Heres how it works,
Scientists come up with theory.
Morons like Al Gore take the theory and try to spread the message using fear-mongering, half truths and sometimes outright lies.
Media likes the morons theories, much more dramatic, sells better to a public that have better things to do than read through climate papers.
Skeptics get pissed, poke holes in badly written poorly backed media stories and believe this is all that is required to debunk just about every climatologist on earth.
Some naive climatologists try to correct this but end up stuck in a political mess and tied on to Al Gores bandwagon of bullcrap.
Meanwhile most scientists continue to refine there theory and debunk the nonsense people are coming up with. This gets largely ignored.
Very few climatologists believed in a rapid fiery death for us all, these effects where always going to be gradual. Stories about sinking islands and increased hurricanes? These were inventions of the media and debunked by the very same scientists that continue to back climate change.
However, the problem is you cant just switch the climate off. The trends we set over decades now will have hundreds of years of repercussions. You switch off all carbon production tomorrow and itll still have huge knock on effects. Thats why so many people want to see some change today. Now if these latest results are right then great! weve got ourselves a few more decades to change the industry of the entire world, and there are huge chunks of it that will need all that time to bring about that change. (Heck we dont have the first clue how to deal with the consumption of the entire aviation industry.)
Weve still got work to do, our efforts have still not been wasted (Although lets face it, theyve been pretty lame.) and personally Im hopeful that things like project ITER or the Z-Machines will have the time to bring our power out of the dark ages, couple it with electric (Or hydrogen Im not biassed) vehicles we could clean up our cities as well. (Apart from anything the pollution provably causes all kinds of health problems and no doubt influences multiple cancers.)
So its good news, but anyone that thinks this means we should rest on our laurels or mock the scientists are just being petty. The science was never set in stone by any scientist worth a damn and resting when we could be building new industry on clean efficient and frankly incredible technologies would be a terrible thing to do even without any motivation at all.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
