The whole “climate debate” frustrates me immensely.

We can talk about how tree rings were measured, methods used to calibrate ice cores, how sediment samples are processed, or which glacier is doing what. We can “debate” just what the noon time temperature was on a beach bordering present day China 100,000 years ago to the date, and debate the accuracy of such a guess.

We can also debate how accurately models predict air flows over continents half the globe away from an ocean that is experiencing a change in water current due to convection.

I can also go down to a car dealership today, ask to see a white car and then argue with the salesman over how white the shade of white is that the factory selected for said car.

The car is essentially a white car to most reasonable people, even if the factory when with “peal metallic” and used a darker base this year than last. Yet, I could dig up an instrument to tell me that the “white” on the car is not as “white” as my reference “white”.

So people can debate. They can debate the uncertainties. They can debate the claims and the qualifications of the people making them. They can debate motives. They can debate whatever they want.

What it won’t change is this - CO2 is a greenhouse gas and industrial society using current technologies are pumping out more and more CO2 and other GHGs, and those GHGs don’t precipitate out of the atmosphere at the speed they are being added. regardless of the complexity and variability intrinsic to the climate system, if you change the gas composition of the atmosphere you will change how it behaves. And if you trap more heat, it has no where to go but make the molecules all around you vibrate at a higher frequency than they would have otherwise.

The only worthwhile debate is policy, and I for one am conviced that we cannot and will not succeed in getting a global agreement on rationing carbon. The only path is to re-engineer our energy supply.

With the intermediate uncertainties accepted but the long term outcome assured (warmer planet and altered climate system), I don’t know how anyone who could follow the reasoning for keeping Nukes out of Saddam’s hands can’t follow the reasoning for taking effective policy actions regarding this threat.