Emily Cunningham

FWIW I agree with this thread. There is a BIG difference between saying "We recognize scientific expertise (IPCC) and resulting policy guidance (CCC), and we prefer to go faster for reasons X, Y, Z." and saying "IPCC is unreliable, CCC is rubbish."https://twitter.com/StephenWoroniec/status/1124224211801837568 …

Curious about your thoughts on this. In no way do I think the IPCC is rubbish, but I have heard from multiple sources that it's actually fairly conservative (because there had to be agreement across multiple countries so there was some compromises that had to be made.) 1/

Also: Aren't there some known (and probably unknown) tipping points that we need to beware of? And that any kind of delay makes us more vulnerable to these tipping points setting off irreversible runaway climate warming and untold devastation? 2/

I'm not a climate scientist, but it seems that we're gambling with our future the longer we delay phasing out fossil fuels. It seems a lot of these climate models deal with probabilities (ie we're X more likely to have Y outcome if we do Z.) Why not play it as safe as possible?

This is a genuine question born out of true curiosity and a desire to learn as much as I can about this crisis and what we can do about it. 4/

Hi Emily, going to take the opportunity to answer some IPCC misconceptions here, so not just your questions. 1) "IPCC is overconservative": here I recommend everyone actually go read, like not on twitter, but actually read "What lies beneath" . 1/ https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/148cb0_a0d7c18a1bf64e698a9c8c8f18a42889.pdf …

The answer is both no and yes. The IPCC tries to cover all peer-reviewed & published scientific evidence - the problem is in synthesizing and summarizing, where overconservative tendencies do happen. I wrote about them here as well. https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/148cb0_a0d7c18a1bf64e698a9c8c8f18a42889.pdf … 2/

I did a Ctrl-F for your name in this report and didn't find it. Just want to double check that you sent the right link and to confirm you wrote about problems in synthesizing and summarizing in What Lies Beneath. Thanks!