Apologies for the rant -- I usually don't do them. I just get tired of the same arguments over and over again. Agreed that the many/most of the tiny pieces of

Apologies for the rant -- I usually don't do them. I just get tired of the same arguments over and over again. Agreed that the many/most of the tiny pieces of climate science are about as settled as you can get. Nobody's debating the absorption spectrum of CO2. Everybody knows what the temperature of the Earth would be if it were a black body. But, as you note, this ain't Newtonian physics. If you think about it, the Earth's climate is the most amazingly complex system we could possibly assess using science. We have myriad chemical processes. Add to those a plethora of biological processes. Throw in a heap of meteorological processes. Finally don't forget the astrophysics of the thing. And if you want to have the discussion to the natural conclusion, don't forget geo-politics, economics, demographics, and a pile of other human-oriented sciences. Geesh Pete, that's a ton of separately enormously complex systems, many of which have huge knowledge gaps, many of which we cannot model well worth a hoot, all working together. To do what? I'm not even sure we understand the question, much less have any clue on how to model the answers. You also make an excellent point about unplanned consequences of mankind taking various actions. I am reminded of an archaeology article I read a while back about a Roman village. The village was home to a large silver mining industry. As such, the people there prospered. The empire grew. But at the same time they poisoned their water supply. There was much suffering. I doubt it would be possible to remove most of the ecological changes (I will not use the loaded term "damage") that economic growth has caused without us all living in bearskins and dying of measles by age 30. That's not acceptable. So it's always going to be a discussion about appropriate trade-offs. It's been that way for all of recorded history, assuming the sky gods remain happy, all we have is this reasoning by induction to use on the climate question. I am honestly at a loss to tell you what the stock market is going to do over the next year. I cannot tell you how the economy will fare over five years. I have completely no idea what changes technology will bring over the next decade or two. Asking for political consensus about what some folks _guess_ might be a few inches of sea level change over the next century? It's simply a non-starter. I don't mean that in a pejorative way. I'm sure folks mean well and are acting in good faith. It's just the entire line of argumentation is far too tenuous, shaky and relies way too much on emotional verve for me to get any traction on it at all. I see a lot of anger, haughty condescension, and political ugliness, but that's just a terrific reason for serious scientists to have nothing to do with the advocacy part of this. There's no there there.