> Heating, cooling, food production, weather forecasting?

Given how irresponsibly wasteful the US is in emissions on a per capita basis, with imports adding around 8% IIRC, there's obviously a lot that can be done.

> With the climate doomerism, what exactly is the problem? What are the alternatives?

The problem that we are trying to solve is climate stability, namely decrease variance and prevent the change of the average / expected behaviour.

When climate researchers say carbon in the atmosphere, they mean carbon and the equivalent carbon required to achieve the same effect / similar behaviour. So methane is a significantly more potent green house gas than carbon (80x).

Suppose for a moment that we do nothing, and keep going on the same track. Then we can expect a severe increase in global temperature. The consequences of that are for example a more frequent split of the jetstream [1]. Normally the jetstream prevents Europe from heating up, and manages the weather. Now, a split of the jetstream is not good because it can enable bubbles of very warm saharan air getting trapped over Europe, creating a heat dome. A heat dome causes damage to local crops, is responsible for loss of life, and dries up the land. This is a major issue for Europe because most houses are not built to sustain such weather, and lots of infrastructure can collapse or endure severe damage [3].

If we do nothing with respect to methane then we will see an increase in troposphere level ozone. Ozone in the stratosphere is a good thing, protects us from UV radiation. In contrast, Ozone in troposphere (0-15km) is absolutely horrible. It causes over 1M premature deaths, is a major component of smog, is highly reactive and causes damage to crops [2].

> Tropospheric ozone is a major component of smog, which can worsen bronchitis and emphysema, trigger asthma, and permanently damage lung tissue. Tropospheric ozone exposure is responsible for an estimated one million premature deaths each year. Children, the elderly, and people with lung or cardiovascular diseases are particularly at risk of the adverse health impacts of ozone.

> Tropospheric ozone is a highly reactive oxidant that significantly reduces crop productivity as well as the uptake of atmospheric carbon by vegetation. Its effects on plants include impeded growth and seed production, reduced functional leaf area and accelerated ageing.

> Studies have shown that many species of plants are sensitive to ozone, including agricultural crops, grassland species and tree species. These effects impact on the important ecosystem services provided by plants, including food security, carbon sequestration, timber production, and protection against soil erosion, avalanches and flooding.

Furthermore, climate change will also result in 1.2 billion or so refugees which will cause further conflict in continents and further reduce our capacity to improve our societies.

I can keep going but it will probably make this reply too long, so I suggest reading up on it. If you are like me, and don't believe that overpopulation is actually an issue and believe it is better to have more humans to educate them, have more doctors and improve the living conditions of other countries, then you will see that climate change causes an enormous amount of premature deaths, lung cancer, and whatever else, effectively reducing the rate of humanity's improvement.

> has in fact created nearly the entirety of the world around them.

This is a good point, and a major point of friction with developing countries, namely, why should they not use fossil fuels when all developed countries did. The emissions of different countries follow an arch they start low, rise up as the society improves, and then start falling down while continuing the improvement. A good way to reduce expected emissions is to accelerate the growth of developing countries so that they spend less time in the developing phase, and more in the developed one. For this to be done however, it has to be done in ways that do not actually cause harm to the country as that will prolong the development period. This is supported by studies on different approaches to helping developing countries, most of which ultimately failed because there are too many things that need to be done simultaneously.

So how does one do that? By investing in better alternatives and improving efficiency of course. The developed world exploited fossil fuels, and now it's the perfect time for us to be "early adopters" of tech that will help us build a greener future. I put "early adopters" in quotes, because even with current tech we can solve the problems, it just costs a lot of money, but living in a cleaner, more stable environment is worth it for everyone.

We do not have to give up heating/cooling/food production/ etc. We need to reduce subsidies for fossil fuels wherever they exist, improve infrastructure to reduce reliance on internal combustion engines, use scale, invest in research, and start applying what we know. All it takes is legislation change.

[1] NB, we know that this is a consequence of human behaviour, this is supported by thoroughly tested and investigated causal models. See here, talk by Dr Simon Clark https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5FmFuPPvdE

[2] https://www.ccacoalition.org/en/slcps/tropospheric-ozone

[3] https://www.npr.org/2022/07/20/1112411697/record-high-temper...