Climate change is a funny topic. I don't see the populace or scientifically illiterate senators (read that as James Inhofe of Oklahoma) weighing in on the standard model of physics, proteomics, or the results/implications of steroid use...but when it comes to anthropogenic warming...everybody has an unequivocal answer. Those most certain seem to be of the political stripe that had the certainty that Iraq had wmd and posed an existential threat to human existence. The scary thing about these folk is that they are so convinced they are right that they are able to convince the people who look at things probabilistically that they are ABSOLUTELY right. Because economics.
Climate change is a funny topic in part because some elements on the far Left (represented by Naomi Klein, for example) want to use it as a lever to justify the kind of radical social engineering that failed so spectacularly and murderously and repeatedly throughout the 20th century, and the far Right have decided that to fight the politics they have to fight the science.
This has resulted in a situation where the Left, who abandoned science decades ago, pretend to care about it, while the Right--which has long had an ambivalent relationship with reality--has decided to go full-post-modern and construe all facts as pure social constructs, which is exactly what the Left has been saying for a long time.
Almost none of the discussion of "climate science" in the public sphere has anything to do with science, and if you're an actual scientist with relevant expertise and you say anything about the science you will get beaten up by both sides.
As a computational physicist I've given my opinion on occasion that climate models are non-physical and therefore non-predictive, no matter how well-tuned they are to past climate (because only the correct physics can extrapolate the past forward, and the unphysical approximations in climate models are not small in the relevant sense.) What climate models do show fairly convincingly is that we are increasing the Earth's heat budget by 1.6 W/m2 or so, which is in the range of 0.5% overall, and this is plausibly a very bad thing.
So because I criticize climate models the Left attacks me as a denialist, and the Right embraces me as one, whereas I'm actually saying the models give a pretty decent reason to take some fairly mundane steps, like implementing carbon taxes and tariffs. The "tariff" part is important because it exports the cost of emissions to other jurisdictions. At this point the Right attacks me as being a socialist taxer (because taxes are socialist?) and the Left attacks me for not wanting to "change everything" (because that always works so well.)
There simply isn't any science in the "climate science" debate. It's all politics.
Honest question: why is "global warming" or "climate change" (as a non-scientist, not sure what I'm supposed to call it) supported by such a vast majority of scientists? Can you elaborate on what political pressure is doing to scientists?
Scientists believe in global warming because Earth is warm and space is cold. Scientists also believe they know what causes that. It seems very plausible that increasing one of the causes will increase the effect.
I keep asking, if the science is so sound, why can't we treat it as an engineering problem and create a global thermostat and climate regulating system?
If the models are solid then the matter of getting or keeping Earth dialed-in to the "right" temperature is just a question of agreement (ha!) and of course large energy inputs and some yet to be developed 21st-22nd century tech. Think of the funding this could generate for R&D! And the conferences and travel to debate the finer points of the right temperature. It would swamp the paltry sums currently dedicated to studying climate change. Climate engineering!
If our task is to engineer an ideal climate for all on Earth we need to develop levers of control. Modulating CO2 emissions -- a massive project in global social coordination of dubious prospect -- may not be the best or first method to reach for in such a project.
However, I suspect engineering an ideal climate is not the objective of the people in this field or even considered a possibility. We could evaluate the success of such a project easily -- when we dial up 0.1 degree, does the system do what we expect? When we dial it down, does it do what we expect? Yes? Fine, we're done. Problem solved.
I rather suspect climate change is just another one of these endless war things that keeps a lot of people employed and isn't meant to be "won" in such a way as I have described. We must be careful not to define the criteria for victory lest we accidentally achieve it.
If climate study is more than a jobs program for less brilliant scientists, what then is the point of studying climate change and recommending and implementing public policy suggestions resulting from research?
Is it to prevent any change to the climate? To prevent unintentional change? What about non-anthropogenic climate change (which could potentially be more severe and more disastrous) -- should we not seek to prevent that also? What if by some enormous effort and sacrifice we are able to completely eliminate the anthropogenic component of climate change only to see the climate do its own thing and push life the edge of extinction anyway. A meteor perhaps. A new, severe ice age. A prolonged solar anomaly. Any of these could make a cosmic joke out of our meagre well-intentioned efforts.
I just don't think people are thinking about this clearly or it is as you say, all politics.
In fairness, you don't see politicians arguing for energy taxes and subsidies by saying that the standard model indicates a global catastrophe will happen otherwise.
Granted. But the level of certainty espoused, with the downside risk considered, imply a level of competence in the concerned matters. From where I sit, the people with the loudest mouths seem to simply not know what the fuck they are talking about. The LHC, by the way, cost some $10 billion USD to date.
