It seems to me that although there's significant questions about the extent of climate change, and the future trajectory (and even more so, its causes), there's enough serious science behind it that we ought to be paying attention.
What I find most frustrating in the "debate", though, is the lack of ... debate. Nearly everyone seems to be concentrating on whether the Earth is warming. Surely that's an important question, but it's very, very far from all that needs to be decide in order to conclude on policy.
Even if this is happening, we need to understand
- What the possible climate outcomes are, and the relative likelihoods of each.
- In human terms, what are the costs associated with those outcomes.
- What can be done to avoid those possible outcomes?
- How likely is it to work?
- What is the cost of pursuing this alternative?
I mean, just because the earth is getting warmer, sea levels may rise a bit, optimal farming areas may move, etc., that's not
in itself reason to just radically change our way of life to significantly curtail carbon emissions.
To begin with, some of the changes may actually be net-positive (looking at the big picture across all humanity; clearly there are always significant costs to change at the individual level): plants like warm (other things being equal), and having the opportunity to farm up into Canada, northern Asia, etc., could help global food production. It's not likely everything is bad, so once you add all the pros and cons, what's the total damage?
We frequently hear the most apocalyptic scenarios, probably because those are the ones that sell the most newspapers. But unsurprisingly, we're discovering that at least the worst scenarios will almost certainly not come to pass. For the more likely scenarios, what are the pros and cons?
Radical changes to our lifestyle might curtail the climatic changes. But what will it cost us to do so? I mean, if we can't run our industry at full capacity, it's going to mean that some people won't be able to get health care, so people won't have food. Certainly, a lot of people aren't going to be able to go visit grandma at Thanksgiving, and commuting (for those of us that will still have jobs) will get a whole lot more expensive. When we compare the costs of averting danger, are you so sure that they're actually smaller than the cost of the problems that are predicted?
And, of course, there may be other "third roads", various approaches of "climatic engineering" that may avert the problems while costing far less in terms of our way of life. Of course, these have their own attendant risks, but it's another thing that ought to be weighed before deciding any policies.
It's just silly to jump from scientific evidence of a warming earth directly to "oh my god, we've got to shut down half our industry". But who's actually discussing this aspect of it, at least in the theater of broad public discourse?