Something is wrong with the message when almost half think it is exaggerated. Your goal really isn’t to get agreement on any particular climate scenario: it is to eliminate the use of fossil fuel to reduce CO2 levels. Insisting on agreement on the worst case projections is, according to the poll, unproductive.

Blaming the media went out with the John Birch Society. Climate Progress is part of the media. Al Gore heads a media corporation. NBC, airer of Global Warming Week, is the major media. Robert Kennedy Jr. is part of the media.

I read a three or four paragraph story a week or so ago in either the Sun Times or the Trib. It quoted two university climatologists who used the term hiccup to describe a possible decadal temperature stabilization. The newspaper used the word cooling. They also said the current cooling – again the word used in the story, could be a misquote – is unexplainable. If you know more about this than what was in the paper, I’d enjoy hearing about it. In fact, when I read it, my first thought was, “Boy, I’ll bet Joe will rip this to shreds.”

Interglacail drought because during stades (massive ice sheets) many parts of the globe experienced severe droughts. I’ll agree it is an unnecessary distinction in this setting.

As a non-scientist who reads this blog and urges others to read it, would you please consider adding Fahrenheit temps wherever you reference Celsius? The message is not getting through without this and it is a simple thing to add. I’ll bet 99% of us think and communicate in terms of degrees Fahrenheit in the U.S.

Also, why call it an “interglacial drought?” Aren’t the glaciers going away in this process, disrupting the balancing systems that “inter-glacial” suggests?

Thanks for helping us non-scientists who are trying to get and communicate the risks to others. More public policy cost-benefit modeling is needed, to illustrate the implications of the sort of data you share on this blog.

We should still strive to keep warming at or below 2C, even if that’s no longer realistic. Any relaxation of the temperature goal could lead to a relaxation in the efforts to reduce emissions. As it stands, we should work towards zero emissions in all haste, and then deal with the results of whatever warming happens as they come.

Climate change: ‘Obama has to do it step by step’
Rajendra Pachauri, head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, tells David Adam about the USA’s ability to meet environmental targets quickly
http://www.guardian.co.uk/ environment/ audio/ 2009/ mar/ 11/ copenhagen-ipcc

I wonder why the shift?

Perhaps the catastrophic 7C argument is just not persuasive. For one thing, it is as far outside the most likely IPCC projections as is no warming at all. Secondly, while temperatures may indeed rise to disastrous levels by century’s end, they are not now convincingly moving in that direction.

[JR: Perhaps the media hasn't told anybody about this "argument" so they can't be persuaded.]

Climate scientists now say we could have an up to thirty year “hiccup” of stable temperatures before warming aggressively resumes. What does that do to the calculus of persuasion?

[JR: Uhh, no, they don't say that. Try again.]

I wonder why the shift?

Could it be that people, especially older people, are now so concerned about the economy that they have pushed climate change out of the forefront?

Perhaps people worry more about a problem that could greatly destroy their way of life in the next few months as opposed to a problem that could come into play decades from now.

Older people, in general, have much more to worry about when faced with the disappearance of their retirement accounts vs. increases in sea levels that won’t become critical until long after they are dead.

Don’t forget “Americans generally believe global warming is real.” from the Gallup report.

Americans have not become deniers.

Perhaps they are simply prioritizing.