I define smart people as those who get things right not wrong. I could not care less about a prestigeous university degree or pompeous appearance and small talk. And I agree most in this industry are complete idiots, and/or parasites, and/or engaged in illegal or unethical activities. Smart are the 1-2 out of hundred people who truly generate alpha. Equally, I define as smart those who accept the basic precepts of man caused climate change, and that includes virtually 95-99% of climate scientists. To what degree and how close we are to catastrophe is all debatable and am open to look at that but I don't want to debate the scientifically undeniable with anyone. (am not referring to you at all here)
You have made up your mind and don't have much time for those that haven't. Fair enough. You'll not be a good scientist, but you could make a dandy Figure Skating judge once you've learned the rules... because there, there's no confusion between an inside edge and an outside one. The loquacious Olympic figure skating commentator, Dick Button, was once left momentarily speechless after an Olympic skater had fallen on her tush more than a few times in a single performance. After a long pause, Button said, "Well, that was less than good." No one ever questioned his assessment.
Says the one who even questions established climate facts. nowhere have I in the slightest put up any statements or shared any beliefs in the timing nor severity of climate change. The only logical conclusion of your reaction to my posts can be either that you did not comprehend my points or that you deny basic climate change facts that are agreed by virtually all climate scientists aside the hardcore deniers. But then you present of course the one or two denier guys who impress you with their university name and other academic "credentials". I would not be in the slightest surprised if you equally believed a few scientists who are paid by lobbyists and claim that trickle down economics works when virtually all others point to the factual evidence that it never worked so far. Who is spinning the story here and talking his book? As I said before, I am happy to discuss timing and severity but really prefer not to further debate established facts. Please choose someone else to engage in that. Cheers.
To say that all evidence points convincingly to human induced climate change is not to say you've made up your mind. I would also say that all evidence points to our current theory of gravity being mostly correct. There are in fact a few scientists who dispute it, and there are whole sections of the current theory of gravity around gravitational waves that are hotly disputed and various theories in the area are proven wrong all the time. What I (and at the expense of putting words in his mouth, @GRULSTMRNN) are saying is that it's absurd to say "The theory of gravity is unsettled science, there are people who disagree and people get proven wrong all the time, therefore we should operate on first principle as if it doesn't exist until it can be convincingly proven it does, and if you say we should treat it as generally true you're not open minded or a scientist". That's exactly what it sounds like climate change deniers are saying about climate change....actually that's exactly what they are saying. I would submit that I can simultaneously accept that the current theory on gravity is the best one we have on the subject but I'm sure it will be refined and change, the plate tectonics theory is the best one we have in geology but I'm sure it will be refined, parts proven wrong, and change, that special relativity is the best theory we have in that area at the moment but parts have already been proven wrong, parts are probably un-provable, and other parts will be refined. And for exactly the same reason say that human induced climate change is the best theory we have in that area at the moment and although undoubtedly parts will be proven wrong and other parts are un-provable, it is neither unscientific nor wrong to use what we know to avoid the catastrophe it predicts if it's within our power to do so. Just do a thought experiment for me, any time you say "you can't trust climate scientists because..." or "we shouldn't use the current climate science theories because...." replace that with "physicists" or "geologists" and if the results are absurd, then I would submit your premise may well be equally absurd.
I think the key is "healthy critical review". As you see on this thread, the ranks of those who are critical of climate change science are almost exclusively (present company certainly excluded) made up of those who come from a position of extreme ignorance and literally make up facts to support their positions. We can both agree that's not "healthy critical review" can't we? Smart folks get things wrong, sure. They don't get things like current CO2 concentration wrong though, or measurements of how much CO2 is being added to the atmosphere by humans, or how much the ocean has acidified, or how much average temperatures have risen, or how much ice coverage has receded or how much permafrost has melted or......any of hundreds of observable phenomenon that the vast majority of climate critics flat out deny is occurring. If your'e going to go with the "smart folks get things wrong" perspective coupled with the "are asking mankind to spend untold Trillions of dollars and to make substantial changes to their very lives, the lives of families and generations to come, to their quality of life, their homes, their property." perspective, I can't see why you wouldn't be terrified about conducting an experiment with completely unknown outcomes where we are on track to double our concentration of CO2 to a level higher than we've seen in 400,000 years which has the very real potential to cause trillions and trillions in damages, make substantial changes to their very lives, the lives of families and generations to come, to their quality of life, their homes, their property. Why are you trusting the the "smart people" who are saying not to worry about that, that nothing will come of it, that all the impacts we're already seeing are either not happening, not caused by humans and therefore outside our control? One is decisively taking a position on one group of "smart people" if one decides we should pursue the "do nothing" approach, therefore one can't at the same time equivocate about "smart people" getting things wrong? Not to mention, I really have to question the "are asking mankind to spend untold Trillions of dollars and to make substantial changes to their very lives, the lives of families and generations to come, to their quality of life, their homes, their property." assertion. New unsubsidized wind and solar are coming in at the $20s and $30s per MWH, lower than any other generation source (http://ieefa.org/bnef-unsubsidized-wind-solar-are-now-the-cheapest-bulk-generation-sources/) At the same time, as you well know, capacity markets are at their lowest levels in years....there is the opposite of a capacity crisis being caused by renewables. Battery storage is following the same cost curve as solar, and we've already got a solar plus storage project at $36/MWH and wind at $21/MWH (https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/nevada-beat-arizona-record-low-solar-ppa-price and https://www.greentechmedia.com/arti...solar-plus-storage-price-in-xcel-solicitation) What are we paying for coal and nuclear power right now, again, energy and capacity? How is it going to cost trillions and require all these horrible changes to replace fossil fuel with renewables or renewables plus nuclear? If you formed your opinion on this 10, 5, or even 3 years ago you would have been perfectly justified, but this is a fast moving field and I would submit that current reality doesn't match the perceptions we've may have that form the lens we see the world through.
I will try to clarify my own views some, because I think they have been somewhat misunderstood. I am a scientist. And I have coauthored papers in photochemistry and diffusion, two fields aligned with knowledge necessary to understand the greenhouse effect, ice core studies, and the original Hansen Hypothesis, which I am convinced is wrong and should be rejected. We seem to be in a slight warming phase but CO2 plays only a minor role. There is no question whether CO2 is a greenhouse gas, it is, but a weak one present at very low concentrations in our atmosphere. Besides making a minor contribution to warming. it also plays a secondary cooling role via its participation in plant metabolism and in the outer atmosphere . Water, which works in all three of its physical phases to moderate the Earth's temperature, is the critically important greenhouse gas. I can't go into details here, as this is not an appropriate forum for a long dissertation, but Hansen is probably wrong about the greenhouse warming effects of CO2 being amplified by a positive feedback mechanism. One thing about which there can be no question is that the Earth's overall feedback to temperature perturbations is negative; not positive. Were it overall positive, none of us would be here. Positive feedback systems are unstable and are driven to their limits. The most recent papers by Miskolczi lend support to the necessity of overall negative feedback. R. Spencer, who heads our satellite remote sensing operation has questioned why the most reliable land based temperature data was adjusted to conform to the least reliable, rather than the other way around in the most recent land-based temperature data set. That's enough to make me very concerned about the quality of much of the climate change science. Another thing that I find quite upsetting is how people I know to be top notch scientists have been made the subject of personal attacks because they pointed out defects in the original Hansen Hypothesis and raised serious questions about the inadequacy of current climate models. I think Nir Shaviv' assessment of the current situation is right on the money. P.S. I have decided to add a little personal note to Sig, someone whose posts are worth reading. Sig, I can trace my training back to I.M. Kolthoff, as I was trained by someone who was trained by Kolthoff. (you can google him) That kind of training of course involves acquiring a certain expertise in pH measurement and electrochemistry. I want to caution you regarding the ocean pH measurements. Getting reliable pH measurements in ocean water outside of a laboratory setting, i.e., directly in the ocean, or aboard ship in a makeshift laboratory, is difficult. The state of past measurements is in chaos but it does seem to indicate a cyclical pattern, not well correlated with 20th century CO2, by the way, except for a recent period. If you see a pH measurement to two significant figures it may be somewhat reliable to +- 0.1 unit. If you see a value to three significant figures, except in very rare circumstances, reject the 3 digit entirely and assume the error is in the second. I can't emphasize enough what an unreliable state the current knowledge of ocean pH over time is. The most reliable, i.e., most precise, measurements may be photometric rather than with a glass electrode, but they are more inconvenient, and only available for recently acquired ocean pH data. Going forward I think it will be possible to get reliable data so long as we are willing to spend enough to get it, but I don't put much faith in the past data if the purpose is to see what is happening to pH over time. Then once you get reliable data you've got the job of figuring out what the cause for a change is. Ocean pH varies widely with location.
If renewables can indeed, as you suggest, come in at an unsubsidized price point even marginally comparable to fossil fuels - then free markets will make the change with greater priority and efficiency than any Government program.
You're looking at it from a household perspective, but I think the primary opposition to any wide-ranging policy changes on energy production and consumption is going to be huge organizations- corporations, governments, trade committees, etc. They are way harder to sway than a family of five. Oil source and pricing is the central focus of America's geopolitical posturing.
It is awfully sad to see how socialized american academia has become. Many concerns such as paleoclimatology and anthropology that are absolutely essential to understanding our origins and our world also can produce results that disrupt the comfort of over-politicized, over-sensitive, over-tenured faculties completely adverse to adjusting the status quo. I recall the great James Watson, Nobel Prize winner and discoverer of DNA, a man foundational to several independent branches of biology. He was completely cast aside and stigmatized because of some mildly unpleasant but scientifically irrefutable comments he made in an anthropological vein. Often our intellectuals operate like tabloid journalists. That said, great discussion between you and sig.