There are some things that climate change believers and skeptics agree about.

Dr. Easterbrook spoke of his studies of solar activity and climate cycles and his prediction that a decades-long global cooling spell was coming, deeper than the one in the middle of the 20th century. Mr. Jungbauer gave a talk and slide presentation that he said were aimed at providing ammunition for anyone in the policy arena seeking to counter visions of catastrophic global warming pushed by liberal campaigners. . .

Dr. Easterbrook, in laying out the dangers of cold spells, noted that the world doesn’t have sufficient energy sources to get through such a period, particularly with the human population heading toward 9 billion. “We want to reduce pollution, increase efficiency, decrease dependence on foreign oil,” he said in a question and answer session. “The difficulty I see is greater demands and fewer resources.” . . .

“There are extremists on both sides,” Mr. Jungbauer said. Extremists on the conservative side, he said, say there’s no problem at all, while “on the other side they say, ‘we want to control your life” by raising energy costs through a cap or tax.

So in the end, the epic struggle over global warming, at its root, remains a struggle over how to drive energy innovation.

How much change can be propelled from the top down, by pressing companies and consumers with rising costs for energy choices that come with emissions of greenhouse gases? How much can come from the bottom up, with policies and investments that invigorate innovation?

Well, none can be propelled by focusing on GHGs and skewing development by making some energy systems more expensive than others. That's a distraction from the core need for more and cheaper energy. If there are to be top down machinations they ought to be focused on energy production improvements. That such efforts would also reduce and eventually eliminate GHGs is an incidental benefit.

The issue with soil carbon is similar. The reasons to increase soil carbon are that it reduces input costs and increases productivity - both are needed to feed the world. That doing so decreases the amount of carbon in the atmosphere is incidental.

This isn't just neeping about the details of energy and agronomics since rational approaches meet less resistance than from those who are harmed by strained political machinations. Rather than squandering our resources on useless political squabbling, defund the politicians and advocates who fail to approach problems rationally, and in so doing reach their claimed objectives more cheaply and quickly.