“I think it is too easy to look at it as two monoliths. (i.e is there global warming? yes/no)”

This where I disagree. To me the question isn't one of whether global warming/climate change is or is not occurring, but one of whether one is at ease in fully believing the politicised science of the IPCC (and its ramifications), or mainstream science: the former having quietly altered its remit to look exclusively for anthropogenic causes, while the latter seeks to continue looking at the whole spectrum; i.e. both man-made and natural causes. From my perspective, therefore, the term denier is entirely wrong, but is still regularly used due to the ease with which it can close down debate.

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“I will be dead before it becomes a problem, so I don't care.”

This both presupposes there is, indeed a ‘problem’ and that CO₂ reduction is actually a solution to it. That said (and though now being 64 and on the downward slope) I do actually care. Not about climate change per se, because I believe it to be predominantly natural, but at the cost (financial, social, political and environmental) to be borne by those youngsters being gulled into demanding action. As I mentioned above, one only has to look at the gilets jaunes protests in France (and the, sometimes, brutal suppression thereof) to get a flavour of what’s to come when the piper demands payment.

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“My life is expensive enough if accepting we need to do something about it makes life more expensive then I would rather we wait to do something.

Again as mentioned above, there are some in the UK already suffering the consequences of the UK’s response to climate change, which at present has only tackled the 'low hanging fruit'. With the necessary increased reliance on renewables, this can only get worse.

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I’ve commented on my local rag’s website that when, in the past, someone was paid to find witches, witches were usually found. Upton Sinclair was more eloquent when he said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” Both can be applied to the way in which the IPCC operates: the searching for evidence to support a preconceived narrative and the ignoring, suppressing and even the altering of counter-evidence, to protect one’s grant payments/income, in this pursuit.

Ever since Michael Mann’s hockey stick graph was comprehensively debunked by Steve McIntyre* (subsequently reinforced by the climategate revelations) I’ve been increasingly suspicious of how the IPCC operates. (Even worse has been the fawning of the BBC in their support.) We’ve had 30 years of ‘ten years to save the planet’ (actually making the latest 12 years a 20% improvement), but in reality, very little has changed. This, of course, hasn’t stopped some from blaming just about every weather event and ill (including Brexit) on climate change – which I find eerily reminiscent of early civilisations, rather than those of the 21^st century. And let’s not forget too that some entrepreneurial individuals have grown incredibly rich from fostering this belief, and the lavish subsidies being thrown at renewables.

You may be correct in believing we need to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, but reinventing an inefficient and intermittent centuries-old technology is not progress. I also believe the storage part of CCS (if they can get it to work) could very well be one of those remedies worse than the illness: a real environmental catastrophe in the making (alongside the present avian slaughter from wind farms). And as I described above, the cost will not be just 'a bit of cash'.

*Am I the only one to notice that Matt Damon's character in Interstellar (the pedlar of dodgy climate data) is a scientist named Mann?