It would be healthy — in the sense of promoting honesty — if every report warning of global warming and climate change (the two terms are interchangeable) came with the following disclaimer: Despite our belief that global warming poses catastrophic threats to many of the world’s 7 billion inhabitants, we acknowledge that we now lack the technologies to stop it. The purpose of our analysis and policy proposals is to create the political and economic conditions that foster the needed technologies. But there is no assurance that this will happen, and much time and money may be invested in futile and wasteful efforts. I am not optimistic. Our climate-change debates confuse more than they clarify. They follow a ritualistic script that is now playing out again. First came a downbeat report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an international group of scientists set up by the United […]