Despite what the professional skeptics might claim, the overwhelming consensus on global warming remains unchanged. Less than a handful of small mistakes in a 4,000-page document do not undermine decades and volumes of important, careful scientific research, no matter what the paid pundits and pessimists try to spin. We cannot ignore that global temperatures have steadily increased in the past century, or that the past 10 years were the hottest decade on record. These are facts. Nor can we ignore that as the climate crisis worsens, we could see more severe flooding, more destructive hurricanes and longer droughts.

We have every reason to be confident in the overall conclusions of the U.N. report, which is based on thousands of peer-reviewed studies and multiple forms of analysis. At the same time, we can all welcome the increased transparency that will come from an independent committee that will review the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s work. What we do not need is to taint objective science with partisan conclusions, which is exactly what some climate change deniers in the US Congress are trying to do. We should not try to manipulate science to our own political ends or to serve the politics of the day. As a nation and a people, we need to respond to scientific evidence with effective and smart solutions. The severity of the crisis befalling our planet requires nothing less.

Which is why the Senate is currently crafting a proposal to limit carbon pollution and spur investments in clean energy. Comprehensive clean energy and climate policies can create millions of new American jobs and strengthen our national security, all the while reducing the pollution that causes global climate change. Now is the time to make sure we pass strong, comprehensive legislation that involves our entire economy and benefits the whole planet.

As former Vice President Al Gore wrote in a New York Times op-ed last weekend, we can’t wish away climate change. We face “…an unimaginable calamity requiring large-scale, preventive measures to protect human civilization as we know it.” And unfortunately, if we do not act to stop it, both the economic opportunity lost and the human consequences would be devastating. The time for questioning the science is over. There is no denying what is at stake and what is needed. We must move forward as a nation and a planet.

Debate over the IPCC’s work underscores a much larger problem -- the regrettable tendency of environmental groups to make exaggerated claims about environmental impacts to advance their campaigns. It’s not uncommon for public interest groups to exaggerate a situation to win support or raise funds.

Recall biologist Paul Ehrlich’s bestseller The Population Bomb in which he forecast that imminent global famines would lead to billions of early deaths. His infamous warnings (for example, that “India couldn’t possibly feed two hundred million more people by 1980”) are still echoed today by activists who use them to regularly claim the root cause of environmental degradation is excessive consumption by too many people.

Yet, Reason Editor Ron Bailey reports: “since Ehrlich’s dire predictions in 1968, India’s population has more than doubled, its wheat production has more than tripled, and its economy has grown nine-fold.” This triumph was possible through the innovation of agronomist, humanitarian, and Nobel laureate Norman Borlaug who defied Ehrlich & Co’s doomsday predictions by developing a special variety of wheat capable of yielding large amounts of grain in harsh growing conditions.

Now -- due, in part, to the so-called “Climategate” scandal -- attention is focusing on the practice of consistent exaggeration by leading environmental groups. Recent news reports reveal the IPCC relied on at least 16 claims from non-peer-reviewed reports from the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) on subjects ranging from deforestation to glacier melt. This is not an accident of excess enthusiasm to tackle global warming. For more than a decade public record has shown that WWF has made claims about environmental degradation which don’t stand up.

With such high stakes, it’s important that we examine proposed climate change solutions both closely and objectively. Bad environmental policy is very costly. Right now, jobs are at stake and money is short. Furthermore, failed and unsoundly conceived environmental strategies fail to achieve their very objective -- protecting the environment.

Accordingly, it’s refreshing to hear the IPCC concede that it needs to get its house in order. Yet, it seems that penny hasn’t dropped for everyone. The only statement made by WWF about the revelation of its record of errors (released by the head of its Australian arm) is defiantly silent on that score.

Everyone else is being called upon to account for what they do and how they spend other people’s money, especially in the wake of the financial crisis. “Green” activists are not exempt.

Politicians and scientists investigate things in very different ways. My sense is that the political investigations have taken an aggressive tone that seems to be more like an inquisition than an investigation. It also seems that many powerful politicians and others have come to their conclusions before the investigations have begun. The climate change debate has become more emotional than logical, more political than scientific --- on many sides. The confusion and doubt that have been spurred by the revelations of some weaknesses in some of the cases presented by climate scientists have now been spread to results and conclusions that should not be tarnished with the same doubt. True science is a complex process of hypothesis, testing, retesting and peer review. Then one should rinse and repeat.

There are many studies in climate change that have been fully vetted and have survived the harsh tests of science and scientists. Many other parts of climate science have quite uncertain results with a wide range of possible outcomes. Connecting economic results with climate results brings in multiple sets of complexity and multiple sets of possible results. However, many of these results have been overly simplified by many sides in the debate.

The climate debate has also taken on a somewhat pseudo-theological tone. One can debate science. “Theology” is yet another thing. When something is science it should remain science and not become wrapped in ideology and “belief”, rather than fact and intelligent study.

There should be investigations at many levels, but these investigations should be scientific, not just political and accusatory.

The EPA regulations need not be turned back just yet. However, as I have said before in this journal, the science behind these regulations needs to be continuously tested and verified, much like the science of other complex environmental issues should be challenged on a regular basis. Otherwise we begin to take uncertainty as solid certain facts. That is just plain bad logic.

Of course the controversy has effect public opinion. As with all such shocks to opinion the events seem to have hardened opinions on all sides, not brought much opinion into doubt. Doubt is a big part of the scientific process. Doubt is one of the fuels that help us find truth. Without it we just are staid in our ways. As realities may become clearer we just stay in the same old perspectives without some healthy and intelligent doubt.

Maybe this scandal could prove to be a good thing. As its implications begin to settle into the minds of those who have to make decisions maybe they will begin to really think about how complex all of this is. However, I fear that all of this will become yet another can to be kicked down the road in our dysfunctional Congress. It may also become yet another distorted reality on many sides that will be kicked around the media until the rest of the public (those with not much concern about this in ether way) will become even more board of the debate.

The issues surrounding climate change could be some of the most important and complex we will face for generations. We should deal with them at a high scientific level, and with brutal honesty about them, most particularly their complexity and uncertainty. Otherwise, we could find ourselves in some very difficult economic and resource situations in the future as the powerful and the “thought leaders” ramble on about how certain they are.

Thanks to the British media and the House of Commons, we are learning more and more about the unsettling Climategate scandal that revealed researchers suppressed and manipulated data in order to reach predetermined alarmist outcomes on climate science.

Today I read in a U.K. newspaper that the Institute of Physics told the British House of Commons that Climategate created “worrying implications” for the credibility of climate science. The institute reflected some of the same concerns that I share with many of my Congressional colleagues and constituents. The British public must also share these concerns, as Climategate has been a hot story in the British media, while the American press has largely ignored the story. I’m pleased that the National Journal is asking these important question and wish more American reporters would too.

Members of Congress shouldn’t have to rely on Parliament or British newspaper accounts to get to the bottom of the Climategate scandal and other revelations about errors in published climate science. The integrity of climate science is at an important crossroads, but instead of putting these concerns to rest, President Obama’s Administration and Democratic Congressional leaders seem unwilling to ask some of the hard questions that this scandal demands.

Unfortunately, we haven’t gotten any answers from this Administration, only dismissive ridicule to those who raise these questions. When asked his thoughts on a major error on Himalayan glaciers in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 2007 report, Todd Stern, the Administration’s top climate negotiator, wrote it off as a “typo.”

By moving the projected timetable for glacier melting up by more than three centuries, the IPCC report helped advance the worldwide fear and alarm over climate change. But what might be more shocking than the prediction that nearly 15,000 glaciers would melt within the span of a few decades is the fact that the IPCC relied on a news story based on an interview of a single Indian glaciologist in 1999, who said later he was misquoted and provided no date to the reporter.

Stern, the State Department’s Special Envoy for Climate Change, should take these mistakes more seriously, since international negotiations depend on a clear view of climate change’s potential.

The same holds true for the Environmental Protection Agency, which stands on the precipice of enacting job-killing climate regulations based on the IPCC’s conclusions. However, despite my requests, it doesn’t appear that a thorough investigation is coming from Administrator Lisa Jackson, even though the Data Quality Act and the EPA’s Peer Review Guidelines both demand that the agency rely on accurate scientific information.

It’s also worth asking why Penn State University climatologist Dr. Michael Mann, whose Climategate e-mails sparked an investigation by the university, received nearly $2.5 million in stimulus grant funding.

The Administration, Congress and the scientific community have plenty to answer for – and those answers are sorely needed by many like me who are now questioning the state of climate science. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem that the U.S. Congress or the Administration has the same thirst for these answers as British newspaper reporters do, so I’ll keep checking for news reports from across the pond to stay informed on this crucial issue.

The UN IPCC has blurred the lines between science and advocacy to the point where they are unable to separate situational awareness from proposed remedies. They have been advocating for specific policy actions and ignoring the original charter of informing the public on the state of science. What is often forgotten is the fact that the UN IPCC and Al Gore won a Nobel Peace Prize, not a prize for science as their cheerleaders would lead the public to believe. Their work was not held to the scientific standard reserved for work in physics or chemistry, which is why the significant errors and a lack of peer-review process in the 4^th Assessment Report should surprise no one. The IPCC has functioned more as a political body than a scientific body - one needs to look no further than the fact that its Summary for Policymakers is released months before the underlying report is finalized.

The problem, however, has greater significance than finding that another UN organization is incompetent. The IPCC has been the benchmark against which all climate science is judged. It is the foundation for the recent EPA Endangerment Finding and its conclusions are typically the jumping-off place for scientific extrapolations by other scientists, organizations, and most importantly, governments.

The reason this is important, in terms of the EPA's Endangerment Finding, is that the Agency almost exclusively, by their own admission last year, relied upon the IPCC report as the scientific basis for their regulatory finding. While the Administration and their allies have tried to downplay this fact over the last few weeks, the fact is that this undermines their legal position as the Endangerment Finding is challenged in the courts.

Last week several members of the Senate tried to distance themselves from the IPCC controversy by citing US scientists instead of the IPCC, but the very US scientists they cited have also served as either lead authors of IPCC chapters or reviewers of said chapters. It is precisely this problem, the same researcher's peer-reviewing each other's work, running the IPCC, and actively working to exclude those scientists who disagreed with them; as evidenced in the CRU emails, which warrants a full investigation. Part of that investigation must be done by Congress since some of the researchers made statements to Congress in hearings which their own emails seem to contradict.

Senator Lisa Murkowski is going to offer a silver bullet: a Resolution of Disapproval for EPA’s Endangerment Finding, which would take away EPA’s authority regulate all greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, give time for an independent review of the science like the UN IPCC has already pledged to do, and allow legislators to craft sensible energy policy that can promote energy independence without killing our domestic production of fossil fuels. It also allows EPA to reconsider its Endangerment Finding without almost exclusively relying upon the IPCC.

The scientific review of IPCC procedures is welcome. If carried out with rigor, transparency and independence, it will reconfirm and strengthen the IPCC’s commitment to robust scientific assessment, and restore public confidence that has been shaken by an aggressive campaign to sow confusion about climate science.

Lawsuits aimed at blocking the Environmental Protection Agency’s endangerment finding because of scientific concerns are unfounded and based on mischaracterizations of the evidence. The usual suspects -- polluting industries and their allies in government -- are grossly exaggerating small errors in the IPCC report and the implication of stolen emails from climate scientists to attack the EPA’s much broader assessment of existing science. In fact, EPA’s endangerment finding is based on solid science from more than a dozen sources beside the IPCC. The accusations in the lawsuits simply don’t withstand basic scrutiny.

While there are some errors in the IPCC's 2007 report, other supposed errors have been mischaracterized. And all of them have been overblown.

The controversy over the stolen emails has been driven by ideologues and anti-science bloggers who would rather attack scientists than grapple with substantive science. In many cases, it’s clear that they don’t even understand what scientists are saying in their emails. These emails have no bearing on our understanding of climate science, something my organization, Factcheck.org and the Associated Press have all concluded. The scientific community has known for decades that emissions from burning fossil fuels are changing Earth’s climate.

Those who choose to actively mischaracterize the scientific evidence about global warming are attempting to confuse the public and distract policymakers from addressing this issue. Let’s be clear: no matter how strong the science is, these contrarians would continue to oppose any policies that would make the oil and coal industries deviate from business as usual.

Regardless of the outcome of an investigation into how the IPCC operates, there will still be members of Congress who will continue to attack the IPCC, harass scientists and ignore the mountains of evidence that global warming is real. These opponents of action are desperate because they know Congress is closer than it has ever been to curbing heat-trapping emissions and ensuring American leadership as the world transition to a clean energy economy.

The first step to restoring legitimacy of international climate change studies is admitting how much is not known about the system. Indeed, it is probably the case that what is unknown is far greater than is known. As award-winning science author Bill Bryson noted, “There is of course a great deal we don’t know, and much of what we think we know we haven’t known, or thought we’ve known, for long.”

The second step is offering greater transparency in the way that the IPCC and similar organizations operate. There is sufficient technology to allow the public access to information and underlying data, so that debate -- the hallmark of science -- can take place openly. That also means the IPCC or its replacement should abandon its drive for consensus. The best science not only considers but welcomes dissenting views.

Next, models should be used as research tools rather than sophisticated PR mechanisms for promoting visions of apocalypse. And the temperature record, which has served as the foundation for claims about the catastrophic effects of greenhouse gas emissions, needs to be re-done. A growing body of evidence reveals that both the global and US records are flawed and contain a large number of errors.

How the UN goes about the review of the IPCC and who it appoints to its independent board will be telling. If the board is comprised of people who have been deeply involved in the IPCC process and strongly claim that there is a consensus or that the science is settled, the review will be little more than political damage control. Submitting the IPCC to the acid bath of truth and the antiseptic of sunlight will not be easy. However, it is the only way to make sure that assessment process is open, transparent, objective and relevant.

Revelations from “Climategate” over the past three months make it clear that the IPCC suffers from a major case of Group Think. The story line coming from the UN and IPCC that its problems were the result of not following its rules and attempting to simplify complex science for policy makers (along the lines of “Global Warming for Dummies”) makes it clear that the organization either doesn’t get it or has adopted a circle the wagons strategy that will not produce much needed changes. Entire text books detail how to deal with Group Think, and those strategies should be used in laying out a path forward.

Unlike Toyota which has market forces, as well as its own culture, providing incentives to fix its problems, government bureaucracies rarely make the kind of organizational and process changes that are needed here. As a result, the UN should disband the IPCC, do a major lessons learned exercise, and then set up a process that will provide governments with the most useful scientific information, including the extent of uncertainty.

Disbanding the IPCC and walking back the rush to judgment philosophy that is driving domestic legislation does not mean that governments should stand still and not take action to limit the growth of greenhouse gas emissions, promote the development of low or no carbon energy systems or use current knowledge and technology to achieve higher levels of energy efficiency. Striking a balance between real knowledge, risk, cost and economic growth would put the nation on a different path, one not driven by panic. That means EPA should forego rule makings under its endangerment finding, and Congress should reassess its legislative initiatives.

We will make better progress in reducing and managing the human influence on the climate system by abandoning the crisis management approach and adopting the long view.

Inhofe gave a speech on the Senate floor during the financial crisis in late 2008 where he acknowledged (a) the need to take extraordinary public action against a recession and (b) the recession’s unknowable severity at the time we needed to act. So the notion of public policy as a hedge against an uncertain future risk is not foreign to him. And this notion is at the heart of whether to wait for more climate science or act now.

The financial crisis exposed analytical tools, such as value-at-risk, that understated fat tail risks and ignored feedback loops like counterparty risk. 2008’s financial risk distribution and feedback power is a useful analogy to climate policy analytics today.

Regardless of how much we study the science, the shape of anthropogenic climate risk isn’t likely to change (it will look about like these fat-tail risk chart from Nature.) To quote from Martin Weitzman's essential October 2009 paper; "In any event, it is a fact that the median upper five percent probability level over all 22 climate-sensitivity PDFs (probability density functions) cited in IPCC-AR4 (2007) is 6.4 degrees C."

Notwithstanding the seeming Gore-Inhofe barbell of public opinion, climate risk is probalistic rather than binary. And the probalistic challenge is that the odds are decidedly against us. The feedback loops (like melting permafrost and ice sheets) make it so. The biggest climate hoax is denying the need to hedge the risk we already perceive.

Last year my colleagues and I published a paper on real option value to assess the hedge value of climate policy. Real option analysis explicitly accounts for the variance of the expected value, as well as skew and kurtosis, to better reflect the actual climate risk profile. Proceeding immediately with climate policy and making adjustments (or dynamically hedging) over time keeps open a valuable option on the asset of a stable climate.

Why do free marketers ignore well-studied market mechanisms such as public goods? Paul Samuelson’s seminal 1954 paper on the topic underpins the argument that public goods (those characterized by nonrivalness of consumption) should have a price of zero - yet if priced at zero, in essence, price theory commends free riding on the provision of such goods. Waiting until climate science is “proven” is a poor excuse for free riding our descendant’s natural resources.

An honest and intelligent conservative viewpoint on climate policy might be as follows (the quote is mine): “A simple emissions cap, with as little Government interference as possible and revenue returned to taxpayers, is a good climate hedge with numerous ancillary benefits for Americans”.

The best outline of such a policy, in my view, is the upstream cap outlined in the CLEAR bill put forth by Senators Cantwell and Collins. While free marketers might not like the financial market restrictions, it is the simplest architecture for the Samuelson-type challenge - and an antidote to the numerous other multi-thousand-page bills our Congress is now considering.

Gilbert N. Plass concluded his 1956 American Scientist paper with: “If at the end of this century the average temperature has continued to rise and in addition measurement also shows that the atmospheric carbon dioxide amount has also increased, then it will be firmly established that carbon dioxide is a determining factor in causing climatic change.” Inaction would be about politics, not science.

In considering what should be done in light of recent revelations about aspects of the IPCC report, it is critical to distinguish between two different issues. One has to do with the IPCC itself. And yes, it is clear that here reforms are in order. The IPCC needs to clarify what sources can be cited in its reports, that all sources are properly verified, and that these guidelines are enforced. Because of the important role the IPCC report plays in international discussions, the standard for accuracy and reliability of everything it issues must be very high. The independent review announced by UNEP and a transparent discussion about these issues at the next IPCC plenary is a necessary and welcome step.

The second issue relates to our basic understanding of climate science. Here I think the answer is equally clear. None of what we have recently heard or read changes the basic scientific consensus that human activities have increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, that these greenhouse gases have raised temperatures (and the more we put into the atmosphere, the more temperatures will increase), that sea level has risen and ice cover declined as a result, and that unless we act now to slow future emissions, we should expect these changes to get worse over time.

The body of scientific evidence behind these concerns has developed and grown over decades of research. It is reflected in assessments by the National Academy of Sciences going as far back as the 1970s. And it is reflected in the IPCC’s physical science assessment, which remains above reproach three years after its release.

The science of climate change is cutting edge and fast paced. It involves an incredible amount of data and complex modeling. That there have been some mistakes made is not surprising or damning; this type of back and forth is true in all fields of science. The central point is this: an overwhelming amount of peer reviewed scientific studies have clearly shown that anthropogenic greenhouse pollution is the cause of current and future atmospheric warming, as well as associated planetary climate change. We may not know exactly how fast this change will take place or how violent and damaging it will be, but we know it is happening now and will continue to happen unless we do something to stop it. That the IPCC and related studies have come under such vitriolic attack has nothing to do with the science but with the extremely well-funded campaign by cynical segments of the fossil fuel industry to hold onto to their last vestiges of fading profit and power.

EPA has a job to do under existing law, and must do it according to the U.S. Supreme Court. Congress has studied and overseen climate science for two decades, and it is time to move beyond Sen. James Inhofe and his congressional gang’s 19th century cowboy worldview (is this the new definition of conservatism?). If the U.N. wants to, again, orchestrate a transparent review of the science, then that is its members’ prerogative (though why the U.N. is not immediately spurring action on fast acting and otherwise harmful greenhouse pollutants, such as black carbon and fluorocarbons, is beyond rational explanation). At some point, a medical doctor must treat a seriously sick patient because excessive studying and delay only reduce the options available to ultimately remedy the problem. In fact, the truly conservative approach here would be to take prompt cost-effective action that has the highest chance, as determined by the best science, of keeping the natural world roughly as we have known it for the past ten thousand years. But that, of course, would interfere with Exxon et al.’s greedy desire to suck up and burn every last drop of global oil it can find, as well as West Virginia’s coal oligarchy dominance. And precisely there lies the current political rub.