Are the global climate changes cause for alarm?

I have been reading Climate Courage by Andreas Karelas upon finding it at a bargain store. This matter of global warming I had come to believe was something which has been blown out of proportion by the media. Could it be a collective hallucination that human industry is causing all these environmental changes? I have a feeling many want to deny the harmful effect humans have on the environment as it's too much of an inconvenience for them to think otherwise. On the other hand, I have been persuaded that some environmentalists are fabricating information to create a sense of alarm. Carbon dioxide has been this great obsession when it's not truly a toxin and I have yet to see any clear evidence that it's worthy of all the media attention and alarmist propaganda about how it's harming the global environment.

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TexasDude · 31-35, M

In the 70's they were worried about Global Cooling. Weather patterns fluctuate and the earth is always fine.

In short, I think it's all very blown out of proportion. Yes, I try to do my part to take care of the earth (like recycling) but I'm not freaked out about climate change

ArishMell · 70-79, M

@TexasDude Yes, because the rate of change is far greater than the natural ones should be. NB: it is climate, not weather, that is at issue. Weather is the local, short-term results of climate so shows the symptoms of the problem.

The speculation on a new cold phase did not last long.

Climatic warming has become very contentious though, perhaps mainly because trying to ameliorate it needs so many people - most of whom are we relatively well-off citizens of rich countries - to change very comfy and frankly profligate ways of life we understandably fear changing or losing.

Of course, if it eventually proves that the current warming is mainly natural rather than anthropogenic, then we won't be able to do anything to stop it. We'd have to adapt as best we can, but it will be desperately hard.

A normal Ice Age interglacial would be serious enough (perhaps 10m sea-level rise?). At least no-one alive now will ever see the end of the present Ice Age entirely, but that is looking many millennia, perhaps tens, of millennia, ahead.

What's less discussed, is what will happen a little further ahead when we can't argue about using oil and natural-gas because it's all gone (coal will be available for a bit longer), and metal ores have become much scarcer.

Ynotisay · M

@TexasDude In short, anyone leaning on that horseshit from the 70's isn't showing themselves much self-respect. There was no consensus, climate science didn't exist then like it did today, and it came down to one reporter for Newsweek, not a scientist, putting out a nine paragraph article.
So that tells me you're locking in to something you were told that isn't true. I know where that strategy originated, and who believes it, but the question is why, Why are some so afraid of reality that they choose belief that's been created for them? What's in it for you bud?