Officials should look deeper at climate change

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But all this frenetic activity resembles an inverted pyramid—a massive weight with only a single point of support.

And just what is this single support? It certainly does not follow logically that CO2 emissions drive a warming trend that began prior to widespread fossil fuel use and that has yet to reach the magnitude of the medieval warm period when Vikings colonized Greenland.

Nor is a climate catastrophe implied by the presently observed rate of warming. Those conclusions are reached only if one accepts two intermediate steps: (1) that science has separated anthropogenic effects from natural climate oscillations; and (2) that the atmosphere-ocean system is metastable so CO2-induced warming will trigger a runaway process.

Neither point has widespread support among those of us who have actually worked with atmospheric processes. Not only is the debate not over; it is expanding.
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Too many valuable resources are needed for justifiable environmental management to waste them on a speculation for which there is no scientific consensus. Such inverted pyramids are dangerous.
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Charles Clough is an atmospheric scientist and was Chief of the Atmospheric Effects Team with the Department of the Army at Aberdeen Proving Ground from 1982 until 2006.