The bridge from cold facts and hot rhetoric to rational climate policy

The scientific community must expand its role in the political debate over climate change if we are to have wise and smart policies. The current debate is characterized by a cacaphony of competing scientific claims, scare tactics and propaganda. Scientists, particularly those in academia, are badly needed to uphold the principles of scientific inquiry and standards of evidence, upon which rational public policy depends. They should weigh into the conflict heavily, when the bounds of -rational analysis are exceeded. The acid test of analytical rigor must remain a first principle.