current assessment of climate science and policies (Pielke snr)

For a current assessment of the state of climate science and policy conclusions that flow from that see Pielke snr's recent Summary Of Climate Science Issues and follow his links for more detail. Here is an abbreviated summary:

the science:

• humans do effect the climate in various ways, not only global warming
• CO2 is important but IPCC focus is misleading, they focus too much on CO2 and computer modelling
• computer modelling of futures is too inexact to be useful at this stage
• global average surface temperature is an inadequate measure, ocean heat, measured in joules, would be a superior measure

policies:

• funding of computer modelling in the hope of achieving accurate predictions decades into the future is a waste of money
• focus on brute force CO2 reduction to achieve a more stable climate will achieve little
• climate policy should be mainly separate from energy policy
• vulnerability analysis, risk and disaster prevention are underutilised policy options