Climate change alarmism

Climate change alarmism or global warming alarmism is a critical description of a rhetorical style that stresses the potentially catastrophic effects of global warming to the point where the scale of the problem appears to exclude the possibility of real action or agency by the reader or viewer.
Public perception of the realities and risks associated with climate change have been described as forming a continuum in which people with "alarmist" views form one extreme along the continuum, and those commonly characterized as "denialists, "skeptics" or "naysayers" at the other extreme.
Alarmism as a pejorative
The term alarmist is commonly used as a pejorative by critics of mainstream climate science to describe those that endorse it. MIT meteorologist Kerry Emanuel wrote that labeling someone as an "alarmist" is "a particularly infantile smear considering what is at stake." He continued that using this "inflammatory terminology has a distinctly Orwellian flavor."
The term is also used to describe, usually in a pejorative way, an alleged consensus of scientists and media said to have propagated a global cooling scare in the 1970s. The purported episode of alarmism related to global cooling has been compared with the perceived alarmism tied to global warming.
Alarmism as an extreme position
Alarmism is described as the use of a linguistic repertoire which communicates climate change using inflated language, an urgent tone and imagery of doom. In a report produced for the Institute for Public Policy Research Gill Ereaut and Nat Segnit reported that alarmist language is frequently employed by newspapers, popular magazine and in campaign literature put out by government and environment groups. In the United Kingdom, alarmist messages are often subject to "subtle critique" in the left-leaning press, while the right-leaning media often "embrace" the message, but undermine it using a "climate skeptic" frame In the context of climate refugees — the potential for climate change to displace people—it has been reported that "alarmist hyperbole" is frequently employed by private military contractors and think tanks.
Looking at 2003 United States popular survey data in 2005, Anthony A. Leiserowitz identified an "interpretive community with high-risk perceptions of climate change" and called them alarmists. The data found that they made up about 11% of the US population, while those he called naysayers, an "interpretive community that perceived climate change as a very low or nonexistent danger", made up about 7% of the population. The remainder of the public lay between these two extremes, including some who confused climate change and stratospheric ozone depletion. Thus individuals differed significantly when questioned about perceived risk. Others have noted the tendency for journalists to overemphasize the most extreme outcomes from a range of possibilities reported in scientific articles. A study that tracked press reports about a climate change article in the journal found that "results and conclusions of the study were widely misrepresented, especially in the news media, to make the consequences seem more catastrophic and the timescale shorter."
Views of scientists
The consensus view based on all available data and scientific modelling is "that today’s climate is far out of equilibrium with current climate forcings". This means that large-scale changes in the Earth's climate are already in motion, and will not reverse even if no more greenhouse gases are emitted into the atmosphere. Estimates are that it is necessary to maintain levels of atmospheric at or below 350ppm to avoid "deleterious" effects and "to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted". The was approximately 390 ppm , rising by 1.9 ppm/yr. This has already led to measurable effects over the last century including average temperature rises, the retreat of Alpine glaciers, reductions in polar ice cover and die-back of coral reefs due to ocean acidification and sea temperature rises. Global tipping points and the risk of irreversible changes to the Earth's climate are difficult to quantify but are cited as causes for grave concern by mainstream climate science. Furthermore, even after years of UNFCCC negotiations aimed at slowing greenhouse gas emissions, humans emitted record levels in 2010, thus exceeding even the IPCC's worst case emissions scenario.
Scientists who agree with this consensus view on global warming often have been critical of those who exaggerate or distort the risks posed by global warming. Stephen Schneider has criticized such exaggeration, stating that he "disapprove of the 'ends justify the means' philosophy" that would exaggerate dangers in order to spur public action. Mike Hulme, professor at the University of East Anglia and former director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, describes such exaggerations as "self-defeating," in that they engender feelings of hopelessness rather than motivating positive action. Hans von Storch has objected to "alarmists think that climate change is something extremely dangerous, extremely bad and that overselling a little bit, if it serves a good purpose, is not that bad."
MIT atmospheric physicist Richard Lindzen, who believes that the effects of global warming will be milder than the current consensus estimate, has written:
Hurricane researcher William Gray stated that Al Gore is a "gross alarmist" regarding his documentary An Inconvenient Truth: "He's one of these guys that preaches the end of the world type of things. I think he's doing a great disservice and he doesn't know what he's talking about."
In a 2009 interview with Fortune Magazine about signing the 2003 American Geophysical Union (AGU) statement, climatologist John Christy said: "As far as the AGU, I thought that was a fine statement because it did not put forth a magnitude of the warming. We just said that human effects have a warming influence, and that's certainly true. There was nothing about disaster or catastrophe. In fact, I was very upset about the latest AGU statement . It was about alarmist as you can get."

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