Anteros,
Thanks for your comments.
I tried to be circumspect about the extent to which CO2 would raise surface temperature and whether “a raised surface temperature is categorically harmful”. If it turns out that CO2 has a trivial effect on climates, or that the effects are not significantly harmful on net, there is even less of an argument for having concerns about CO2 emissions dominate energy policy. My main point, however, is that finding that the effects are non-trivial and significantly harmful on net would not be not sufficient to justify restricting CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels. It is only the start of an argument for such a policy when too many people treat it as settling the matter.
Your other comments about dealing with “climate events” versus “climate change” miss the point that we would only be concerned about climate change in so far as “climate events” impose net costs. If there are ways of reducing the costs of such events, those actions are an alternative to trying to stop the climate change — which is a futile exercise anyway in a world where many factors affect climates and we are talking about controlling just one of them whose real impact is uncertain as your first comment states.
I think your criticism that “there is no evidence at all that the decline [in fossil fuel use?] will be rapid” suggests that you misinterpreted me. I was tailing about the rate of decline in CO2 emissions once non-fossil energy sources become competitive with fossil fuels, not the rate of fossil fuel use until that happens.