As someone who has done extensive work in nuclear nonproliferation on different fronts, leading to actual concrete steps, and also climate change science, from both the modeling and the data analysis perspectives, I think I should weigh in a bit.

I think modern advancements in nuclear energy might very well be hinting at safer nuclear power sources.

I am somewhat skeptical of anthropogenic climate change, although I am open to the concept as we document more of the feedback processes in the climate.

The earth sciences need to find more and new funding justifications so they are not held captive by the lunatic fringes and subject to political winds. In the long run (speaking centuries or even millennia), humans should want to understand the planet they live on for lots of reasons. Large scale geo-engineering projects are somewhat risky if we do not understand the systems better. Oil might be a limited resource that needs to be replaced. If humans aspire to terraforming other planets or moons, they need a much firmer understanding of the processes. Do humans want to climb further up the Kardashev scale or not?

Another way that the earth sciences hamstring themselves is an almost universal disdain for tool creation. But tool creation leads to applications, which is why physics and other areas of science are better funded. So...