The ‘inside baseball’ dirty secret is that both sides in the global warming debate officially ignore each other, but react aggressively and axiously to any major media coverage the other side receives. It’s a ping pong match without end. The skeptics have behaved better, by and large, but only by placing fairly rigid limits on the scientific range of discussion. They are most probably correct in saying that a simple doubling of CO2 will not cause catastrophe, but are intentionally ignoring that another re-doubling and perhaps yet a further re-doubling of CO2, and the effluent that would accompany it, would, as the conventional environmental wisdom has it, carry costs we do not want to bear–or sometimes even contemplate.

And while they bat the ball back and forth–’Denier!’ ‘Alarmist!’–what we breathe out has been officially classed as pollutant and poison, and the power to regulate how much of it we can produce has been delegated to the most faceless of bureaucracies. The Environmental Protection Agency, created by Richard Nixon, will have… power… that may be difficult to constrain in the future.

President Obama, pragmatic and practical, almost certainly wants to use the EPA’s newly minted power as a bully stick to threaten the Republicans, forcing them to the legislative bargaining table. But, in the same way that Republicans should have reflected while pursuing the expansion of presidential powers that they would not govern forever, so too should President Obama remember that the powers given to the EPA may not always be exercised in strict accordance with presidential wishes.

The most extreme environmentalists have as an ultimate goal the reduction of the human population to such a level as they believe concords with the ‘carrying capacity’ of this planet, and feel that their morality is on a higher plane than those who do not share this desire. And with the help of environmental organisations, they have worked hard at getting to the top of committees, organisations and, yes, governmental bureaucracies. Should President Obama ever feel the need to tell the EPA to back off, he may be surprised at the answer he receives.

Evidence is beginning to accumulate suggesting that this particular doubling of CO2 will not imperil us. Arctic ice is recovering, the lack of sunspots calls to memory the cold periods that accompanied previous minimums of sunspot activity, temperatures are declining of late. But even if this trend persists, environmentalists will rightly bear in mind that the energy consumption and resultant pollution of 6 billion now, 9 billion in the future, will certainly have effects that include upward pressure on temperatures, and much else besides. They would be fools to abandon their case even if they are made to look like fools in the short term.

So if you think the debate has been mean-spirited and ugly to date, I can tell you now that it may only have been the prelude. The skeptics, if proven right in the first battle, will use their victory to diminish the value of climatology, possibly at just the time climatology matures to such an extent that it would be of service going forward. Those who sounded an alarm that looks now to have been arguably false will have a choice–to either admit error and engage with those they have fought, or to regroup and become even more bitter and accusatory than they are at present.

The tactics to date of the alarmists have been stupid–graceless to the point of thuggishness. But worse than stupid, their tactics have been wrong. Most skeptics have only wanted their objections acknowledged and incorporated into ongoing study of climate and its changes.

But, as someone who is proud to be a liberal, I can hope that other participants in this debate remember the essential utility of liberalism–the tolerance that allows consensus and yes, compromise. President Obama’s energy plan is a good start for this country, and I say that as one who is skeptical about the current range of catastrophic outcomes predicted by alarmists. Let’s use it as a starting point for Round Two of debate on climate change.