OPINION/COMMENTARY

Climate Confusion

The current debate over climate change runs the gamut from C to shining C. It's about climate. It's about catastrophe. It's about consensus. It's about carbon. It's about condemnation. Most of all, though, it's about confusion. There was a lot of confusion Monday at the 10th Annual Conference of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol in Buenos Aires, particular about data. The Pew Center on Global Climate Change offered two papers up that demonstrate how confused the climate change issue has become. Now, everybody agrees that there has been some warming over the last century, to the tune of about 0.6 degrees Celsius (about 1.1 degree Fahrenheit). And a consensus of scientists agrees that man's emission of greenhouse gases in that period -- particularly carbon dioxide, which has risen from 0.028% of the atmosphere to 0.037% -- must have had some kind of an impact. The consensus breaks down when you get into a discussion of how much and what kind of an impact....