Global warming has been hopelessly politicized since a Kyoto Treaty was jammed through over objections and then basically ignored by everyone. A science basis for American cars causing global warming but Chinese cars being exempt from pollution numbers did not exist and the dates for the Kyoto targets far too conveniently matched easy dates for two European countries(1) while penalizing everyone else.
Since that time, some science journalists turned from trusted guides to cheerleaders on the issue (good news, though - they are trying to get their credibilty back and bloggers have filled the science gap), some climate scientists became advocates and all people fell along political lines on the climate change issue. Progressives became willing to believe anything and conservatives nothing. The conservatives at least had a compelling argument; trashing 25% of the US economy today for a 0.5 degree Celcius change in 50-100 years was not good and future science would likely have a better solution.
Yet these are the same people contending that all of climate science is a leftwing scam and that academia in general couldn't be trusted, so who did they think was going to develop this future magic science that would clean up all of the pollution? Academics they won't want to fund because of the way they vote?
The IPCC finally got called out for publishing ridiculous 'media guide' doomsday scenarios that were not evidence-based but science, like politics and business, sometimes has to engage in impact analysis too.
One scenario that merits consideration; given that global warming takes a back seat when there isn't actual warming and people are out of jobs, what if CO2 emissions don't follow a linear curve? What if the worst CO2 polluters aren't East German
(1) France and Germany. When the target date is before the latest nuclear power plant goes online in one country and just after a merger with a former Soviet satellite, making it possible to close a few USSR World War II factories and meet a CO2 target, there is something wrong.
