Where are the "alarmist doomsday predictions" that never came true? Climate Change deniers claim that these exist all the time, but I have never seen an actual example. Predictions over the last 20-30 years have been almost universally spot-on.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7139797.stm
> Warming expert: Only decade left to act in time (2006)
https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna14834318
> (1989) A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000.
> He said governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect before it goes beyond human control.
At least to me it seems the greenhouse effect now is out of human control. I do not see mankind preventing it from raising much higher, for years to come, before we'll do anything about it.
> Those articles may still prove to be correct.
The greenhouse effect is totally human controllable. You don't even need to stop using fossil fuels or resort to absurdities like industrial carbon sequestration. Geoengineering used to be a thing; if climatologists believed in their models, they'd be able to come up with a solution that works. Painting Australia white, pumping sulfur dioxide into the upper atmosphere; whatever. Someone could at least make a suggestion which doesn't involve everyone living in a yurt and eating gruel. One becomes suspicious people whose only solution is the latter are millenarian cultists rather than science minded.
Maybe if we lived in mile-high ecumenopolis mega cities instead of 8-lane-gridlock-highway-connected-cookie-cutter-5-bedroom-McMansion-suburbs we wouldn't have to live in "yurts" and eat "gruel".
Yes, actually: if I'm supposed to take "scientists" seriously, the only reason we listen to them over astrologers is they're supposed to get things right, not make shit up. Why is this confusing to you? Do you think there is some other reason to listen to "scientists?"
What a horrible perspective.
You can't have it both ways. Either "the science" predicts something or it doesn't. Which one is it?
They are supposed to evaluate scientific theories by checking testable predictions to find out if the theory is the correct explanation about how things work in our universe. Which means that scientists try to proof themselves wrong most of the time.
A prediction is also often multidimensional and can be accurate about what will happen, while being off about when it will happen. This article https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prediction uses the solar cycle as an example of that under the Science category.
>> governments must adopt an alternative scenario to keep carbon dioxide emission growth in check and limit the increase in global temperatures to 1 degree Celsius
>> If the world continues with a “business as usual” scenario ... temperatures will rise by 2 to 3 degrees Celsius
> https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna14834318
That's reality, inevitable 2°C raise even if humanity left planet today, 4°C–5°C raise with a “business as usual” scenario.
The very article you link points out that scientific consensus is 2040-2100, and the author of the paper is quoted as saying that, because of the variance in his own model, 2030 is a more reasonable estimate.
> the other two
Refer to time of action, not time of consequence. There's a ~30-40 year delay between greenhouse gas emissions and fully realized warming. A ton of gas released today doesn't cause warming tomorrow. Because these targets haven't been met, even if all emissions stopped today, enough ice would melt over the next century that the Solomons, Marshalls, Maldives, and other low-lying island nations will be swamped.
> Many scientists have attempted to estimate when the Arctic will be "ice-free". Professor Peter Wadhams of the University of Cambridge is among these scientists; Wadhams in 2014 predicted that by 2020 "summer sea ice to disappear," Wadhams and several others have noted that climate model predictions have been overly conservative regarding sea ice decline. A 2013 paper suggested that models commonly underestimate the solar radiation absorption characteristics of wildfire soot. In 2007, Professor Wieslaw Maslowski from the Naval Postgraduate School, California, predicted removal of summer ice by 2013; subsequently, in 2013, Maslowski predicted 2016 ±3 years.
If only people would devote half as much energy to debunking denialists as they do scolding 'alarmists'.