Here's my take.

Most young people, at least my peers (25-35-year-olds), agree that we need to do a lot more. I don’t think they identify CO2 as the main threat, but more the mindset of corporations/governments shackled to capitalism. Sure, we’re making positive changes, but we have a long way to go before we can say we’re making moderate gains. Most emissions are generated by industry (when I last checked); we need to make energy-intensive processes non-reliant on fossil fuels. We can't worry about who's to blame; we need to focus on the future and how we make it better for everyone. I think most humans suffer from a lack of altruism; instead, they live here and now without considering the whole. 

I highly recommend watching “Breaking Boundaries: The Science Of Our Planet,” narrated by David Attenborough; everyone needs to see it to consider what they can do; we all play a part! 

The younger people are getting fed up with a reactionary old generation who want to keep things just the way they are, because it suits them to do nothing.

It's very easy to convince yourself that nothing is wrong, if you don't want to do anything.  And there will be a plentiful supply of wealthy vested interests, and their rent-a-scientists, who will keep feeding the message that any problems have been made up.

It may be calming to have a look at what Dr. Roger Pielke Jr, professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder has found in the latest IPCC report:

"These conclusions of the IPCC, and presented in the language of the IPCC below, indicate that it is simply incorrect to claim that on climate time scales the frequency or intensity of extreme weather and climate events has increased for: flooding, drought (meteorological or hydrological), tropical cyclones, winter storms, thunderstorms, tornadoes, hail, lightning or extreme winds (so, storms of any type). "

rogerpielkejr.substack.com/.../how-to-understand-the-new-ipcc-report-1e3

Having spent the early decades of my life in the Soviet Union, I can recognise the methodology used at forcing the "anthropogenic climate crisis" belief upon the global audiences these days: point at the self-evident moral virtue argument and play the scientific consensus card (I've heard of even 99%), keep any deviant opinions out of the mainstream media and ostrasize the carriers of any sceptical voice, indoctrinate the young as early as possible.

Humanity needs to replace fossil fuels one day, no doubt, but for the right reasons. Once the climate alarmism phase is over (before 2030, I hope), the west can perhaps understand why it took so long for the Soviet Union to collapse even after the fear of death for political thought digressions was long gone: fear of "being cancelled" and losing a good job can be as effective in establishing self-censorship. 

Or we could look at what IPCC themselves say, not how someone on a web forum has chosen to quote someone else's choice of how to interpret their report. The following are the IPCCs key findings, intended to presented as such:

A.1 It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land.
Widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and biosphere
have occurred. 

A.2 The scale of recent changes across the climate system as a whole and the present state of
many aspects of the climate system are unprecedented over many centuries to many
thousands of years.

A.3 Human-induced climate change is already affecting many weather and climate extremes
in every region across the globe. Evidence of observed changes in extremes such as
heatwaves, heavy precipitation, droughts, and tropical cyclones, and, in particular, their
attribution to human influence, has strengthened since AR5.

A.4 Improved knowledge of climate processes, paleoclimate evidence and the response of the
climate system to increasing radiative forcing gives a best estimate of equilibrium
climate sensitivity of 3°C with a narrower range compared to AR5.

Andy

Whenever there is a general scientific consensus on something, there will always be someone somewhere who disagrees with it.

The problem here is that the naysayers are desperate not to believe in climate change and will latch on like limpets to anybody who supports their view, discounting every other scientist in the field who says it's real.

Simon Barker: 
 

Whenever there is a general scientific consensus on something, there will always be someone somewhere who disagrees with it.

The problem here is that the naysayers are desperate not to believe in climate change and will latch on like limpets to anybody who supports their view, discounting every other scientist in the field who says it's real.

Con sensus. Clue is ‘con’

Science should only be fact based. Otherwise its just worthless pseudoscience.

CO2 is good ? 

Andy,

Those are indeed the IPCC headline summaries. As you look into the details they are not quite so certain with significant amounts of ‘moderate confidence’ and ‘likely’. 

Even so they bear no resemblance to the predictions of destruction being promoted by the likes of XR. These are some quotes from the BBC article I linked:

- Nearly 60% of young people approached said they felt very worried or extremely worried.

- More than 45% of those questioned said feelings about the climate affected their daily lives.

- Three-quarters of them said they thought the future was frightening. Over half (56%) say they think humanity is doomed.

- Two-thirds reported feeling sad, afraid and anxious. Many felt fear, anger, despair, grief and shame - as well as hope.

The younger generation will see little if any significant changes in their lifetimes. Take the ECS of 3°C look at the various projections for CO2 level increases and see when we are likely to have a problem. What temperature rise will cause a significant problem? The 1.5°C appears to have come out of the Paris Conference. The IPCC produced a special report on 1.5°C:

https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/spm/

It seems remarkably woolly for a concept that is demanding enormous expenditure and enormous use of natural resources. Wind turbines, solar panels, batteries heat pumps and EVs all require materials and large amounts of energy to make. The current demands for stopping the use of fossil fuels by 2035-2050 will make matters worse in the short to medium term.

What, as ever is, missing is an actual engineering style project plan with costs, resources and time scales. There is a lot of rhetoric, lots of demands for government expenditure (even though governments don’t have money, taxpayers do) and lots of scary, unjustified predictions.

Will FLOP26 do any better? St Greta doesn’t think so. 10’s of thousands of the not so good and the not so great will fly into Scotland during a pandemic and indulge in posturing and virtue signalling for what?

Simon,

‚Consensus’ and ‘Belief’ are not words to do with science, they are words to do with politics and religion.

I am quite happy with the concept of climate change, there is sufficient data to back it up. I support reducing our impact on our planet, reducing the consumption of finite natural resources and improving our use of land and oceans. What I do not support is the scaremongering rubbish and wild demands of the climate activists.

With some joined up thinking we can steadily work on improvements.

We can of course also do it the green way. Let’s shut down the nuclear power plants in Germany so they can burn lots more brown coal. Let’s protest against a coking coal mine in the UK so we can buy the steel for our wind turbines from China with all the added emissions that involves. (The heat for some of the steel making processes can come from electricity or hydrogen but the fundamental process requires carbon).

I always thought that climate change was part based upon the release of bovine methane due to the overproduction of cow products.  

I maybe wrong!  But that is the point, its the maybe, the willingness to believe that the evidence on climate change is related soley to human activity. 

It doesn't help when ‘activists’ use pictures of cooling towers to advertise examples of climate change.

Legh

Andy,
In general, I would agree with your comment - to check the original report -, but with the thousands of pages of the full IPCC reports, its is too time consuming. Knowing that the Summary for Policymakers is politically motivated and often contains claims contradicting with the contents of technical reports, I find independent summaries made by not just "someone" but independent climate scientists with earlier IPCC connections like Dr. Pielke helpful.

I know personally only a few people with engineering background who are true believers in the CO2-related CAGW hypothesis. All of them are characterized by a blind faith in IPCC authority and findings, refusing to look at any other data sources or critical commentaries. I would think that after having a look at CO2/temperature relationship records and El Nino/temperature upswing correlation, any person with analytical mindset would realize that arguments supporting the "climate control knob" functionality of CO2 at current atmospheric concentrations are weak. We should be grateful that scientists like Dr. Ole Humlum are willing to apply their efforts to analyzing and aggregating public sources of globally available climate data on the monthly basis, offering a wealth of consolidated reports for those willing to learn to understand at least some of the climate trends and processes:

www.climate4you.com/.../Climate4you_August_2021.pdf

A good starting point for the open-minded would be the video recording of US Senate Climate Change Hearing of March 2013 where Dr. Don Easterbrook, professor emeritus of geology, presented the facts why CO2 cannot have caused the current mild global warming.

www.youtube.com/watch