“It is not possible to determine exactly how much the Earth will warm or exactly how the climate will change in the future”

This is not a "devastating" admission, it is the common opinion of responsible scientists. The issue has been one of risk and risk management.

You have set up a straw man Des, and revealed your own lack of objectivity.

geoff davies .. what on earth are scientists doing getting involved in risk and risk management?

Ah .. what big egos you guys have.

Time to shoot the messenger eh geoff? How novel.

What rubbish!
A report that basically says "the science is sound, but not perfect" and according to this wally it means "uncertainties mean all bets are off!".
Uncertainty is part of almost all real world science, especially ones that attempt to understand complex chaotic systems.
Exactly the same criticisms can be made for daily and weekly weather forecasts: uncertainties, imperfections and less than perfect models...yet our forecasts are valuable to the tune of $Billions a year. I have yet to see the alternative to doing science rationally: religion certainly provides *nothing* when it comes to real-world data!
Can these instant-experts please apply this level of sceptism to our economic leaders? Here we are allowing massive profiteering, rent-seeking and blatant profiteering, yet the energies of these twits is being spent on deriding something they barely understand.
The answer to limited good science is more good science, *not* political anti-science dirt digging.
Please read the actual report to get the balance right.
This author is only interested in the Murdoch style "angle".

BTW. this guy works for an institute that has as a main goal to "argue for a reduction in the role of government."
Can you see his political angle?
Sadly, as much as I agree in "minimal" government, it is clear that open slather "law of the jungle" does *not* equate to maximum good for the community, the nation or the environment.
These guys just don't want any community restrictions on their profit activities. This is where the majority of the anti-GW nonsense is coming from.

Ozandy, one could fire the same tu quoque argument back at you:

'The idea of climate change should be seen as an intellectual resource around which our collective and personal identifies and projects can form and take shape. We need to ask not what we can do for climate change, but to ask what climate change can do for us…Because the idea of climate change is so plastic, it can be deployed across many of our human projects and can serve many of our psychological, ethical, and spiritual needs' - Mike Hulme.

Climate is a chaotic non-linear system and thus any predictions of its exact behavior have to allow for this non linear reality.
Yes the more extreme predictions are extreme and many of the greens are unreformed, bossy, command economy lefties, BUT- if the worlds climate was to simply become less favorable for food production; if major crop failures in the Russian steppes or in chinas rice bowl were to become %10 percent more common, we would have a big problem.