I understand the CJR author's point, while disagreeing with some of her methods. I think Ron gets it too, as he recognizes that if the consensus is right, and global warming poses a serious peril to civilization, then anything that tells the voters that such peril doesn't exist will tend to slow down action to address it. Personally, I think of the situation more as deciding how much insurance to buy. You don't buy homeowner's insurance because you believe your house is definitely going to burn down. You buy insurance because it might burn down. If the best available science says there's a 1% chance of catastrophic climate change, the kind that sinks New York, Miami, San Diego, Los Angeles, and Boston under several meters of seawater -- well, how much are you willing to pay for insurance against that risk? Is 0.1% of GDP unreasonable? 1%? 10%?

Given that there are also a bunch of non-global-warming-related disadvantages to our current energy system, I'd vote for devoting a significant chunk of GDP to dealing with this situation. Maybe not 10%, at least not immediately -- trying to transition the economy that fast would cause a lot of dislocation and unnecessary pain. But a percentage point or two? Sure.

As a side-note, plenty of folks in the sustainability world did speak out against ethanol. Even some mainstream liberals did. e.g. Aaron Sorkin: there's an episode of The West Wing that revolves around the fact that candidates for President in both parties have to make a pledge to support ethanol subsidies in order to win votes in the Iowa caucuses, and they're not particularly happy about it, because they know what a boondoggle ethanol is.

Heh, I got sidetracked and forgot the original point I was going to make, the reason I picked my title.

What I wanted to say is that the fundamental problem is that the CJR reporter, like most reporters, is underequipped to think about science. We need some people who have both hard scientific background, and the story-telling skills to explain their work to the general public.

Presenting Expert A who supports the consensus and Expert B who disagrees, is not helpful -- not in a political sense, but in an explanatory one. The viewer or reader is left with the impression that there is violent disagreement, which is to say that no consensus exists -- a false belief! -- while he or she also doesn't really learn anything about the scientific basis for the claims of either expert.

I personally find the blog RealClimate.org extremely useful in understanding what the skeptics are actually claiming, and why the consensus continues to hold and strengthen against them. The folks there are perhaps not quite up to the popularization standards of Cosmos, but somebody has to manage it eventually. Maybe Simran Sethi will do the job.