The term 'climate alarmist' is usually reserved for high-profile activists, scientists or politicians — think Bill McKibben, Tim Flannery or Al Gore — who raise concerns about the catastrophic impacts of future global warming. But with the release of some frightening reports over the last 12 months, those who deny the scientific consensus on climate change will have to expand their list of 'alarmists' to include some unlikely suspects — the World Bank, PricewaterhouseCoopers and the International Energy Agency.
The Oxford Dictionary defines alarmist as 'someone who exaggerates a danger and so causes needless worry or panic'. The key point is that the alarm is raised without due grounds. On that basis, very few activists, scientists or politicians who warn about future calamities from climate change are actually alarmist because the dangers of global warming are well established and accepted by the overwhelming majority of scientific institutions.
But in the lexicon of the climate denial blogosphere, 'alarmism' has a more specific definition, once described by skeptic Kenneth P. Green as 'the reflexive tendency to assume worst-case scenarios generated by climate models are automatically true (and to enact public policy based on that belief)'.
Under that definition, the World Bank's November 2012 report 'Turn Down the Heat: Why a 4°C Warmer World Must be Avoided' could well be termed alarmist. 'It is my hope that this report shocks us into action,' reads the foreword by Dr Jim Yong Kim, president of World Bank Group. Although the global community has agreed to keep temperature rise under two degrees, the report argues that 'present emission trends put the world plausibly on a path toward 4°C warming within the century'.
In case a four-degree temperature rise sounds balmy but tolerable, the World Bank points out that the greatest warming would occur over land, with increases ranging from four degrees to ten degrees. Heat waves such as occurred in Russia in 2010 are likely to become 'the new normal summer'. The warmest July in the Mediterranean could be nine degrees warmer than today's warmest July. Other near-apocalyptic predictions include regional extinctions of coral reefs and sea level rises of up to one metre by 2100.
The summary closes with these words: 'The projected 4°C warming simply must not be allowed to occur — the heat must be turned down. Only early, cooperative, international actions can make that happen.'
But what are our chances of prevention? Not great, according to a November 2012