What is your definition of a skeptic? Anyone who doesn’t believe with the IPCC summary that scientifically there exists at least 90% confidence that mankinds attribution on 20th century temperature increases is greater than 50%? Would your dad fall under it?

The wisest solutions will target creating costs for net CO2 emissions and other forcing, while creating incentives for sequestration and development of new technologies – without the government taking a direct role in directing technology investments.

But since the US experiences some benefits from climate change, I am concerned that our Congresscritters may be more interested in more government spending without changing fossil fuel consumption incentives, and without really focussing on China or India, much less the other nations that need to become more affluent in order to adapt to the changing climate.

Yes, the battle for spoils will soon be on. Let’s try to minimize the wastage, and strive for effectiveness.

The wisest solutions will target creating costs for net CO2 emissions and other forcing, while creating incentives for sequestration and development of new technologies – without the government taking a direct role in directing technology investments.

But since the US experiences some benefits from climate change, I am concerned that our Congresscritters may be more interested in more government spending without changing fossil fuel consumption incentives, and without really focussing on China or India, much less the other nations that need to become more affluent in order to adapt to the changing climate.

I agree with you that it is funny that very few commentators focus on this.

I wrote an article for National Review that speaks about this, that you can find here:

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZmViY2Y3YzY1YmVkYTg4NjczODhkYWU1Mjg1YzhjMTI=

The key relevant passage is:

“The current summary indicates that the IPCC is “90% confident” that we have caused global warming. The summary further implies that if we double the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, the IPCC is 90 percent onfident that we will cause further warming of 3° C +/- 1.5° C.

But what do these statements of confidence really mean? They are not derived mathematically from the type of normal probability distributions that are used when, for example, determining the margin of error in a political poll (say, +/- 5%). IPCC estimates of “confidence” are really what we would mean by this word in everyday conversation—a subjective statement of opinion. This is a very big deal, since bounding the uncertainty in climate predictions is central to deciding what, if anything, we should do about them.

Jim

And 90%! I love that part. I read carefully through that summary, and could find no reference to how that number was calculated. IMNSHO, someone remembered the aphorism that “If you can’t describe it numerically, it isn’t science” and said, “We need a number here, gentlemen, to protect our phoney baloney jobs.” “90% sounds good, it’s impressive, but we can wiggle out of it when we’re wrong.” “Let’s go with it.” Given the complete dearth of hard information in the “Summary”, I’d say my scenario is just as likely as not.

As we leave comments here, there exist today efficient solar cells that power our Mars explorers, Norwegian gas extraction that sequesters CO2, energy plants that can sequester the CO2 from coal and coal tar (as opposed to the dangerous proliferation of more nuclear power plants), cars that can run on biofuel and machines that can capture the power of wind and waves. It is not a stretch to move now towards reducing humanity’s GHG, but to close the book of the science of human induced GW or the natural mechanism propelling us towards an unknown future is both foolish and unscientific.

Not this science writer, but the only media interest I’ve raised is from the Guardian’s Comment is Free blog. Given the tone of debate on that site, I’m not sure I want to accept the commission.

I criticised Ward and the open letter in the Psci-com email list, and was shouted down for my troubles. Part of this was due to me drawing a link between the object of Ward’s opprobrium – Martin Durkin – and an ultra-left political clique that has an influence in the British science communication community out of all proportion to its numbers. But Ward, in the email list discussion, is being very aggressive toward those who do not like his open letter.

I can’t quote directly from the list discussion as that is a members-only forum. However, I did publish two blogs on the matter:

http://skysong.eu/2007/04/science-advocacy-and-political-lobbying/
http://skysong.eu/2007/04/spittle-flecked-invective-pfui/

Why the silence from others? Many and varied reasons, I’m sure, but one may be professional self-interest. I’ve certainly done myself no favours in speaking out.

Considering what we know we don’t know about clouds and precipitation, and the fact that every percent change in global precipitation is worth 0.78 w/m^2, and all but the most arrogant of us knows there are things we don’t know that we don’t know, 90% is a little high, I think…