Greta Thunberg (klimataktivist)

/.../I asked the Australian climate scientist Tom Wigley what he thought of the claim that climate change threatens civilization. “It really does bother me because it’s wrong,” he said. “All these young people have been misinformed. And partly it’s Greta Thunberg’s fault. Not deliberately. But she’s wrong.”

Apocalyptic statements like these have real-world impacts. In September, a group of British psychologists said children are increasingly suffering from anxiety from the frightening discourse around climate change. In October, an activist with Extinction Rebellion (”XR”) — an environmental group founded in 2018 to commit civil disobedience to draw awareness to the threat its founders and supporters say climate change poses to human existence — and a videographer, were kicked and beaten in a London Tube station by angry commuters. And last week, an XR co-founder said a genocide like the Holocaust was “happening again, on a far greater scale, and in plain sight” from climate change.

När jag var ung hade jag en god vän som tog sitt liv. Hon begick självmord strax innan hon skulle fylla arton, och passade på när resten av familjen var på semester så att hon säkert skulle vara död innan någon kom hem och hittade henne.

Det var en fruktansvärd och djupt traumatisk händelse både för hennes familj och för alla oss som stod henne nära. Men helt oväntat var det tyvärr inte. Hon hade försökt tidigare, redan som tolvåring. I oljekrisens tid, under det tidiga 1970-talet, hade hennes unga och sårbara sinne nämligen blivit så påverkat av mediernas alarmistiska krisrapporter om jordens nära förestående undergång att hon helt enkelt inte stod ut. I ångest och vanmakt tömde hon varenda pillerburk som fanns i föräldrarnas medicinskåp, och sköljde ner med en flaska ogräsgift. Det var ett under att hon överlevde och det tog tid innan hon fick lämna sjukhuset.
Någon livslust återfick hon dock aldrig, trots hennes föräldrars enträgna strävan efter att hjälpa henne och ge henne hoppet tillbaka. Och andra gången lyckades hon med sin
föresats. I år blir det 40 år sedan hon dog, flickan som var min vän och som aldrig blev
vuxen.
/.../
På sista tiden har jag tänkt mer än vanligt på henne, när medierna – mångfalt fler dessutom –formligen svämmar över av klimatalarmism. Jordens undergång har aldrig varit så nära förestående och den medborgare som inte känner närmast outhärdlig flygskam och klimatångest kallas ”klimatförnekare” eller ”klimatförvillare”. Medierna beskriver dem på ungefär samma sätt som 1600-talets prästerskap beskrev människor som antogs kunna förvilla människor med trolldom. Ännu höjs inga röster för att dessa
”förvillare” ska brännas på bål, men att avskaffa demokratin är numera tänkbart för oroväckande många. Allt är tillåtet eftersom jorden ändå kommer att gå under om några år.
/.../
Så var kommer det att sluta? Sannolikt inte med att jorden går under, i alla fall inte under den närmaste framtiden. Men möjligen med en förlorad generation – om inte vuxenvärlden återgår till att vara vuxen.

Michael Mann, Professor of Meteorology, PennState University:
The article paints an overly bleak picture by overstating some of the science. It exaggerates for example, the near-term threat of climate “feedbacks” involving the release of frozen methane (the science on this is much more nuanced and doesn’t support the notion of a game-changing, planet-melting methane bomb. It is unclear that much of this frozen methane can be readily mobilized by projected warming).

Also, I was struck by erroneous statements like this one referencing “satellite data showing the globe warming, since 1998, more than twice as fast as scientists had thought.”

That’s just not true. The study in question simply showed that one particular satellite temperature dataset that had tended to show *less* warming that the other datasets, has now been brought in line with the other temperature data after some problems with that dataset were dealt with.

Richard Betts, Professor, Met Office Hadley Centre & University of Exeter:
While it is clear that ongoing warming of the global climate would eventually have very severe consequences, the concept of the Earth becoming uninhabitable within anywhere near the timescales suggested in the article is pure hyperbole. The author has clearly done very extensive research and addresses a number of climate threats that are indeed major issues, but generally the narrative ramps up the threat to go beyond the level that is supported by science.

Daniel Swain, Researcher, UCLA, and Research Fellow, National Center for Atmospheric Research:
This is an unusual piece in that it accurately describes some of the most dire consequences of unabated global warming but focuses almost exclusively on worst case scenarios. In doing so, it provides a compelling narrative of what could happen in the future, but does not accurately characterize the likelihood of particular outcomes relative to what is justifiable based upon existing scientific evidence.

Charles Koven, Staff Scientist, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab:
The article, while it does thoughtfully discuss some serious implications of climate change, also goes beyond the evidence in a number of instances of its exploration of worst-case scenarios.

Alexis Berg, Associate Research Scholar, Princeton University:
This article focuses on the high-end scenario for global warming—high emissions and/or high climate sensitivity, high impacts. It selects recent research that highlights these outcomes. I am sympathetic to the author’s efforts to raise awareness about such scenarios, including impacts that are not always well discussed, and agree that we tend to focus too much on median outcomes. Nevertheless, I think the article would have gained from a more explicit acknowledgement that this particular focus is the goal of the article, as well as a from an explicit discussion (even if only qualitative) of the probabilities associated with these scenarios. Absent that, I am afraid the article, as such, feels misleading, or at least confusing for the general public.

In addition, the article contains a number of claims that are factually wrong, and a number of claims that are, to my knowledge, not substantiated by research.

I was also concerned by the implied claim that this article, being written after interviews with many climate scientists, somehow reflects scientists’ true opinion about global warming. I don’t believe it does.

What this article suggest to me is that we, as as community of scientists and science journalists, need to find a better way to more accurately discuss climate change projections and to convey the associated risks to the public.

Ironically, I am a co-author of a recent article in the journal Nature Geoscience (see e.g. this piece), using that very same new, corrected, satellite dataset, that shows that past climate model simulations slightly **over-predicted** the actual warming during the first decade of the 21st century, likely because of a mis-specification of natural factors like solar variations and volcanic eruptions. Once these are accounted for, the models and observations are pretty much in line—the warming of the globe is pretty much progressing AS models predicted… which is bad enough.

The evidence that climate change is a serious problem that we must contend with now, is overwhelming on its own. There is no need to overstate the evidence, particularly when it feeds a paralyzing narrative of doom and hopelessness.