I am not doing research in the area, thankfully. I know people who are. I talk to them often, and I have come to the realization that this is an incredibly complex problem. One has to take into account the physics, chemistry, biology of the entire globe... plus the Sun cycles, the cosmic rays, and the effects of man on the environment. It's a daunting task.
I also remember that back in the days I studied Physics, it was widely accepted that computers can't predict the weather more than a couple of weeks in advance due to the chaotic nature of the fluid dynamics equations. If you can't predict reliably more than two weeks in advance, I doubt you can predict 20 years into the future. This is pseudo-science, and while scientists know there's an awful lot of uncertainty in it, these "results" are communicated to the general public as though they were absolute truths, which is nauseatingly unethical, not to mention dishonest.
All in all: I think it's time to take a deep breath, let one's head cool off and analyze the problem scientifically. Fostering fear is dangerous and counter-productive. A massive stampede usually eliminates anything in its path... and that's no solution.
I'm all for analyzing the problem scientifically, but, really, what do you think the IPCC reports are based on?
Regarding the weather question, this is a valid concern. There's of course a difference between predicting the weather, meaning the exact temperature and precipitation on certain days, and predicting climate, meaning mean quantities over the scale of years. It's true that for a chaotic system, it's difficult to predict the exact state of the system far in advance unless you have extremely good models and information of the current state. However, predicting the mean of a distribution is usually far easier. To what extent is this a problem with current weather models? I'm not an expert enough to know, but I'd suspect it has been tested.
I also remember that back in the days I studied Physics, it was widely accepted that computers can't predict the weather more than a couple of weeks in advance due to the chaotic nature of the fluid dynamics equations. If you can't predict reliably more than two weeks in advance, I doubt you can predict 20 years into the future. This is pseudo-science, and while scientists know there's an awful lot of uncertainty in it, these "results" are communicated to the general public as though they were absolute truths, which is nauseatingly unethical, not to mention dishonest.
All in all: I think it's time to take a deep breath, let one's head cool off and analyze the problem scientifically. Fostering fear is dangerous and counter-productive. A massive stampede usually eliminates anything in its path... and that's no solution.