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Well, I think it would be prudent to widen the field of research to other factors in climate change than only CO2.

You'll find information about solar, methane, cosmic rays, and the full gamut of what *science* knows about climate change in the, wait for it, IPCC 2013 report.

Yeah, odd that being right keeps people feeling confident in their predictions...

Really? I don't see 20' of water covering downtown Manhattan yet. And I certainly don't see the ice age that was predicted for this time back in 1974.

That just shows how little you pay attention to what the climate scientists actually say. No scientist who is knowledgeable about cryology ever said Manhattan would be under water by now. And no, Al Gore didn't say that either. You need to pay attention to the time frame that they put on those statements. The last IPCC report in 2007 said sea level was expected to rise about 0.35 m (14") by the 2090-2099 time frame but more current estimates are for SLR by 2100 is about 1 m (3+ feet). At the rate we're going we might hit 20 feet of SLR around the year 2200.

They didn't predict an ice age for now either. At best it takes several hundred years for an ice age to develop. There was a lot of hoopla in the news about global cooling in the 1970's but if you look at scientific publications from 1965 to 1979 there were over 6 times as many papers on global warming as there were on cooling.

Not much of one at all, if you have ever studied the effect of CO2 on plant growth (and) Only if we're not smart enough to take advantage of the increased growing season in the north.

CO2 is far from the only factor in plant growth, in particular soil is important. The further north you go the poorer the soil is and it takes time to build up good soil. Climate change will change rainfall patterns which may or may not help. You probably never have been involved in farming. I have. It's not that simple.

When Adam Smith wrote "The Wealth of Nations".

LOL. If you want to say that our whole economic system is a conspiracy I'm not going to argue with you. In some ways I think it is.

But science is measured against the physical world. The physical world has characteristics that can't be faked and scientists know that. Do you think they want to be like the emperor with no clothes when their falsification is discovered? I believe very few scientists are willing to take that risk. I've seen no evidence that grants are biasing the science. It seems like if the case could be made for that it would have by now. You can cruise over to the National Science Foundation and browse all of the grants they make. Let me know if you find bias.

What makes you think I said scientists were infallible? I don't just start with the assumption that they failed. I think when they are wrong most of the time it's honest mistakes and not attempts to make the science something it isn't.

The effect on the human species MUST come before the science, or the science will become a factor in our extermination.

It's true that some technological development may be the downfall of the human race (I worry most about something out of some bio-lab) but it's also true that we ignore what science tells us about the physical world at our own risk.

Tell me in what quantifiable ways it is going to effect our lives on this planet.

The IPCC AR4 Working Group 2 report is a good summary of how it is expected affect our lives. The updated AR5 report is due out in October.

* is the World is warmer than it has been for the last two thousand years? Why is the answer to this question relevant? There are many variables that affect climate (forcing factors). It's entirely possible that we've experienced cooling over the first 1700 of the last 2000 years; that has nothing to do with what degree (ha!) of change we should expect from our cranking CO2 up past any level we've seen in the last 15 million years. http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/last-time-carbon-dioxide-levels-111074.aspx * is the warning of the last three hundreds years (which is undeniable) human induced? You quote Watts. He (unsurprisingly) gets the science wrong: http://grist.org/climate-energy/co2-doesnt-lead-it-lags/ * why are scientists who use the Scientific Method and go against the narrative being vilified? and 1. Who is being vilified? Names, please, of climate scientists who have been vilified for arguing against AGW. I know of very few -- Lindzen and Singer, perhaps, the latter being entirely deserving of vilification to the point of outright dismissal from the conversation, given his enthusiastic and utterly disingenuous defense of the asbestos and tobacco industries and the former appearing to simply be a contrarian in general. http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/03/misrepresentation-from-lindzen/ Meanwhile, climate scientists who report that we're headed in a dangerous direction are receiving death threats. No, really: http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-06/battle-over-climate-change 2. Controversial research results are a dream. Anybody who could come up with a data-driven defensible argument disproving AGW would have their career made for them. * global climate models "Much of the global warming information is based on 'extrapolations' (projections) of short-term trends." Hm. Seems like lots of folks are running tests of current GCMs against paleo data, which undermines if not invalidates your point. http://www.research.noaa.gov/climate/t_modeling.html#figure4 http://www.giss.nasa.gov/projects/gcm/ http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter6.pdf I know that climate change, as a global problem, is painful for libertarians to consider. However, as Feynman said, nature cannot be fooled. In a battle between physics and philosophy, I bet on physics. Apologies if the formatting is broken in this post; apparently Safari on a Mac doesn't want to insert line breaks.

Because that's what every single report says.

We produce around 3% of the CO2.
Man made: +26GT
Natural sources: +771GT
Natural sinks: -788GT

Net = +6,000,000,000,000kg per year.

sources

Here is a graph of global temperatures using skeptic Roy Spencer's satellite reconstruction: http://woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/plot/uah-land/trend

Temperatures have gone from -0.25 to 0.25 since 1980. That is 0.5C in 30 years or 0.16C/decade. Even at the current rate the 1.6C added this century will push us over the 2C tipping point that we are trying to avoid. Even at the current rate the added 1.6C would put us right in the middle of the IPCC B1 scenario of 1.1 – 2.9C (with best estimate of 1.8) by the end of the century. - http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/syr/en/spms3.html

Why the natural logarithm? Do we have a hypothesis to explain why the overall forcing effect of CO2 follows the natural logarithm of atmospheric concentration? Why a linear combination with volcanic sulfate? [...]

In the absence of sound theoretical answers to these questions, these are interesting but not compelling plots. The IPCC4 report (for example) goes into far more detail about our theoretical understanding of climate forcing from different components, and how projections are built up from this understanding that apply correctly in retrospect, leading to a more compelling argument for climate change.

The fact that CO2 has a logarithmic relation to radiative forcing has been well understood since Svante Arrhenius in the late 19th century, and is also reported in the IPCC WG1 report. The base of the logarithm is irrelevant (as long as its >1), as that only translates into a constant scaling factor.

The Briffa/Melvin/Grudd paper is specific to the Torneträsk region of northern Sweden. It's a mistake to try an extrapolate it to global temperatures. It's just another datum in the accumulating pile of data and does nothing to refute Mann's work.

Watts is so eager to find something to disprove AGW that he often reads more into something that appears to support his position than it warrants.

The fact that Forrest Mims is an AR5 reviewer doesn't impress me. After all Lord Monckton was able to sign on as a reviewer. If we had wanted to you and I could have probably signed on too.

Mims is saying that the IPCC-AR5 should cite the recent NVAP-M work and quoted a statement from them thusly:

“Therefore, at this time, we can neither prove nor disprove a robust trend in the global water vapor data.”

But he didn't include the whole paragraph:

"The results of Figures 1 and 4 have not been subjected to detailed global or regional trend analyses, which will be a topic for a forthcoming paper. Such analyses must account for the changes in satellite sampling discussed in the auxiliary material. Therefore, at this time, we can neither prove nor disprove a robust trend in the global water vapor data."

In other words they're saying they haven't completed their work and done enough analysis yet to say anything about global water vapor trends. It would be premature to cite it in the AR5 since at this point it does nothing to confirm or refute other water vapor datasets. Here is the NVAP Statement on Using Existing NVAP Dataset (1988-2001) for Trends.

To quote the IPCC AR4 report:

Based on a range of models, it is likely that future tropical cyclones (typhoons and hurricanes) will become more intense, with larger peak wind speeds and more heavy precipitation associated with ongoing increases of tropical sea surface temperatures. There is less confidence in projections of a global decrease in numbers of tropical cyclones. The apparent increase in the proportion of very intense storms since 1970 in some regions is much larger than simulated by current models for that period.

We'll see what the AR5 says about it but recent Atlantic hurricane seasons have mostly been more active than average.

Thanks, I had fun tracking down the stuff on NVAP and learned something. But I got side tracked several times and spent way too much time on it.

The only thing I'm finding confusing at the moment is the apparent discrepancy between your assertions and the lack of any available evidence to support those assertions - by which I mean the statement

If AGW is the worst thing facing humanity, then we're currently in a REALLY good situation.

And this one (highlighted)

What metric did you use to define the relative likelihood + impacts of a nuclear winter versus anthropogenic global warming?

The IPCC report. I don't claim to know the full impact of nuclear winter, but we are talking about hundreds of millions dead in the first few days

Which IPCC report? One of these - http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_and_data_reports.shtml [www.ipcc.ch]?

To give you an opportunity to clear up any confusion you might have inadvertently caused, I'll ask again:

Which IPCC report? One of these - http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_and_data_reports.shtml [www.ipcc.ch]?

And what were the death rates?

I've seen figures of the order of 100 million deaths by 2030 (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/26/climate-change-deaths_n_1915365.html) - is this an acceptable order of magnitude?

The only thing I'm finding confusing at the moment is the apparent discrepancy between your assertions and the lack of any available evidence to support those assertions - by which I mean the statement

If AGW is the worst thing facing humanity, then we're currently in a REALLY good situation.

And this one (highlighted)

What metric did you use to define the relative likelihood + impacts of a nuclear winter versus anthropogenic global warming?

The IPCC report. I don't claim to know the full impact of nuclear winter, but we are talking about hundreds of millions dead in the first few days

Which IPCC report? One of these - http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_and_data_reports.shtml [www.ipcc.ch]?

To give you an opportunity to clear up any confusion you might have inadvertently caused, I'll ask again:

Which IPCC report? One of these - http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_and_data_reports.shtml [www.ipcc.ch]?

And what were the death rates?

I've seen figures of the order of 100 million deaths by 2030 (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/26/climate-change-deaths_n_1915365.html) - is this an acceptable order of magnitude?

What metric did you use to define the relative likelihood + impacts of a nuclear winter versus anthropogenic global warming?

The IPCC report. I don't claim to know the full impact of nuclear winter, but we are talking about hundreds of millions dead in the first few days

Which IPCC report? One of these - http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_and_data_reports.shtml?

And what were the death rates?

I've seen figures of the order of 100 million deaths by 2030 (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/26/climate-change-deaths_n_1915365.html) - is this an acceptable order of magnitude?

Yes, the world is warming, on average, but what kills is not the average temperature rising by one or two degrees, its drought,
extreme events such as storms, ocean acidification, etc. The danger is that people think we're heading for a Mediterranean climate here in N Europe, etc. and that global warming might not be a bad thing for chilly Ireland, for example, when massive droughts and crop failures (across Europe and elsewhere) are starting to threaten global food supplies.

Any evidence that those are happening on a more frequently scale than usual? I hear the usual fears and I see the usual lack of evidence. Confirmation bias is an ever present threat under these circumstances.

Yes, but it is and will be probabilistic. See for example this on the Moscow heat waves, for example, and the discussions at RealClimate. Attribution studies are very expensive (in time and money, for computing ensembles), but are a key body of work over the last few years, and there is a section of the upcoming IPCC AR5 report summarizing it. The IPCC reports are
the best summary of the science, even though they are very conservative.

And the term, anthropogenic climate change mixes a number of human activities. Sure, AGW, desertification, and deforestation (to name three problems with likely global impact which would fall under the umbrella term above) have synergistic effects. But lumping them all under one category as you do here, doesn't help us figure out which activities are causing which problems or how to use our limited resources best to mitigate the effects of what we're doing.

Yes, and I didn't go into details. I didn't mention desertification or deforestation, for example, but you're right about synergistic effects. For example I've been working providing data to a group at NUI Maynooth" studying the effects on forests: the (measured and predicted) lengthing growing season leads to multiple generations of tree-predating insects surviving. Some species may have difficulty surviving this, so foresters need to know 30 years in advance what species to plant.

In particular, bad policy has been a remarkable driver of higher costs and fairly often confused for an AGW-related harm. For example just from the US, food prices have been driven up by ethanol subsidies for corn (which simultaneously drives up the price of corn, the price of gas, and reduces the availability of food) and the total cost of damage from cyclonic weather and flooding has been driven up by US government flood insurance policy (which still subsidizes to some degree construction in flood-prone areas).

Yes. The numbers I've seen say that the shortfall in wheat due to the Russian heatwave in 2010 equalled the crop production in Europe diverted to make ethanol under EU policy for 5% ethanol mix, for example.

Its ironic that the denialists

Yet another anti-scientific propaganda term. I find it a bit hypocritical to complain about the scientific basis of criticism of AGW while simultaneously using language that discourages scientific thought.The problem here is that there is a wide range of criticism of AGW from simply claiming it doesn't exist to disputing the claims of harm from global warming. I agree that some degree of anthropogenic global warming is occurring (though the basis for such a claim is much shakier than proponents are willing to admit), but I don't agree that the harm from AGW is as great as claimed.

Non-scientific, yes. The terms "sceptic", "denialist","AGW believer",etc are not pro- or anti-scientific, they're political.
And I will not shy from the politics. There are simply n

Thanks for the informative post. I googled, and can confirm the author of TFA is infamous for absurd attacks on climate science and climate scientists. However, according to IPCC's schedule, a 2013 "second order draft" is circulating now to governments, who could be leaking them. While TFA downplays a 1 meter rise in ocean levels by 2100, that number is double it's previous estimate. Given a recent study claims oceans are rising over 3mm per year, even 1 meter may be low. How bad will it be if we see a 3 meter rise?

While the author is a wing nut, I'm encouraged to see these guys shifting away from "the Earth is not warming" to a discussion of how bad the impact will be. If I were Canadian, I could see plenty of upside to global warming. It's not 100% bad, just mostly bad... Shifting to a discussion of the impact would be a huge step forward.

The political construct is unraveling

The headline hit the nail on the head, but I'm pretty sure it's not the nail the GP was aiming at.

this clearly shows that humans are in no way responsible for global warming.

Unfortunately, it shows nothing of the sort.

It says that water vapor is the most significant greenhouse effect gas. Water vapor indeed is a greenhouse gas, but water vapor cycles in and out of the atmosphere based primarily on temperature. The hotter is is, the more water evaporates into the atmosphere; the colder it is, the more water condenses out of the atmosphere. So, basically, water vapor is an amplifying agent-- if you increase the temperature, more water evaporates, and the greenhouse effect increases. This is well known.

I would like to really suggest you read the IPCC Working-Group 1 report, "The Physical Science Basis of Climate Change" http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_and_data_reports.shtml

You would be able to argue more effectively if you started out by being aware of what is already known.

a) What percentage of released CO2 gets converted in carbonic acid in the oceans and then absorbed in the rocks what percentage ends up in the atmosphere? I don't think we know exactly how that plays out

50% ends up in the ocean

b) As we change temperature, we carbon cycles. A lot of CO2 is in earth's plants right now. And of course there is methane trapped as well.

I think you accidentally a whole word there, so I'm not quite sure what you're saying, but there are no studies that show CO2 levels are not rising globally.

c) There is a lot of potentially positive feedback. Heat melts ice, melting ice decreases earth's reflective properties, which increases amount of heat absorbed....

Positive feedback is the problem that results in a "runaway" greenhouse effect, where CO2 forcing leads to higher temps which leads to more water vapor which leads to higher temps.

So yeah we know more CO2 means hotter. We just aren't sure how much hotter. That's what I mean by temperature models are so/so.

We have a pretty good idea, and the IPCC has been reporting the lowest possible estimates, phrased as "it will get at least this hot," when obviously the error bars indicate it will get hotter than the lowest possible estimates.

In terms of soy, it is a great source of protein. Try chocolate soy in milk, it is like the chocolate milk you had as a kid but super good for you.

Thanks but no thanks, I like beef. And pork. I am all about the motherfucking hog.

    That beings said I'm a bit more optimistic than you.. I think we get much much more rain. We get more CO2 and as we learn which plants adapt I think we get that 35% or maybe even more. I don't think we get much erosion. I think we add more land that's usable as huge areas of Russia and Canada come onboard. So I'd put 2:1 or 3:1 it is a net positive... but if I'm wrong the downside is terrible. We end up with a carrying capacity of only supporting 2b or less and that kicks off wars which might do environmental damage that even further lowers the carrying capacity.... And all that doesn't include the salt cycle in the ocean stopping and we maybe get 250m year ago's climate with 10% oxygen from all that frozen ocean hydrogen sulfide hitting the melting point.

Well again, the "thinks" and "hopes" don't really matter much when the observations and experiments say otherwise. That's the thing about science. There is no "belief," there is no "debate," there is just "false" and "not necessarily false." There are ways out of this mess (nuclear power for our cities, hydrogen for our cars) but we have to acknowledge the problem. There are brilliant upsides, too, like we don't have to suffer the muslims anymore because they have oil. But we have to acknowledge the obvious observed facts.

If you have further questions, I recommend this website: http://www.skepticalscience.com/ They have good resources.

I was responding directly to your comment, not the thread in general.

It's not a "supposition", it's the conclusion of the last IPCC report after accounting for all the factors with quantifiable economic impact.

My reading of the IPCC AR4 report says that if we take strong action to limit and eventually eliminate net emission of CO2 and other greenhouse gases then the cost will be a modest reduction in GDP. But the longer we wait to take that action the higher the cost. From the AR 4 Synthesis Report:

It is very likely that globally aggregated figures underestimate the damage costs because they cannot include many non-quantifiable impacts.

You can't ignore the non-quantifiable impacts just because you can't put a number on them.

True, but the primary cause of man-made extinctions isn't AGW, it's population growth and habitat destruction, and those are related to lack of economic development. Strong measures to prevent AGW are going to make those problems worse by reducing economic growth (IPCC), not better.

Really. What causes habitat destruction if it's not economic development? Of course there are other things that cause it too but development is a major factor. I'm not arguing against economic development, just more thoughtful development.

Modern industrial agriculture depends on little more than sun, warmth, and land ...

You obviously don't know much about agriculture. Part of my growing up was on a farm. Without fresh water in the form of precipitation or irrigation, without fertilizers, without energy to run the machinery and without good soil yields would drop precipitously. It would become difficult if not impossible to support the current world population.

No it is not. If the ice on greenland melts the sea level rise is over 7m.

That would take centuries no matter what happens with climate change.

If a vulcano breaks out below greenland and all the ice drops into the ocean over a few years time span, you have the 7m instantly.

That has nothing to do with global warming and is completely outside our control. Furthermore, subglacial volcanoes are common and don't cause rapid, massive melting of entire ice caps.

Even with "normal" temperature increase like we see right now, it wont take 100 years to rise the sea more than a meter. During the next 100 years it is indeed very likely that most of Greenland will melt.

There is no realistic scenario under which Greenland's ice cover will melt this century.

http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/tssts-5-2.html

Do you not realise that without a stable environment we lose even the basics such as food and energy supply and therefore any kind of society so all your arguments are moot. This is not some political or economic issue its one of basic survival.

Please think about what you're saying and some of the many resources on science around you. Primates have been around for 85 million years, and modern humans for at least 250000 years. Look up the PETM and glaciation cycles. The BBC documentary you link to talks about frequent and large "abrupt climate changes" over the last 100000 years. Humans and primates have survived and thrived under changes far larger than those predicted even under the IPCC's worst case scenarios of high growth and no action.

Global warming does not produce significant food shortages, it just causes arable land to move around. And how could global warming possibly decrease the energy supply? A lot of coal, oil, gas, and minerals are locked up under ice; if that melts, we might get more energy, we certainly don't get less.

Why is it people like you worry about politics and economy even when doing nothing is literally destroying the planet.

Instead of fabricating horror scenarios or watching British corporate edutainment, why don't you look at what the actual experts have to say, namely the IPCC reports. Even in those already alarmist documents, there is no serious claim about threats to "basic survival" of humans.

Climate change is, in fact, only a question of economics and politics: an important issue, but just one of many. And by repeating uninformed and unscientific horror scenarios, you let yourself be used as a tool for propaganda.

Hint: it's a terrible idea unless the algae sinks when it dies. If you're burning it, then the CO2 is just going back into the atmosphere. The atmosphere's CO2 levels need to be brought down, and the biofuel algae solution is only relevant after we've fixed the problem through some more permanent means.

It's true that there is latency in recovery from greenhouse gasses. Plants are only a temporary solution, since much of what they capture will eventually be released back into the atmosphere. You can read some statistics here about how the concentrations of the major gasses have changed. The numbers at the bottom for residence time can be interpreted as "how long it stays in the atmosphere", i.e. how long before a reduction is noticed. CO2's huge variability is because most of the time when CO2 leaves the atmosphere, it goes into the top layer of the ocean, and then comes back out again. It can take up to 500 years for the carbon to actually work further down into the ocean and become completely removed from the system.

But this hardly means no action should be taken—it means that simply stopping isn't enough. We need to actively reduce the greenhouse effect by removing moreCO2 from the atmosphere than we're putting in so we can reach sustainable levels again. That's not an excuse to stop production, and claiming it might be makes you look like a spoiled brat.

Supporters of climate change research don't behave religiously because they aren't religious; the evidence is very solid and they're simply reacting logically. I'm glad we nipped that fallacy in the bud before it got out of hand. Conversely, though, I'm surprised you didn't try to blame environmental science for the ELF.

Decide for yourself: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/contents.html

I'm sorry but if you're not aware that climate is weather occurring over a long period of time

It's not. Weather and climate are separated by time scale. One can say that climate is weather in the long term and conversely that weather is climate in the short term. But that just illustrates the division. It's not claiming that the two are the same subject.

and 30 years is considered the minimum

It's not. IPCC considers "months" the minimum time scale.

Climate in a narrow sense is usually defined as the ï½average weatherï½, or more rigorously, as the statistical description in terms of the mean and variability of relevant quantities over a period of time ranging from months to thousands or millions of years. The classical period is 30 years, as defined by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

They give lip service to the WMO definition, but they don't agree with it.

Climate - The average of weather over at least a 30-year period. Note that the climate taken over different periods of time (30 years, 1000 years) may be different. The old saying is climate is what we expect and weather is what we get.

http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/outreach/glossary.shtml#C

In the 1980's the National Weather Service established the Climate Prediction Center (CPC), known at the time as the Climate Analysis Center (CAC). The CPC is best known for its United States climate forecasts based on El Nino and La Nina conditions in the tropical Pacific.

The CPC most definitely does do climate science. Any round numbers that end in zero are popular. There are sets for every previous 30-year period ending in zero, such as 1971-2000 as you point out. They also do rolling sets, such as the current year + the 29-years prior.

The info talked about in this discussion was part of the most recent 30-year set released by the CPC -- 1981-2010. Thus bringing up 1951 and claiming relevance was incorrect in this context.

Also, the IPCC uses the 30-year mark for definition as well.

The classical period is 30 years, as defined by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg1/518.htm

In short, I'm right and yes, just about everyone in that professional area of study uses 30-year periods as a basis for defining "climate".

Right, but things like this make me doubt the 'scientific consensus':

It's important to understand the denominator when looking at these kinds of lists. You have 100 people with a PHD that doubt the consensus. Over 34,000 science doctorates are turned out each year. The Intelligent Design people put out these kinds of lists as well. They are meaningless when you consider the denominator.

One series of these e-mails called out the journal Climate Research, which had the audacity to publish a paper surveying scientific literature that didn't support Mann's claim that the last 50 years are the warmest in the past millennium... Editors resigned.

There is a very good reason that they resigned. It became clear that the journal was the victim of 'pal review' - http://www.skepticalscience.com/print.php?r=427 . Basically Pat Michaels was submitting papers directly to his CATO institute colleague and free market sympathiser Chris De Fraitas which were then rubber stamped. These papers were easily shown to be bunk and made the journal a laughing stock. The chief editor resigned saying that certain Climate Research editors were systematically publishing methodologically flawed papers.

That article I linked gives an explanation as to how 1) water vapor is far more effective a 'greenhouse gas' than carbon dioxide

This is not unknown to scientists, and is specifically why scientists are worried about Carbon. Added carbon will heat the atmosphere. A warmer atmosphere will hold additional water vapour. Additional water vapour will warm the atmosphere... etc. This is what is known as a feedback. Currently there is about 4% more water vapour in the atmosphere due to atmospheric warming.

and 2) carbon dioxide levels rise after the globe warms up, not before. The argument sounds credible to me.

This is only half true. Carbon levels will rise when the globe warms, but of course it can also rise for other reasons such as the burning of fossil fuels. BTW, a hotter world will release more carbon into the atmosphere which will warm the world... looks like another feedback.

Did you read the Super Freakonomics chapter about global warming? It says that just 20 years ago people were complaining that we were entering a cooling period and we had to do something to warm the globe up.

We have a survey of the literature from over 20 over years ago called the IPCC FAR. http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/far/wg_I/ipcc_far_wg_I_chapter_08.pdf . The conclusion was: "Global mean temperatures have increased by 0.3 - 0.6 C over the last 100 years. The magnitude of this warming is broadly consistent with the theoretical predictions of climate models." Looks like the Freakonomics guys are out to lunch.

Hint: There's a reason people are starting to call it "climate change" now instead of "global warming".

To a scientist these mean different things. They use Climate Change when they are referring to changes in climates, and global warming to refer to the warming of the globe. Politically though it was Republican strategist Frank Luntz who suggested using Climate Change rather than Global Warming because it sounded less scary: http://www.ewg.org/files/LuntzResearch_environment.pdf

Because stuff like the ClimateGate emails makes it seem like a lot of those 'experts' care more about being right

Science is fiercely competitive. Of course they care about being right. It's a meritocracy.

As I said, no amount of data can change the mind of people who are determined to not pay attention to data.

Climate scientists publish all the time. They don't "hide their data and methods," nor "share only with people that agree with them"-- the whole point of peer-reviewed research is to publish and get the data out there in the community. I really, really, suggest that you should read the IPCC WG-1 report; http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/contents.html ; it won't change your mind (since you've determined you aren't interested in changing your opinions), but at least it will allow you to argue with some actual knowledge, instead of simply parroting the third-hand opinions of people who simply assert that climate scientists are frauds.

...Let's go back to that computer model.

What do you mean by "that" computer model? At the moment I'm aware of nineteen major global circulation models, being run by groups in America, Canada, France, Australia, China, Russia, Japan, Germany, Korea, UK, Norway, and Sweden, but I'm sure that there are more. You talk as if there's one model, that's made one prediction. There are a series of many different global circulation models, run by many different institutions, dating back nearly fifty years. (The earliest real global climate model incorporating convective/radiative transfer with an assumption of constant relative humidity was Manabe and Wetherald, 1967; but I've referenced that so many times I'm tired of it.)

A bunch of amateur software developers

"Amateur." Well, that's a charge that's impossible to refute, since whoever does it, I'm sure you will just say "they're amateurs." One of the major models was the Los Alamos model, for example; their experience in running finite-element supercomputer models of fluid and thermal transfer comes from the fact that they model nuclear weapons explosions. But I'm sure you can say "oh, they're amateurs" if you want to. Yeah, nuclear bombs probably don't even work, it's all a hoax. The National Center for Supercomputer Applications? Amateurs. Yeah, sure.

Pretty much all of the supercomputer centers in the world have worked on climate models over the last fifty years. "Amateurs." Yeah, right. Whatever.

with no source control, no data integrity and no experience with formal software engineering procedures

You know, Los Alamos National Labs pretty much invented formal software engineering procedures on supercomputers. And, yes, they do apply it to climate models. (discussed, among many many many other places, here, for example http://www.csm.ornl.gov/~bbd/IJHPCASpecialIssue05/Drake.pdf or here http://www.nd.edu/~gmadey/sim06/Classnotes/Validation/pope.pdf or here http://www.informs-sim.org/wsc98papers/016.PDF )

And for that matter, the majority of the computer models, including the source code, are publicly available-- many of them are even on the web.

are claiming to model something that is incredibly complex using what is by definition an abstraction. Do you understand what an abstraction is? Doesn't sound like it.

Yes, a computer model involves making abstractions. All equations are abstractions, for that matter, but guess what? Physics still works.

THEN they play straw-man, citing a survey that asked scientists "Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?" What is wrong with that? What is wrong is the fact that a great many scientists believe that land-use changes has has MORE effect on climate than CO2. So this survey is completely useless in determining how many agree about CO2-based warming. [Jane Q. Public]

Could you please provide a citation documenting the claims made by these (unnamed) great many scientists you're talking about?

I have already pointed out that Doran is a straw-man argument, IF you are talking about CO2-based warming (what most people mean when they refer to AGW). The questions they asked do not specifically relate to CO2-based warming. Rather (example: "Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?"), it encompasses such things as land-use change, which many scientists consider to be a greater factor than CO2. [Jane Q. Public]

Here's a radiative forcings chart that actually does summarize research from many scientists:

1. Notice that humans release four significant greenhouse gases, and that methane, nitrous oxide and halocarbons have forced the climate by about +1.0 W/m^2 since 1750. This is a large fraction of the roughly +1.6 W/m^2 due to CO2 alone, which is one reason why climatologists don't focus solely on CO2.
2. Notice that land-use changes have produced an albedo effect that forces the climate by about -0.2 W/m^2. Clearing rainforests to plant endless fields of identical crops actually increases the albedo, reflecting more sunlight and producing a slight cooling effect.
3. Notice that the error bars on land-use change albedo forcings actually extend to zero. Modern science can't reliably distinguish land-use change albedo forcings from "zero", which is one reason why the Level of Scientific Understanding (LOSU) is listed as medium-low. Compare these error bars to those the on greenhouse gas forcings which has a high LOSU.

again, Doran was not about just "CO2-based" warming either, which is what most people mean when they say or write "AGW". It includes other anthropogenic causes like land-use changes. ... If you include climatologists their average drops below 90%. For ANY anthropogenic warming, not just CO2! [Jane Q. Public]

Yeah, ~88% is less than 90%. The higher percentages in the Doran survey already included all the climatologists who are active publishers on climate change. So agreement is only as "low" as ~88% when climatologists who don't publish regularly about climate change are included.

thanks to your reference, I have solid evidence that a good bit less than of 95% of "the experts" (less than 90% actually) support AGW theory -- and that is any AGW, not just CO2. [Jane Q. Public]

You seem to be implying that land-use changes can warm the global climate in ways that aren't related to CO2. As shown above, land-use changes actually cause a cooling albedo effect. But land-use changes actually do have a warming effect on the climate:

The pri

THEN they play straw-man, citing a survey that asked scientists "Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?" What is wrong with that? What is wrong is the fact that a great many scientists believe that land-use changes has has MORE effect on climate than CO2. So this survey is completely useless in determining how many agree about CO2-based warming. [Jane Q. Public]

Could you please provide a citation documenting the claims made by these (unnamed) great many scientists you're talking about?

I have already pointed out that Doran is a straw-man argument, IF you are talking about CO2-based warming (what most people mean when they refer to AGW). The questions they asked do not specifically relate to CO2-based warming. Rather (example: "Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?"), it encompasses such things as land-use change, which many scientists consider to be a greater factor than CO2. [Jane Q. Public]

Here's a radiative forcings chart that actually does summarize research from many scientists:

1. Notice that humans release four significant greenhouse gases, and that methane, nitrous oxide and halocarbons have forced the climate by about +1.0 W/m^2 since 1750. This is a large fraction of the roughly +1.6 W/m^2 due to CO2 alone, which is one reason why climatologists don't focus solely on CO2.
2. Notice that land-use changes have produced an albedo effect that forces the climate by about -0.2 W/m^2. Clearing rainforests to plant endless fields of identical crops actually increases the albedo, reflecting more sunlight and producing a slight cooling effect.
3. Notice that the error bars on land-use change albedo forcings actually extend to zero. Modern science can't reliably distinguish land-use change albedo forcings from "zero", which is one reason why the Level of Scientific Understanding (LOSU) is listed as medium-low. Compare these error bars to those the on greenhouse gas forcings which has a high LOSU.

again, Doran was not about just "CO2-based" warming either, which is what most people mean when they say or write "AGW". It includes other anthropogenic causes like land-use changes. ... If you include climatologists their average drops below 90%. For ANY anthropogenic warming, not just CO2! [Jane Q. Public]

Yeah, ~88% is less than 90%. The higher percentages in the Doran survey already included all the climatologists who are active publishers on climate change. So agreement is only as "low" as ~88% when climatologists who don't publish regularly about climate change are included.

thanks to your reference, I have solid evidence that a good bit less than of 95% of "the experts" (less than 90% actually) support AGW theory -- and that is any AGW, not just CO2. [Jane Q. Public]

You seem to be implying that land-use changes can warm the global climate in ways that aren't related to CO2. As shown above, land-use changes actually cause a cooling albedo effect. But land-use changes actually do have a warming effect on the climate:

The pri

How much of it would have happened anyway?

If we are talking since 1900, none of it according to the best models, if anything the globe would have very slightly cooled. The official IPCC position is more conservative and simply states that "most" of the observed warming is due to our activity (it's the second point in the much maligned 3 point scientific consensus)

rant/
A good place to start looking for more detailed answers on sun cycles and volcanos is here, and the youtube channel "climate crock of the week" is also a good place to visit for quality investigative journalism on the subject, (warning it includes strong British sarcasm). But for god's sake don't take my word for it, trusting a single source in the minefield of disinformation on climate science is quite likely to be fatal to your understanding of the issue. WP (or any other reputable encyclopedia) is also a good place to start, and it's hard to go past realclimate.org, it's run by Michael Mann (the hockey stick guy) and features articles and commentary by some of the world's leading climatologists. sourcewatch.org also has an extensive database of front groups, shills and lobbyists who publish climate misinformation, making it relatively simple for a genuine skeptic to work out who is bullshitting them and why. Make no mistake, if your interested in truth these "lobbyists" are your enemy, they will attempt to recruit you into the dwindling ranks of their army of useful idiots they have extensive propoganda experience that has been refined since the days the same people were paid to disrcedit medical science that said smoking causes cancer, somewhat surprisingly such expertise is cheap, (as well as fucking nasty).
/rant

Disclaimer: Unlike the so called "climate change skeptics" I want you to be skeptical of what I say and who I recommend. I've been following the science as an interested layman now for 30yrs, I want you to constructively attack the evidence I'm leaning on because (as a grandfather of three) the issue is way too important to allow the mediocrity you speak of in your sig to waste time and sow doubt amongst the uninformed.

A final bit of good faith advice (Aussie style) - Do you fucking homework mate, your ignorance.is your enemy's most effective weapon.

(Ed. note: I've been trying to post comments like this one since 2012-09-01, but they never appeared on my article at the San Gabriel Valley Tribune. So I finally posted this reply at my website, Slashdot, and Mike Haseler's website Scottish Skeptic.)

Let's get the facts straight. Even doubling CO2, means its greenhouse effect would only rise global temperatures by 1C. That is half the threshold for action set by the IPCC.

But, this scam has nothing to do with their real science. These charlatans would be predicting the same nonsense if CO2's effect were twice as high or half as much, because the real contribution of CO2 is much smaller than the natural variation.

And let's not forget:

1. This scam is based on a rise in temperature from 1970 to 2000 which happens to be coincident with rising CO2. The overwhelming bulk of this rise has nothing to do with CO2 greenhouse effect.

2. Largely the same academics who cry wolf over this short term trend were crying wolf over the short term cooling before the 1970s.

3. It all stopped in 2000 (1998 to be precise). That's 14 years without warming, compared to the 30 year trend they say proves warming will continue till the earth fries (much like we were heading for an iceage)

4. And just to cap it all, it warmed the same amount, for the same period, before CO2 was measured rising between 1910 and 1940 and guess what ... we didn't end up global warming doomsday then either. [Mike Haseler, 2012-09-01]

0. Many diverse lines of evidence (paleoclimate, modern observations, fundamental physics) show that doubling CO2 warms the planet by roughly 3C.

1. Human CO2 forcing has increased dramatically since 1970, while solar irradiance, volcanic activity, cosmic rays, solar flares, etc. have remained about the same.

2. Even during the 1970s, most scientific papers were predicting warming.

3. Skeptical Science's "going down the up escalator" shows at a glance that this often-repeated myth about global warming ending in 1998 is wrong.

4. The rate of warming from 1910 to 1940 was about 0.13C/decade compared to about 0.18C/decade from 1975 to 2005. But scientists don't simply compare the rates; they examine natural and human radiative forcings which change the global climate's total energy, which is indeed an average over at least several decades. In the early 20th century there was a lull in volcanic eruptions which usually cool the climate by blocking out the sun over a few years. Early human CO2 emissions and a slight increase in the Sun's brightness also played small roles. Internal variability modes, which shift energy from one part of the globe to another (i.e. climate cycles) are also important. Temperatures measured in the 1940s were warmer than the models; this discrepency is thought to be due in part to Ar

(Ed. note: I've been trying to post comments like this one since 2012-09-01, but they never appeared on my article at the San Gabriel Valley Tribune. So I finally posted this reply at my website, Slashdot, and Mike Haseler's website Scottish Skeptic.)

Let's get the facts straight. Even doubling CO2, means its greenhouse effect would only rise global temperatures by 1C. That is half the threshold for action set by the IPCC.

But, this scam has nothing to do with their real science. These charlatans would be predicting the same nonsense if CO2's effect were twice as high or half as much, because the real contribution of CO2 is much smaller than the natural variation.

And let's not forget:

1. This scam is based on a rise in temperature from 1970 to 2000 which happens to be coincident with rising CO2. The overwhelming bulk of this rise has nothing to do with CO2 greenhouse effect.

2. Largely the same academics who cry wolf over this short term trend were crying wolf over the short term cooling before the 1970s.

3. It all stopped in 2000 (1998 to be precise). That's 14 years without warming, compared to the 30 year trend they say proves warming will continue till the earth fries (much like we were heading for an iceage)

4. And just to cap it all, it warmed the same amount, for the same period, before CO2 was measured rising between 1910 and 1940 and guess what ... we didn't end up global warming doomsday then either. [Mike Haseler, 2012-09-01]

0. Many diverse lines of evidence (paleoclimate, modern observations, fundamental physics) show that doubling CO2 warms the planet by roughly 3C.

1. Human CO2 forcing has increased dramatically since 1970, while solar irradiance, volcanic activity, cosmic rays, solar flares, etc. have remained about the same.

2. Even during the 1970s, most scientific papers were predicting warming.

3. Skeptical Science's "going down the up escalator" shows at a glance that this often-repeated myth about global warming ending in 1998 is wrong.

4. The rate of warming from 1910 to 1940 was about 0.13C/decade compared to about 0.18C/decade from 1975 to 2005. But scientists don't simply compare the rates; they examine natural and human radiative forcings which change the global climate's total energy, which is indeed an average over at least several decades. In the early 20th century there was a lull in volcanic eruptions which usually cool the climate by blocking out the sun over a few years. Early human CO2 emissions and a slight increase in the Sun's brightness also played small roles. Internal variability modes, which shift energy from one part of the globe to another (i.e. climate cycles) are also important. Temperatures measured in the 1940s were warmer than the models; this discrepency is thought to be due in part to Ar

"For most of the USA the likely outcome appears to be less rainfall..."

Do you have a source for this? It certainly contradicts what I read about it. I am not far from Canada, and while it has been unusually warm this year, it has also been very abnormally humid.

The IPCC is a good resource for this: "General circulation models (GCMs) project an increase in precipitation at high latitudes, although the amount of that increase varies between models, and decreases in precipitation over many sub-tropical and mid-latitude areas in both hemispheres. Precipitation during the coming decades is projected to be more concentrated into more intense events, with longer periods of little precipitation in between. The increase in the number of consecutive dry days is projected to be most significant in North and Central America, the Caribbean, north-eastern and south-western South America, southern Europe and the Mediterranean, southern Africa and western Australia." - http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/technical-papers/ccw/chapter4.pdf

Interestingly this is exactly what is being observed.

Anyways, the climatologists and scientists need to work together and publish one big document.

Like this one?

This [advantages vs disadvantages] is a discussion that doesn't seem to happen much.

While it's true this discussion hasn't been covered by the media much, that's mostly because so many people seem stuck at the "it's not human-caused" stage, or worse, at the "it's not warming at all" stage.

But it's certainly been studied in the scientific literature. There are a huge number of factors that could go either way of course, but that link (though far from being a comprehensive survey) summarises a number of studies of both positives and negatives. Opportunities were also considered (alongside risks) by the IPCC WGII.

Evidence aside, it seems reasonable to assume that, even assuming equal advantages and disadvantages, the disruption of the status quo and the significant costs of rapid adaptation, both for humans as well as the rest of the ecosystem, would result in a net negative. We would hope to see positive results greatly outweigh the negative for it to be worth allowing climate change to continue, but that is far from certain, and the studies that I've seen tend to show the opposite.

The next part of the argument is where things get more specious: The claim that this will be a bad thing for humanity as a whole. That's not a scientific theory, that's an over-arching claim, a judgement call. It is based on a number of theories and hypothesis out there. However to be accurate it needs to be backed up by theories with evidence that indicate that things will change in negative ways. Also you have to weigh just how positive and negative all the predicted changes will be.

You need to read the IPCC AR4 Working Group II report. That's exactly what it's about.

I've observed that people who regard themselves as climate science "skeptics" generally insist that one should disregard information provided by web sites run by experienced scientists who have studied the primary literature in depth and have concluded that the scientific consensus on the nature and hazards of global warming is broadly correct. Apparently, in "skeptic speak," having studied the evidence enough to have formed an opinion constitutes being "biased" (presumably, only ignorant people can be "objective"). So sites such as RealClimate, Skeptical Science, Open Mind, the IPCC web site, and the the NASA GISS web site are all out of bounds. Of course the distinguishing feature of climate science "skeptics" is that (unlike the skepticism of successful scientists) their skepticism is quite one-sided, and they become quite credulous when it comes to anything that seems to cast doubt on climate science--so they will happily cite sites like "WUWT."

But I cite SkepticalScience not as a source of opinion (I've already stated my opinion) but because that it is a site that provides good links to published reports that contain the evidence supporting my opinion. Nevertheless, it happens that I've personally reviewed many of the summaries provided on SkepticalScience and have compared them to the primary literature, and I find that SkepticalScience tends to be reliable and accurate, and a fair reflection of the consensus opinion of working climate scientists. This is in dramatic contrast to my experience at WUWT and other "skeptic" sites, where I often find that descriptions of the published literature are highly misleading, sometimes in ways that appear to me to be intentional.

Take a look at the chart they're using vs a google search [google.ca] for the same chart. Why is their chart different than the rest? All the other charts show that real temperatures most closely match Hansen's scenario C, which involved CO2 emissions ceasing to increase past 1990.

And here we see an example of why a site like SkepticalScience is useful, particularly compared to a Google search, which often turns up frequently-repeated misinformation. If you doubt that SkepticalScience is accurately reporting the models, all you have to do is click on the link, and it will take you to the original paper by Hansen. And if you doubt that the GISS data is accurate, you can click on the link, and it will take you to actual GISS data. Moreover, it is quite obvious just from looking at the short term variation of the models that Scenarios B and C diverge only slightly up to the present day, so it is impossible that we could have temperature data that would differentiate between them. However, the question of whether there is any evidence of the warming trend "leveling off" as described in Scenario C (which was calculated for an unrealistically optimistic scenario of CO2 mitigation that does not at all correspond to reality) can be addressed statistically by mathematically subtracting known sources of short term variation, and the answer is "No."

By the way, one way in which real scientific skepticism differs from climate science "skepticism" is that real scientists are skeptical of even their own work, and often acknowledge errors and revise their conclusions in the light of new evidence and better analysis. So, for example, based on subsequent work, it is now generally thought that

Yes, you're quite correct to point out that the solar maximum has a warming effect.

But if you look at figure 2.4 on page 39 of the AR4 synthesis report, "radiative forcing components", the estimated solar irradiation forcing is 0.12 (between 0.06 and 0.30) W / m^2, whereas the total net anthropogenic forcing is estimated as 1.6 (0.6 to 2.4), so the solar cycle effect is between 2 and 20 times weaker than the anthropogenic forcing effect.

source: IPCC 2007 4th assesment report: synthesis report http://ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/syr/en/contents.html

Yes, you're quite correct to point out that the solar maximum has a warming effect.

But if you look at figure 2.4 on page 39 of the AR4 synthesis report, "radiative forcing components", the estimated solar irradiation forcing is 0.12 (between 0.06 and 0.30) W / m^2, whereas the total net anthropogenic forcing is estimated as 1.6 (0.6 to 2.4), so the solar cycle effect is between 2 and 20 times weaker than the anthropogenic forcing effect.

source: IPCC 2007 4th assesment report: synthesis report http://ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/syr/en/contents.html

This is the lower bound.

This is what the IPCC report says:

Limited and early analytical results from integrated analyses of the global costs and benefits of mitigation indicate that these are broadly comparable in magnitude, but do not as yet permit an unambiguous determination of an emissions pathway or stabilisation level where benefits exceed costs.

http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/syr/en/mains5-7.html

So, they are not "lower bounds", the costs and benefits of mitigation are "broadly comparable in magnitude".

In different words: stop lying.

Yeah, that whopping 0.05% GDP in non-US Kyoto economies will be a real killer (the paper looked at non-US costs since the US didn't ratify the treaty)
.

The underlying problem is too hard to solve with current technology. According to Hansen et al, we need to get the CO2 levels down to 350ppm if we want to be safe. This means, not only must we immediately stop adding CO2 to the atmosphere, we also need to remove some of it.

Hansen is someone who spreads FUD to gain notoriety. Read the IPCC instead. It contains a lot of scary imagery too, but ultimately, you can find a simple cost/benefit analysis, which sums it up:

http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/syr/en/mains5-7.html

For increases in global average temperature of less than 1 to 3ÂC above 1980-1999 levels, some impacts are projected to produce market benefits in some places and sectors while, at the same time, imposing costs in other places and sectors. Global mean losses could be 1 to 5% of GDP for 4ÂC of warming, but regional losses could be substantially higher.

Limited and early analytical results from integrated analyses of the global costs and benefits of mitigation indicate that these are broadly comparable in magnitude, but do not as yet permit an unambiguous determination of an emissions pathway or stabilisation level where benefits exceed costs.

The idea that we should dump vast quantities of iron into the ocean in order to mitigate a potential problem that amounts to little more a slight reduction in global GDP is ludicrous. Algal blooms and tinkering with iron content of the ocean is far more dangerous than rising CO2 levels, Hansen's cataclysmic fantasies notwithstanding.

I see it differently. I've spent a lot of time looking into "climate science" and found that the "big research" like the IPCC all came from a single source, the CRU in England.

Oh please. That is demonstrably false. Have you ever even looked at the cites in the IPCC report (Hint: The references are at the end of each chapter). If you threw out everything the CRU ever did it wouldn't change the conclusions of climate science one bit.

See IPCC, or easier to read: the human fingerprint in global warming.

There are a few other theories like "internal variability", "solar flux", "natural effect" and "time delay" which are popular among "sceptics". However, each alternate theory has been evaluated and rejected because it doesn't match the facts as well as anthropogenic green-house gas induced global warming. Ironically, the self-branded "sceptics" are unable to be sceptical about their own pet theories.

How about you detail some of these proposed measures?

Considering that this includes everything from economic measures to encourage conservation of carbon-based fuels to alternative sources of energy to CO2 recapture, you are asking for a book-length treatise. But you can readily find this kind of information on the web (a good starting point would be the IPCC Report on Mitigation of Climate Change. None of them involve large-scale release of greenhouse gasses other than CO2. Which particular measures do you imagine would worsen global warming.

Or, at least, admit that CO2 and methane are not the only possible causes of global warming, even if they're the only two currently-acting factors you are willing to recognize right now?

If you are talking about things that could theoretically affect climate, but that have been conclusively excluded as the cause of the current warming, that is also a long list. A good starting point is the IPCC Report on the Physical Basis of Climate Change

It's not just cars and power generation that release CO2, many industrial processes (which I keep mentioning and you keep ignoring) release CO2 and, in fact, the mere act of breathing releases a fair bit of it.

Some proposed strategies for mitigating CO2 emissions involve some form of fee for CO2 release, which would apply to industrial processes as well as fossil fuel burning. An advantage of this kind of approach (which has been proved successful for mitigating other pollutants) is that this creates an economic incentive for carbon conservation--the most critical (and valuable) uses of carbon will remain, while those that for which more economic substitutes are available will be replaced.

Breathing is not really a factor in the current increase in atmospheric CO2--the total amount of respiratory CO2 release on earth simply has not increased that much.

So we can switch to all nuclear/solar/wind/hydro power, each of which has its own, different, ecological impact that may, on the scale required to meet our current and future power demands, contribute to global warming just as much as the CO2 released from our current power production methods. To wit, the solar cell on your calculator does about as much for global warming as the CO2 in the breath I just exhaled; scale that solar cell up to what would be required to meet the world's power demands.

Sorry, but this is nonsense. These sources of energy contribute appreciably to global warming only to the extent that fossil fuels are involved in their production. If you are worried about waste heat, (a) this is negligible compared to the huge solar energy flux that CO2 affects, and (b) is equally a factor for fossil fuel energy plus the increased retention of solar energy due to CO2.

In fact, it's likely that many of these processes (such as smelting[*4] metals to create wind/hydro turbines and batteries used in electric cars[*5], refining uranium to generate nuclear power[*6], and refining silicon to a degree suitible for solar cell production) may not even have non-CO2-producing counterparts[*7]. So, do we just do away with those processes and the things they allow us to create[*8]?

You are getting silly again. Power to do things like smelting can be obtained from multiple sources, it need not require CO2 production. Anyway, nobody is proposing that every single source of CO2 emissions must be eliminated, just that emissions need to be substantially reduced, so this is a fairly idiotic straw man. In any case, the dominant source of CO2 emissions is power generation. There is no conceivable plausible scenario in which carbon-sparing manufacturing technologies could result in more carbon release.

Well, you'll never know unless you substantiate your claim with evidence.

I gave you direct quotes from the ACTUAL STUDY, and you ignored them with the weak sauce argument that "scientifically informed" means "scientifically informed about something specific and unstated about climate science" :)

Implicit in that assertion is that denialists know the correct context in which a hypothesis is used in science, and the rest of us do not.

The fact that you think that a falsifiable hypothesis has a "correct context" in science is a sure fire sign that you don't understand how *fundamental* it is :)

The science game *starts* with a falsifiable hypothesis. You can talk about tachyon pulses, warp engines, red matter, in all the glory of pseudo-scientific sounding babble, but until you've got a falsifiable hypothesis, you're not playing the science game.

More likely then, denialists are merely ignorant of what that hypothesis is (that CO2 absorbs light in a short spectra and emits it in a longer spectra - it's a greenhouse gas),

Now you're projecting your own ignorance - skeptics don't doubt that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, what skeptics doubt is that you can move from the simple proposition that CO2 is a greenhouse gas to the following unfounded leaps:

1) human CO2 emissions drive global average temperature;
2) higher global average temperatures are going to be catastrophic.

If the only hypothesis you wish to defend is "CO2 is a greenhouse gas", then you'll get no argument from me. Expecting me to believe that simply because CO2 is a greenhouse gas that human activity must be curtailed to save the planet, now *that's* a stretch :)

Just to be clear, you are not in a position to make bargains. You are free to continue to propose and then attack straw men

So you see this as some sort of negotiation? :) When you don't propose a necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis you're willing to stand behind, all I have is straw men to attack - if you prefer complaining about the straw men I construct on your behalf, you're more than welcome to actually *propose* something :)

Please elaborate on why a molecule of CO2 would behave differently in the atmosphere compared to an experimental sample.

It doesn't *behave* differently, it has a different *effect*. Yes, it absorbs the same spectra in the wild as in the test tube, but effect it has on the ambient temperature of the test tube, under simplified and controlled conditions, simply cannot scale to model the effect it would have on the ambient temperature of the entire atmosphere.

You do understand the complexity of the atmosphere, don't you?

What precisely changes between the small amount (sample) and the large amount?

Well, let's see, the test tube doesn't have oceans, a biosphere or clouds. Care to cain that those factors can be blithely ignored? :)

Which model, precisely, are you referring to that excludes cloud formation and albedo?

Whoa there slick, you've taken one statement and morphed it again by accident - I stated that no GCM gets cloud formation or albedo close to right, not that they exclude it. As for the cite, see the IPCC -

http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch1s1-5-2.html

"the amplitude and even the sign of cloud feedbacks was noted in the TAR as highly uncertain"

In the end, you've quite effectively demonstrated the ignorance of climate alarmists:

1) a falsifiable hypothesis isn't used in a *context* of science, it is the *foundation* of science;
2) CO2 being a greenhouse gas does not

What we need is a nice, easy summary page, summarizing all the relevant studies so far, and what they imply or mean when it comes to climate page.

I'm sorry that climate science is not so simple as to make your wish possible, but it's not. You just have to accept that.

The closest thing to a summary of all we know on the subject would be the IPCC reports. The IPCC AR4 Working Group I report in particular shows the basis of climate change science. It includes references to peer reviewed studies. If you want a one page summary of what we know about the climate then the FAQ 1.1 What factors determine Earth's climate? from the WG1 report does a pretty good job. The IPCC AR5 report is due out in 2 or 3 years so we'll get an update then.

What we need is a nice, easy summary page, summarizing all the relevant studies so far, and what they imply or mean when it comes to climate page.

I'm sorry that climate science is not so simple as to make your wish possible, but it's not. You just have to accept that.

The closest thing to a summary of all we know on the subject would be the IPCC reports. The IPCC AR4 Working Group I report in particular shows the basis of climate change science. It includes references to peer reviewed studies. If you want a one page summary of what we know about the climate then the FAQ 1.1 What factors determine Earth's climate? from the WG1 report does a pretty good job. The IPCC AR5 report is due out in 2 or 3 years so we'll get an update then.

The "current IPCC report" 2007 (Fourth) explicitly did not consider sea level rise and gave _lower_ numbers than the Third
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/ar5/ar5-leaflet.pdf
"due in 2014, will provide an update"
What do we know better now?
Example: See the illustrations at: http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/rosenzweig_03/

All of the oxygen in the atmosphere comes from reduction of carbon dioxide to oxygen and reduced carbon, so (other than a very small amount currently in biomass) if you burned all of the reduced carbon underground-- what we call "fossil fuels"-- you'd return the Earth to a carbon dioxide and nitrogen atmosphere. That shouldn't be controversial. Yes, if we burn all the fossil fuels, it will have very bad consequences.

I'm sorry I don't have time to critique that website line by line. Given that he manipulated the baseline on figure 3 to move the Hansen prediction upward by 0.4 degrees (and then draws the conclusion "look, Hansen was wrong! His prediction is a whole 0.4 degrees too high!), I don't trust anything else he says unless I track back to the original sources, and I don't have time to do that.

On the subject of feedback factors, there's a decent overview in the IPCC Working Group I Report, "The Physical Science Basis," available here:
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_and_data_reports.shtml#.T5lYtO25340
That should, at a minimum, help convince you that feedback factors aren't numbers just made up out of thin air, but do have real science behind them.