So what you are saying is simply that the climate will change. There is NOTHING that we can do to stop climate change. If we spend trillions of dollars to do something the climate will change. If we do NOTHING the climate will change. Which is how this planet's environment has been working for billions of years. The climate changes. Duh.
Raising a hullabaloo over the climate changing is a very good political game, but it is not very good science. Should we study how the climate works? Should we learn to model and predict the weather? Sure. These are worthy goals. But that is NOT what is going on here. At this time, there are conflicting models about how changes in the various components of the atmosphere will change the climate. Some predict high temperatures, some do not. Some think that the high temperatures will trigger an ice age, some do not. Some predict that the Sahara Desert will become green, some say that the desert will expand. Many of these models, based upon reasonable science lead to mutually exclusive results: they cannot all be correct.
The arrogance of man is obvious to those who look for it: we THINK that we are so IMPORTANT that we can and should control the climate. The truth is that we do not understand our climate to any significant degree. We cannot predict next summer's weather any better than our ancient ancestors despite reams of data and sophisticated models. Scientists make fools of themselves and their profession by making predictions that do not come true. How many Atlantic hurricanes again? How many droughts predicted in advance? If you could predict such things, you would make a killing in the markets, by the way. The incentive to make accurate climate and weather models is extreme. Think of the things we could do if we knew that the monsoon was going to be bad next year; or how many hurricanes in the Atlantic, Typhoons in the pacific, what the winter in Siberia was going to be. How well are the rains going to fall in the Midwest? Trillions of dollars in damages and untold consequences in human and animal suffering all because we can't predict next years regional climate.
As to the certainty of catastrophe, none of the models predict a climate that is inhospitable to life on our world. None of the models are even going outside the boundaries of known, past behavior for our planet. So what is this catastrophe? That the arable land will shift around? That humans will have to adapt to a changing climate? That we will face the political and economic difficulties of mass human migration? That is not a catastrophe of an environmental nature. That is a POLITICAL problem caused not by man's technology and emissions of carbon dioxide, but by the artificial walled gardens we created called countries. That changes in our climate can lead humans to kill each other over food is NOT a CLIMATE problem but a problem of human BEHAVIOR. Tossing trillions at a moving climate isn't going to the root of the problem: human behavior. And when those predictions do not lead to catastrophe, the science will be discredited like the boy who cried wolf. THAT is the real impending catastrophe.
But of course, by 2050, the scientists making the predictions will be long gone. They will have spent their grants and retired, and perhaps even expired. Kinda like religion where the priest promises you paradise after you are dead, so if he lied you can't complain, can you?
While it is certainly the job of science and those who profess to be scientists to provide the rest of us with data and interpretations, that is clearly NOT what is going on here. The data is being cherry picked. Criticism suppressed not with facts and data, but with political machinations - something that has clearly lead to disaster in our past. The truth, while painful, is liberating to all of us. That is NOT what is going here, people with vested economic and political interests are suppressing and manipulating data to support a pre conceived conclusion. Here we are seventy years beyond the dawn of nuclear power still relying on coal and gas for our energy. Not because nuclear power is more dangerous than coal and gas, but because of the politics of fear. People with vested interests in preserving their own territory came together to suppress the use of nuclear power by using the fear of accidents and nuclear war. And now, how much of this climate change would not be an issue if we had gone down THAT road? If we were using nuclear power and electric cars instead of natural gas, coal, and gasoline would we now be talking about carbon dioxide regulation?
Humans cannot see very well into the future. We cannot see all ends. Thus the Law of Unintended Consequences applies. What ever we decide about climate will not be the best decision and will be unenforceable by political means. And there will be consequences that we cannot predict. It is in technology that the changes to carbon dioxide levels can be made, but the current approach is not one conducive to developing such technology for global use. The advanced nations can do this, but the rest of the world will not follow suit because it will cost too much. It's easy to say to the European and American, we'll cost your family another $4000 in taxes to boggle up the climate a bit, but when you live in Kenya and your family makes $1300 per year, you can't saddle them with another $4000/year.
Now we can regulate how much carbon dioxide we produce in industry. But we can't regulate the concentration of the gas in the climate because we are not the sole source. Global temperature is the same. We can regulate how much heat we produce in industry, but we can't control the sun. In fact, we really don't know what the effects of higher carbon dioxide level will be, just like we don't know what the effects of higher temperature will be.
So the climate will change. What should we do? Where should we go? If we do nothing, the climate changes. If do something, the climate changes. We really don't know in which direction the climate will go or what the changes will do to any particular region. Which is exactly where we were a hundred years ago before we gathered reams and reams of climate data and tons of computers to model our climate. Now some scientists demand that we spend trillions on climate regulation to prevent an impending disaster of global proportions. Except that the details of this disaster are rather vague, and tend to sound a bit biblical: the seas shall rise swallowing the coasts, droughts and famine, war and pestilence, dogs and cats living together. Mass hysteria! Or maybe just a bit to much like a line from Ghost Busters, except here, if nothing happens, the scientists will have spent their grants, retired, and probably expired before anyone realizes that we've been conned.
Scientific decision making is not fear based, but fact based. Fear based political manipulation using some vaguely defined threat has lead to some of the worst decisions humanity has made. A brief historical review: Fear of the Jews in Nazi Germany lead to world war. Sure that was a made up fear, but it whipped up German support for the political goals of a small group of people. Fear of Communists gave the United States McCarthy, the Vietnam war, and the cold war. Fear of terrorists gave us the Patriot Act, the War on Terror, and two largely unwinnable wars: Iraq and Afghanistan. The debate on climate change has gone from science to politics with certain scientist banding together with other interest groups to whip up a frenzy of fear of impending global catastrophe in the far future that we must ACT NOW to prevent. This is EXACTLY the same fear mongering used to sell some very stupid policies.
And yes I am CERTAIN that the climate will change, and that I and my children are up to the challenge of surviving in this brave new world.