@johnquiggin

I am personally under the delusion that basic climate change is very simple.

Heat reflected from the earths surface is trapped better by CO2, and water vapour, than by other gasses in the atmosphere, like oxygen and nitrogen. You can shine an infrared light through a bottle of nitrogen, oxygen, and CO2 to verify this.

There are some positive and negative feedbacks, such as more water vapour (positive), more clouds (negative), less ice cover (positive).

Burning fossil fuels creates CO2, which remains in the atmosphere long enough to make a difference.

Methane is an even better trapper of heat, but does not last as long in the atmosphere.

@johnquiggin

At some level getting breakfast for everyone in Australia tomorrow is complicated.

I don't see a transition to clean energy as a relatively complicated thing.

I understand a lot better how energy gets from solar cell on a roof to a car, than how petrol gets from an oil well into my car.

We just need to build lots of wind farms, and put up lots of solar, string some wires, connect some batteries, and possibly build some pumped hydro, which is also dead simple.