Climate change is not just about Carbon Dioxide

> When 2045 comes, and the coral still exists, our populace will be further trained to ignore the warnings of climate scientists.

When 2045 comes there will be no more "climate scientists" warning the general public because decades of "climate"-related scare mongering combined with "green" marketing (i.e. greenwashing) will have made the public insensitive to whatever they have to say, be it based in reality or in ideology. Instead of "climate" there will be some new looming disaster caused by human activity - nanotechnology, genetic engineering, nitrogen release due to farming (look at what is happening in the Netherlands [1] for a preview of what is to come) - which will also be co-opted by ideologues and marketeers for their nefarious purposes upon which the cycle will repeat. A very incomplete litany of apocalyptic predictions helps to shed a light on this phenomenon:

- food shortage due to overpopulation

- nuclear winter

- Paul Ehrlich's famine predictions

- the Silent Spring which would have killed off all birds

- a new glaciation triggered by particulate matter in the atmosphere

- the ozone layer scare

- acid rain which would kill all life in lakes and bleach trees

- another glaciation, now confirmed by satellite data and climate records showing no end to the 30-year cooling trend for the northern hemisphere

- the current "climate crisis" with its many individual scares like:

* the arctic would be ice free by 2014 (Gore) or 2016 (US Navy)

* ...which would cause a methane catastrophe due to the release of gas hydrates (which turned out to be caused by isostatic rebound, i.e. the ground rising after the ice pack retreated at the end of the last glaciation some 8000 years ago)

* north-western Europe would become "Siberian" by 2024 (did not happen)

* snowfall would be a thing of the past (record snowfall in the last few years)

* sea level rise would drown island nations (did and does not happen)

* Greenland would melt (it is actually doing the opposite)

In all these cases there was and is a core of truth which formed the base of these apocalyptic scenarios but in all cases that core of truth was stretched beyond reason for ideological and marketing purposes. Overpopulation could lead to food shortages but the industrial revolution made for a massive increase in productivity which actually increased the food supply per capita. Pesticides were harmful for birds but the "Silent Spring" scenario was severely overblown for ideological purposes. Particulate matter in the atmosphere leads to an increase in cloud cover which increases the planet's albedo while decreasing the amount of water vapour (a potent green house gas) but the glaciation scenario was severely overblown. The ozone hole scare never materialised even though the "hole" in the ozone layer persists. Acid rain turned out to be far less of a problem than predicted (something which became clear when I studied this phenomenon myself during my years at a leading agricultural university where I studied forestry). The "climate crisis" which we supposedly now are going through also quite stubbornly fails to differ substantially from earlier warmer periods like that in the 1930's (the Dust Bowl years) with the arctic refusing to melt, snow falling abundantly, islands not drowning as promised, north-western Europe not succumbing to a Siberian climate etc.

The real cure for these problems lies in the rigorous application of the scientific method without the troubling addition of ideology, without emotionally driven goal-hunting in the data, without commercially driven hiding of findings, without the religious dogmatism of The Science™. As to how to implement such a scheme... I don't know... anyone?

[1] https://www.dw.com/en/dutch-farmers-block-food-distribution-...

pH could drop to 7.95 by mid-century, according to the latest projections: https://bg.copernicus.org/articles/17/3439/2020/.

The second part of the sentence seems fictional. I don't think there is any support of that from a basic understanding of carbonate chemistry.

There has been no crying wolf. If anything the dangers are being consistently undersold.

Just because someone says 'it will be x bad if you don't do this list of things' then you do three of them and ignore the rest and it's not quite as bad doesn't make them a liar.

> Corals have persisted through the geological past when atmospheric CO2 was many times today's level.

We're heading toward something similar to the Miocene, both in CO2, temperature, and ph. You might want to look into the "Middle Miocene disruption", which refers to a wave of extinctions of terrestrial and aquatic life forms that occurred following the Miocene Climatic Optimum. There's a big oceanic fossil gap in the Miocene, because of this peak-temperature which seemed to tilt ecosystems too far. We do know the hard-coral scleractinians (same as modern corals^1) didn't appear because of this change, but likely because they were one of the few types that can survive it. Unfortunately, if the trend continues, the hardiest of the ancient species all die^2. 7.2 doesn't sound like 7.95? The ocean isn't uniformly affected^3 and will likely kick off another "disruption" of the existing ecosystems causing a collapse. ie You don't need to set fire to all the trees for the forest to burn down.

^1 https://bmcecolevol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-... ^2 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1419621112 ^3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_acidification

Discuss the actual predictions from mainstream climate science rather than the unlikely doomsday scenarios, like a hothouse Earth. And include the adaptability of humans and the potential of technological solutions. Weigh that against realistic scenarios in a cost/benefit analysis. Proclaiming society is doomed and humanity is going extinct is not only unlikely, it’s chicken little and ends up turning well meaning people off.