Amid editorial articles that consist mostly of "is, too" or "ain't, either,"George Will offers an excellent statement of the protocol that must be followed if the global warming issues are to be addressed in a scientific fashion:

The consensus catechism about global warming has six tenets: 1. Global warming is happening. 2. It is our (humanity's, but especially America's) fault. 3. It will continue unless we mend our ways. 4. If it continues we are in grave danger. 5. We know how to slow or even reverse the warming. 6. The benefits from doing that will far exceed the costs.

Will accepts (1) and questions all else. Even if one accepts both (1) and (2), however, many questions need to be asked.

One question that Will does not address involves sunk costs: Some minimum level of gas emissions is unavoidable, given that so much of the world is entering the fossil fuel era. Only the effects on the environment of the difference between that level and the one that would occur if nothing is done matters. (The "incovenient truth" appears in the last paragraph.)

BTW, the WSJ article contains at least one bit of misdirection: The IPCC did reduce the estimated change in sea level, but it did so because it expressly omitted possible effects of glacial melting which has been included in the earlier report.