Here's what Lars Fosdal said in his share of John Baez's post:

Here's what Lars Fosdal said in his share of John Baez's post:
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Winter is ... unpredictable

The possible impacts of the most serious scenarios are so grave that they appear to be almost unthinkable.

I guess that's why it is so easy to take to denial over acceptance.  But the scientists are right - we need to focus on the opportunity for change and deal with it as it comes, rather than to go into full panic doomsday mode.

Terrifying post by John Baez and don't forget to read his sources as well.
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Originally shared by John Baez

Global warming: managing the terror

Climate scientists have been working hard to understand global warming.  But they have a lot to deal with.  First: hacking, lawsuits and death threats.  And second: the stress of trying to stay objective and scientific when you discover scary things.

Jason Box is studying how Petermann Glacier, in Greenland, is melting.  He caused a stir when he read a colleague's remarks about newly discovered plumes of methane bubbling up through the Arctic ocean.   He tweeted:

"If even a small fraction of Arctic sea floor carbon is released to the atmosphere, we're f'd."

His remark quickly got amplified and distorted, with headlines blaring:

CLIMATOLOGIST: METHANE PLUMES FROM THE ARCTIC MEAN WE'RE SCREWED

Notice this is not what he said.  He said if.  In fact, it seems that human-produced carbon dioxide will be much more important for global warning than Arctic methane release, at least for the rest of this century.   A few centuries down the line, if we don't get a handle on this problem, then it could get scary.

But when it comes to emotions, the issue tends to boil down to: "are we fucked?"

Gavin Schmidt, one of the climate scientists whose emails got hacked, had this reaction:

"I don't agree. I don't think we're fucked. There is time to build sustainable solutions to a lot of these things. You don't have to close down all the coal-powered stations tomorrow. You can transition. It sounds cute to say, 'Oh, we're fucked and there's nothing we can do,' but it's a bit of a nihilistic attitude. We always have the choice. We can continue to make worse decisions, or we can try to make ever better decisions. 'Oh, we're fucked! Just give up now, just kill me now,' that's just stupid."

This is from an interview with John H. Richardson in Esquire. Richardson probed him a bit, and that's when it gets interesting:

"The methane thing is actually something I work on a lot, and most of the headlines are crap. There's no actual evidence that anything dramatically different is going on in the Arctic, other than the fact that it's melting pretty much everywhere."

But climate change happens gradually and we've already gone up almost 1 degree centigrade and seen eight inches of ocean rise. Barring unthinkably radical change, we'll hit 2 degrees in thirty or forty years and that's been described as a catastrophe—melting ice, rising waters, drought, famine, and massive economic turmoil. And many scientists now think we're on track to 4 or 5 degrees—even Shell oil said that it anticipates a world 4 degrees hotter because it doesn't see "governments taking the steps now that are consistent with the 2 degrees C scenario." That would mean a world racked by economic and social and environmental collapse.

"Oh yeah," Schmidt says, almost casually. "The business-as-usual world that we project is really a totally different planet. There's going to be huge dislocations if that comes about."

But things can change much quicker than people think, he says. Look at attitudes on gay marriage.

And the glaciers?

"The glaciers are going to melt, they're all going to melt," he says. "But my reaction to Jason Box's comments is—what is the point of saying that? It doesn't help anybody."

As it happens, Schmidt was the first winner of the Climate Communication Prize from the American Geophysical Union, and various recent studies in the growing field of climate communications find that frank talk about the grim realities turns people off—it's simply too much to take in. But strategy is one thing and truth is another. Aren't those glaciers water sources for hundreds of millions of people?

"Particularly in the Indian subcontinent, that's a real issue," he says. "There's going to be dislocation there, no question."

And the rising oceans? Bangladesh is almost underwater now. Do a hundred million people have to move?

"Well, yeah. Under business as usual. But I don't think we're fucked."

Resource wars, starvation, mass migrations . . .

"Bad things are going to happen. What can you do as a person? You write stories. I do science. You don't run around saying, 'We're fucked! We're fucked! We're fucked!' It doesn't—it doesn't incentivize anybody to do anything."

So you see, Schmidt had made up his mind to be determinedly optimistic, because he thinks that's the right approach.  And maybe he's right.  But it's not easy.

Jason Box doesn't actually run around saying "we're fucked".  But here's what he says:

"There's a lot that's scary," he says, running down the list—the melting sea ice, the slowing of the conveyor belt. Only in the last few years were they able to conclude that Greenland is warmer than it was in the twenties, and the unpublished data looks very hockey-stick-ish. He figures there's a 50 percent chance we're already committed to going beyond 2 degrees centigrade and agrees with the growing consensus that the business-as-usual trajectory is 4 or 5 degrees. "It's, um... bad. Really nasty."

The big question is, What amount of warming puts Greenland into irreversible loss? That's what will destroy all the coastal cities on earth. The answer is between 2 and 3 degrees. "Then it just thins and thins enough and you can't regrow it without an ice age. And a small fraction of that is already a huge problem—Florida's already installing all these expensive pumps."

and:

"It's unethical to bankrupt the environment of this planet," he says. "That's a tragedy, right?" Even now, he insists, the horror of what is happening rarely touches him on an emotional level... although it has been hitting him more often recently. "But I—I—I'm not letting it get to me. If I spend my energy on despair, I won't be thinking about opportunities to minimize the problem."

You should read the whole article:

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a36228/ballad-of-the-sad-climatologists-0815/