A Reasonable View on "Global Warming"

I can appreciate this viewpoint by Geoffrey Styles in his blog Energy Outlook. I count myself in the camp of the "skeptics" and I'm more than willing to talk to those in the "warmer" camp. I have no time for those at the extremes of "denialist" or "calamatist". I expect the resolution of the debate will be a muddle since the real world is complex and not amenable to simplistic assessment. The apparent success of physics in producing fairly simple "laws" to explain the world is achieved by ignoring complexity (such as friction and the usual muddle of "systems" that are not uniform or simple).

Here's the bit that I like:

In a recent New York Times op-ed, Stewart Brand, an iconic figure and an acquaintance from my former work with Global Business Network when I was at Texaco, proposed a useful taxonomy for our reactions to climate change. He suggested four categories into which those with an opinion on the subject fall: Denialists, Skeptics, Warners, and Calamatists. The views of those in the first and last categories aren't likely to alter much, no matter what science and further evidence reveal about the climate. What they see reinforces pre-existing mindsets. The Skeptics and the Warners, on the other hand, are part of a legitimate scientific debate and are both amenable to adapting their views to new evidence.

I consider myself mainly a Warner in Stewart's terms, having consistently expounded the risks of climate change both in this blog and elsewhere, but I am still willing to give both sides of the argument a fair hearing. I want to see Climategate addressed openly and objectively. If the science turns out to be flawed because of bias and improper manipulation, we need to know that and correct the flaws. If the actual science is unaffected, but the means by which it has been conducted requires reform, then we need to address that as well, because if we don't the public's confidence in its findings won't be high enough to act on them. And I'd rather see this hashed out in an open scientific forum held by a body such as the AAAS and involving many disciplines outside climate science as a true jury of peers, than to see it resolved by litigation, which is where this all could be headed if scientists respond by shrugging it off or circling their wagons.

The kind of complexity that needs to be judged in this debate over global warming are issues like climate model validity & verification, accuracy of temperature measurements (placement of sensors, urban heat islands, and 'adjustment' algorithms), water vapour, cloud cover, aerosols, land use change, solar irradiance, and geomagnetic/cosmic ray role in cloud formation. In other words, there are a lot of factors other than CO2 (and other greenhouse gases) in modeling climate. In a real debate I expect that an honest conclusion will be that the anthropogenic elements of "global warming" is quite unclear and will require a great deal more research. I also expect that all the doom-and-gloom, now is our last chance to save ourselves rhetoric will give way to more reasonable conclusions that the mechanisms are very uncertain, some positive, some negative feedbacks making it difficult to predict, and then a global program based on moderation and efficacy (a real cost/benefit analysis) instead of hysteria and doomsday thinking.