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Now the original quote apparently doesn't appear to be on tape. But since both people seem to say it is referring to one highway, in NYC, in 40 years, if CO2 was 560ppm.

It's not going to happen. That is, even if CO2 hit 560ppm (which it will by the end of the century), sea level won't rise that much. That's far outside the probability range.

Ocean currents are not generally been part of the climate models... sigh this is not the place to debate science anymore.

Dude, you are so wrong; wrong enough that I've wasted quite a few mod points to post this.

5 seconds with Bing and the search term 'gcm that includes ocean currents' had Evaluation of the GISS GCM ModelE in the top few results. This article is dated 2002 and talked about how ocean currents are included in the GISS GCM. Ocean currents have been part of GCMs (General Circulation Models) for at least that amount of time.

Now, I am skeptical of the robustness of GCMs. Their predictive power appears to be weak over time (look at how accurate the CFSV2 is over a three month period, for example); and probably because their resolution is quite low; GCMs typically having a horizontal resolution of between 250 and 600 km, 10 to 20 vertical layers in the atmosphere and sometimes as many as 30 layers in the oceans. But that will change as computers get faster or more massively paralleled.

Disagree with GCSs all you want. But at least try and do some rudimentary research on why you disagree with them..

If you extrapolate current emission scenarios to 2100 with no artificial carbon scrubbing, you end up with below 1000 ppm CO2. Basic science tells us that even such an unrealistic scenario gives us perhaps 3C warming over current conditions. In the past, when there have been such carbon concentrations, mammalian life was flourishing and primates became established. But that scenario is unrealistic anyway because economies are already motivated to reduce emissions all by themselves: fossil fuels are expensive, and they are getting more expensive the more we use them up. That drives both energy efficiency and renewable energies. In reality, we're probably going to end up with maybe 600 ppm CO2, leaving us with less than 2C temperature increase.

The problem with climate science isn't the science, it's the fear mongering, corruption, and politics people misuse the science for. Yes, carbon emission growth and temperature increases are real, but Paris is not the answer. In fact, government attempts to intervene are likely going to make things worse rather than better.

The only quantitative _predictive_ statement in the Medium article is that a doubling of CO2 concentration will cause a 2degreesC increase is temperature (at fixed relative humidity). This is a strictly log-linear prediction. Let's submit it to a real _prospective_ experiment:

We are currently at ~400 ppm CO2. According to the IPCC, the prediction of CO2 concentration in 2100 is about 600 ppm. So, according to the cited model, we will have about another 1degreeC in global mean temperature by 2100. (This, by the way, is well below the 2-5degreesC range predicted in the last IPCC assessment report (AR5). At the very high end of the CO2 predictions above, we have 800 ppm, meaning 2degreesC warming according to the model.

So, they're predicting 1-2degreesC increase with business as usual! I can live with that. Let's see if it's right.

I agree, we should stick to the science. Here you go:

• The peer-reviewed Journal "Nature Climate Change" includes and references thousands of scientific papers on the subject.
• The IPCC's 1,500-page "Physical Science Basis" report cites hundreds of references and is authored by hundreds of experts. It clearly states what we know, don't know, and how we know it. It reviews its past predictions, notes where its models have errored, and takes into account an incredible wealth and scope of scientific observations over 150 years.
• The IPCC also makes all of its data and models available for review. So you can see for yourself.
• The US Government also recently updated its regularly scheduled report written by over 300 experts.
• The USGS has a Climate Model Browser that lets you try out all the different simulated predictions for Global Warming. You'll notice the specifics vary widely, but they all predict dramatic temperature rises.
• The NOAA has a National Climate Data Center where you can watch the temperature trends. Here's a visualization based on the data.
• The United States Defense department has several reports on the risks posed by Global Warming (see here, here, here, and here).
• The Center for Coastal Resources Management (CCRM) has produced some excellent reports on sea level rise due to Climate Change to inform local communities like Norfolk VA, where flooding is already a major issue, what to expect in the near future due to Global Warming.
• You can also watch the sea levels rise at the NOAA's Sea-Level Trends website.
• If you don't trust the government, then I recommend The Berkely Earth Project. It was funded by the liberal's favorite bad guys, the Koch Brothers, but its results were so compelling that the lead Climatologist, Richard A. Muller, wrote a piece for the New York Times announcing he was no longer a skeptic.
• Of course, it's always good to have a contrarian viewpoint in the mix, and for that, I recommend AGW skeptic Judith Curry, who presents valid challenges to the consensus with her strong scientific background. I don't find her convincing, but her challenges make for good food for thought.

If you dispute this science, then I recommend publishing your own peer-reviewed papers, your own models, and your own alternative hypotheses in the scientific journals. I see a lot of skeptics nit-picking the science, but not many actually taking the effort to publish in the scientific forums.

I eagerly await one of the skeptics out there to please post an equally substantive list of references to "balance" my citations, so everyone can review and compare them.

If you're interested in the science of Anthropogenic Global Warming, I suggest you read the science, not blog posts. I've read both WattsUp and SkepticalScience, and they are both very poorly written and lack rigorousness. If you are reading these two blogs, you are reading the work of bias amateurs.

Here's what you should be reading:

• the peer-reviewed Journal "Nature Climate Change," which includes and references thousands of scientific papers on the subject.
• he IPCC's 1,500-page "Physical Science Basis" report, clearly states what we know, don't know, and how we know it. It reviews its past predictions, notes where its models have errored, and takes into account an incredible wealth and scope of scientific observations over 150 years. I highly recommend downloading this 0.5 GIG report and at least skimming it. I consider it the model of good science.
• The IPCC also makes all of its data and models available for review. So you can see for yourself. Take this data and give it to a machine-learning algorithm. The science of AGW is actually shockingly simple.
• The US Government also recently updated it regularly scheduled report written by over 300 experts.
• If you don't trust the government, then I recommend The Berkely Earth Project. It was funded by the liberal's favorite bad guys, the Koch Brothers, but its results were so compelling that the lead Climatologist, Richard A. Muller, wrote a piece for the New York Times announcing he no longer a skeptic.
• Of course, it's always good to have a contrarian viewpoint in the mix, and for that, I recommend AGW skeptic Judith Curry, who presents valid challenges to the consensus with her strong scientific background. I don't find her convincing, but her challenges make for good food for thought.

Science, published peer-reviewed science, not blogs, is where we should keep this discussion.

I haven't seen any models for myself

Realclimate's FAQ is a good place to start looking if you're interested in climate models (data sources are on the strip menu at the top of the page). The site is run by people who are internationally recognized as being at the top of their field, the articles are both understandable to the layman and highly regarded in the climate science community. You could also try the IPCC data center. The IPCC don't do science, they periodically gather a mountain of recently published research on the subject in one place and condense it into reports, the ~2500 scientists who do this are not paid by the IPCC, they (or their university) donate the time and effort spent on this rigorous and tedious task. The "working group 1" report is the scientific meat but it requires a lot of chewing.

Warming has not been lower than forecast (what stinking place did you pull that from?)

I pulled them from a VERY stinking place, some place most people never go, the actual data. Take a look at the IPCC forecasts from 1999 IPCC now take a look at actual data from 1999 to 2012 at NOAA (or Hadley CRUT).

It clearly shows that while there has been warming it has been lower than the low forecast.

If you don't want to sift through the data (although I encourage you to do so and see for yourself), here's an article from an anti-denier site showing Hansen's 1988 predictions similarly being low. Note that this site is in the business of proving that global warming is real, their bias is strong and their data is suspect but even they clearly admit that actual temperatures are below the forecast.

These aren't cherry picked examples either, take most past temperature predictions and chart them against actual and you'll see that the rise is less than predicted. Or check the IPCC predictions from edition to edition and you'll see that they are slowly moving down in the near term (although often have global warming shift into high gear a few decades hence).

To be clear, I'm not a denialist. I do think global warming is real and a problem. But I think Climate Science is a lot like economics, they have a pretty good idea what's going on and you'd be foolish to ignore them, but you'd also be foolish to think that they have everything fully figured out or that they aren't missing some really big and important factors in their analysis.

Erm, have you checked google, or are you just repeating talking points?

Because the IPCC has pretty much all of their data available. Here is the data used in AR4. Whereas the math appears to be over at the paper itself.

Erm, have you checked google, or are you just repeating talking points?

Because the IPCC has pretty much all of their data available. Here is the data used in AR4. Whereas the math appears to be over at the paper itself.

"Call me old fashioned"

No, I'm old fashioned, I don't own a mobile phone. You are simply repeating propoganda without bothering to understand the context. The data still shows the MWP and the RWP however it has been demonstrated time and again that they were regional anomolies thus they have less influence on the global data than previously thought. That kind of self-correction is how science progresses, if you think that it goes against the scientific method then you must be looking at a different method to the rest of us.

"Weren't past IPCC reports peer reviewed (back when peer review maybe meant something)?"

The more you speak the more you reveal your ignorance. The IPCC is a 4 yearly review of all peer-revived papers on the subject of climate, it has an annual budget of $5-6M sourced from over 200 politically diverse nations. Each review involves roughly 2500 unpaid scientists tirelessly pawing over the mind numbing details of tens of thousands of papers during those four years. Collectively those scientists represent virtually every reputable scientific body on the planet. Who do you suggest should peer-review what amounts to the most rigorous peer-review of peer-reviewed science ever conducted on any scientific question?

Of course for any genuine skeptic the answer to that question is to review the reports and data yourself but I doubt the political muck raking displayed in your post will allow that to happen.

I don't belive you because I do not believe the fully qualified bloggers you link to.

Why? - Because the senate inquisition into Mann vs McKyntre called on the National Acediemes of Science to offer an opinion on McKyntre's claims. Much to the dismay of the inquisitors who organised the witch trial, the NAS testimony came down firmly in favour of Mann's "hockey stick".

They did however make some minor criticisims of Mann's confidence levels. Mann has since published an extended study in the Journal of Science (the Journal published by his NAS critics). McKyntre's paper failed to withstand the test of time and he has since failed to publish anything other than a web site. However, to McKyntre's credit he has recently dissacociated himself from the propogandists at WUWT.

Yes, Mann did not want McKyntre's paper in the 2007 IPCC reports for the simple reason that flogging a dead horse is pointless, nevertheless it WAS included despite his objections. I'm not going to link directly to proof of that claim since I think you would learn a lot more digging through the IPCC data collection yourself.

Correct "Science =! Public Policy" but one would hope science informs policy, which is exactly what the IPCC was set up to do.

"Rather it's unpopular because for every honest scientist out there, there's a hundred James Hanson or Al Gore types shouting about the end of the world, or a new way to "cure" male pattern baldness, or herbally make erections larger or breasts bigger, or a thousand other things that turn out later to be absolute bullshit."

Your post demonstrates a peculiar problem in the US in that many people don't even recognise science when it's shoved under their nose, it's a political thing on both sides, the left have their 'truthers' and the right have their 'birthers' both as equally bat-shit crazy. Occasionally this culture of believing what suits you spills over into serious matters such as the right wing anti-environmental dogma getting in the way of rational discussions.

It seems to be a culturally acceptable thing in the US to ignore a mountain of data because you don't agree with the messenger's politics. Or perhaps a lack of scientific understanding leaves a vast audience susceptible to the misinformation of lobbyists from the heartland institute (amoung others) who supply an endless stream of irrelevant cherry-picks and red-herrings via their "front" sites such as iceap and WUWT. Either way calling Hansen's science "snake oil" only demonstrates the lack of basic scientific awareness TFA is banging on about.However as an adult you have nobody to blame for your ignorance except yourself, perhaps if you could stop taking pot shots at the messengers for a few moments and actually investigate the claims you might appreciate two world renowned geeks a bit more.

You should be aware that McIntyre (of climateaudit.org) has been implicated in publishing a paper McIntyre and McKitrick (2005) that tries to reinstate the medieval warm period by censoring the data used in analysis. Furthermore, there paper fails statistical verification tests - it's mathematically unsound. Just something to be aware of. Note that the scientific community does listen to McIntyre, despite this proven intellectual dishonesty. The US temperature record was changed slightly when McIntyre correctly pointed out an aberation in 1999-2000 US data, due to data collection technicalities.

Anyway, are you saying that the simple equation you provided fits temperature measurements on Earth? Earth's temperature variations must be due to a change in atmospheric pressure then, right? The equation for Venus isn't really that useful, since it's known that CO2 doesn't actually trap very much heat. So fill in the numbers for Earth... and we'll see where that goes.

like what is the decrease in transmission for various wavelengths for say a ten meter insulated tube with various atmospheres, is it still logarithmic over atmospheric distances?

You can see a diagram here, that shows water, ozone and CO2 cooling and heating various parts on the atmosphere, at specific wavelengths. This diagram is reproduced from Claugh & Iacono (1995), you can read the original paper if you want to see how to get from raw data to the diagram.

I would like to know, quantitatively about feedback, the length of CO2 in the atmosphere, clouds, and many other processes, either from first principles, or experiment, and somewhat fundamentally, the calculated standard deviation of the weather for 1 year, 2 years, etc.

It sounds to me that you want me to dig up the details on climate models. They are in the IPCC reports. They don't include standard deviations for weather, but they do include averages and standard deviations for climate change. You can find them on here. The models come with documentation for how they are put together, data visualisation tools, point estimates, and standard deviations (which are required to make point estimates meaningful).

Yep, sample size matters. I agree we needed the sattelite that's now at the bottom of the southern ocean. However we don't need it to be sure our CO2 is a problem, we already have satellites such as MOPITT, GOME, OMI, TES to measure atmospheric gasses/areosols and their distributions, there are at least two gravity probes that yeild data on ice loss plus information that is vital for modeling ocean currents. Add to that highly sensitive altimiters for, snow depth, sea level, etc plus all the run of the mill weather satellites and we have a sizeable armarda of sattelites collecting evidence from space.

There are also litterally millions of sensors spread across the globe in various networks bobbing about in and under the sea, on land, on glaciers, in rivers, in aircraft, weather ballons, rooftops, submarines, ocean liners, etc, we started building and maintaining this massive data set in earnest about 150yrs ago when physicists argued over wether the sun was made of coal or not. Then you have paleotologists who look at dust and gas trapped in ice cores, tree rings, the tickness of sea shells, isotopes in microsopic samples, pollen distribution, the independent lines of evidence are vast and go all the way back to Fourier in the 1820's. To seriously debunk the claim that AGW is the major factor in the observed warming requires extrodinary evidence that is currently only noticable by it's absence.

What we needed the OCO satellite for was to more acurately pinpoint the major changes in emmision sites (NO2 is also a GHG as is Methane). If an international treaty is to be effective this type of data is essential and the more acurate the more certainty there is for business in a future carbon market. If the treaty includes land use issues such as tree planting, highly accurate data will be needed to audit those claims and monitor this experiment we call the industrial revolution.

Personally without such data I think the planting of trees for carbon credits is of dubious value to fixing AGW and ripe for corruption. Trees are valuable in their own right, far better if a farmer got a credit when he plows biochar into the ground. Making and burrying biochar is an efficient carbon negative process that can run on raw sewarge and other waste organic matter, not only does it's sequester the carbon for 1000yrs but will also fertilize the soil and reduce the need for oil based fertilizers. However, even on a massive scale, biochar alone is not enough to counter our current emmissions.

If you haven't read the IPCC reports the best place to start skimming is here, the reports go back nearly two decades and it's interesting to read some of the older ones and compare their warnings to recent events. These people are certainly not infallible but nothing is, they represent the world's scientific institutions and IMHO getting that many experts to agree virtually gaurentees their statements will be qualified, conservative, and backed by a mountain of evidence.

Just because you personally don't understand it well enough to make sound risk management decisions does not imply others are in the same prediciment.

"Better yet, just google IPCC politics and read for yourself."

What's the point in that? Like you I will only find the politics I want to see and we would simply hurl links to our favorite political hacks at each other for a few posts and get nowhere.

I suggest we short circit that argument with some old fashioned intellectual honesty. Try googling for the IPCC BUDGET and other financial information, the main points of which you will find sumarised in my other posts. It is not the "only credible authority", it is a peer review process that is endorsed and performed by virtually EVERY "credible authority" on the planet.

The fact that you posted a link to the heartland institute means we obviously have different interpretations of the meaning of "credible authority", it is run by the geriatric ex tabacoo scientist Fred Singer. Perhaps you could look up who funds them and let us all know, a similar googling makes it look impossible to find out from their own site?

Once you have defeated your political conspiracy delusion, you may want to actually read what the reports say rather than let political hacks tell you what's in them. If you do manage to filter out your own politics and gain a decent understanding of the basic science you may recognise Lindzen for what he is, ie: a WSJ opinion columnist with a political axe to grind.

"the Mythbusters have busted this whole sugar in tank myth."

Thanks. No really, I pride myself on the skill of scientific skepticisim and I have learned something from you about sugar in the tank that I didn't know. I will be more carefull with my slashdot car analogies in the future. In an effort to redeem my geek credientials I will repay your genuinely appreciated mythbusting in kind with the following...

"Did you all know the sun is going into a magnetically very quiet period?"

Yes, early last year the 11yr sun spot cycle was indeed out of wack with historical records and AFAIK nobody has a clue why. However climatologists have already accounted for historical measurements of solar irradience. For further information on the data, methods and findings behind the radiative forcings portrayed in that graph have a look here. For a more reader-friendly general overview check here. If you don't like the IPCC or WP then you could always try the USGS

"We will know within a few years if the sun is the more important climate driver or CO2."

The physics that underpins the greenhouse effect has been known for ~180yrs. As can be seen from the link it was "discovered by Joseph Fourier in 1824, first reliably experimented on by John Tyndall in the year 1858 and first reported quantitatively by Svante Arrhenius in his 1896 paper". Future hypothisized variations in the sun's output may indeed affect the climate but it won't make the observed effects of our greenhouse gasses and areosols disappear, the only thing that can do that is a radical rewrite of fundemental physics and chemistry.

You may also want to check out a list of common climate myths that do not so much debunk George Will as inform you of the things he is forgets to tell you, coincidently they rank the "it's the sun" myth at the top of the list.

While I sympathise with any effort to make scientific data more accesible, the deluge of questions were long ago answered by the philosophy and method of science, ie: train oneself to think critically.

I don't disagree with your argument but I think you shot yourself in the foot by equating AGW and religion.

"Yet for some reason Darwin's theory of evolution gets picked out so that teachers must highlight its weaknesses. Why might this be?"

I agree with the GP's point: Pointing out weakness' in a theory is how it becomes stronger.
I agree with your caveate: All disagreements must be intellectually honest.

Evolution is nowhere near as contraversial as when I went to school in the 60's, a time when tectonic plates and black holes were also contraversial, science has convincingly won all three very public arguments over the last 40yrs (150yrs in the case of evolution). Of more immediate concern is the current FUD from global warming psudeo-skeptics (coinidentally they are also particularly strong in Texas). Not that I have anything against Texas but the reason these people make (subtle) anti-science and greenie bashing a political platform could be due to either power/money/ignorance, regardless of which one it is, ignorance amoungst their followers is the sole reason they get away with it.

IMHO Dawkins and Sagan are correct in that science is taught as a "dictonary of facts", the philosophy of science is largely ignored by the education system and consequently misunderstood/ignored by the public at large. Evidence for this is not hard to find, just count the number of "climate fools" here on slashdot, they espouse all manner of nerdy sounding but thougoughly debunked scientific red-herrings, not because they are stupid but becuase their lack of understanding as to what "scientific skepticisim" means makes them easy prey for intellectually dishonest politicians and their sponsors.

Due to the overwhelming weight of scientific evidence I can no longer belive a politician can (legitimately) keep using ignorance as an excuse to poo-poo global warming and/or evolution. Therefore the root cause of the cherry-picked "science" found in the opinion columns of the mass-media and subsequently regurgitated by a million ignorant bloggers - must be money and/or power.

Premptive Al Gore reply: I'm not from the US, I haven't seen his film. I had already read the IPCC reports and didn't see the point, from the reviews of Gore's film by IPCC scientists, (and later their answers to critics), I would have to conclude his slide show was an accurate representation of the reports. OTOH: Just because the doco is accurate does not mean Gore's motivations for presenting it are intellectually honest.

You have posted a list of conclusions. For future reference this is what evidence looks like.

Just to be clear the second list is made up from individuals while the first only contains scientific organizations, it excludes universities and individuals, including them would make the list unmanageably large. I don't know of a single reputable scientific organisation or university that is seriously at odds with "the consensus", certainly none appear in the list I offered although some of the individuals do hold respectable positions. An interesting excersice is to cross-check the claims of the individual skeptic with the organisations they work for.

As to your questions both have been around for many years and have been thouroughly debunked, but I will have a go. The first one about CO2 levels rising after the ice melts in an ice age is true but the claim that it is evidence against AGW is false. The regularly reccuring ice ages are caused by Earth's orbit (solar forcing), as the ice melts so does the permafrost. The melting permafrost relaeses methane which rapidly breaks down into CO2. Therefore CO2 goes up (feeds back) and ADDS to the warming caused by the shift in orbit. In otherwords CO2 is normally a feedback and that feedback mechanisim will compound the warming from our emmissions (human forcing). None of this refutes the physics that says CO2 is a GHG, nor does it refute the temprature rise expected from increased CO2. What it does tell us is that nature will add to our CO2 spike as the permafrost melts because of our CO2 spike. Personally I think the last sentance is the reason psudeo-skeptics continue to push this particular red-herring in the media.

The medieval warm period and the little icse age are different events and are the favorite fodder of media outlets such as the WSJ, they were real questions at one time and are much harder to debunk, so other than saying the conclusions are from proxy records I will just point to the RC links.

As for accuracy of the models, they have error bars but have a skim though the IPCC reports particlularly the SPM. Being a computer scientists my favorite model link is this movie of a single simulated year from Japan's Earth simulator.

"if you can explain these issues convincingly why do you let the media get away with not covering the counter argument?"

Good question, it's not from lack of trying by those involved and coverage by the media is usually a bit better outside the US (eg:BBC). The two questions you asked are not easy to understand for many people, maybe a better question is why do some people in the skeptics list get so much repeated media attention for their red-herrings and esoteric but misinformed details, despite both points being thouroughly debunked time and again? For instance why do we currently keep hearing about how cold it is the last couple of years when the fact is the hottest 10yrs on record (global average) have all occured in the last 12yrs? Why are the opinion columns (eg: WSJ) full of people who deny the Arctic sea ice is dissapearing when half of it's area and most of it's volume has already gone in just under half my lifetime? Why does the media constantly focus on rising oceans and hurricanes when (IMHO) the major threat from AGW is to agriculture and marine stocks?

I have been refering to the consensus in ambiguious terms above, however when a climatologists refers to "the consensus" they are usually referring to the falsifyable (and IMHO conservative) assertions in the IPCC reports. For seven years now many media outlets have failed to pick that up as

Just one more bit of triva to cast a skeptical eye over...

The IPCC recently redisigned thier site, it was a dog's breakfast to start with and I thought the redesign made it worse. However I now take that crtisisim back, what they have done is set up a seperate site dedicated to data and analysis here.