Excerpt from the linked article:
I am a climate lukewarmer. That means I think recent global warming is real, mostly man-made [Ned: "mostly" is too strong for me; I think over half is natural, post-ice-age warming] and will continue but I no longer think it is likely to be dangerous and I think its slow and erratic progress so far is what we should expect in the future. ...
This view annoys some sceptics who think all climate change is natural or imaginary, but it is even more infuriating to most publicly funded scientists and politicians, who insist climate change is a big risk. My middle-of-the-road position is considered not just wrong, but disgraceful, shameful, verging on scandalous. I am subjected to torrents of online abuse for holding it, very little of it from sceptics. [Why? Because his view merely disagrees with skeptics, but it not only disagrees with warmists, it also threatens public spending and policy.]
...In the climate debate, paying obeisance to climate scaremongering is about as mandatory for a public appointment, or public funding, as being a Protestant was in 18th-century England.
...
I was not always a lukewarmer. When I first started writing about the threat of global warming more than 26 years ago, as science editor ofThe Economist, I thought it was a genuinely dangerous threat. ... Gradually, however, I changed my mind. [His path to analyzing the evidence and concluding it was much ado about nothing is described at the link, which is well worth the read, even though left out here.]
...
I am especially unimpressed by the claim that a prediction of rapid and dangerous warming is "settled science", as firm as evolution or gravity. How could it be? It is a prediction! No prediction, let alone in a multi-causal, chaotic and poorly understood system like the global climate, should ever be treated as gospel. ... It is absurd to argue that one cannot disagree with a forecast. ...
Incidentally, my current view is still consistent with the "consensus" among scientists, as represented by the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The consensus is that climate change is happening, not that it is going to be dangerous.
...
I have never met a climate sceptic, let alone a lukewarmer, who wants his opponents silenced. I wish I could say the same of those who think climate change is an alarming prospect.
[Much more at the link.]
Link: http://rationaloptimist.com/blog/my-life-as-a-climate-lukewarmer.aspx