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Finally, I'll leave you with the words of a noted global warming proponent and researcher: "Pauses as long as 15 years are rare in the simulations, and âwe expect that [real-world] warming will resume in the next few years,â(TM) the Hadley Centre group writes. Researchers agree that no sort of natural variability can hold off greenhouse warming much longer." - Richard Kerr, Science (2009) So, we'll see...2009 is already five long years in the past, and the pause shows no sign of stopping at this point...

What pause? The one you've been hearing about on denialist websites? How about instead of hearsay, we actually look at the data?

No, the one that everyone admits is ongoing, including climate scientists and the latest IPCC report.

For instance:

Leading climate scientist Kevin Trenberth has told reportingclimatescience.com that he believes the pause in global warming may be caused by long term changes in the Pacific Ocean.

So, the very real pause is a subject of hot debate even among climate scientists. I suggest you re-read the quote from Richard Kerr above, as it also references the pause way back in 2009. It will be interesting seeing how things go over the next few years. We're currently right at solar maximum, and the tail end of this solar cycle will be long and low. Then, Cycle 25 will begin (starting probably in roughly 2020-2022) and it is predicted to be much lower than the current cycle, with the first estimate being a maximum sunspot number of 7 (versus about 67 for the current very low cycle - this one is already the lowest in over a century). So, the next 20+ years will give us an excellent idea of the true influence of extremely low solar activity on climate - and I believe the results will not be positive for climate alarmism.

As to the big picture on CO2, the US is no longer the biggest producer, nor will it be going forward. If growing CO2 concentration is in fact a crisis, the task of the alarmist community will be to convince China, India, Russia and the host of growing third-world economies to forgo growth and save the planet. Good luck with that.

The one possibility that might be a win-win is the proliferation of thorium or LENR nuclear technology in a major way. That route would provide plenty of energy at low cost, without producing a gram of CO2. Regardless of CO2 production, there are a lot of good reasons to displace coal electricity production with cleaner technologies. Solar will also play a role, but it is not a good source of baseline power, and is unlikely to ramp up to the levels needed anytime soon.

I'm not going to spend a lot of time on the rest of your post (for the three people that might actually read this lol) but I'll hit a couple of high points...

They aren't "theories". They are measurements.

You know, legitimate climate scientists going out with scientific instruments and collecting real-world sea-temperature measurements to do legitimate reliable science.

The ocean temperature measurements aren't nearly as straightforward as you make out. The purported "extra heat hiding in the oceans" amounts to changes of hundredths of a degree in the water column. Reliable measurements of that accuracy simply don't exist.

On the other hand, we do have accurate satellite measurements of sea surface temperatures going back for some time. Here's the most current data I could find. (If you track it down, you'll find temperatures have been similar back to 1998, the year of a major El Niño event.) You'll note that sea surface temperatures have not noticeably risen. As I said before, it doesn't pass the "sni

Do you know what feedback loop is?

Evidence. There's no supporting evidence for your concern that a feedback loop exists.

We KNOW a fast rise in temperatures is extremely dangerous to life diversity on Earth, which is essential to our own survival.

Life diversity is not essential to our own survival. We depend instead on a rather small number of species, both for direct benefit and to sustain an ecosystem.

We KNOW the atmosphere has a feedback component and a lot of inertia

No, we don't. Instead we KNOW that heat radiates as the fourth power of temperature which is a strong negative feedback mechanism.

Your sister doesn't work in a field with tens of thousands of researchers.

Really? How many, according to you? Tens of thousands sound about right to me.

Sounds right to someone without a clue. For example, most of the research about which climate change research and advocacy is based comes from a few dozen researchers.

Also the simple radiative model doesn't take into account clouds or convection.

It does. Clouds account to the albedo of the planet.

Nope, clouds have a much higher albedo than Earth does. Thus, you have to consider other factors such as how often clouds form and the degree of cloud cover.

The only (local) bias in the model was due to underestimating the amount of heat absorbed by the oceans, which slow down warming in the immediate term but induces a positive feedback in the long term (since warmer water implies less CO2 dissolved in the oceans). All in all, the amount of energy in our atmosphere is steadily rising at the pace predicted by the models.

Where's the evidence for this claim? This is a "God of the gaps" argument where the missing heat is attributed to ignorance of our environment - it must be in the places we don't know much about, rather than to flaws in our models.

Similar claims are made for the differences between GISS satellite data and weather station data. Satellite data supposedly shows heating that doesn't exist in the instrument record, so it must be in the locations where we don't have instruments. Or it could be flawed satellite data. But that doesn't seem to be considered.

In a free market, those whose air, water, or land was polluted could take the polluters to court

HAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAAHA.

You mean to tell me you believe that the little guy, in any country, can actually go against the big corporation (and their swags of money) and actually win something in court?

isn't the courts a form of regulation anyway? i.e. they are upholding an existing law (property rights) or regulation (accepted/allowed levels of pollution)

The free market, my friend, would consider this an 'external cost' and not factor it into their pricing. In other words, they would not price themselves out of the picture (market) by selling their product at the correct price had they factor in the cost of a) cleaning up after themselves b) using more sustainable (less polluting) practices.

No, they will continue to pollute until told otherwise (regulation) and only then adjust their product / practices to the bear minimum standard.

Because I just can't resist feeding trolls, a free market is dependent on property rights. In a free market, those whose air, water, or land was polluted could take the polluters to court, and in fact government protection of polluters has been a consistent feature in wide-scale environmental problems.

I guess ever since CERN validated the results of a Danish study proving the causal effect of cosmic rays on cloud seeding, and the causal effect of the Sun's level of activity (and magnetic field) in regulating the cosmic ray flux in the upper atmosphere, we'll just have to lump CERN (a truly scientific organization as opposed to the IPCC lobbying group) in with the "fringe" that knows that climate change is not affected in a major way by human activity.

http://opinion.financialpost.com/2011/09/02/lawrence-solomon-our-cosmic-climate/

http://probeinternational.org/library/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/CLOUD_SI_press-briefing_29JUL11.pdf

The US cap and trade on sulphur dioxide emissions was passed in 1990.

Overall, the Program's cap and trade program has been successful in achieving its goals. Since the 1990s, SO2 emissions have dropped 40%, and according to the Pacific Research Institute, acid rain levels have dropped 65% since 1976.[15][16] However, this was significantly less successful than conventional regulation in the European Union, which saw a decrease of over 70% in SO2 emissions during the same time period.[17]

S02 emissions were also falling from a peak in the late 1970s toward the 1990s, in other words the US S02 trading scheme was on an already declining path and was less successful than more direct European approaches.

S02 emissions trading was also local and not between countries which is another area where the proposed Green House Gas emissions trading schemes fall down. A corrupt county can just 'create' permits and then sell them. This has already happened with European and other schemes.

A tax would be a much more honest, much more transparent scheme than an Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). ETS type solutions are attractive largely because politicians don't have to say they are a new tax, they can be easily gamed by giving out free permits and Enron style firms (including Enron itself before it went bankrupt) see a potential bonanza.

Happens all the time 1 2 3.

You call that a disaster? What about that Chinese dam failure in the 1960s? OK, I'll go look for a reference... so it was the Henan Province dams, 1975. Tens or perhaps hundreds of thousands dead, millions or tens of millions affected in one way or another, whether made homeless or without fresh water, etc. Kept secret by the Chinese government for something like 20 years.

http://www.irn.org/basics/ard/index.php?id=050915t umbling.html
http://www.probeinternational.org/tgp/index.cfm?DS P=content&ContentID=13831
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henan

Actually, the excess Pu is already very useful in Candu reactors. These reactors can burn weapons grade Pu into lighter isotopes useless for weapons production, while at the same time providing electricity for a whole region

umm... no... There's a reason why it's called a breeder reactor; read here just to the right of the bottom right hand corner of the picture of the neutron hitting the U235 Nucleus about how "difficult" it is to change a burner reactor into a breeder reactor... basically all you do is add "common" U238