I'm surprised these politicians can hear about the trans-polar shipping route opening up, and still disbelieve.

Sure, there are people who say "no greenhouse gases, no global warming" and stop thinking at that point. Some of them are in positions of power. This kind of attitude is dangerous and could lead to big mistakes in the long term. On the other hand, the people who say "greenhouse gases, but maybe not much global warming" or "land use and healthy ecosystems are most important" or "gradually moving toward less carbon in fuel is the best approach" never seem to get a shout-out from the activists.

It's usually more like: "We're trying to save these neanderthals and they're stupid/tricked by evil so they're going to end up killing us all."

Can you see how this doesn't lead to healthy cooperation? The "no greenhouse gases, no global warming" people might not know how to study the climate, but do you really believe that all of them were fed that mantra by bad actors, and none of them are just lashing out at bullies?

From my perspective, the activists started their political campaign to regulate CO2 back when the Science (IPCC FAR) said "the observed increase could be largely due to this natural variability" and I have been suspicious of their motives ever since. You want me to be mindful of carbon in the atmosphere, measured temperature trends, changing ecosystems, pollution, and resource use? Great, those are all smart things to care about.

You want me to support your political campaign to regulate the gas that I exhale, because otherwise there will be a doomsday, and if I don't agree I'm either stupid or evil? Ehhhhh, no thanks.

>You want me to support your political campaign to regulate the gas that I exhale, because otherwise there will be a doomsday, and if I don't agree I'm either stupid or evil? Ehhhhh, no thanks.

The fact that you exhale co2 is just not relevant. It's not your exhalation that is menacing the future of humans and other animals. It's the "exhalations" of industrial-scale energy generation (and also industrial-scale agriculture, etc) that are the problem. Surely you see that, yes?

> stupid or evil

I'm not accusing you, but there absolutely are some evil people at work here. These are people who know (and in many cases have known for decades) that what they're doing - large scale atmospheric dumping of co2 - is going to cause real harm and suffering to fellow humans, but choose to do it anyway because they personally profit from it and their wealth insulates them from the consequences within their lifetime.

I don't trust you, or anyone else, with the power to make this determination.

> These are people who know (and in many cases have known for decades) that what they're doing - large scale atmospheric dumping of co2 - is going to cause real harm and suffering to fellow humans

It is absurd to suggest that anyone "knows" what a system as complex as the Earth will be like in the future. Many people believe that this is the most likely future, and I'm sure some of them don't care.

it's absurd to suggest radiative transfer and heat retention aren't well understood scientific phenomena.

Regarding your exhalation comment, the specific problem is not CO2 itself. The problem is liberating CO2 from fossil-fuel sinks where it has been sequestered away from the atmosphere for millions of years.

That was the time for gradual moves to fuels with lower carbon, and a gradual shift to more consideration of the ecosystem.

Whilst the scientific consensus of how serious and urgent a problem we face was still being honed, the fossil fuel industry was pretty unequivocal about it. Clearly they don't fit the same political or activist labels yet seem to be painting a future just as unpleasant as the most strident activists. A future that is going to require regulation and restriction of some choices as "being mindful" isn't going to cut any production or output from the plastic factory, or internal combustion, or any reduction in the worst forms of agriculture (grain fed cattle).

Humanity, or more precisely, political parties and industry ignored clear warnings for 40 years. We seem to have left it much too late for gradual anything to work. We ran out of time, thanks to a succession of governments across the globe, of all colours, sweeping it under the rug. 40 years of "not on my watch".

The scientific consensus is over 97% of climate related scientists find there is an urgent problem. What should we do now?

As an aside I try not to heed much from activists, political, religious or anything else, even on issues where I sympathise. The sensible and accurate discussion is usually found a little further from the margins.

nope

> "We're trying to save these neanderthals and they're stupid/tricked by evil so they're going to end up killing us all."

this but unironically

> but do you really believe that all of them were fed that mantra by bad actors, and none of them are just lashing out at bullies?

ah yes, the guys with total political power are being bullied

> You want me to support your political campaign to regulate the gas that I exhale, because otherwise there will be a doomsday, and if I don't agree I'm either stupid or evil

yep

Do you expect to live another 20+ years? Do you have children or young people you care about? If so, I think you have plenty of skin in the game.

This sounds like at least a mildly stupid mindset to me. "Some people associated with your movement made an assumption about me that I don't like, so I'm not going to participate regardless of its merit."

If not "stupid", how about "spiteful, stubborn, and unwilling to face hard truths"?

Humans react differently to the same information based on how it is presented. It seems to me that activists - specifically those on the left - often fail to take this into account.

I almost always agree with those activists. I certainly agree about global warming. But - pragmatically - if your goal is to convince skeptics, you ought to be very concerned about tone. For better or worse, how you tell your story is at least as important as the evidence backing up your story.

The IPCC report is typically more conservative, as it requires a consensus of a large number of scientists. However, even in this case, this phrase is a qualifier that follows a number of stronger statements (and also notes that it could be hiding further warming). For example, the executive summary (we are certain of the following), point two ends with

> These increases will enhance the greenhouse effect, resulting on average in an additional warming of the Earth's surface.

The earlier Charney report (1979), has in its summary

> Their consensus has been that increasing carbon dioxide will lead to a warmer earth

and

> If carbon dioxide continues to increase, the study group finds no reason to doubt that climate changes will result and no reason to believe that these changes will be negligible

Even in 1979, long before the FAR, it was clear that carbon dioxide would alter the climate. Claiming that activists were jumping the gun on the scientific case in 1990 is not fair. They may have ulterior motives, but wanting to regulate CO2 in 1990 is not evidence of this.

The science has significantly progressed since then, such that the evidence is now even clearer. There are arguments to suggest that it would be cheaper to pay for the adaptation to climate change, but unfortunately it is now very clear that the costs for that will be high.

first 10 years - there's some problems here that maybe we should think about doing something about it.

second 10 years - ok heh heh, well the stuff we were talking about I guess you guys thought it was a joke but really we think there might be a cause for concern and we should somehow rein it back a notch. Please?

third 10 years - really, we're serious. Things cannot continue like this there will be real problems look at all the data that we have been amassing since we started talking about it.

forty years in - are you people kidding me? I am really starting to doubt some of your people's intentions are in the right place. This has civilization threatening consequences, at the worst maybe even extinction of human life. We need to get a handle on this now, look at the data. The people who say the data is lying are themselves lying or at worst very confused.

50 years in - We're trying to save these neanderthals and they're stupid/tricked by evil so they're going to end up killing us all.

Now I realize that someone doesn't like to hear that they're stupid or evil, but when the subject under discussion is extinction of human life and you don't want to support the political campaigns to do something about it because of the tone of that campaign?

That's like that one time my friend was walking around in the start of a hurricane hitting shore (not knowing anything because somewhat insular) and the cop said hey jerk get inside it's a hurricane and it could kill you! If my friend had then taken that warning and said well, I don't like his tone I think I will just walk around some more, when he finally died I guess everyone would think well he was stupid, and if he said I'm gonna make all these school kids walk around with me, they would have said well he was evil.

And of course if we were really to be accurate we are at least 70 years in on warnings that human activity was negatively affecting the climate at a serious level.

199X: We have proxies that show 1998 is the warmest year in history, and things are warming so fast that we're in serious trouble. Give us power!

200X: OK, luckily 1998 was an outlier but we're still warming too much on average. The sea is going to rise and the Arctic is going to be ice-free. Give us power!

201X: OK, the Arctic still has some ice but the Northwest Passage is opening up. The seas are still rising a bit, and here are some scary local flooding and erosion stories. Coral reefs are all going to die. Give us power!

Are climate researchers trying to get elected into positions of power? I haven't seen any evidence of that.

As far as I can tell most people just want to stop burning down the house we live in.

Bush junior’s usage comes to mind immediately.

The linked wiki article shows a fairly even divide in its use though. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/You%27re_either_with_us,_or_...

That's because it is.

We're realizing that we're in much deeper shit climate-wise, than we used to think. It's a literal mass extinction, and yet people continue to squabble about stupid petty nonsense. But there's money to be made by appealing to the ignorant comfortable masses.

Every day we read of Professors not receiving tenure because they believe in global warming. Articles that support global warming being rejected from journals. Notable commentators suggesting the belief in global warming should be criminalized.

Whatever.

Good thing there's real scientists conducting this research and releasing reports. But let's instead ignore that and go off our personal brief system instead...

The US met the goals in the Paris Agreement this year, mostly by using domestic natural gas. This kind of progress is not going to stop because everyone wants to go back to being covered in coal soot. We'll probably be using mostly carbon-free energy sources by the end of the century.

Or, people might try so desperately to claim the power to "save the world" that a war breaks out and we go back to burning wood for survival.

Your statement that wood has less energy for its carbon emissions is highly misleading. It may be technically correct, but since that carbon recently came out of the atmosphere, the net emission is zero. The actual trend, then, is zero carbon emissions, then a lot, then less. That seems rather uninformative when looking at where things would head in the future.

It certainly did not. Where did you get that information?

That's around 60 years too late, by current estimations.

Change needs to happen a lot faster than that.

One loud guy says to the other, “my professor at [mumbled] college told us that there’s no way that smoking can cause birth defects. He said that research would be unethical because they’d have to force women to have babies and force them to smoke. Blah blah blah ...” All the guys around him nod in agreement then go on to share screeds about how the liberals are ruining all the fun the world and violating their personal freedoms.

And, I’m thinking to myself, “What the F is going on?” They were talking confidently enough that even I second-guessed my my beliefs on smoking. So, I hit Google Scholar, read the abstracts of the top 5 papers (out of hundreds), and then felt relief that, yes, the science on this topic seems legit and well-explored. And, yes, it is dangeous for pregnant women to smoke.

But, I’m still bothered. These guys seemed like educated, and likely intelligent, people. And, yet, they’re trapped in a political belief system that is making them doubt science wholesale. Some authority figures (likely with same political stance) can tell them ‘facts’ with enough conviction that these guys buy it without question. And, worse, they go on to confidently spread memes about the unreliability of science, scientists, and the liberal political agenda.

To me, as a scientist, this is scary as hell. For 300+ years, we’ve been using science as our most reliable way to understand the world and make rational predictions. And, now, people are disavowing science if it slightly goes against their belief system. What does this means for the future? I don’t know, but I can’t imagine that it’s good.

(By the way, I don’t consider myself a ‘liberal’, although that’s what I am called these days. Generally, I just try to learn a lot about things and side with what seems like the most rational position.)

It seems a small minority on the left and probably slightly larger one on the right love to pigeonhole people into these categories. Meanwhile the majority don't really think of themselves in those terms and are feeling politically homeless.

- The replication crisis is real

- The university system is a huge and corrupt industry

- The university is no longer a "safe space" for wrong-thinkers

But sure, whenever someone rejects good science it's the fault of those darn Republicans!

I can't think of anyone who actually says those things, is why I ask. People opposed to reducing emissions usually tend not to think about it or dismiss it, in my experience.

Sure, short sighted, profit focused decisions create a long term detriment, but the system that encourages and rewards those types of decisions is also a big problem.

When we live in a world where humans can't survive between the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn because wet humidity will kill them. Then we're going to see a lot of migration and society is going to change in a big way.

the term "eat the rich" springs to mind.

It's like the early days of the space race. Scientists would say things are dangerous and were just being alarmist, or think it was safe then the whole thing blew up killing everyone aboard. Scientists can't always predict the future as accurately as they think.

I don't think this is a good reason to just blithely hope for the best, though.

Climate model predictions of global warming have generally been fairly consistent in projecting future warming, as shown in this animated chart:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BZ38rf7F3al/

The chart is taken from this 2017 article: Analysis: How well have climate models projected global warming?:

> "While some models projected less warming than we’ve experienced and some projected more, all showed surface temperature increases between 1970 and 2016 that were not too far off from what actually occurred, particularly when differences in assumed future emissions are taken into account."

https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-well-have-climate-m...

In general the climate science has been very sloppy so they lost a lot of trust. This starts with the name greenhouse effect that describes something different from the main effect in a greenhouse (warm air cannot escape vs reflected radiation). And goes on with melting glaciers in the Himalayas in the next 30 years. Climate gate didn’t increase trust either.

Of course this doesn’t prove that climate scientists are wrong. But they appear more confident than they should.

But that may give some insight into /why/ so many people, including intelligent ones, disregard climate change.

In our current era humans are contributing to the changing climate in a very big way given our industrialization, the extreme levels of population and economy dependent on extracting oil and coal from the ground and burning it. That does not change the fact that climate has been changing even before humans could have any noticeable impact on it, and those changes were often very fast and sometimes cyclical.

If it's just cyclical, then why are we blaming our activity?

If you've decided to do nothing in response to the reports, the easiest talking point to garner support is to say the science is biased, unreliable, and so on. That talking point has worked for decades. And it has a real impact with people who take it at face value.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90243700/the-trump-admin-says-sc...

https://www.google.co.nz/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/201...

That being said, the politicians might have been behaving sensibly. I've not been following it as closely as I used to, but there have been some data points suggesting solar/wind energy sources are now starting to cross key thresholds and become cheaper than the traditional fossil fuels. If that is so, the problem will solve itself without the politicians needing to step in and screw up the economy.

This other article from 2017 https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/07/antarcti... states that

> the last time atmospheric carbon dioxide was as high as it is today, and the temperature was about what it’s expected to be in 2050, sea levels were up to 70 feet higher than today.

That's going to cause mass migrations in all countries of the world, rich and poor, and destroy the logistics that let us live like we do now. Obviously we'll adapt but there are going to be maybe billions of deaths (famine and diseases). I think I'm lucky because I'll be dead by then. However I could see the first coastal cities going a little bit underwater.

Ultimately we elect our politicians so we are responsible for what they decide and not decide to look at. We'll get what we deserve.

The world has an inexorable thirst for energy. It's great if there are more watt-hours being generated by green sources, but at the same time, there is what seems to be an inexorable growth in pollution causing sources. Example: Look at how many cars are sold each year to the growing middle class in China and India.

Yet I have never, not once, not ever seen this point expressed by any person of significance.

Every single time, it turns out to be a strawman constructed by taking statements out of context, or applying dumb overly-literal interpretations to someone's words. Always.

If someone could point to any example ever of any significant person stating that the climate is not changing whatsoever, or that humans cannot possibly affect climate in the slightest, I'd be very interested. Not taking two words out of context - I mean someone who clearly means that and sticks to that message. Does such a person exist anywhere today? What is his or her name?

This is Marco Rubio, US senator, who claims global warming is not caused by humans.

““I don’t agree with the notion that some are putting out there, including scientists, that somehow there are actions we can take today that would actually have an impact on what’s happening in our climate,” Rubio said in an interview that aired Sunday on ABC’s This Week. “Our climate is always changing.”” - http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/marco-rubio-global-warming

Roger Wicker, US senator voted No on an amendment to confirm Climate Change is real. http://time.com/3677496/climate-change-wicker-inhofe/

There’s a list of senators who voted against that climate change is caused by humans: https://www.aip.org/fyi/2015/record-key-senate-vote-climate-...

The POTUS has stated multiple times that climate change is a hoax, and has only recently amended that he believes its naturally occurring (not human influenced) https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/donald-trump-global-warmin...

Even with the demand for proof of someone that absolutely denies climate change, you leave in two difficult phrases here: “significant” and “in the slightest”. Both of these give you a rhetorical out on technical merits- anyone who denies climate change will do so using FUD techniques, not outright stating their denial, therefore it’s easy to say no one uses obvious language. The effect however is still the same- politicians and significant figures are spreading FUD about climate change, which is causing climate change and human caused climate change to be called into public question and it prevents legislation being passed to regulate emissions.

>"I don’t agree with the notion that some are putting out there, including scientists, that somehow there are actions we can take today that would actually have an impact on what’s happening in our climate,"

A serious reading would indicate Rubio is saying the US doesn't have policy levers to solve the problem - not that humans cannot ever have any effect on climate.

>Roger Wicker, US senator voted No on an amendment to confirm Climate Change is real

Interesting that he was the only senator to vote no, including Marco Rubio above. Does this give you any pause about your first example? Since you know, you just contradicted yourself right there with your own evidence.

Regarding Wicker himself, his position is "scientific data on rising global temperatures is not conclusive" which is not the same as "humans can't affect climate".

>There’s a list of senators who voted against that climate change is caused by humans

Again, you are lying. They didn't vote against climate change being caused by humans to any degree. They voted against "human activity significantly contributes to climate change" which is a much stronger statement.

Again the pattern: Take any nuanced position and misquote it as saying the climate can't possibly change because of people, and then say how ridiculous it is. It is ridiculous, which is why nobody says that.

Regarding Trump, he did use the word "hoax", but that doesn't mean he thinks the climate never can change at all or that humans can't possibly affect it. Look at what he actually meant.

Snopes is a radically biased source so not useful in this discussion.

Regarding your last paragraph, you are simply moving the goalposts. You changed it from "they deny the climate changes" to "they are politicking to avoid my preferred policies". Nobody would deny that people obfuscate and double-talk in politics. That's not the question at hand.

My position stands.

Just as astonishing as "climate change deniers" are the "climate change fanatics" who thinks climate was static until 200 years ago.

I believe humans are affecting the climate to some degree, but not all. I'm more concerned about preserving the environment/nature/species/forests/etc rather than global warming. I don't think the world is going to end because of global warming. I do think there will be winners ( global north ) and losers ( global south ). And most importantly, I'm against people fearmongering about the climate to sneak in global carbon taxation system to enrich themselves.

Also, for much of the 20th century up until the 1970s, people cherrypicked data points to assure us that we were experiencing global cooling.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/GISSTemperature/g...

Hopefully one day, politics will leave climate science so that people can do real science rather than practicing politics.

Once again, I do believe the climate has been warming in the short term. I do believe humans have contributed to it somewhat. I don't think it is the end of the world. I don't think humans should give up civilization because of global warming. And I don't believe in using climate to give bankers and wall street a global carbon taxation system to gamble on.

If those who want to say that CO2 levels are trending up then there is a significant need to have 1000's upon 1000's of monitoring points worldwide. This way the evidence can be gathered to show what is happening around the globe.

In addition, with these CO2 monitoring points, we need rainfall information, temperature information, plant growth rate information, vehicle usage, manufacturing and population information. We need volcanic activity information, we need land usage information, we need forest and bush fire information. This data collection is only the tip of the "iceberg" of information we need.

Without it, we do not have the evidence profile required to demonstrate what is actually happening around the world. Without that evidence, we are unable to see what needs to be done.

When it boils down to it, there are climate change effects that can be mitigated, there are climate change effects that cannot be mitigated. Choosing strategies that are ineffective is, in many cases, worse than doing nothing.

Take my country Australia for example, many of the species of plant life depend on drought conditions and the subsequent bush fires for the propagation of the species and regeneration of the land. Increased CO2 levels have a beneficial effect on the plant life by either reducing water consumption or increasing density and growth of plants, so that our tree population increases. Increasing forest coverage increases water retention.

Without comprehensive data, we are all blind-sided. There is no level playing field on which we can build the appropriate strategies.

For those who say we must do something now, how do you know that what is being proposed won't make things worse?

https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/global.html#global

Barrow, Alaska, Mauna Loa, Samoa, and the South Pole all show the re same trend.

https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/gl_trend.html

https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/...

We have comprehensive data going back a million years, from deep ice cores.

edit: if anyone wants comprehensive data, a good place to start is with the IPCC reports, particularly the "physical science basis" section: http://ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/

This is a few years old now (they're currently working on the "sixth report") but the data was already clear and uncontroversial.

After water vapour has been removed? What is the effect if water vapour is not removed from the figures? Does this show a different profile or is the profile identical? What was the reasoning for removing the water vapour figures from the readings?

Simple line graphs like these don't give the kinds of profiles needed. We need much more comprehensive mapping. Looking at the sites mentioned, there does not appear to sufficient coverage of all environmental areas to give us a clear picture of what is going on.

My first question is whether or not the measurements are being affected by the local environment profiles - are there other factors we need to know about the areas in which the measurements are taking place? In other words, are there specific site characteristics that effect CO2 measurements that are not applicable elsewhere. For other untested sites, are there site specific characteristics that would show a higher or lower CO2 profile?

You note that the high altitude winds that circle the Pacific Ocean are an advantageous factor for Mauna Loa in determining global CO2 levels. My first question relates to what effects does the Ring of Fire have on these readings and my second would be related to what effects does the circulating wind flows have on these readings.

Just looking at the displayed data leaves me with lots of unanswered questions.

These are questions that can only be answered by having CO2 monitoring stations located in 1000's upon 1000's of different locations: islands, remote sea buoys, mountain ranges, savannahs, forests, high plains, low plains, continuously circling weather balloons, coastal and internal land mass locations, cities, farming communities, deserts and arid land locations, tropical, sub-tropical, temperate zones. We also need all the other data that will give us a handle on what is happening.

For ocean locations, are there dissolved CO2 levels that are affected by changing temperature profiles and is there a atmospheric and ocean transfer of CO2 that affects the readings? Does the plankton population levels change the CO2 levels, is there feedback loops here - positive or negative?

There are many more measurements that can be undertaken to give us a better understanding of what is happening. The complexity is very high and we need non-political active cooperation between many different fields to get the information required.

As I said, we need comprehensive data to be able to determine what strategies are going to be useful and what will be of no use whatsoever.

Your statement: ...we need non-political active cooperation between many different fields.... paints you as a troll. The only people who think the scientific consensus on climate change is the result of political beliefs and not scientifically sound reasons are of a certain persuasion.

Yes, but. Look, I'm not an expert in this area and so I have to hold my hands up and say I don't have a clue and have to defer to those who think they do.

However, in most other areas of research I find people are able to make a simple, clear case with other factors accounted for in a way that climate change seems to lack. I don't know enough about it to know why, maybe it's just the difficulty in ruling out other factors on one planet. But I feel like I've lost count of the number of times a single dataset like that from Mauna Loa is held up, questioned and then... nothing. Well, nothing but pointing out someone isn't an expert.

We should probably do a better job of addressing the questions people have given the importance. Or at least, someone who's an expert should probably do better if they want everyone to buy into the argument.

In general when I read about a study done by experts in an area outside of my expertise and I quickly come up with possible objections to the conclusion I assume this says more about my lack of knowledge than it does about theirs. A lot of times I read an article about math in a newspaper and something is just plain wrong in the article but explaining to a layman why it’s wromg is not so easy. I don’t know if the same thing is true for climate scientists but I suspect it is.

I’m all for people questioning things and wondering why a given conclusion is right. I want though for laymen to use such questions as the basis for furthering their own study and quest for knowledge in that area instead of stopping at the question and concluding the scientists have it wrong.

I work from the basis of there are no stupid questions. Some are difficult, some are annoying, some of them challenging and some are unanswerable, but none of them are stupid.

I didn't take the time to read all the comments in this thread but I did not have the impression you were trying to "debunk climate change" to the contrary, you seemed to accept the presence of problems, but desire more open access to the datasets and presumably tutorials and explanations on how to reproduce analysis (think kaggle scripts).

You correctly point out the danger of inefficient or insufficient diagnosis and treatment of the problems. In a sense you seem to hint at counterintuitive policies, where the straightforward policy would be more costly (and hence the difference in cost could have been spent otherwise on more monitoring or treatment).

Regarding CO2 monitoring on a worldwide scale, it is indeed a problem scientists and engineers are dealing with. None of your downvoters point out any of the found solutions for the problem you visualize, but they do have the time to downvote you, which imho is not entirely fair, so I will take a little time to respond on that front: they use remote sensing of CO2 (and other greenhouse gases), molecules have their own spectra (normal spectra or raman spectra), imaging satellites equiped with lasers take "pictures" of the concentrations of the species under study. These need to be callibrated (at least during the start of their program, and probably periodically throughout the satellite's mission). They can use selected ground stations, or airborne labs measuring CO2 levels. Then the whole picture can be interpreted.

There's a lot of unhelpful vile, I presume mostly coming from ex-denialists. There's that saying that goes like: at first they laugh at you, then they vehemently oppose you, and then they not only agree, but pretend they were on the side of history all along... These ex-denialists lack the knowledge to help others see the light, but are more than willing to poop "in the name of their new team" on anyonne who seems to be still in denial...

Any gap in my knowledge can well be a reflection of the science. The question I asked about the removal of water vapour figures and why is simply not answered here. As a matter of course for publicly disseminated information, the reasoning for this removal should be explicitly available as well as all the graphs related to having the information included as well as what they presented. That is their responsibility if they want buy-in by the general public.

As far as calling someone a troll for stating about non-political cooperation, I have worked for many different kinds of companies and organisations over the decades, private, public and government. In all of them, politics was a normal mode of life, except where certain people were able to protect their staff from it. When politics was not involved, we could achieve much and did achieve much. You demonstrate that politics is alive and well by using the word troll.

I don't care about consensus, I care about the data and what it indicates for me and all the generations that follow. I am not interested in strategies that will be ineffective. Without the data we just don't know. If you want to believe the experts without them providing their full reasoning and assumptions, fair enough, you are entitled to that. But I want more, a lot more. I want the data so that it can be analysed by many people so that we can see what it shows. I want to know the assumptions made in the data collection and analysis done. I want to see what interactions are occurring that we can measure. I don't expect consensus, I don't expect agreement as to what it means. But I do expect enough people of different persuasions to get together to hammer out possible strategies for moving forward.

If all we have is name calling, then we are not going to develop any effective beneficial strategies for moving forward. If questions are asked then they need answered, clearly and in detail. If these questions are not answered then a major problem exists. You don't build confidence in your expertise if you disparage those who are asking difficult or annoying questions.

The important thing here is the collection of data and across a very broad range of fields. Without that publicly available data, with many eyes looking at it, do you really think somebody, anybody can come up with the appropriate strategies for the future?

Climate change is inevitable, it is very real. What we can do to mitigate the effects effectively is dependent on much more knowledge than is currently available. We need to get that comprehensive data across all sorts of fields and get it fast.