Global climate crisis

The global climate crisis is one of several common terms for an event beginning around the mid-1800s, during which the climate stability that was characteristic of the Holocene period has been disrupted. Global average temperatures have risen by roughly one degree Celsius so far, and most climatologists attribute this mainly to growing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere cause by human industrial activities.

The central importance of the activities in question for maintaining industrial civilization, placed in tension with the likelihood that an overly hot climate will lead to extreme weather events so frequent and severe as to threaten the survival of civilization (especially when combined with a likely rise in sea level that could render coastal cities uninhabitable), has inevitably made the climate crisis a political issue as much as a scientific one. Broadly speaking, political liberals and environmentalists tend to favor strong political action to motivate a rapid shift in our industrial base toward technologies with zero net greenhouse emissions, while most conservatives reject the premise that such a transformation is necessary to prevent global catastrophe. In fact, the term "climate crisis" itself was devised by Vice President Al Gore in response to what he saw as the conservative reframing of the issue from "global warming" to "climate change" to reduce its seeming importance.

James Lovelock is among the scientists most alarmed by the climate crisis and its potential future impact. In his book The Vanishing Face of Gaia, he asserts that current climate trends lead inevitably to a new climate that will stabilize at a much higher average temperature.

Movies, TV, and video

 * An Inconvenient Truth, the famous documentary based on Al Gore's climate slideshow
 * Chasing Ice, a movie about photographer James Balog's quest to capture time-lapse footage of melting glaciers
 * Merchants of Doubt, a movie about climate misinformation and the companies and ideologically-driven scientists who peddle it, based on the book by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway
 * Years of Living Dangerously, a television series about the impacts of the climate crisis and some of the potential solutions, featuring famous actors as "correspondents"
 * 24 Hours of Reality, an annual event in which Al Gore's Climate Reality Project broadcasts an hour of content about the climate crisis from each of the world's 24 time zones

Convincing the un-alarmed
There seems to be a consensus among scientists that human caused climate change is happening and will have negative effects. Even so, there are many who are not "climate change deniers", but who are un-alarmed and believe the crisis is overblown. In order to reach these folks we need to comprehensively address their key questions.

What exactly do 97% of climate scientists agree on?
In May 2013 a paper quantifying consensus on anthropogenic global warming found that 97% of the scientific paper abstracts they surveyed that actually take a position on global warming say that the world is warming up and that human emission of carbon dioxide is the cause.

Opinion pieces that critique the finding:
 * '97% Of Climate Scientists Agree' Is 100% Wrong
 * The Myth of the Climate Change '97%'