AMONG climate researchers, the consensus is growing that global warming may be close to a tipping point beyond which runaway feedbacks could take hold, creating what George W. Bush’s top climate modeller this week calls “a different planet” (see “‘One degree and we’re done for'”). Yet the political discourse that should be helping us find ways to respond to such warnings remains a mess.
Last week, the Royal Society in London sent a measured complaint to the oil company ExxonMobil, asking it to end its long-standing and extensive funding of lobby groups that the society says “misinform the public”…
