Professor Brooks' paper projects an aura of inevitable catastrophe. He correctly notes that the climate is always changing and that somewhere in the near or far future there will always be something awful ahead. But this atmosphere of philosophical inevitability bypasses two important concerns. (1) By casting inevitable disaster into an unspecified future, he softens the urgency of the current problem: climate catastrophes are likely in a relatively brief time frame (less than 200 years). And (2), by arguing for inevitable failure, he misses what might be done to blunt or delay the worst outcomes. So, my principle aim here is to supply some useful dates and time periods to the philosophical discussion.
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