Opinions are like navels: everyone has one, and they are all different.
I'm sure that CO2 is already at a level that is causing change, and is obviously still headed almost straight up, not inflecting down. If that doesn't change, it's only a matter of time until this planet's climate becomes unrecognizable.
(We might HOPE that it will take more than a few more decades, but speaking for all our descendants: WHO CARES whether it takes them 20 years or 200 years to starve?)
What matters is not whether disaster is assured in 20 years, or 200. What matters is starting to make hard decisions EARLY ENOUGH that we (might) still have a chance to reverse this without totally destroying the world economy (as the only alternative to destroying the ecosystem). That would have been smart, and that boat may already have sailed.
For that to change, politicians all over the world would have to do intelligent, difficult things. Looking only at USA politics for the moment, I have zero hope of that.
My actual hard-core very-strongly-held belief is that we ought to be at least a LITTLE bit careful with our planet, until we have several spares, and even then, most species are smart enough not to poop in their own beds.
Excuse me: Most OTHER species are smart enough to not poop int heir own beds. Humans, I guess, are not that smart if there is any money to be made by USING UP THE PLANET.
Say there is "only" a 90%, 50% or 20% chance that anthropogenic CO2 will cause massive crop failures and/or sea level rises that take away significant coastal area. That chance should have every person on the planet jumping up and down anxiously until we have a proven solution.
Because we don't want our descendants to try to live in a desert or where daily temps routinely go over 110F.
Yes, the species survived ice ages, but if we are smarter than chimps, we won't make our grandchildren huddle in caves until the planet cleanses itself.
I think it was Al Smith who said "Let's look at the record."
So far, in the USA at least, we have a LOT of people who seem to be saying "It's not yet PROVEN that horrible things are CERTAINLY going to happen, so let's do nothing and make things worse at the rate of 9 BILLION tons of CO2 per year until I get a promotion for keeping quarterly profits up, up, up.
