Jeff Kueter, president of the Marshall Institute, responds to my blog post of last week titled, Will You Walk into My Parlor? which was critical of an upcoming briefing on climate science. Here is his response:Indeed, that last bit was my point exactly. Thanks to Jeff Kueter for taking the time to respond.Your April 30 post “Will You Walk Into My Parlor?” was brought to my attention over the weekend. Whether you agree with the premise or not is a subjective matter, of course. The premise nonetheless is true. The United States likely would not be engaged in efforts to cap, tax, regulate, or otherwise impose artificial limits on carbon emissions without the justification provided by the anthropogenic global warming argument. The Institute has long called for expanded investments in the technology base underlying the energy sector and adoption of incentives (or other means) to accelerate the deployment of those technologies, as both a response to the probable risks of AGW and as an end in and of itself. (see, for example http://www.marshall.org/pdf/
materials/86.pdf , http://www.marshall.org/article.php?id=274 , http://www.marshall.org/article.php?id=607 , and http://www.marshall.org/pdf/materials/449.pdf as examples). And while haven’t recently looked at the decarbonization matter, we certainly don’t oppose it and have tried to highlight it as circumstances allowed (see http://www.marshall.org/pdf/materials/7.pdf ).If one wants to debate whether public policies supporting decarbonization are worthwhile, then by all means, let’s do that on its own merits rather than wrapping it up in the nebulous discussion of what climate science does or does not say.