Allow me to reply.
First off, I was a climate skeptic for many years. Coming from someone who studied geology and the ice ages and even had professors of the time suggest this was a natural pattern, I had concluded this was largely a non issue that would work itself out. But years later, and relatively recently, I was forced to confront my conclusions and acknowledge that yes - it was happening - and yes, man is at least partly involved. The CO2 being the main and obvious issue that can be measured.
So you’re right and wrong about “climate change mostly educated speculation of future changes”. The models DO run a gamut of “not that bad” to “mass extinction levels”. It most likely will be in the middle somewhere, but an honest scientist will say that they can’t be certain how bad it will be at this point.
But we have the evidence that it is getting worse. Nine of the 10 warmest years on record have all occurred since 2005. The hippy dippy Pentagon has released papers outlining issues global warming is threatening 2/3rds of their mission critical bases. So whether one wants to acknowledge it or not, or believes man is involved directly or not, things are happening.
Now - is WWII a good analogy? It’s decent, because it will take a global effort and people contributing in small ways - possibly even rationing and sacrificing for the greater good. It also is global problem that will effect everyone in some way.
It will be expensive - but it will also be expensive if we do nothing. The flooding we are seeing in the midwest is going to get worse. Coastal areas are going to see more flooding and most likely stronger hurricanes. In the past when things got too wet in an area, we just migrated back a little bit. But with established cities, people are going to fight pulling up tent stakes and just “moving back”. Do you spend money on the front end to try to get ahead of it, or money on the back end to clean up the mess?
Globally we have seen it cause massive issues already. The Syrian civil war was touched off due to a severe drought which forced people in the rural areas into the city to seek refuge. More problems where an area is hit hard and civil unrest erupts is a guarantee. How much have we spent in Syria? How much have other countries in dealing with the refuge crisis?
Then we have the issue of - do we want to still be number one? People are developing new technologies. China is the sleeping dragon that is awakening. They are making a massive push for greener technology. Their current pollution issues are like what the US had in the 70s pre EPA. They are working on clean coal plants (as that is the one raw source they can easily get), but they are also making a huge push with new nuclear plants being built. They already have tapped hydro power for the massive rivers. But they are also working solar and wind technology. The tech sector in China is exploding and they have about 2x the number of STEM graduates than in the US. India is also putting out more STEM grads. If we aren’t actively pushing to be the forefront of this technology, others will and we will lose our technological edge.
Finally, I do share your opinion that no one in the government has a good, clear picture on what to do. I am not sure anyone does. In fact I do worry about just throwing money at the issue like it will solve it, when those solutions might not be the best ones available. And certainly some of the proponents are making clunky statements that are easy to mock and make memes of. But this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be working towards that goal.
