That would be the logical outcome but it probably won’t occur. AGW alarmism will end with a wimper and be forgotten soon after another fear takes it place. Just as the overpopulation and resource depletion scares of the 1960’s and 1970’s have ended with no accountability for the alarmists. Not only has there been no accountability but many of the same scientists are now the premiere AGW alarmists. I remember Earth Day 1970 as a smart child be scared out my wits that two-thirds of Americans would die in famines and resource wars by the year 2000. Recall Hansen saying in 1988 that New York would flood by 2000 and there was nothing we could do to stop it. There won’t be accountability for alarmist scientists. That is what tenure is all about.

The game will remain the same but the subject will change. Fear has always been a path to power and control. As the Talking Head say “Same as it ever was”.

Fifty years from now, scientists will look back at the abandonment of the scientific method and marvel at more than just the hubris. They will marvel at the gross incompetence and wonder whatever happened to the adults.

They will be slack-jawed at such things as how a “scientist” who refused to make his data available (“you’ll just try to find something wrong”) could not only be allowed to continue working as a scientist, but be given responsibilities as lead author of a section of IPCC assessments!

Fifty years from now, they will look back at the conflicts of interest and ignorance of ethical standards with shock and dismay. Young grad students will question retired old-timers “how could that kind of garbage pass as science?” The old-timers will just shrug and say, “times were different, politics ruled, you had to go along to get along, it was about the funding ….”. The youngsters won’t understand. They’ll wonder why so few scientists were willing to stand up for science. Why science was allowed to become a public laughingstock. They’ll never understand.

Since no one has yet demonstrated an even tenuous causal link between tropospheric CO2 levels and global mean temperature, this is of course all very much ado about nothing.

Economic reality bites again, but historians and other analysts fifty years from now will marvel at our underserved miracle: Just as the rich industrialized nations were about to commit economic suicide by enacting expensive and worse-than-useless CO2 mitigation schemes, the hyper-inflated global credit economy burst. The world could no longer afford its green indulgences.

Now if the Sun will just stick with its recent historical cycles and stay cool for 30 or so years, hubristic humanity will be properly chastened and stripped of the last vestiges of its childish self-importance.