Short answer: you don't. How would you interpret reports filled with technical jargon, and most of it has no clear-and-obvious relation to normal every-day life

Short answer: you don't. How would you interpret reports filled with technical jargon, and most of it has no clear-and-obvious relation to normal every-day life? You trust the people telling you what's what, and you analyze your standards and expectations of what can happen and plan accordingly. How do you plan against something you know next-to-nothing about, or you know so little that you can barely grasp the enormity of preparing for "global warming"? That's a great question, and it'll involve plans whose scope lies well beyond what you'll be doing tonight, tomorrow, next week, or 20 years from now -- it'll involve plans that include everybody and what we'll be doing tonight, tomorrow, next week, or 20 years from now.