[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by Arragonis

My issue is with the way the word was first used, which you haven't really addressed. There are alternatives available which don't have such a link...

Really? Give one or two that are accurate descriptions.

Are today's temperatures unusual ? [I]Maybe, we don't know. History suggests not - at least on a questionable local level (MWP / LIA). More open science please.

Today's temperatures aren't the issue, or the problem. It is what temperatures will be in years, decades, or centuries to come. A little less short-term thinking would be useful here, as in many another field.

But what about the "Pause ?"

Prime example of what you don't want to call denialism. The so-called pause is a figment.

In the medium to long term we will ensure that those in the developing world will not advance because we won't let them have cheap energy - that means kids like some of us here have in our own homes - becoming sick and possibly losing their lives to simple, treatable conditions we take for granted.

This is just fear-mongering, and groundless. Treating those conditions, or avoiding them, takes trivial amounts of energy. Most of the advances in health/lifespan seen in the last century or two are down to simple public health measures like vaccination & basic sanitation, not individual medicine.

Meanwhile access to cheap energy and other "benefits" that go along with the first world's lifestyle leads to all sorts of lifestyle diseases, from obesity to allergies to tobacco-induced lung cancers.

On the other hand we could focus on learning what is happening and going to happen, and mitigate for it.

Well, we (that is, those climate scientists) have been doing just that, and trying to tell people about it. But you folks claim it isn't happening, isn't going to happen, and will be a good thing when it does happen.

In any case mitigation may work, prevention (by the original post here) is not going to.

Please explain how one "mitigates" the extinction of most vertebrate life.