I’m updating this post from April since so many in the media and elsewhere still seem to be pushing the myth that climate scientists have been overhyping the threat posed by climate, when the reverse is true.
The professional global warming disinformers and their enablers and some in the media want you to believe that scientists are exaggerating the threat — which is why conservatives and conservative-leaning independents believe just that (see “Gallup poll shows failure of media, conservatives still easily duped by deniers, scientists & progressives still lousy at messaging“).
But that is patently absurd. I don’t meet 1 person in 50 who has any idea whatsoever of the incalculable misery — Hell and High Water — that we are in the process of inflicting on the next 50 generations on our current emissions path. Fewer still understand the true plausible worst-case scenario, again since the climate science community and the IPCC hardly ever talk about it (see UK Met Office: Catastrophic climate change, 13-18°F over most of U.S. and 27°F in the Arctic, could happen in 50 years, but “we do have time to stop it if we cut greenhouse gas emissions soon”).
While the U.S. media largely downplays or ignores the threat (see U.S. media largely ignores latest warning from climate scientists and Study: “The U.S. media’s decision to play the stenographer role helped opponents of climate action stifle progress” and here) — the European media is often much blunter, which is to say, more accurate.
James Randerson — the Guardian’s environment website editor and a top UK science journalist — issued a powerful wake-up call back in April based on the results of a poll of climate experts:
Climate scientists are hyping the global warming crisis in order to keep themselves in jobs, conferences and research grants to exotic locations. Their snouts are wedged deep in a lucrative trough.
So goes the familiar chant from the climate naysayers – those who are convinced climate change is not caused by people nor that its effects are overblown.
So the results of the Guardian’s poll of climate experts showing that most believe we don’t have a hope in hell of keeping planetary warming to below 2C – the threshold the EU defines as “dangerous” – are all the more remarkable.
It blows the lid on a very different sort of conspiracy: that climate scientists have actually been toning down their message lest the worst-case scenario becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
As one respondent put it, “Great things can only be achieved by everyone believing it can be done. How do you think the second world war was won? Churchill didn’t stand around saying most people think we will lose the war. He said we will fight it on the beaches.”
Far from over-playing their hand to swell their research coffers, scientists have been toning down their message in an attempt to avoid public despair and inaction.
Precisely.
Anyone who has ever talked to leading climate experts — and I interviewed and listened to dozens in researching my book and writing this blog — knows that the overwhelming majority of climate scientists are prone to understate what the science says, especially when speaking in public. Many confided to me in private a much more realistic assessment of what we face, which is how I was able to put together back in 2006 an accurate picture of what the scientific literature is now saying.
Just 7% of the 261 experts surveyed (200 of whom were researchers in climate science or related fields) said they thought governments would succeed in restricting global warming to 2C. Nearly two-fifths thought this target was impossible and 46% thought a 3 to 4C rise by the end of the century was most likely.
A 3 or 4C rise might not sound much but the climatic shifts accompanying it would be massive. At 3C one to four billion extra people would face water shortages and 150 to 550 million more people would be at risk of hunger. With an extra degree of warming on top of that, seven million to 300 million would be put at risk of coastal flooding due to sea level rise.
In the face of such apocalyptic scenarios it is natural for people to feel like giving up. Small personal actions such as turning the TV off standby, turning down your thermostat and lagging the loft have always seemed pitiful in the face of a global catastrophe.
But if the scientists are saying the bad stuff is going to happen anyway then it is tempting to think we might as well stop punishing ourselves, jump on that no-frills flight and be done with it.
Unfortunately, the climate doesn’t give us a milestone beyond which we can stop bothering. Warming the planet to 3C beyond pre-industrial levels is a lot worse than a 2C rise, but it is a walk in the park with mum buying you an ice-cream compared with a rise of 4C.
Likewise, stopping us getting near 5C is very much worth the effort. Sea-level rise at that global temperature increase will take out cities including London, New York and Tokyo. The poles will be transformed by warming.
Scientists must stop sanitising their message. World leaders and their people need to hear the warnings loud and clear and follow through with radical action that matches the scale of the crisis. Only if they do will future generations look back on what is looking decreasingly likely to be our “finest hour”.
Precisely.
Finally, a few scientist have started becoming blunt, which is why I started my category “Uncharacteristically Blunt Scientists.” See also the presentations delivered at the recent “Four degrees and beyond” conference.
But the media still loves to focus on the pseudoscientific contrarians who counsel ination and delay — see What else is Newsweek wrong about? Pushing Freeman Dyson’s pseudoscience and NYT magazine profiles climate crackpot, Freeman Dyson, and lets him slander James Hansen, and, of course, Error-riddled ‘Superfreakonomics’ and Dubner is baffled that Caldeira ‘doesn’t believe geoengineering can work without cutting emissions’. And they still quote the professional disinformers every chance they get.
No one who reads this blog regularly or follows U.S. politics could possibly believe there is better than 1 in 3 chance that we will stabilize anywhere near 450 ppm, anywhere near 2°C warming.
But anyone who reads this blog also understands that it is not too late — not only could we stabilize at 450 ppm at a low total cost, one tenth of a penny on the dollar, we could stabilize at 350 ppm for probably no more than double the cost of stabilizing at 450 ppm [see "How the world can stabilize at 350 to 450 ppm: The full global warming solution")].
And so I will continue to side with the climate expert cited above, but I’m going to change one word in his impassioned plea:
Great things can only be achieved by everyone believing knowing it can be done. How do you think the second world war was won? Churchill didn’t stand around saying most people think we will lose the war. He said we will fight it on the beaches.
This isn’t about belief. This is about knowledge.
Churchill knew the war could be won, and he was right.
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Thanks for your work, Joe.
Every time we downplay what could happen, the result is “Eh, we’ll adapt.” Then, when the scientists say what could actually come to pass, they get “It’s overblown hype!” We can’t win with some people.
I agree completely. One impression that I’ve had so far from this CRU hack incident has been that of scientists treading very carefully in the political arena and being generally out of their depth, under seige from a committed and politically savvy opposition with no sense of intellectual integrity.
Maybe it’s time to take the gloves off, since the other side has been hitting below the belt the whole time.
Yeah – I think part of what is at fault is a tendency to think in dichotomous succeed / fail terms. Like when midway through the semester you realize that with very low scores so far, even if you aced everything going forward, you’d still fail the course. So naturally there’s no point in trying. But as you said, there is no point at which the planet says “you fail” and further damage does not matter. There are many gradients of failure – our task is to minimize the suffering and devastation to whatever extent is possible. Unfortunately this is not a very inspiring message.
Thank you Dr. Romm for being so clear. This is one of the most important things for us to grasp, the urgency, the time-criticality of GW. The media, especially in the US, continuously minimize the danger of GW. Some scientists’ desire for respect and acceptance by remaining above the struggle, often contribute to the misunderstanding.
We say in the US media that it is essentially a matter of money. Should we spend money now to reduce the expected mild impacts of GW in the future, or should the next generation, presumably a richer generation, pay to curtail the damage then. This is devoid of basic understanding of the danger involved. Every day we emit millions of tons of GHG and most will remain there damaging the climate for hundreds of years or longer.
Most of our elected officials have limited grasp of the severity of GW. It is natural; we never encountered any thing of this immense magnitude before. I am glad they are being alerted by this specific observation of yours.
Reading in US media on GW leaves you relaxed, all the danger is to other countries, mostly remote countries. We, in the US, (according to the mistaken media) would be facing just some minor impacts on weather: more rain here, less rain there, some disturbances to our agriculture. And some other nonsense likes that. We will have considerably more powerful impacts on our lives, from more powerful extreme weather events, hurricane and tornadoes to lack of water to major population centers, to name just a few. The danger to us here is real and progressing.
We need to just grasp one example, the melting of the Himalayas glaciers, the source of water to hundreds of millions in China and India. This is going on now and progressing. This is an international tragedy in the making of a scale we can not comprehend. It is impossible to relocate this immense number of people, to change agriculture, to feed the impacted population.
Every day there is a tragedy in-the-making for millions of people.
Please keep alerting us to the time-criticality of global warming since it is natural for all people to shut their mind on a problem of this immense magnitude.
I’ve go my swimming trunks on…
This is not just about “science” as that term is normally used. It is about a combination of science and genuine human ethics/responsibility.
It’s not only scientists who should be yelling from the rooftops by now. It’s also moral philosophers, ethicists, religious leaders, responsible sociologists and psychologists, and mothers and fathers and sons and daughters.
And, other species should also be screaming (at us) at the top of their lungs, or whatever they have.
When you should be concerned about something, in order to take action, then you SHOULD be concerned about it. It would be stupid NOT to be concerned. Being concerned about something is quite different from thinking that there is nothing that can be done about it.
And anyhow, we can look to the ultimate source of many “answers”: Woodstock. At Woodstock, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young said that they were “scared sh_tless”, or something like that. But, they played beautifully. See, it can be done.
Scientists should be speaking out right now, clearly and loudly.
And, they shouldn’t take “no” as an answer from the media. They MSM should get with it, or voluntarily dissolve themselves.
Be Well,
Jeff
It’s the data, stupid. Publish the data.
And we, as concerned and knowing citizens try to raise concern among among our friends and coworkers, are faced with the same need to downplay our rhetoric because “if it is as bad as that our leaders would certainly be telling us.” So down and down we go to the lowest common denominator and the likes of Inhofe. Someone needs to break the ice and tell it like it is. Who better than President Obama. We are in dire need of a statesman right about NOW. IMPACT WEEK. Make your voices heard.
I wonder what it was like when humanity faced other tectonic shifts in its moral construct?
It took centuries to change thinking about slavery, colonialism, hunting things to extinction…
Based on the propensity of some citizens to continue to re-elect Sen. Inhofe, I think that we should consider a process of de-anexation of the State of Oklahoma and to return it to those who were there first along with the Cherokee that we forced to move there.
Leif, speaking of breaking the ice…this terrifies me, frankly:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/ environment/ 2009/ nov/ 22/ east-antarctic-ice-sheet-nasa
Sorry Rockfish, but what makes you think humanity has learned not to hunt things to extinction? The ocean fisheries are about to collapse as are many terrestrial species populations!
Eli, #2, I’m with you on that. Case in point:
Someone hacks the CRU files, which show nothing except scientists’ disdain for the denier crowd. Patrick Michaels appears as a “climatologist” injured party, claiming all kinds of malfeasance. The MSM (such as NYT) indulges him. Scientists, instead of attacking this absurdity, revert to apologizing for the way they talk in private.
One thing you can say for the deniers, they are good tacticians.
Scientists need to study military history, so they can learn to take the strategic and psychological offensive. This is way too serious for petitions and more statements about scientific consensus. The yahoos on the other side either don’t care about science, or choose to ignore it for financial and political reasons.
The language need not be strident or even confrontational, but it can certainly be a lot more direct. Ike Solem and a few others are leading the way. Time to move with determination and decisiveness. These are the only qualities that will defeat the opposition, since the only rational world they respect is that of dollars and sense.
Since we’re discussing Churchill I suggest that a better name than ‘deniers’ is along the lines of ‘appeasers.’ A nice twist on the 9/11 rhetoric, bringing up that national security issue that appeals so much conservatives. Not so much ‘climate appeasers’ (this suggests war with the climate) but ‘carbon appeasers’? ‘chaos appeasers?’ etc., etc.
It works better than ‘deniers’ because rather than suggesting delusion after the fact, it points to delay and inaction *before* the, er, storm.
Joe – it’s about knowledge AND belief.
Our job is helping people believe that we can – and should – and will – turn this planetary energy system around.
Hansen at least has discussed scientific reticence http://www.iop.org/ EJ/ article/ 1748-9326/ 2/ 2/ 024002/ erl7_2_024002.html and has looked at the possibility of a runaway greenhouse similar to Venus: http://www.columbia.edu/ ~jeh1/ 2008/ AGUBjerknes_20081217.pdf so there is some move in attempting to get past some of the natural conservatism in science.
But, it would not be science without the conservatism. It is like a sonnet. The form of the poem causes the creativity that comes out of the form. The conservatism of science leads to certainty that is much less available in other endeavors and which allows the further building of the subject area (because the foundation is sound).
So, it is up to activists to really sound the alarm. Their zeal for persuasion can also build on the fruits of the scientists’ zeal for precision in a different manner.
I heard British historian Dan Todman recently discuss his best assessment of how the politics worked in Britain in the runup to and during the early phase of WWII. The legend is that Churchill led, but Todman describes the truth as somewhat different. Speaking of the “appeasement” minded Chamberlain government:
“…So really the Chamberlain government is trapped in a circumstance where it can’t generate the national will that’s necessary to fight a more total war, even as it becomes more and more convinced as it gets into the spring of 1940 that that is what it has to do.”
The Churchill government is described as following the people more than most seem to think now, because in a democracy, there is no other option:
“And really it is not until the circumstances change, until the fall of France, and this great threat to Britain that emotionally mobilizes the population, that ANY government can start to do that. And it has to be said that even when the Churchill government comes in in 1940 it takes a far more hesitant approach to the mobilization of domestic efforts than is often assumed.”
The transition from Chamberlain the appeaser to Churchill the man who will lead the fight on the beaches and wherever was May to June 1940.
“May to June 1940 is not as great and decisive a shift as we sometimes think in terms of things like rationing, and the conscription of women, those are events that take place much later in the war. And they’re very concerned, the Churchill coalition, to stay behind the demand curve, really, they’re operating inside the same set of limits as their predecessors, but they’re doing so in a drastically changed international circumstance.”
“not only could we stabilize at 450 ppm at a low total cost, one tenth of a penny on the dollar, we could stabilize at 350 ppm for probably no more than double the cost of stabilizing at 450 ppm”
Considering how poorly economists (as a group) did with the collapse of the housing bubble, and the implosion of the credit default swap market, should we really believe economic projections that run 50 years into the future, especially when those projections involve some technologies that haven’t been fully commercialized or deployed at large scale?
Realistically, economists can’t even come to a consensus explanation for what has happened in the past. Why should I believe anything they have to say about the future?!?! When it comes to the eventual cost of these climate fixes, I think you’ve entered the realm of fortune telling.
I argued with Bob Watson in 1988 that scientists should take a more forceful line, at the Changing Atmosphere conference in Toronto. He said they were doing the best they could, that it was ordinary citizens such as myself who must do the forceful speaking. Scientists had to retain their credibility.
Watson went on to create the IPCC. You can’t argue with that. As Hansen says its good people can say there’s these thousands of scientists who have agreed to describe the problem in this specific way, and it’s true.
But I disagreed with Watson, and do. I called for the scientists to lay it all out then and there and all the time. But anyone can see where that will get you. Watson survived to get the chop from Bush, and even now has a good job. I fit into civilization so poorly most of my life I haven’t even had a job.
I went nowhere. I went out into Canadian politics as the voice of doom. I was calling then, in 1988, for returning the atmosphere to the preindustrial composition saying I didn’t know the way, but if everyone on Earth put their heads together we could find a way, asking people for their votes. Many thought I was insane.
I couldn’t find one scientist I could say was also calling for what I called for, until Hansen started saying in December 2007 that there was too much GHG in the atmosphere already, that his paleoclimate studies had convinced him that 325 – 350 ppm CO2 was the limit. I had despaired sometime in the mid 1990s so there may have been some scientists saying all these plans to limit change to 550 ppm or whatever were insane. I don’t know. I was dead somewhere.
I was a pariah in the environment movement of Canada. In the same period when Canada’s Ambassador to the U.N. interrupted the final plenary session of what some in Canada called “the most profoundly disturbing environmental conference of human history” to ask me to stand and be recognized for my contribution, I was condemned by Canada’s most powerful environmentalist voices who said I was “insane, and dangerous”, because I called for planetary conservation, and hence did not think on their wavelength. I said forget this movement to create more parks that has you ally yourself with political forces that will kill the planet, you cannot draw a line around some part of the planet on a map and declare that you’ve “saved” it for all future generations. This will all be swept away. A new politics must be created. So I said then. What a joke.
I hardly understand how going from 280 to 350 plus all the other GHG like the synthetics that have never been part of the atmosphere before that might be contributing 20% of the total enhanced effect even now could possibly leave the planetary system even somewhat like the one we grew up on but I love Hansen for finally saying there is too much CO2 already as he did in 2007.
I had despaired from speaking out ever again, until I heard Hansen say this.
If you find yourself disagreeing with Hansen on policy, consider that he is living far more vividly in a world that has already gone over the edge than you.
I was recognized at the Toronto conference because for four days I was the guy telling them all they had to do more, they had to recommend more action, they had to describe the problem more bluntly, they had to believe people would respond.
They were preparing a conference statement, and I was the only guy who stood to tell them it was even possible to turn this situation around. In the final plenary I told them that they had to take out this statement they were going to put in that the changing climate “could not be reversed”. I couldn’t believe they were doing that. I said it could be reversed. They took it out. They wished there were billions more people like me, and they knew that there were not. I could feel that.
I left the event horrified. The premise of the conference was that we were preparing a statement for heads of state all over the planet. Many there believed this.
The statement advised civilization that it was headed for a fate that could only be exceeded by global nuclear war, and the recommended course of action was to take steps that could only slightly slow the rate civilization would accelerate into it.
Scientists have come a very long way since then.
What more can you ask someone like Hansen to say about the scientific perspective? He’s warned that if BAU proceeds to burn all the oil, tar sand, and coal, he believes a runaway greenhouse will occur, the oceans will boil away and Earth will never have oceans again. The planet will be dead.
He’s calling for drastic action. He’s been critical of Congress, and he hasn’t been swayed by those who argue that what might come out of Congress is the best that can be had right now and is a very big deal. He’s saying it isn’t good enough, and he’s calling for more.
How much more blunt can you get?
I agree completely. One impression that I’ve had so far from this CRU hack incident has been that of scientists treading very carefully in the political arena and being generally out of their depth, under seige from a committed and politically savvy opposition with no sense of intellectual integrity.
Climate scientists have been under seige since the late 1990s. I believed that eventually the other side would give up when they were confronted with ever stronger evidence. They haven’t and at this stage nothing will stop them for at least another decade. A decade we don’t have.
It’s time to fight back.
Time to open up to the possibility of widespread sugar-coating by all climate scientists. More like overly cautious speech.
I see and hear scientists speak eloquently about their own narrowly defined field…. so oceanographers may be forthright – but dare not speak of atmospherics. Chemists are afraid of botanists, etc…they all get shy, tongue-tied and reticent about concluding anything larger than their field. So we know that corals are doomed, methane tipping points, glaciers, etc,, but not one single academic department is ready to put these together and speak-up.
This seems like a systemic problem — academic science that is so rigid.
Thanks Joe, for the ‘Uncharacteristically Blunt Scientists’ Category…but all the others need to take off the blinders.
Joe,
It’s all about what I and others have noted – scientists won’t engage in the political debate, leaving the arena of combat to be defined by others. Until we do – fully engage – there is less hope then we could have.
I have come to the conclusion that climate change will be a fact of live for all that succeed us (if any). It will bend this world out of shape for the next 5000 years. Sea levels will keep on rising (that won’t stop in 2100) as ice will keep on melting. When you look at the current average temperature this is coherent with a 20 meter sea level rise (as paleoclimatology so nicely tells us). I sit at 18.45 above sea level when I write this and I’ll be damned if in fourthousand years from now anyone will be able to sit here (not being on a boat).
But still in Holland we are awash with screaming Climate Change deniers from conservative parties which are the same men who fear a muslim terrorist behind every tree. I’m sick and tired of this constant battle against nay sayers who clearly have no scientific background at all at worst or a dubious one at best (or vice versa). It are voices that twist words, rip them out of context and do not understand the ways of propper scientific discource. And their message is appealing, a blattant renaicanse Capre Diem, the Carpe Diem that has fosterred our economy into a 2 centuries of feeding frenzy, the Carpe Diem that spurred the short term thinkers of our great creditr crunch and the Carpe Diem that made us all victims of the mass media and their spur of consumer culture.
Now in the 15th century the Carpe Diem replaced the Memento Mori of the middle ages spurred on by black death that ravaged Europe (England lost 1/3 of it’s poppulation in a single plague). Now science tells us once again that their is a problem on the horizon to which it has no solution. That we should repent and redeem outselves, we need a new catharsis, a new paradigm through wich to interprete the world. But we are still merily dancing in the town sqaure as the Florentine people did on the day the plaque hit them mid 15th century. Then they started counting there dead, and so will we. In the blackest of the black scenario’s our little merry dance will cost us the lives of 6.9 billion people and the world poppulus will be more then decimated (James Lovelock, the vanishing face of gaia). And yet we dance, yet we dance a dance of denial, a dance in praise of our new God being worshipped in countles stripmalls and high streets the God of goods. He is a benevolent God that seems to provide and provide, but at what cost. Now the bible tells of Moses decending from Ararat and witnissing the people of Judea dancing aroud a golden calf, broke into a tantrum and broke the first version of the ten commandments. He then climbed up again and returned with a new version. 10 commandments are the bases of all our laws and all our believes (and that goes for anyone, christian, jew, muslim and atheist in one form or another). We should reflect on this deeply and understand what decent behaviour nowaday is comprised of. Is wasting energy (direct via fuel consumption or indirect via commercialism) facing the facts of emminent shortages and environmental catastrophy coherent with decent behaviour. In short don’t we need new commandment?
“Thou shall not waiste energy!”
Greetings, Ed
David (#17),
I’ve been thinking for a couple of decades about how to turn things around. My latest development has to do with growing more coral. http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2009/11/davy-jones.html I agree that more people thinking about this is what is needed.
Leonardo da Vinci observed:
“When fortune comes, seize her firmly by the forelock, for, I tell you, she is bald at the back.”
Dylan Thomas urged:
“Do not go gentle into that good night.”
Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein, and some other “pretty darn smart folks!”, took action when action was called for. (See the Russell-Einstein Manifesto.)
There is no real question here about whether scientists should get more active and outspoken. They SHOULD. I’d be happy to explain that (in terms of ethical arguments that themselves are deeply grounded in scientific understanding and basic reasoning) to any scientist who doesn’t think so.
Be Well,
Jeff
While I think this report does not cover the full risk for sea level rise it is a stronger statement than some: http://www.copenhagendiagnosis.com/
Craig, it doesn’t matter what the costs may be. We attempt a transition and possibly succeed, or we’ll pay a far higher cost. Physics doesn’t care about our quibbles.
Joe et al,
As a global change ecologist who studies climate warming and its impacts in high-latitude ecosystems, I can attest that it’s not hyperbole for scientists to caution more strongly about accelerating changes, some of which are happening faster than model predictions. It’s also not hyperbole to argue that things like soil carbon and permafrost/sea ice thaw have the potential to accelerate warming further.
However, to say that scientists would be more effective by simply turning up the volume or intensity of their message makes a key assumption—that current messaging works and that science speaks for itself. For many people, it does. For many others, however, it doesn’t. Why people don’t believe/engage climate warming is a complex story that goes beyond scientific dissemination of information, which I have written about in a five-part series at globalchangeblog.com:
http://www.globalchangeblog.com/ 2009/ 11/ why-dont-people-engage-climate-change-part-5-a-perfect-storm-of-climate-change-denial/
Here’s another piece evaluating the recent Science article by Richard Kerr on supposed “climate fatigue”:
http://www.globalchangeblog.com/ 2009/ 11/ in-this-weeks-issue-of-science-climate-communication-has-climate-fatigue-set-in/
One potential outcome is that—in the end—public opinion may not matter. If federal, regional, state, and local legislation initiatives continue to succeed–as many have already–, this suggests that public opinion isn’t that big a burden to politicians.
A few years ago, then-NASA administrator Michael Griffin was asked about his views on climate change. He replied that he didn’t see how anyone could decide that a given set of climate conditions was optimum.
Well, now an international group of 29 scientists has taken a first cut at this. They have established limits on various impacts to the global environment, such as CO2 concentration, where the desired limit is 350ppm. Other impacts considered are biodiversity decrease and the levels of nitrogen and phosphorus. The full story is available online at
http://www.scientificamerican.com/dec2009
Having read the numerous postings since 23 Nov I am quite convinced that none of the posters has ever analysed any climate data for themselves. If they had they would have seen that even using the (possibly doubtful) data published by the CRU that the typical claims that disastrous temperature changes are about to occur are only rather loosely connected with the actual numbers. Projecting any analyses of real data up to the present in an attempt to forecast the state of affairs twenty years hence is very ambitious indeed. Has anyone here given a thought to the fundamental statistical models on which projections are based? Linear, exponential, power series, trigonometric are all potential candidates. Try fitting some of these (linear is far the simplest and is the bread and butter of climatologists for obvious reasons) and see what you make of the confidence intervals for projected future values of the data set you are using. It will be quite fascinating and enlightening.
[JR: Uhh, no. The climate certainly isn't linear, and multiple independent analyses make clear that on our current emissions path, the temperature rise this century will be 9F or higher.]
It’s time to call the denialist/delayers reckless, irresponsible, dangerous, mind-bogglingy thick, incompetent, ignorant, irrational, stupid, stupid, stupid.