Here's another attempt to provide "a theoretical justification for irresponsible behaviour."

The largest academic conference that has yet been devoted to the subject of climate change finished yesterday in Copenhagen. . .

This was not a process initiated and conducted by the world’s governments, there was no systematic synthesis, assessment and review of research findings as in the IPCC, and there was certainly no collective process for the 2,500 researchers gathered in Copenhagen to consider drafts of the six key messages or to offer their own suggestions for what politicians may need to hear. The conference was in fact convened by no established academic or professional body. . . . this conference was organized by the International Alliance of Research Universities (IARU), a little-heard-of coalition launched in January 2006 consisting of ten of the world’s self-proclaimed elite universities, including of course the University of Copenhagen. . .

we are no further forward after the Copenhagen Conference this week than before it. All options for attending to climate change – all political options – are, rightly, still on the table. Is it to be a carbon tax or carbon trading? Do we stick with ‘two degrees’ or abandon it? Do we promote geo-engineering or do we not? Do we coerce lifestyle change or not? Do we invest in direct poverty alleviation or in the New Green Deal?

A gathering of scientists and researchers has resolved nothing of the politics of climate change. But then why should it? All that can be told – and certainly should be told - is that climate change brings new and changed risks, that these risks can have a range of significant implications under different conditions, that there is an array of political considerations to be taken into account when judging what needs to be done, and there are a portfolio of powerful, but somewhat untested, policy measures that could be tried.

The rest is all politics. And we should let politics decide without being ambushed by a chimera of political prescriptiveness dressed up as (false) scientific unanimity.

World climate, like the world economy, has observable problems. The causes and possible prescriptions for improvement are unresolved, perhaps unresolvable. Opportunists and true believers seek to exploit these "crises" to advance their agendas held for no discernible reasons except emotion. They would do the same even if aliens landed tomorrow and somehow made the "crises" go away.

Their irresponsible behaviors are a far more palpable threat to humanity than the crises that they go on about, and impede the efforts of responsible people to deal with the "crises". They are "B" movie hysterical losers who panic and act out during dramatic moments, making things worse, turning the threat of possible future harm into immediate actual harm. They are often smarmy, unlikeable characters that we didn't respect before they flipped out under pressure, so the emotionally fitting resolution is that they - and they alone - should be the ones to be toasted by circumstances as punishment for their weakness and unreflective lack of cooperation.

It is seldom so. . . except in movies.