What would you do if a new report stated global warming and climate change was worse than currently believed?

Question

Assume a new report by someone like the IPCC was released in three months time. The report states that the world is warming faster than previously thought and the potential consequences of climate change are more dramatic than we've seen so far, not radically different but perhaps 10 to 20% more serious.

Would it prompt you to start acting on climate change, to do more than you're already doing, not to do anything...?

Answer 1

To me in person it wouldn't do any difference because I already believe it's worse than IPCC states in its previous reports. Even though some people think the IPCC reports are very biased it works in both directions and what they write is only what every scientist and politician can agree upon. Hence it becomes a middle way story. (This does not mean I believe that it will become as bad as Al Gore's movie describes it in the short term.)

So, though it would feel sad to see my thoughts confirmed I would hope that it could get some more politicians to work harder to cooperate on a global scale.

Answer 2

What would I do? Probably sigh heavily.

The issue for me is not “how bad” global warming is going to be. Therefore increasing the claims of “badness” will not make me behave any differently.

To illustrate what I mean, let’s take as an example a man standing on a street corner, wearing a placard stating “The end of the world is nigh”. Naturally, you don’t believe him, but, just for fun, you ask him exactly how “nigh” the end of the world is. Let’s say he replies “next year”. A week later you see the man again, and this time he tells you that “nigh” means “next month.” Are you any more likely to try and do something about it, just because his claims have got worse? Of course not. You didn’t believe him before and you still don’t.

Thus, given that I’m a sceptic, I would perceive a new report making claims that “global warming is worse that we thought” as a cynical attempt to get additional people onto the bandwagon by scaring them even more than before.

The challenge facing the scientists within the community working on climate change is not to scare more people onto the bandwagon, no true scientist would care about such things, but to try and reduce, or better yet eliminate, the uncertainties in the data.

The fundamental problem with the whole global warming debate is that there is too much *opinion* and too little science. I wonder how NASA’s Apollo program would have fared if they had based decisions on similar levels of personal opinion? I would suggest that a) we would still be waiting to get a man on the moon, and b) many more people would have lost their lives.

People need to stop trying to convince others by charismatic public-speaking. See for example criticisms of Gore (http://ff.org/centers/csspp/pdf/20070522_isdo.pdf ) and Hansen (http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/education/reports/hansen/HansenTestimonyCritique.pdf ). Rather, we need to get the science right.

The sceptics will accept the science when the facts are incontrovertible.

Currently they are not.

Answer 3

in basic terms seem on the solutions above! everyone examining the comments below could think of that the scientific debate approximately anthropogenic climate replace is super open. It particularly annoys me while human beings on comments boards make specious claims like "the ice caps have been melting for the final 4 hundred,000 years". Says who? the place are you components? All this does is confuse the concern for non-scientists. maximum folk in basic terms don't have time or power to income the analyze for themselves, so as that they only pay attention to the persons who're asserting issues that they choose to pay attention. This works the two techniques, of direction, however the version for denialists is that the technological know-how is overwhelmingly in help of ACC - no rely what your correspondents right here could choose to have self assurance. you may desire to endure in ideas that there are some relatively wealthy and useful businesses available who've a vested pastime in to verify that humanity keeps to burn fossil fuels, come what might. Is it any ask your self that lack of understanding and confusion abound while lots of the main important businesses in the international are investment it?

Answer 4

It would prompt me to look further for independent corroboration that the report is true.

There is so much in the way of revenue, reputation and work invested in environmental issues that I no longer trust everything I am told.

We have a company in the UK that sells electricity allegedely generated from wind-farms into businesses. The guy that runs it is now a millionnaire because everyone likes to be seen to be green. On the face of it this is a "good thing" but, when you dig a little deeper it turns out that only 25% of the energy he sells comes from renewable resources.

I do not deny that there are problems, I do not deny that we need to act - but I do not trust politicians, businessmen or sometimes even academics to give a balanced and unbiased view when their own careers are at stake. We are all in danger of making knee-jerk reactions (I remember in the 70s everyone was worried about the next ice age because we had a few cold winters in a row) without proper balanced consideration.

........and I get very upset when someone like Sting or Madonna tells me to save the planet by half-filling my kettle, before they jet off to their private hide-aways in the sun for a wee holiday !

Answer 5

It "is" worse then we believe, everybody is trying to make this as easy as possible, especially the politicians, but there's one thing nobody seems to be taking into account and that's what I call lead time, we're trying to ease people into being green but it takes 10 or 20 years to really have a noticeable impact, because everyone can't go out and buy a new car tomorrow so there will still be many older cars on the road for decades to come. Not everyone can go out and refit their homes with solar heat and hot water and electricity, at least not without government help, and there's example after example that will take many years to switch over and all during that time we're
still dumping god awful amounts of crap into the environment.
If people like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet and whoever really want to make a difference they should use their vast resources to help people convert their homes to solar, this would not only help the environment but would put a lot of people to work, not illegals but Americans, or help them get into high MPG cars, or plant trees.

Answer 6

Politics is the art of the possible and if a new report was widely accepted I would feel inclined to be more strenuous in pursuing my individual efforts to reduce my carbon footprint. I feel though that the public would still be sceptical given British weather forecaster' habit of forecasting snow three times for each time it occurs.

Edited Comment: I believe in global warming and man's role in it, it is just that I am sceptical of the precision of models which predict a wide range of possible consequences of it.

Answer 7

I'd roll my eyes and treat it like the news we've been receiving for the past couple years. like its crap.

Look, when the Enviro-whacks first warned of gloabl warming, they said it was about 100 years away, and the temp change would be a few degrees...when THAT news didnt scare people, the enviro-whacks changed it to 50 years, and 3-5 degrees...when THAT news didn't scare people, now they have it to 20-30 years, and 6-10 degrees...

well, THAT finally scared enough people (Who can't think for themselves)...so NOW all of the sudden, "The jury is out" on this issue...never mind that the very principles upon which the "research" is based are flawed...that doesn't matter, as long as they now have your attention...

so a new report, raising the danger ANOTHER 20% would be even more laughable, and make these "scientists" even MORE wrong.

Answer 8

I don't think it would change anything for me because I'm already doing what I can and I'm actually expecting the IPCC report to be conservative in its projections because it doesn't take most feedbacks into account.

I'd make sure that everyone I could contact was aware of this new finding and understood it.

Answer 9

I'd do exactly what I am doing now. trying to conserve and save myself money on my utility bills, while helping other do the same by giving friends and family CFLs when i feel like I have money that is burning a hole in my pocket.

Answer 10

Of course the reports are going to state the news is 'the worst thing to happen in recorded history'...bad news sells product!
Right now, they are vending carbon credit snake oil to cure anthropgenic global warming (as if puny humans could possible make the climate! ;) because they could not sell global cooling in the 70's.
Remember, it is the very same 'scientists' who were screaming global disaster and ice age in 1971 that are now yelling that we will all burn in the next few years.
Bull.
It didn't sell then because it was nonsense and it is the same nonsense now.
Their sources are the very same charts and temperature records, just rewritten with the new agenda in focus.