Hmmm. How can we understand what doesn’t yet exist? (And ‘*basic* science’?)

This is the most important bit for most of us. (Oh, *that* ‘basic’!) Impacts need an area or three all to themselves. We don’t care – or need to know? – about atmospheric physics. Just what will happen in various parts of the world.

Alas, nobody knows very much about that – and what little is known has been so much oversold that perhaps you’re right and, despite its being of secondary importance for most of us, you’d do better for now concentrating on increasing our understanding of How Science Works and so on.

Tricky, though. That sort of thing is better done at school.