The Environmental and Conservation Issues Room
I have mentioned this before- there are many climate models, but all we hear about are the couple of doomsday ones.
Yes, climate change is bad — but scientists must ‘chill’ when it comes to doomsday scenarios, experts say
There are many studies out there warning people that climate change could lead to the end of our world. Yes, climate change is very real and poses a serious threat to the health of our planet. However, researchers at the University of Colorado-Boulder have a simple message for scientists who focus on the most dire effects of global warming: chill out.
In a letter in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the authors write that many scientists are focusing way too much of the worst-case scenarios of climate change and environmental shifts all around the globe. While the team notes that these problems are real, constantly preaching impending doom is counter-productive and overshadows the more likely outcomes of global warming. These more-likely outcomes fall into the middle of the climate change conversation — not good, but also not extremely bad.
“We shouldn’t overstate or understate our climate future,” says CU Boulder assistant professor Matt Burgess, a fellow at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), in a media release. “People need to think in terms of gradations, not absolutes. Yes, we need to be aware of the extremes, like climate solutions that get us to net zero before mid century, or on the flipside, global catastrophes. But it’s what’s in the middle that is more likely. And that deserves more research.”
The letter answers back to a recent study in PNAS called “Climate Endgame.” Led by the University of Cambridge’s Luke Kemp, the report argues that catastrophic climate futures need to be the main focus of climate research — including scenarios that predict human extinction.
Preaching catastrophe ignores what will likely happen
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Originally Posted by RMNIXON
