I would like to point out that before the introduction of cattle, millions upon millions of buffalo dominated the Great Plains of America. They were so thick you could not see where the herd started and where it ended. I can only assume that the anti-meat, manmade global warming crowd must believe that buffalo farts have more socially redeeming value than the same flatulence emitted by cattle. Yes, this is absurd, but the deeper one looks into this global warming juggernaut, the weirder this movement becomes and the more denial is evident.

As good as John McCain’s pro-growth, supply-side tax plan is, his cap-and-trade strategy unveiled this morning is very hard for conservatives to swallow. The whole cap-and-trade experience in Europe and elsewhere reveals that this is a huge government command-and-control operation that taxes, spends, and regulates on a grand scale. The “cap” part rolls back production to an extent that undermines economic growth. The European cap-and-trade plans are prohibitively expensive, and are themselves hostile to economic growth.

Lopez: How can John McCain legitimately differentiate himself from the Democratic nominee on climate policy?

Lomborg: I’m no expert on American politics.

I note that Obama and Clinton have called McCain’s plan “too timid” — but I also note that the three of them are all supporting, in varying levels, the Warner-Lieberman Bill on climate change, which looks set to be a massive subsidy-fest that would achieve very little for the environment, at great cost.

McCain could dramatically differentiate himself by being the only candidate acknowledging that promising cuts in the near future just means economic pain for no gain. He could stand out by acknowledging that promising dramatic reductions in the far-off future is simply sweeping the hard choices under the rug for now, for no gain. Wishful thinking is not sound public policy.

We need the technological solutions that will allow our societies to transition cost-effectively to low-carbon energy by mid-century. McCain could recognize that this is a century-long problem which needs century-long, smart solutions.

Lopez: You are about to hold your Copenhagen Consensus 2008. What happened there that John McCain (and the rest of us) should know about?

Lomborg: The Copenhagen Consensus 2008 gets some of the world’s greatest thinkers together to prioritize solutions to the world’s greatest problems: air pollution, conflict, disease, education, global warming, malnutrition/hunger, sanitation/water, subsidies and trade barriers, terrorism and women/development.

The prioritization is based on research that has been created specifically for the project by top economists in each field, identifying the best investments we could make in order to achieve good in the world.

Politicians like John McCain prioritize every day. The message from Copenhagen Consensus is that when it comes to battling environmental and developmental problems, we need to be explicit about our priorities, and talk about where we can do the most good first.

We should not focus on the problems that get the most publicity, but the issues where we can do the most good. Analysis from Copenhagen Consensus research shows that cutting CO2 now will do 90 cents worth of good for every dollar spent — a bad deal. However, investing in research and development of new energy technologies will do $16 worth of good for every dollar spent — while being much cheaper. Let us do the smartest things first, in dealing with all of the world’s problems, including global warming.

Global warming will be "put on hold" over the next decade because of natural climate variations, scientists claim. ...

The findings suggest the official models used to predict short-term global warming patterns are too crude. ...

But scientists say rising carbon dioxide levels caused by man will send temperatures up again after the natural trends peak and will continue to rise in following decades.

Using advanced computer models to factor in deep-sea warming and other aspects of the carbon cycle that naturally creates and removes carbon dioxide (CO2), the scientists, from countries including the United States, Canada and Germany, are delivering a simple message: The world must bring carbon emissions down to near zero to keep temperatures from rising further.

"The question is, what if we don't want the Earth to warm anymore?" asked Carnegie Institution senior scientist Ken Caldeira, co-author of a paper published last week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

In an extraordinary outburst aimed at America's failure to tackle global warming, Al Gore says that if scientific agreement on the climate crisis had been reached sooner it would have been easier to "galvanise the public and persuade Congress to act".

"The nature and severity of the climate crisis had seemed painfully obvious to me for quite a long time," claims Mr Gore, writing in a new foreword to a revised edition of his book, Earth in the Balance, being published this week.

The ethical challenge for journalists and journalism (as opposed to infotainment personalities in "the media") is stark. It means accepting what the best available science has now concluded is fact about global warming — that it's happening and human activity is an aggravating if not principal cause — and pulling the plug on spurious "debate" engendered by conservative ideologues, much like what credible news organizations have done with Holocaust-deniers and creationists.

In the case of major newspapers like the Star Tribune and local television news outlets like KSTP, WCCO, KARE and KMSP, this would mean largely if not completely ignoring the vocal minority railing away at the work and findings of the National Academy of Sciences and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. If the talk radio choir wants to have a "debate" among itself, fine. But for journalists the debate phase has ended and the story now is, "What to do?"

In the most docile of times mainstream news organizations are reluctant to make declarations of such rancor-inducing finality. Doing so plays against most journalists' fair-minded, if mushy-headed, preference for "balance." It is a mind-set where "both sides" should always get equal space and treatment. But these aren't docile times, and the potential consequences of global warming are vastly more significant than those of, say, public subsidies for light rail or repealing the "death tax."

We're at a critical moment where significant changes need to happen, specifically with regard to our use of fossil fuels. (Geopolitical reasons alone demand an immediate and dramatic change.) Serious journalists cannot honor their professional commitment to truth while simultaneously pandering to political ideologues who are substituting campaign-style spin and misinformation for science. More to the point, papers, op-ed pages and TV stations that continue to play the "balance" game with global climate change undermine any claim they may have to journalistic credibility. What they are "reporting" is a political battle, not a scientific debate.