I don't have any expertise at all. I have not dismissed them. I have no argument except that to point out that predictions are hard, especially about the future. I note our innumerable mistakes in the past and how confident people were when they made them, and I'm surprised that people can go on being so sure of themselves. Must be the human condition.

I remember that scientists more than four decades ago were saying the everyone was going to die of hunger due to overpopulation. It was a VERY SERIOUS MATTER that everyone believed in, and only fools dared to doubt the ever present experts. Well, here we are, and I'm fat.

Scientists four decades ago were also jabbering on about global cooling, which appeared on the cover of Time magazine, and an endless parade of doom prophets have marched by since then predicting civilizational destruction on TV and in print. They come, and then they go and and are forgotten. We are still here.

If you doubt these experts, you will be right more often than you are wrong.

Here's a prediction: Politicians will milk this gravy train for all it is worth for as long as they are able to keep the public's attention. There will be a lot of drama and a fair bit of madness, but nothing much will happen and after another ten years or so the public's attention will wander to some other matter and this climate change craze will begin to fade. 30 years from now doubting Toms like me will hold up the predictions of the 20's as an example of failed predictions, but nobody will listen because their experts will be telling them about a new disaster that's all their fault and for which they must atone or be damned in the eyes of the gods.