Anyone who says "the science is settled, the laws of physics cannot be violated" fails to realize what physics is even about. The vast majority of victories that physics has had since Isaac Newton are based on incredibly simplified models that strip out all of the complexity from a system. Basically everything interesting is treated as linear (as in f(x) ~ x) and a lot of the other stuff is just thrown into constants. After a few decades of working with that, both in theory and with experiments, you might get comfortable enough to add some small corrections to your theories. In this way you step closer and closer to "truth" but we are still very far off, even with our best physics, from fully understanding anything of even moderate complexity. This is not to say that we don't get incredibly useful results from physics (just look at our technology!), but it does mean that we need to constrain statements about how much we really understand and where our "laws" really are applicable. Take for instance the equation for kinetic energy, k=.5 * mv^2. Hugely useful, but dead wrong if you try to apply it to things moving at relativistic speeds.
The problem of climate science, from my perspective, is that we can't strip it down like we do for simple systems like a ball moving in space. Climate is inherently very complex; if you try to ignore how oceans interact with vegetation, how vegetation interacts with clouds, how clouds and rain are connected, etc, then your models can be interesting and might reveal something, but they can't be used to predict what will happen with any degree of confidence because they are too far removed from the real thing. And if you don't strip something out of the system when doing your modeling, well then good luck: you'll never understand anything at all because the thing is too complex to be used to calculate anything of interest.
edit: added some words.
edit2: more words.
There's however a consensus on the fact that it's going to be bad. What don't know is how bad. Which is IMHO frightening enough
I do think you make a great point, which is that the risks and rewards need to be considered. The problem is that analyzing the cost is also a pretty complex problem and there are very real arguments to be made that going green could end up being very costly.
FWIW, I actually came into the climate science debate on your side and have been won over by paying attention to a broader set of sources. One of the things I really can't stand about the climate change disaster is that even if you accept all the claims from the IPCC, it pales in comparison, in my opinion, to other issues that seem a bit simpler to me. The collapsing insect populations, for instance, can have a pretty direct impact on human health and happiness. The climate discussion seems takes all the attention even though no one has made a credible argument as to why it is more dangerous than other problems we face.
edit: I'll add that scientific modelling is _very_ difficult in general, even for much simpler systems than what we are talking about here. These models have tons of simplifying assumptions baked into them and they can be made to spit out just about anything, depending on what values for certain parameters are chosen. The tools aren't particularly trustworthy.
edit: I'll add a bit more. I do think climate change is happening and I do think that humans might have a big part in why it is happening. What I don't find compelling is why this is necessarily an end-of-the-world scenario. The typical argument is: "there has already been warming and there will be further warming. Then there will be runaway effects, then the warming will become extreme and life will become very difficult for most people in most places." Well I do agree with the first part, but it is _really_ hard to predict what happens afterwards, i.e. are there going to be runaway effects. There are reasonable arguments that there won't be. The arguments that there will be tend to focus on a few scientific facts and ignore the complexity of the system at large (i.e. they ignore negative feedback mechanisms and focus only on positive feedback).
The mere fact that an end-of-the-world scenario is possible should mobilize us all. End of the world is not something you gamble on. And, of course, it won't an end of the world, it will a slow and painful life on an unlivable planet.
Can you give me any positive feedback from the release of carbon ?
And I definitely think that relying on the weather a.k.a. "renewable energy" when you have solid prediction that its going to be unreliable, while your prediction of the possibility of averting the crisis is unknown, is beyond dumb. It's suicidal.
We're choosing the worst possible strategy right now. We have the highest probability of the worst case scenario: chaotic climate and weather while relying on said climate for energy generation. Planning for worst case is planning for the crisis happening regardless of your actions, because your confidence about the impact of your actions is pretty low.
There is no metric by which the current suicidal strategy makes sense. We're not minimizing the damage in the worst case. We're not adapting to the situation as it comes. The only scenario in which the current strategy has a better outcome is if we somehow were right about everything, not only about the impact of CO2, but about the geopolitical actions taken by China and India.
The probability that we're on the best possible strategy is practically zero.
Good luck.
Aside from borderline impossible claims of a runaway greenhouse effect, there is absolutely no world where human extinction is on the table and frankly I would argue that mass death is unlikely as historical evidence is by far in the favor of human adaptability.
I would argue that mass death happening somewhere else is almost an inevitability by historical arguments; it just doesn't look like it's climate related. Is a refugee from desertified Africa who drowns in the Mediterranean a "climate death"?
Mass death won't look like the Al Gore movie. It'll look like COVID: a line going up on a chart which people can ignore.
But please, keep trying.