I give these thoughts to reinforce Roger’s bottom line #1. In the not-so-distant future, somebody will undoubtedly look to derive health care costs associated with treating climate change-induced human health maladies, without considering that the foundation of their research premise – anthropogenic climate change is leading to noticeable and worrisome changes in human health – is still on the speculative side of rock-solid.

To all this I pose a question I’ve been asking myself for a long time: what is the role of our community to “bring down” those making broad, speculative, and often hysterical claims without evidence or, even worse, when the evidence shows otherwise? From my experience, those in our field are not afraid to attack the claims and credibility of the Idso’s and Baliunas’ because the latter gleefully fly in the face of what most consider the general consensus. But should scientists be equally strenuous in shouting down those making exaggerated claims from the side the scientist agrees with in principal? This question brings together the Landsea posts with the recent discussion about RealClimate and specifically Roger’s “No free passes” advice (which is essentially the point of the Feynman “Cargo Cult Science” address, right?).