Is federal judge Richard Posner beginning to realize that the science isn't settled?

From the peak of the global warming scare (early '07), federal judge Richard Posner expounds on the alleged danger of CO2

In my book Catastrophe: Risk and Response (2004), I considered the evidence to be altogether convincing that global warming was a serious problem for which human-caused emissions were the principal cause—and since then, more evidence has accumulated and the voices of the dissenters are growing weaker. The global-warming skeptics are beginning to sound like the people who for so many years, in the face of compelling evidence, denied that cigarette smoking was harmful to health.

What has changed since I wrote my book is that not only has the evidence become even more convincing that our activities (primarily the production of energy) are causing serious harm, but also the scientists are becoming increasingly pessimistic. It is now thought likely that by the end of the century, global temperatures will have risen by an average of 7 degrees Fahrenheit and the sea level will have risen by almost two feet. Besides inundating low-lying land, turning tropical farms into desert, and causing tropical diseases to migrate north, global warming is expected to produce ever more violent weather patterns—typhoons, cyclones, floods, and so forth.

Richard Posner: Information from Answers.com

Richard Allen Posner (born January 11, 1939, in New York City) is currently a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. He is one of the most influential living legal theorists and a major voice in the law and economics movement, which he helped start while a professor at the University of Chicago Law School. He currently serves as a lecturer at the Law School.

March '05: What is Richard Posner So Afraid Of?: The high cost of the falling sky - Reason Magazine

Posner's final disaster was "abrupt global warming" of 14 degrees Fahrenheit. Posner reasonably noted that the scenarios for gradual warming over the next century actually did not imply the need for measures like the Kyoto Protocol, which would impose limits on the emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide. Why? Because considering the pace of technological progress, such long term problems might well be handled more cheaply and expeditiously by improvements in technology in 50 to 60 years. Nevertheless, Posner estimated the current expenditures on climate change to be $1.7 billion annually and the possible losses of "abrupt global warming" at $66.6 trillion yielding an implied probability of 1 in 388,000. Again, he asserted that the annual probability of abrupt global warming must be higher than that, and therefore we were once again underspending to protect ourselves against this threat.

Once more, Posner is looking solely at research expenditures aimed directly at studying climatology. He is apparently ignoring the vast sums spent on improving energy technologies and expenditures on basic research in areas like nanotechnology which are likely to yield solutions to energy production problems in the future.

July '08: The Becker-Posner Blog: Should Gasoline Taxes Be Raised or Lowered? Posner's Comment

...the calculation of an optimal carbon-emissions tax is impossible because the costs of global warming and the benefits (in reducing those costs) from a tax on carbon emissions cannot at present be estimated with even minimal confidence.