Richard Betts has new mates these days (;-) having been invited by Dot Earth to expand on the dangerous climate change article he wrote for this site a week or so ago.
I was struck by reading this very reasonable statement by Betts:
Some further climate change is already in the pipeline which means we are going to have to consider adapting to it. However, if our adaptation is informed by science cherry-picked to support a particular standpoint on "dangerous climate change" then this risks leading to wrong decisions on adaptation. For example, sea level rise poses very real risks, but talking-up the certainty of rapid and catastrophic rises could lead to investment in flood defenses unnecessarily early, while down-playing the risks could lead to inappropriate delays. The same is true for drought and other impacts.
And then the rather grubby footnote to the article by Revkin.
The word skeptic [referring to the Bishop Hill blog] above is in quotation marks because it’s a term that has been co-opted by those challenging science pointing to disruptive human-driven global warming, implying that those with different views are not seriously appraising evidence.
There's something about the juxtaposition of these two paragraphs that I find amusing, although I can't quite put it into words.
I'm guessing Revkin feels if he is going to link here he has to say something snide so that he does get threatened with the "big cutoff" again. Anything for a quiet life I suppose.