Rich Lowry over on the homepage reflects on Phil Jones’s newfound heterodoxy, and concludes:
Too many of the creators and guardians of the “consensus” desperately wanted to believe in it. As self-proclaimed defenders of science, they should have brushed up on their Enlightenment. “Doubt is not a pleasant mental state,” said Voltaire, “but certainty is a ridiculous one.” The latest revelations don’t disprove the warming of the 20th century or mean that carbon emissions played no role. But by highlighting the uncertainty of the paleoclimatic data and the models on which alarmism has been built, they constitute a shattering blow to the case for radical, immediate action.
In the Boston Globe, MIT climate scientist Kerry Emanuel marshals what will have to be the fall-back argument for fighting warming: “We do not have the luxury of waiting for scientific certainty, which will never come.” Really? That’s not what we were told even a few months ago — before climate alarmism acknowledged doubt.