I am writing in the context of the new IPCC report. I do not represent a special-interest lobby group trying to increase constituents’ bottom line.
The essentially absolute consensus about Climate Change is remarkable given that science is about uncertainty. It is understandable that we have difficulty considering the changes necessary to mitigate what we have unleashed, given that we easily instinctively attribute the climate extremes we are already experiencing as one-off events; we have experienced these kind of individual events before and need science and analysis to actually interpret that the pattern is already clearly different.
We also do not instinctively understand positive feedback loops and exponential functions.
For our species, which has been so diverse in its cultural/technological evolution, in the vast majority of times there would have been natural selective advantage to expect the world to go on just as we have experienced it growing up and to continue in whatever cultural matrix was adapted enough to allow us to have survived to adulthood.
Unfortunately, at this time, science which real achievement and role it is to filter out our unconscious biases, tells us that we are headed for a cliff. Please make the Climate Change story front page material.
Andre C. Piver MD
Nelson