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Maybe I'm unfamiliar with these models. Do they show the potential economic and geopolitical effects of warming? Do they have detailed models that show changes to the agricultural carrying capacity of the earth at various temperature levels?

Or do the models just say "reduce atmospheric CO2 by X ppm and it will result in a temperature drop of Y deg C"?

I'm talking about simple cost:benefit where the benefit is less CO2 in the atmosphere.  This is a very simple way of assessing whether money spent will have at least that simple impact, and to what degree.  One can carry this into more complexity of course by attempting to assess how T increases may alter this and that.

And yes, the various climate models have as a main input CO2 levels and a main output global mean T.  They are extremely complex and varied in type, and I didn't want to get into whether the models are really predictive or not.  The MIT Climate group has assessed the benefit IF everyone hit their Paris targets, for example, and the impact is small.  I find that relevant, and important to consider.

So I did show my work. The atmosphere (well, the entire biosphere or whatever sphere they call it these days) is key to life on earth. We don't have great capabilities to run large scale experiments on it to determine what will happen given the range of options. So by necessity, we have to do a lot of guessing. Given the uncertainty in outcomes in messing with the composition of the atmosphere, and given the very, very bad possible outcomes, we should make policy based on keeping it stable.

Got it. Precautionary principle. 

Except that there's a penalty for remaking our entire energy paradigm at high cost... The high cost. The opportunity cost of that money not being invested in anti-cancer drugs, or groundbreaking new technologies that will advance economic growth somewhere else, or whatever. (Granted, it'll probably actually be spent buying NFTs in the metaverse...)

You're proposing to engage in something that has very high cost today for something that has a potential negative effect down the road. 

Well, as a society, human beings have never really been good at pain today for benefit tomorrow... So understand that you've got a pretty big hill to climb. 

I'm talking about simple cost:benefit where the benefit is less CO2 in the atmosphere.  This is a very simple way of assessing whether money spent will have at least that simple impact, and to what degree.  One can carry this into more complexity of course by attempting to assess how T increases may alter this and that.

And yes, the various climate models have as a main input CO2 levels and a main output global mean T.  They are extremely complex and varied in type, and I didn't want to get into whether the models are really predictive or not.  The MIT Climate group has assessed the benefit IF everyone hit their Paris targets, for example, and the impact is small.  I find that relevant, and important to consider.

You're a pragmatist, CD, and I get that. You're right. Even if we hit the Paris accord targets (which we won't) it won't do much anyway. 

I'm just saying that you're taking that reduced CO2 and reduced T is a benefit--I'm asking for the next step. Is reduced T good? Is increased T bad? Is the value of taking steps to reduce T now worth forgoing other economic growth that could help us mitigate future increased T without taking costly actions now? 

I've said before that the climate change alarmist position basically has to follow a chain:

• The earth is experiencing real, observed, warming.
• CO2 is a greenhouse gas. 
• Increased emissions of CO2 by humans is the cause of some portion of the observed warming. Continued emissions of CO2 and higher atmospheric CO2 levels is likely to increase global temperature from where it is today. 
• Warming (increased global T) is bad.
• The economic/social/geopolitical negative effects from warming have a value of Y. 
• We can alleviate the bad effects of warming if we just spend X now on transitioning our energy economy away from fossil fuels. 
• We can't mitigate the bad effects of warming down the road for any cost that is meaningfully lower than or in the same range as X.
• X is much, much lower than Y. 
• Thus, it is justified to spend X now to avoid Y later. 

I'd state that steps 1-3 are basically agreed upon by all rational people on both sides of the debate. 

4 is probably true, but I wouldn't say it's conclusively proven. 

5-9 are complete and total unknowns. 

The alarmists skip from 4 to 9. Warming is horrible, we're causing it, so we'd better pay whatever is necessary to stop it. 

The rational* skeptics mostly say that we don't really know how bad warming will be and that we haven't really justified that the cost to mitigate it today will really be worth the gain from avoiding some level of warming. 

The pragmatists (you) say that we won't actually do anything of note anyway, and that most of the discussions are one big circle jerk. 

 * By rational skeptics I'm removing the wack-jobs who don't believe warming is happening, or who deny a link between human-produced CO2 and that warming. 

U.S. Energy Secretary Granholm calls on oil and gas companies to raise output (cnbc.com)

I am all astonishment.

Except that there's a penalty for remaking our entire energy paradigm at high cost... The high cost. The opportunity cost of that money not being invested in anti-cancer drugs, or groundbreaking new technologies that will advance economic growth somewhere else, or whatever. (Granted, it'll probably actually be spent buying NFTs in the metaverse...)

You're proposing to engage in something that has very high cost today for something that has a potential negative effect down the road. 

Well, yes, opportunity cost is a thing. When Three Mile Island occurred they invented all sorts of regulatory schemes on nuclear plants that made them cost prohibitive. Now it is very difficult and expensive to build new nuclear plants in the United States, and so it is very rare that anyone builds them. I am not certain of this but it certainly doesn't feel that the United States is at the forefront or anywhere near the forefront of research on nuclear power. Other countries didn't artificially increase the cost of nuclear power, and they seem just fine. So forty years of choosing to fall behind other countries certainly raises the cost of catching up. 

Germany and Japan are closing down their power reactors, I don't imagine they are doing research much on new ones.  The US is still abreast of modern nuclear reactor design.  The SMRs are interesting and COULD provide an intermediate term approach that might work, but as yet, it's not happening.

This is political, not technical.

It's definitely political, and then becomes technical. If one wanted to work on design of nuclear reactors, you would be silly to stay in the United States. We have to buy research from other countries if we even wanted to have modern technology, which we mostly don't.

I do not think that is true at all.  I don't think any other country has more advanced nuclear technology than the US.

I wouldn't want a Chinese reactor near me.

Homer is smart