It seems to me that scholars are often even more confused about climate change than non-scholars.

Public attitudes about climate change reveal a contradiction. Surveys show most Americans believe climate change poses serious risks but also that reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions sufficient to stabilize atmospheric GHG concentrations can be deferred until there is greater evidence that climate change is harmful.

This is push polling rather than evidence gathering. We see this all the time when confronted with some survey that asks confused questions and provides no sensible answer choices. "None of the above" almost always seems more correct than any of the choices given for the poorly formed question. In this case - yes, climate change is a risk - but we have no useful information about the causes. Emphasis on useful. Much of the hesitation to embrace policies for emissions reductions are that they aren't known to be effective. It's not clear that this is a proper approach to the real risks, though it does seem clear that the reduction policies proposed are just bureaucratic wanking that will have little if any effect for the world wide problem.

Such wait-and-see policies erroneously presume climate change can be reversed quickly should harm become evident, underestimating substantial delays in the climate’s response to anthropogenic forcing. We report experiments with highly educated adults – graduate students at MIT – showing widespread misunderstanding of the fundamental stock and flow relationships, including mass balance principles, that lead to long response delays. GHG emissions are now about twice the rate of GHG removal from the atmosphere. GHG concentrations will therefore continue to rise even if emissions fall, stabilizing only when emissions equal removal. In contrast, most subjects believe atmospheric GHG concentrations can be stabilized while emissions into the atmosphere continuously exceed the removal of GHGs from it. These beliefs – analogous to arguing a bathtub filled faster than it drains will never overflow – support wait-and-see policies but violate conservation of matter.

A better analysis of public hesitancy is that they, like patient parents, are allowing the child to grow up a bit mentally, to see the problem more clearly and propose better solutions. The parents may have some confusion in their understanding too, but that doesn't mean that the children are not even more confused.

One problem, as stated, is that emission rates exceed removal rates. This may not be the only problem, but focus there for the moment. Reducing emissions isn't the only, or the best, method to resolve the imbalance. Unless emissions are reduced to a level far below removal rates, and held there for a long time, little is achieved. The inevitable is only slightly delayed. This is the sort of thing that politicians do instead of addressing problems. Real reform can be deferred until they are safely retired, but in the meantime they can still eat high on the hog.

A better approach is to increase removal rates. This does not mean that emissions will not also fall as a result of improved systems, but it does mean that collective effort is focused on a more effective point. This is also something that would not meet as much public resistance since it does not harm them. But, this does not satisfy the base urge of many policy makers to "socially engineer consumption patterns, especially those of the United States". This is the real conflict: emissions control is a way to "back door" these long held and cherished social objectives that have nothing to do with climate change.

When we open the analysis up again and consider other climate changing factors - such as land use changes - the narrow focus of social engineers in climate scold drag seem even less credible or sensible. I've been pleasantly surprised that Americans have held out this long against the concerted efforts of ideologues brandishing the climate hobgoblin. I expected them to go paws up long ago, and only come to their senses after the policies were shown to have failed. Much social damage would have been done by then of course, so the social engineers would have stolen a march on society even if they failed to deal with pressing problems. This is standard practice, staggering into the future.

There are some very interesting technologies for removing atmospheric carbon. Some have the added benefit of also enhancing soil, giving multiple benefits. That a significant part of the atmospheric carbon concentrations came from the soil in the first place, impoverishing it and causing other environmental problems, makes such an approach all the more attractive. The response of social engineers to these facts is to ignore them or actively seek to keep them quiet since they undermine the true objectives of controlling consumption as a sacrifice to the po-faced god.

None of our technologies are presently adequate to the task as we understand it. It's not a simple matter of routing the bad guys and doing right. Keep your fists in your pockets. But we won't succeed in this task if we remain in thrall to those who have nonsense understandings and ulterior motives for their policy recommendations. That needs to be said repeatedly to shift our attention to more effective mechanisms.