I'm never surprised when the Truth turns out to be wrong. Or myself. We have all watched what is true today become false tomorrow, and the history of science is full of such upsets. Climate science's predictions may yet turn out true, and only time will tell. I do note there is a pretty wide variance in the climate models, and they can't all be right...

The subtext of all this sparring is the question of what is to be done about it. Real action that makes a meaningful difference is going to come at a very significant cost to society. It is one thing to discuss these costs, and another thing entirely to commit to them. A very serious reduction to people's standard of living and quality of life would be required. You can't drive that car, you can't run that air conditioning.

Worse, the West needs the rest of the world to cooperate, and they will not. They may agree and sign treaties, but when the time comes to take concrete action to limit electricity use and transportation, they just won't do it. China has signed some of these treaties, but they are also building new coal plants as fast as they can.

I live in Vietnam. I know people who are involved in building these plants. They have been coming on line quickly, and you can see the difference. Power used to fail with depressing regularity, killing your aircon in sweltering heat, defrosting freezers, shutting down your office for the day...it was terrible. This doesn't happen anymore, and there's no way you're going to convince people to go back to brown outs to save themselves from a theoretical few degrees of heat decades in the future, if it ever comes at all.

Vietnam cannot afford to develop with clean energy. Nor can India, Brazil, Indonesia or China. They will never cooperate, not really.

But there are other urgent environmental matters where you might get their cooperation. Plastics and poisons. Ever wonder where all the insects went?