this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2024
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I was in the audience at Web 2.0 Summit in 2008 when Al Gore said on stage that according to scientists this would happen "within five years".
His actual statement:
No, this is not the statement I refer to. Youtube link exists in a comment for all to verify.
https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/arctic-sea-ice/
I guess the models and estimates changed. Science is like that: it responds to new discoveries. It's only a minor difference in the time scale though: whether it's 2013 or 2030, we're in serious trouble now.
It's the difference between scientific consensus and doomists.
Scientific consensus isn't that the north pole sea will be ice free in the summer in the next few years.
Pretty amazing to see all these downvotes on a purely factual statement. Watch it yourselves:
https://youtu.be/7hI5t3Uwfkk?t=1619&si=XtZDhtXoLyoczEG0
Then maybe you should pay more attention to the actual climate scientists then politicians.
Oh I do. That's the whole point. This whole thread is about doomists screaming about what's not the current scientific consensus.
What to you is the current scientific consensus then?
To me? It's what you find in IPCC AR6. You read the IPCC reports right?
Well I was asking you specifically since your comment made it seem like you didn't think it could be possible. So I was just asking to see what what measure of "doomerism" in particular you followed cuz it all sounds pretty bad to me.
My guess is that I'm the only person in this thread that reads the IPCC reports. "Maybe at the end of the century" is way different from "the next few years".
(PS: The IPCC also states that only half of the reduction of the ice is due to human emissions, so, don't go buying property at sea level regardless of how well we do at stopping said emissions)
The problem is the statement seriously misrepresents what Gore said, which was in turn a misrepresentation of the current state of research
Do note the article is about a comment in 2009 while I describe something from 2008. You would expect him to make that mistake once - not repeatedly :) Feel free to check the Youtube clip. The words "quick fact" are relevant.
I was being nice to Gore. The polar ice cap includes a lot more than just the summer sea ice.
He tried to describe research, and got it wrong. That's going to happen some of the time when a politician (or any other non-expert) tries to describe science. It's not a big deal unless they're doing it consistently or intentionally.