Climate system changes only at its own speed

Politicians and environmental scientists, especially in Europe, seem to have the mistaken idea that merely stabilizing the abundance of CO₂ in the air will stabilize the climate, and that reducing it back to preindustrial levels would rapidly bring back the climate of my childhood. This idea is based on the hopes of politicians and ideologues, not on scientific wisdom. More seriously, it is driven by the short-term aims of entrepreneurs who see vast fortunes to be gathered from the subsidies offered by government, especially in Europe, for renewable energy schemes. We must not forget the high probability that it is all but impossible for us to reduce the input of fossil-fuel combustion products to the air rapidly enough to change the climate favourably. Even if we reduced all emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to preindustrial levels, there would be no rapid return to past climate  and the less turbulent Earth we once knew. As Sir John Houghton warned in Global Warming, the climate system can change only at its own speed.