> What are the chances that the US will cut CO2 emissions by 50% in a decade or two? I'd say that it's about zero.

I agree. But so does everyone else. So why point it out unless to argue in favor of despair?

Placing a sufficient price on CO2 emissions would probably do it. Odds of getting our legislatures to do this may be slim, but why not try?

> Exaggeration doesn't help the argument that anthropogenic climate change is a serious problem.

I'm not exaggerating. The EPA's forecasted temperature increase over the next 83 years is a confidence interval with upper bounds at 12F for the USA and 8.6F for the global average. (https://www.epa.gov/climate-change-science/future-climate-ch...) A change of that magnitude will have tremendous consequences:

- Changing rainfall patterns and foundering marine ecosystems might threaten public food and water supplies.

- The resulting economic fallout might create large migrations of people who will have to compete for space in regions of the world already overfull.

- Large regions of the country would become unpleasant to reside in on account of the temperature alone.

- Violence and poverty could become widespread.

These seem to me to be genuine threats that it is realistic to believe that people alive today might face in their old age.