Here are a few facts that never seem to make their way into the pointy little heads of such scientists:
Most of the increase in greenhouse gas emissions, now and for the foreseeable future, will be attributable to the several billion people in the third and developing worlds, who are just starting to approach modernity because of the use of plentiful and cheap fossil fuels, mainly coal. Nothing could be more cruel, unreal, or destructive than to tell these unfortunate souls that they must scale back, in order to save the planet. They won't do it and they should not be asked to.
Given the foregoing, and given the massive, inflexible energy needs of our technological infrastructure (transportation, agriculture, manufacturing, energy production, water and wastewater treatment), anything done "on the margins" to reduce the human "carbon footprint" - things such as parking our SUV's, fiddling with our thermostats, working from home - will have such a microscopic impact on the overall picture as to be laughable. And yet they would be quite painful to WORKING CLASS PEOPLE, in the form of inflation, discomfort, and inconvenience.
I choose to think that mankind will do what it has always done: develop engineering solutions to the problems as (and before) they arise. Lest we forget, mankind has made vast inhospitable deserts, frozen wastelands, and swamps into happy, eminently habitable areas. Think Phoenix, Alaska, the Netherlands, New Orleans. And we will do it again.
Does anybody really think that Venice and New York City will just allow rising seas to turn them into empty curiosities?