[Just an edit to clarify - I'm not saying climate change isn't real, or that we don't need to do something about it. I'm steel-manning the grandparent poster be

[Just an edit to clarify - I'm not saying climate change isn't real, or that we don't need to do something about it. I'm steel-manning the grandparent poster because I don't think the parent to this post was giving them a fair hearing.] Does the term "Baptists and Bootleggers" mean anything to you? One side can have (all?) the scientists and still there could be an agenda on that side to push through legislation that has nothing to do with fixing global warming (and instead be, say, about consolidating power). [Not that I'm saying this is the case, but there are many reasons to be against particular policies besides climate change not being real]. Take, for example, the infamous case of Prohibition in the US. Much of the political agitation was funded directly by bootleggers who stood to make an enormous profit off of alcohol being, and remaining, illegal. Even though it was true that "alcohol had ill societal effects", and even though real people really did want it banned, it was still, in its implementation, mostly a power play by people who had no good intentions. (See, for example, most drug stores having 'medicinal alcohol' for sale during this period, and many high-level political and other actors completely ignoring prohibition in their own daily lives.) And, even if you can convincingly argue that the entire climate change side is completely well-intentioned [which I believe most of them are], that does not mean that scientists' policies are actually going to be effective - an expert in one domain does not automatic translate to expertise in others, and multibillion dollar mistakes have real costs beyond money.