Doubt vs. Certainty in the NYT

Venerable New York Times reporter William K. Stevens resurfaces today in the paper's Science Times with a few words on the changing nature of the debate over the changing climate. The headline is only slightly misleading:

"On the Climate Change Beat, Doubt Gives Way to Certainty"

Technically, there is no certainty, just diminishing levels of doubt. But it is a nice little essay. I just finished writing something similar for a magazine, and found the similarities with Steven's piece almost troubling, except that it's pretty obvious stuff.

To say that reasonable doubt is vanishing does not mean there is no doubt at all. Many gaps remain in knowledge about the climate system. Scientists do make mistakes, and in any case science continually evolves and changes. That is why the panel's findings, synthesized from a vast body of scientific studies, are generally couched in terms of probabilities and sometimes substantial margins of error. So in the recesses of the mind, there remains a little worm of caution that says all may not be as it seems, or that the situation may somehow miraculously turn around -- or, for that matter, that it may turn out worse than projected.

The last line of that paragraph is something that most so-called climate change deniers frequently and conveniently avoid.