The trajectory of public thought on climate change/global warming/etc. changed several years ago. Climategate may have been the why, but I suspect that the economy, domestically and globally, was probably the real reason. Polls show that the public ranks global warming near the bottom on a list of problems to sort. The moment for the global warming hysteria movement has passed.

Seas have been rising, ice has been receding, and temperature has been rising for some 150 centuries. At the end of the last ice age humans were a widespread, but rare, subsistence hunter-gatherers species. Since that time we have become food producers, our lifespans have increased, we specialize and exchange. In short, we have prospered; imperfectly, perhaps, but prospered nonetheless.

Science has shown that our economic activities can affect the environment. We would do well if our economic and political decisions were informed by, but not based on, knowledge garnered from climate scientists.

The idea of a global political-economy ruled by the triumvirate big government, big science, and compliant media is not going to happen. Borrowing metaphors from World War 2 we can say that the Battle of Midway is over and the momentum has shifted. I have no doubt true AGW believers will soldier on like Shoichi Yokoi but, ultimately, they will be just as irrelevant.

Thanks for an interesting couple of threads.

WW