http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/gcag/gcag.html#HERE

But what if these charts were all stuck on a +/- 5 degrees centigrade scale? 9 to 19 C range? Certainly an average from 9 to 19 might be okay?

In any case, since 1880, the baby’s normal temperature is 14C, -.73 +.6 That’s my opnion as a medical professional.

Okay, I’m suddenly told that I am responsible for this baby. I’m told that various people have been measuring the baby’s temperature using various instruments in various ways for the last ten minutes and when I measure the temperature I see that it’s gone up by 0.7°C.

I don’t have a manual so I don’t know what temperature is ideal for the baby.

Then I realize that the baby is significantly older than I am…

Let’s say I took this baby to emergency with it’s 0.7°C “fever” and they discovered that I and many others have been measuring this baby’s temperature obsessively for some undislosed period of time…

Here is a twist to the Doctor analogy of Mr Gore. Not so long ago in the news (I know that MSNBC covered the story) a women was mention as being falsely diagnose with cancer.

She started all the regiment of treatment had many inconvinience including a serious infection with the bacteria C-difficile (not sure what it is in english. After a few month or year of treatment another doctor told her that she didn’t have cancer.

Doctors make alot of mistakes even though medical science is way more advanced and certain than climate science.

I’m looking forward to actually getting to read your book (Amazon estimates shipping around May 2). Too many people advocate one-size-fits-all approaches to policy advice and your description in this column suggests comfort with the notion that different circumstances call for different kinds of interactions.

To explore Gore’s medical metaphor and your analysis further: Part of the difference between Hansen and Gore on the one hand and yourself on the other is the metaphor used to frame the climate question.

If Gore and Hansen are right, it’s like a heart attack where we have a brief window in which to act and if we’re prompt and aggressive we have a good chance to largely cure the condition. Here, as you indicate in your column, a purely technocratic approach may be best.

What you’ve argued elsewhere about adaptation and mitigation suggests that climate is more like metastatic cancer where complete mitigation is impossible, aggressive mitigation may carry unacceptable side effects, and palliation (adaptation) is a rational alternative. Here, it’s important to involve decision-makers and stakeholders in detailed and informed discussion of the alternatives.

(For completeness, Lindzen and Michaels think it’s a case of Munchausen syndrome and want to refer the patient for a psychiatric consultation)

So is the choice of metaphor (or “frame,” as is fashionable to say these days) arbitrary, or can expertise offer guidance on choice of metaphor beyond merely putting the expert’s personal preference into fancy pseudo-objective language? I believe there is component of objective truth to the metaphor question, and thus that experts have a role (but a limited one) in selecting and rejecting metaphors, but I’m not clear on how they can discharge this role in a way that’s legitimate and effective.