Discover illuminates the differing perspectives of climate scientists, Judith Curry (Georgia Tech) and Michael Mann (Penn State), on the implications of ClimateGate and the state of climate science, in general. Breakthrough Senior Fellow Roger Pielke Jr. has excerpts from the interview on his blog.
Here's Judith Curry in response to the question: "So where does climate research go from here?"
"I personally don't support cap-and-trade. It makes economic sense but not political sense. You're just going to see all the loopholes and the offsets. I think you're going to see a massive redistribution of wealth to Wall Street, and we're not going to reduce the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. We need a massive investment in technology. We do need to help the developing world that is most vulnerable now to the impacts of climate variability, not even the stuff that's related to carbon dioxide. There are a lot of things going on--floods, hurricanes, droughts, and whatever--that can't even be attributed to global warming right now. By reducing the vulnerability of the developing world to these extreme events, we'll have gone a long way to helping them adapt to the more serious things that might come about from global warming."
