerous pesticide pollution and so forth. There was a consistent pattern of exaggeration, followed by damp squibs: in not a single case was the problem as bad as had been widely predicted by leading scientists. That does not make every new prediction of apocalypse necessarily wrong, of course, but it should encourage scepticism.

What sealed my apostasy from climate alarm was the extraordinary history of the famous “hockey stick” graph, which purported to show that today’s temperatures were higher and changing faster than at any time in the past thousand years. That graph genuinely shocked me when I first saw it and, briefly in the early 2000s, it persuaded me to abandon my growing doubts about dangerous climate change and return to the “alarmed” camp.

...

I am especially unimpressed by the claim that a prediction of rapid and dangerous warming is “settled science”, as firm as evolution or gravity. How could it be? It is a prediction! No prediction, let alone in a multi-causal, chaotic and poorly understood system like the global climate, should ever be treated as gospel. With the exception of eclipses, there is virtually nothing scientists can say with certainty about the future. It is absurd to argue that one cannot disagree with a forecast. Is the Bank of England’s inflation forecast infallible?

Incidentally, my current view is still consistent with the “consensus” among scientists, as represented by the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The consensus is that climate change is happening, not that it is going to be dangerous. The latest IPCC report gives a range of estimates of future warming, from harmless to terrifying. My best guess would be about one degree of warming during this century, which is well within the IPCC’s range of possible outcomes.

Yet most politicians go straight to the top of the IPCC’s range and call climate change things like “perhaps the world’s most fearsome weapon of mass destruction” (John Kerry), requiring the expenditure of trillions of dollars. I think that is verging on grotesque in a world full of war, hunger, disease and poverty. It also means that environmental efforts get diverted from more urgent priorities, like habitat loss and invasive species.