> What "leading climate researchers" said this?
Here are a few examples. You can of course easily find more. Just Google for "global warming" and set it to show results from whatever time you desire. I wanted to see predictions for 2000-2015, so I Google "global warming" for resources published in 1995 or earlier.
Stanford University professor Paul Ehrlich:
By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people"
United Nations Environmental Program, in 2005:
"Amid predictions that by 2010 the world will need to cope with as many as 50 million people escaping the effects of creeping environmental deterioration, United Nations University experts say the international community urgently needs to define, recognize and extend support to this new category of refugee."
Cristina Tirado (University of California) again made the claim of 50 million climate refugees, changing it to "by 2020" at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
James Hansen headed NASA's Goddard Institute for 30 years before moving to University. In 1988, Hansen was asked by a journalist how the greenhouse effect would affect New York by 2008. "The West Side Highway [an elevated freeway] will be under water" , Hansen said.
UN IPCC author Michael Oppenheimer was "chief scientist" for the Environmental Defense Fund in 1990. He said that by 1995 global warming will be "desolating the heartlands of North America and Eurasia with horrific drought, causing crop failures and food riots."
Just for fun, along with all of these climate scientists, let's throw in our favorite leader of the global warming movement, Al Gore. Oppenheimer (above) was also an advisor to Al Gore, who claimed:
"The entire North Polar ice cap will disappear in five years. Five years is the period of time during which it is now expected to disappear." (The polar ice caps have actually INCREASED since then, significantly).
United Nations Environmental Program, Director of New York office in 1989:
Entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if global warming is not reversed by the year 2000
We're spending $360 billion dollars a year based on these people's predictions - several thousand dollars per family in the US.
I'm going to repeat once more, it is true that today it is warmer than it was 500 years ago, and much colder than it was 1,000 years ago. So yes, the climate changes in cycles, absolutely. Stanford, Berkeley, and Princeton have just ridiculously exaggerated the effect, while pitching for yet another $10 million grant to continue their work.
> Rising CO2 levels and climate change are politically controversial only because the fossil carbon industry hired a bunch of PR firms to sow public doubt. Who needs science, when industry PR is gospel?
Indeed, who needs this "science" from NASA, Stanford, Berkeley, Princeton, and the UN, when Comedy Central is gospel?