If you look at sites like Our World in Data then nearly all metrics of human progress have dramatically improved over the past century, while temperatures increased 1°C.
So it isn't clear that another degree increase will lead to catastrophe. The numbers are round and arbitrary. Our increased wealth and technology has improved lives far, far more than the increased temperature has diminished them, and I don't see why that trend won't continue.
I don’t have anything productive or polite to say about you misinterpreting my comment as climate denial and then mocking me for having a simplistic mental model.
It's good to know you've at least returned the favor in misinterpreting my comment in kind.
> what I am taking issue with is the annoying method of communication of predictions about that reality, communication that resembles nothing so much as systematized crying wolf. I’m not even asking for it to stop, or threatening to spitefully disbelieve in climate change because of it, I’m just asking for it to be served with a spoonful of kindness.
And this is extremely petty and ludicrous. Get past the communication methods and look at the core of the problem. If someone can't do that, then I have nothing to offer them but mockery.
This is not directed at you personally (just in case you misinterpret my comment again)
What we need are people in positions of power that care.
Okay then - so how do we get those people to materialize?
Absent "appeals to collective action" which you've already determined is never going to work.
That is simply a hard sell, always has been, and most of us are to blame for the consequences...
It seems pretty clear to me that specifically US policy would have been MUCH more climate focussed if people had voted like 60% Al-Gore in 2000 (who ran 100% on that platform). But that option was basically on the table, people went like "meh, might as well take generic republican junior instead" and then got distracted by counter-jihad for the decade after.
Now most of the damage is already done, and the same things that would've really helped in 2000 are much less useful now because they're late.
And its not like Europeans did much better in the meantime, but they at least have the excuse that their baseline emissions are about half US level already (per capita) and governance is more fractured (by design), too...
- the slow-boiling frog
I don't know how you "have to force myself quite hard to take this seriously" when the environment around us has been degrading faster than scientist have been claiming for years.
Maybe you're confused by how events related to climate catastrophe unfold? It's not like a nuclear bomb where one day everything is fine, then the next every thing is gone. That case is different in two major ways: the break down is instantaneous and a new normal is almost immediately established.
The final warning for climate is about a process that once started can no longer be stopped.
You don't have to "trust the science", you can literally watch it happen as the arctic heads rapidly towards a blue ocean event (see "arctic death spiral"), crop failures have been increasing, California has suffered extreme years of drought followed by this current season of incredible floods, lake mead reaches a lower level than it has since it was filled, Texas is subjected to extreme weather (in both directions) causing year after year failure of the power grid.
These things will continue to happen, will happen more frequently and at greater magnitude for the rest of your life.
If you feel unconvinced it's because you're in a state of denial (which in part of grieving so not terribly surprising or uncommon).
“the environment around us has been degrading faster than scientist have been claiming for years.”
But not faster than science reporting has been claiming, since they have pretty reliably been claiming apocalypse in 5-10 years for 60 years now.
Every article since they has made use of increasingly unrealistic solutions to create the illusions that there is more time.
And again, the "apocalypse" is not a single day's event in the case of climate change. Given that fossil fuel usage continues to climb as well as CO2 (and now methane) emissions it's clear we have chosen the worst case path. The only limiting factor is how much hydrocarbons we can suck out of the ground.
We have committed to destruction of our ecosystem and transformation of the biosphere in ways not seen in millions of years on this planet.
You don't need to read the news, you can just look at outside and watch it continue to happen at an escalating rate for the rest of your life.
IMO the situation is that mainstream science said categorically since before 1990 that CO2 emissions lead to unpleasant outcomes, and gives periodic updates on how the world in aggregate is mostly doing worse then planned in emissions and adds some detail to the predicted resulting consequences.
What would you expect from science and science reporting instead?