Statistically undetectable

...you might want to read the December issue of the Journal Of Atmospheric And Solar-Terrestrial Physics in which Cornelis de Jager of the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research and Ilya Usoskin of the Sodankyla Geophysical Observatory in Finland test the validity of two current hypotheses on the dependence of climate change on solar energy -- the first being that variations in the tropospheric temperature are caused directly by changes of the solar radiance (total or spectral), the other that cosmic ray fluctuations, caused by the solar/heliospheric modulation, affect the climate via cloud formation. The Finn and the Dutch guy from the A-list institutions with the fancypants monikers writing in the peer-reviewed journal conclude that the former is more likely -- that tropospheric temperatures are more likely affected by variations in the UV radiation flux rather than by those in the CR flux.
...when you do read the actual science, you quickly appreciate that it's not by any means "settled" -- that there all kinds of variables. To quote the Finnish-Dutch bigshots:
"There is general agreement that variations in the global (or hemispheric) tropospheric temperature are, at least partly, related to those in solar activity (e.g., Bond et al., 2001; Solanki and Krikova, 2003; Usoskin et al., 2005; Kilcik, 2005)." Therefore: "Variations of the mean tropospheric temperature must include stratosphere-troposphere interaction."
However: "A detailed mechanism effectively transferring stratospheric heating into the troposphere is yet not clear."
...In the course of the 20th century, the planet's temperature supposedly increased by 0.7 degrees Celsius, which (for those of you who want it to sound scarier) is a smidgeonette over 1 degree Fahrenheit. Is that kinda sorta staying the same, or is it a dramatic warming trend?
And is nought-point-seven of an uptick worth wrecking the global economy over? Sure, say John Kerry and Al Gore, suddenly retrospectively hot for Kyoto ratification. But, had America and Australia signed on to Kyoto, and had Canada and Europe complied with it instead of just pretending to, by 2050 the treaty would have reduced global warming by 0.07C -- a figure that would be statistically undetectable within annual climate variation. And, in return for this meaningless gesture, American GDP in 2010 would be lower by between $97 billion and $397 billion -- and those are the U.S. Energy Information Administration's somewhat optimistic models.
And now Jerry Mahlman of the National Center for Atmospheric Research says "it might take another 30 Kyotos" to halt global warming. Thirty times $397 billion is... er, too many zeroes for my calculator.
So, faced with a degree rise in temperature, we could destroy the planet's economy, technology, communications and prosperity. And ruin the lives of millions of people.
Or we could do what man does best: adapt. You do the math.