I'm no climate scientist but common sense tells me that changing the composition of the earth's atmosphere ought have some effects. Indeed the big surprise would be if it
didn't bring some impacts on something.
General knowledge of physics tells me that temperature is a likely impact. It's a common impact of many things.
As an engineering challenge the idea of building a non-emitting energy system is a decent challenge. It beats most other things we do in Australia these days, it's an actual challenge to solve it, it's not something dead easy.
But.....
What gives me serious doubts about the whole thing is the attitude of those who scream the loudest.
Engineers and other technical people don't go around looking for National Parks to destroy. Rather, they go looking for technically and economically suitable places to build wind farms, hydro, transmission lines and so on.
Now when it turns out that every good hydro site has already been claimed for a National Park or World Heritage, when it turns out that every available transmission route raises objections, when it turns out that even putting the wind farms on an island literally nobody other than the private owners ever goes to causes objections, when there's opposition to burying something radioactive in the ground in the same state it came out of, well then it all starts to look rather suspicious.
Then there's the response when discussion turns to what needs to happen and what the options are. Broadly speaking it's not the engineers, average people or even those who think there isn't a problem with climate who argue against building large scale infrastructure to fix it. No, it's those who scream loudly about the issue who are the ones who also scream loudly against attempts to fix it.
It's not engineers, political conservatives or even those who say there's no problem with CO2 who dislike big electrical projects be they wind, hydro, solar, nuclear or transmission. Most are more than happy with anything that's properly designed and built and which keeps the lights on, and most do see at least some benefit in not using fossil fuels even without the CO2 issue being considered.
No, the opposition comes from the very same end of the political spectrum that screams most loudly about climate change. The far Left.
So we have a situation where those calling most loudly for action are largely the ones standing in the way of it. They always say the same thing - they support renewables but not here, they support wind but not if it's "industrial scale", they support storage but not if it's large enough to actually replace gas, and so on. They want token efforts not actual solutions.
That may seem harsh but I've seen plenty of it first hand and it's the reality. Cut CO2 emissions 20% and everyone's your friend. Try and cut 100% and the Left will fight you all the way and beat you into submission. Been there, played this game.
As it stands right now, there's a quiet backdown going on. I don't expect there'll be any grand announcements but it's much like the pandemic as of ~two years ago. No grand announcements, just a shifting of focus and it faded into the background. I see the same thing afoot and it's really because governments have worked out they can't win. Fix it or don't fix it, the same people will object either way, and that being so the focus is shifting to the rest who are more worried about the price of energy than the emissions from it.
So we have WA dropping any thought of pumped hydro, which has also quietly disappeared completely off the agenda in SA, we've got most states saying gas can continue to be installed in new homes, there's plans for new fossil fuel projects, and so on.
If the climate activists aren't happy, they need to realise it was their kin who brought this about. Too many objections to building things made government realise it couldn't win no matter what it did, and that being so it's politically rational to avoid upsetting the rest.
Trouble is, there actually are a lot of reasons why we ought be getting off fossil fuels. Wars in the Middle East for a start.....