Tried to stir HN crowd but failed miserably (IPCC announcement)

> Although the summary of the report doesn’t expressly use the term “tipping point” to described the changes in climate, it acknowledges that in many cases they are irreversible

So: (1) The IPCC doesn't say there's a tipping point.

(2) The source you give mentions "irreversible" but doesn't say "now irreversible".

The fact that the climate is changing in some direction or other does not mean we can reverse that change, much less that it's worth doing so. Even if we're causing it.

The second link you posted seems to be a 70-minute video featuring a bunch of activists, with no text summary to explain why it should be interesting or relevant - no WONDER you didn't get lots of upvotes! (I haven't watched it, but would be happy to skim a transcript, a summary, or an article on the same subject).

The third link you posted does mention tipping points, but not based on any recent news or anything the IPCC just said. It's an essay written by some dude who is quite alarmed about things, referring as a source back to a essay written by some other dude last year which in turn refers back to papers in 2007 and 2012. There doesn't seem to be any NEW information about "tipping points" therein. Yes, people were talking about speculative "tipping points" back in 2007. Most of that sort of talk has been dialed way back since then, in large part because nature didn't cooperate. Surface warming trends are flat, and weather isn't notably more "extreme" that it has been in the past.

Actually, it's worse than that. When you look at the specifics of HOW the IPCC thinks we're currently being impacted by climate, a huge negative current impact they note is the damage done by a rise in food prices, a rise which was in large part caused by crop diversion for use in biofuels. Which is to say, a misguided program from the past that was allegedly intended to help the environment, hurt us all on a global scale. If in 2007 the US had simply taken a chill pill and ignored the IPCC's warnings rather than instituting more of a biofuels mandate, we'd all be better off today; the measurable current harm from climate change would be a fraction of what it is and we'd have released less net CO2.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/10716756/Biofuels-do...

http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/the-biofuel-hope-that-beats...

On good things we can expect: The main measurable good thing we can expect from the next 1-3 degrees of warming is increased agricultural productivity. In the northern areas where most of the world's food is grown, warmer average temperatures means a longer growing season which makes it easier to feed the world. (It also increases the range where we can grow crops and makes winters less bitterly cold in places like Canada.) Closer to the equator the warming part doesn't help so much but the extra CO2 makes forestry more productive - it helps trees grow better due to CO2 fertilization. (My main source on this is the AR4 IPCC report - I haven't read AR5 yet.)

Also: many more humans die each year from excessive cold than from excessive heat; a planet with less bitterly cold winters is a more habitable one.

Also: being warmer puts us a little further away from the next ice age. Climate always changes; given the choice, I'd rather it get a little warmer than a little colder. (There is no reason to think the temperature in, say, 1990 was optimum for human life worldwide. We don't need to return to that, nor do we need to keep it where it is now.)

With regard just to sea ice it's not "oscillating between extremes" so much as there's been a shift over time as to where more sea ice collects on the planet - more in the south, less in the north. Changing sea currents and weather patterns can do that over long cycles. When alarmists look at growing sea ice in the south they dismiss it with "oh, the currents have changed" or "oh, the weather patterns have changed" or "yeah, but ignore that and look at the LAND instead!" but when they look at shrinking sea ice in the north they tend to insist it's due to warming and only that; I'd like to see a little more consistency.

SkepticalScience is not a reliable source - it's a propagandistic site run by a cartoonist, not a scientist - but in this case that's not a factor: argument 25 at that link is about sea level rise. Since I agree that sea levels have (very slowly) been rising over time, I'm not sure how that's relevant. (FWIW, I also agree that measured temperatures increased in the last half of the last century and that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and that some recent warming has been the result of human activity.)

> HN is the last place I would expect to find myself fighting against climate change skeptics

The article you wrote suggested in passing that the planet could become uninhabitable in mere decades because we've passed a bunch of "tipping points" - you're bound to get some pushback if you try to make wild-eyed claims of that sort. If you want to say stuff like that you should try to figure out where the claims are coming from, whether there's any science behind them, and whether the science is any good.

The examples in the second paragraph that are supporting the argument: cops protecting corrupt cops, the Vatican protecting pedophiles, etc

The interesting part is the (unconscious?) connection of left wings with corrupt cops and Catholic paedophiles. Wow, even right-wing propaganda in HN is on a whole different level.

PS: Don't worry - it's a site built around entrepreneurship - aka free market ideology. It cannot get extremely left-wing no matter what.

Second, I'm not right-wing nor is "critisizing extremeist liberalism" right-wing propaganda. The real propaganda is you assuming "the other side is attacking" when someone constructively criticizes a group you belong to.

Third, "It cannot get extremely left-wing no matter what." you obviously know nothing about Reddit and Digg and what happened there. You are the perfect example of what I was talking about. Groups that protect the extremist sub groups within them. Denial, is almost always the first defensive method used to prevent discussion over what might be wrong with a group.