ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes a procedure in which disagreeing experts would confront each other before a panel of scientifically competent judges who were not personally involved with either side, and who could make a fairly objective, dispassionate decision on the merits of the argument. Our intent was just the opposite, to make as objective as possible the scientific basis for controversial public policy by resolving technical disputes between biased experts. The climate dispute is like any other technical controversy except that the stakes are higher, lobbyists more potent, the public and politicians more skeptical, and international agreement far more elusive than it was to protect stratospheric ozone by banning chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). Recent climate changes have had widespread impacts on human and natural systems. Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia.
