For the skeptics of human-caused planetary warming, Exhibit A in evidence against the scientists who view this as a real phenomenon is the Hollywood disaster film, "The Day After Tomorrow," about which too much already has been written.

There is no doubt people concerned about climate change have focused on a sequence of issues to try to get the public to pay attention - what National Center for Atmospheric Research senior scientist Mickey Glantz calls "the dread factor."

Sea-level rise, biodiversity collapse, heat waves, flooding and many other potential problems have been been run up the flagpole. So far, however, an indifferent public has not saluted any of them.

So, where is the hysteria? It seems to lie more with the climate skeptics. They gleefully headline on various Web sites any misguided comment - for instance that global warming caused the Indian Ocean tsunami - as if it were the majority position of climate scientists. For the record - let's just say this once - no one on any side of the argument actually believes this canard.

Lord Taverne, speaking in England's House of Lords, said of the climate debate, "There is a slight whiff of eco-McCarthyism about."

Joseph Potts, on the Ludwig von Mises Institute Web site, wrote, "Government and science have found each other, and the spawn of this marriage looks set to destroy global wealth on a scale that will render the greatest of history's wars trivial by comparison."

We don't have the global cost of World War II here in front of us, but even a worst-case scenario of the costs of addressing climate change range from 1 percent to 4 percent of global domestic product. If one looks at the record so far, moreover, the cost has been less than that - considerably less.

For instance, on the evidence - which everyone always urges everyone else to look at - in England between 1990 and 2002, greenhouse gas emissions were reduced by 8.3 percent, while the nation's economy grew by 49 percent.

Furthermore, many policy approaches being proposed to deal with climate change seem quite sober and thoughtful - and involve presenting choices. One example: Warming is being linked to an upswing in tropical diseases, so is money better spent reducing greenhouse gases or bringing the fight directly to malaria?

Roger Pielke, a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado in Boulder, published a paper in the January issue of the journal Population and Environment that urges a more considered line on climate issues.

"We're advocating a more holistic approach," Pielke told UPI's Climate. "Let's start with the impacts and work backward to the cause, rather than start with the cause an work toward the impacts."

For instance, damage from hurricane landfalls in the United States has increased dramatically since 1950 - roughly the same time period over which the globe has seen its strongest warming. A linkage? Not quite.

The number and intensity of hurricanes hitting the coast has not increased since 1850. The main factor driving the increase in damage, Pielke and co-author Daniel Sarewitz wrote, is the increase in development in hurricane-prone areas.

"Decision-making at local levels (e.g. related to land use, insurance, building codes, warnings and evacuation) can have a profound effect on the magnitude and significance of future damage, much more in fact than can efforts to modulate the incidence of extreme events via energy and policies," they said in the article.

So, too, the impact on malaria. Stabilizing global atmospheric carbon dioxide at 550 parts per million would reduce the population at risk for malaria by 2.8 percent at a cost of about $280 billion in today's dollars, according to Indur Goklany of the U.S. Department of Interior's Office of Policy Analysis.

"Malaria's current annual death toll of about 1 million could be halved at an annual cost of $1.25 billion or less, according to the World Health Organization, through a combination of measures such as residual home spraying with insecticides, insecticide-treated bednets, improved case management and more comprehensive ante-natal care," Goklany wrote in a recent article in the journal Science.

Pielke essentially urges a policy that defines more closely the problem to be solved. One serious issue of global warming that is not well addressed by economic considerations is the impact on biodiversity of the plant and animal kingdoms, which may not be as adaptable to conditions as humans are.

"We care about climate change because it affects us and it affects things in the natural world that we care about," Pielke said. "Some people think that they have intrinsic rights themselves - plants, animals, ecosystems - (because they) rely on the stability of the climate system."

Even in biodiversity, there are many factors beyond climate that affect an organism's ability to survive and prosper.

So, first define the problems you are trying to solve, Pielke urged. "Let's be a little more scientific in our focus on policy in the climate change debate," he said.

None of this is particularly radical, however. Despite the barbs and barbarisms occasionally floated, the vast middle ground on the policy questions favors a conservative approach.

A joint conference last spring sponsored by the Pew Center on Global Climate Change and the Aspen Institute found considerable agreement between business and environmental advocates on how to proceed on climate policy.

Most striking, perhaps, is they agreed that a mandatory greenhouse-gas-reduction program for the United States "could be both effective and politically feasible." What the consensus urged was that restrictions on greenhouse gases be broad-based, rather than sector-specific, and that any targets be phased in slowly.

In addition, conference participants generally urged the use of market-based mechanisms, such as carbon emissions cap-and-trade.

None of this seems particularly hysterical. The McCain-Lieberman bill on greenhouse gas reductions is formulated along these lines.

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