It's funny, but when I read this I kept thinking the author was a nut job with an agenda.

"Some colleagues who share some of my doubts argue that the only way to get our society to change is to frighten people with the possibility of a catastrophe, and that therefore it is all right and even necessary for scientists to exaggerate." Talk about a vague attack. It does not even say they actually exaggerate only some people feel it might be a good idea.

Whenever I hear someone discussing an issue like global worming without using any data I dismiss them. We could probably cut our emissions in half over 20 years with a with a CO2 tax around 1 cent per gallon of gas. Suggesting the only way to deal with the problem is wrecking our economy is just as insane as suggesting global worming is going to end life on earth. However, sounding like your taking the middle road does not make your analysis correct.

Is that a troll? Do you really want to start a debate about the definition of reasonable?

The author expressed some very clear ideas. Are you trying to suppress them?

"Do you really want to start a debate about the definition of reasonable?"

Yes, I do. What is it that makes an article espousing a middle-of-the-road position on global warming reasonable, but an article that espouses taking immediate action to enact a carbon cap unreasonable?

Or are we expected to believe that the best course of action is the one that seems reasonable, whatever that means.

We're talking about a very complex problem here, and jumping to conclusions based on unreliable computer simulations and mass hysteria promoted by the media is, indeed, unreasonable.

The comment I was replying to didn't claim the article was reasonable because it was thoughtful and rational, it claimed the article was reasonable because it was middle-of-the-road.

The problem is indeed very complex, which is why I find it amazing that people who aren't studying the issue in question think they can make statements like this. (If you indeed are doing research in the field, please point me to your papers indicating that the simulations are unreliable to the point that they have no predictive value.)

I am not doing research in the area, thankfully. I know people who are. I talk to them often, and I have come to the realization that this is an incredibly complex problem. One has to take into account the physics, chemistry, biology of the entire globe... plus the Sun cycles, the cosmic rays, and the effects of man on the environment. It's a daunting task.

I also remember that back in the days I studied Physics, it was widely accepted that computers can't predict the weather more than a couple of weeks in advance due to the chaotic nature of the fluid dynamics equations. If you can't predict reliably more than two weeks in advance, I doubt you can predict 20 years into the future. This is pseudo-science, and while scientists know there's an awful lot of uncertainty in it, these "results" are communicated to the general public as though they were absolute truths, which is nauseatingly unethical, not to mention dishonest.

All in all: I think it's time to take a deep breath, let one's head cool off and analyze the problem scientifically. Fostering fear is dangerous and counter-productive. A massive stampede usually eliminates anything in its path... and that's no solution.

I'm all for analyzing the problem scientifically, but, really, what do you think the IPCC reports are based on?

Regarding the weather question, this is a valid concern. There's of course a difference between predicting the weather, meaning the exact temperature and precipitation on certain days, and predicting climate, meaning mean quantities over the scale of years. It's true that for a chaotic system, it's difficult to predict the exact state of the system far in advance unless you have extremely good models and information of the current state. However, predicting the mean of a distribution is usually far easier. To what extent is this a problem with current weather models? I'm not an expert enough to know, but I'd suspect it has been tested.