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We're not denying it, we're just questioning wether it's linked to CO2.

PR firms are noted for producing bovine excrement. They are really good at polishing it to make it look good, but it doesn't change its essence. If you want to know where climate scientists stand, you should read stuff written by climate scientists.

The cornerstone to the IPCC Report is the Michael Mann (et el) "hockey stick" graph

That is presuming gloabl warming is real and that it's linked to CO2.

You may be completely right and it's great for everyone to have an opinion on global warming and carbon dioxide. But is your opinion based on what you got from the media or was it formed through scientific reasoning?

Wether for or against, could any of us make a good scientific argument to support theories?

How much do you we all know about climatology?

What models did the IPCC researchers use in temperature prediction?
How were the models verified?
What's the MBH98 hockeystick graph?
What are the criticisms of the MBH98 graph?
How is temperature measured?
What's an urban heat island?
What's a microwave sounding unit?
What's the percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere?
What's Hubert Peak Theory?


For anyone who's unsure, may I suggest less BBC and more science. Here's some links.

IPCC Report

realclimate

CO2 science

Temp for last 100 years

try RealClimate.org and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

I've read all the papers (a few in summary form only) from the conference on which this report is based. The BBC report accurately reflects what I have read.

Just about 40 yrs ago scientists were saying we might soon have a mini ice-age! So what changed thier minds? Funds from liberal environmental groups.

  Sorry, but I gotta call bullshit on this one. Forty years ago scientists measured global cooling effects and they were right. It was related to global dimming - burn a lot of high sulfur fuels and you end up with reflective sulfate aerosols in the stratosphere. We've cleaned up our fuels and this effect has been reduced.

    We currently get about 4.0 watts/M^2 of 'forcing' due to carbon dioxide, methane, and a cocktail of other stuff I can't spell without Googling for it. We lose about 2.0 watts/M^2 due to sulfate and other aerosols reflecting sunlight.

    All of this information and more can be found at http://realclimate.org/

Really, did they offer an explanation for why the Martian polar caps are receeding?

they keep making computer models that are nearly 100% inaccurate then they tweak them to match their desired results. Amazing!!!!!

They ignore history for thousands and thousands and tens of thousands of years.

http://www.realclimate.org/

Actually, the Antarctic interior may be thickening slightly, but the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets and smaller glaciers worldwide are thinning rapidly, and total ice volume is diminishing rapidly.

> Scientists have concluded that will all the C02 emissions from cars and factories it is still a microscopic amount.

Complete nonsense. Atmospheric CO2 is rising faster than at any time in at minimum the last 50 million years, and its isotopic signature shows that it is of fossil origin. I can explain where this myth comes from but let's get the main point stated first.

> Michael Crichton does some in depth research and wrote a very provoking article upon environmentalism.

Chrichton is spewing nonsense for reasons of his own

>Check the research!

I will follow up with references. Will you?

There is a consensus about evolution. There is a consensus that tobacco is carcinogenic. There is a consensus that the world is a sphere. There are a few people here and there who would argue otherwise. Does that make the consensus disreputable?

To be sure, there are (increasingly rare) cases of a solid scientific consensus that is in error, but to bet against the common opinion of the best informed people on a given matter (in other words, against the scientific consensus) is to take very long odds.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=192

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=180

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=192

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=180

I'd like to ask you to find those "several climatologists" - but the fact is you won't be able to. Even the Cato Institute doesn't think so, see this from Robert Lindzen:

"Indeed, the global cooling trend of the 1950s and 1960s led to a minor global cooling hysteria in the 1970s. All that was more or less normal scientific debate, although the cooling hysteria had certain striking analogues to the present warming hysteria including books such as The Genesis Strategy by Stephen Schneider and Climate Change and World Affairs by Crispin Tickell--both authors are prominent in support of the present concerns as well--"explaining'' the problem and promoting international regulation. There was also a book by the prominent science writer Lowell Ponte (The Cooling) that derided the skeptics and noted the importance of acting in the absence of firm, scientific foundation. There was even a report by the National Research Council of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences reaching its usual ambiguous conclusions. But the scientific community never took the issue to heart, governments ignored it, and with rising global temperatures in the late 1970s the issue more or less died. In the meantime, model calculations--especially at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at Princeton--continued to predict substantial warming due to increasing carbon dioxide. Those predictions were considered interesting, but largely academic, exercises--even by the scientists involved." (text emboldened by me)

See realclimate.org if you want to debate a climate scientist on this.

Climate scientists refer to Crithon's book as State of confusion. Some in the US government are clutching to the FICTIONAL straws he is offering.

"Conveniently enough it's also right when they're having some sort of fundraiser or selling a new book."

The one spinning outrageous fiction for political and personal gain is Crithon, Lovelock actually belives in what he is saying as is evidenced by his consistent message over the last 40yrs or so. He also belives that modular reactors are the way forward in the medium term and this has marginalised him in the environmental movement he helped to create.

Climate scientists refer to Crithon's book as State of confusion. Some in the US government are clutching to the FICTIONAL straws he is offering.

"Conveniently enough it's also right when they're having some sort of fundraiser or selling a new book."

The one spinning outrageous fiction for political and personal gain is Crithon, Lovelock actually belives in what he is saying as is evidenced by his consistent message over the last 40yrs or so. He also belives that modular reactors are the way forward in the medium term and this has marginalised him in the environmental movement he helped to create.

And please, don't mention that Mars is also going through a warming period. That is merely an accidential coincedance; or caused by those SUV's that NASA beligerantly dropped onto the unsuspecting planet, breaking holes in its celestrial sphere and causing horrible consequenceses.

If I may distract you from savagely beating up that strawman, there are some real arguments against Mars warming here. :-)

Such matters are definitely considered in most serious studies of climate-change. You can find some summaries on realclimate (a site dedicated to explaining the view that climate change is both real, and largely anthropogenic) here and here and here, as well as finding some discussion of it cropping up in many other discussions. The recent IPCC report foudn that around 30% of the measured warming was due to solar factors, but the majority of the remaining warming was thought to be largely anthropogenic in source.

Jedidiah.

Such matters are definitely considered in most serious studies of climate-change. You can find some summaries on realclimate (a site dedicated to explaining the view that climate change is both real, and largely anthropogenic) here and here and here, as well as finding some discussion of it cropping up in many other discussions. The recent IPCC report foudn that around 30% of the measured warming was due to solar factors, but the majority of the remaining warming was thought to be largely anthropogenic in source.

Jedidiah.

Such matters are definitely considered in most serious studies of climate-change. You can find some summaries on realclimate (a site dedicated to explaining the view that climate change is both real, and largely anthropogenic) here and here and here, as well as finding some discussion of it cropping up in many other discussions. The recent IPCC report foudn that around 30% of the measured warming was due to solar factors, but the majority of the remaining warming was thought to be largely anthropogenic in source.

Jedidiah.

How do you explain the Little Ice Age, then?

"Scientists have identified two causes of the Little Ice Age from outside the ocean/atmosphere/land systems: decreased solar activity and increased volcanic activity."

Mars, Pluto, and Triton are warming without any greenhouse effect (they haven't enough atmosphere to try it)

Mars.. Is... Leaving... Winter... And... Solar... Irradiance... Is... In... DECLINE.

Greenland was green within the last few hundred years.

Greenland is still green on the southern coast and that hasn't changed since the times of Erik the Red (985 AD). Greenland has for the most part been an icy wasteland for millenia. The name Greenland was an exercise in marketing. Erik the Red had been banished from Iceland (for murder) and wanted to attract settlers to an otherwise inhospitable land.

Anthropogenic climate change is not conclusive fact,

Yes, it is. The scientists who study this stuff, who know this stuff, and who are highly educated about this stuff, have pretty much unanimously concluded that the current spate of climate change is primarily due to human activity. This has been the result of decades of research and tens of millenia worth of data. Your rebuttal to this mountain of evidence is...

The observation [ed: that would be your observation] is miles from conclusive, but I'll always find a single, common explanation more plausable than numerous and varied ones when looking for the cause of several similar events. ... When there's so much relevant data -- and funcitonality -- missing from even our best climate models, and so much that the flavor-of-the-month hysteria that is global warming fails to explain, "the simplest explanation is the most likely" has added heft in my mind.

In other words, you believe in the intellectual equivalent of the God of the Gaps argument. You don't like the complex answer that is supported by the facts so you prefer the simple answer that the facts disagree with. Even worse, you use as support for your simpleton conjecture that the Real Science has too little "funcitonality", meaning too many holes, aka TOO MANY GAPS. You have so much more in common with a creationist than you do with a scientist.

But what really boils my blood is this incredible assumption you've made that the scientists haven't considered the "fiery orb" called the Sun. As if somehow they've spent the past couple of decades ignorant of the contribution of the Sun and it takes some random Slashdotter to point out the fatal flaw in their reasoning. What sort of hubris must you have to be so arrogant.

If you want to know why I showed contempt for your "intellectual capacity" it is because you're a damn idiot.

Mars, Pluto, and Triton are warming without any greenhouse effect (they haven't enough atmosphere to try it)

Mars.. Is... Leaving... Winter... And... Solar... Irradiance... Is... In... DECLINE.

Greenland was green within the last few hundred years.

Greenland is still green on the southern coast and that hasn't changed since the times of Erik the Red (985 AD). Greenland has for the most part been an icy wasteland for millenia. The name Greenland was an exercise in marketing. Erik the Red had been banished from Iceland (for murder) and wanted to attract settlers to an otherwise inhospitable land.

Anthropogenic climate change is not conclusive fact,

Yes, it is. The scientists who study this stuff, who know this stuff, and who are highly educated about this stuff, have pretty much unanimously concluded that the current spate of climate change is primarily due to human activity. This has been the result of decades of research and tens of millenia worth of data. Your rebuttal to this mountain of evidence is...

The observation [ed: that would be your observation] is miles from conclusive, but I'll always find a single, common explanation more plausable than numerous and varied ones when looking for the cause of several similar events. ... When there's so much relevant data -- and funcitonality -- missing from even our best climate models, and so much that the flavor-of-the-month hysteria that is global warming fails to explain, "the simplest explanation is the most likely" has added heft in my mind.

In other words, you believe in the intellectual equivalent of the God of the Gaps argument. You don't like the complex answer that is supported by the facts so you prefer the simple answer that the facts disagree with. Even worse, you use as support for your simpleton conjecture that the Real Science has too little "funcitonality", meaning too many holes, aka TOO MANY GAPS. You have so much more in common with a creationist than you do with a scientist.

But what really boils my blood is this incredible assumption you've made that the scientists haven't considered the "fiery orb" called the Sun. As if somehow they've spent the past couple of decades ignorant of the contribution of the Sun and it takes some random Slashdotter to point out the fatal flaw in their reasoning. What sort of hubris must you have to be so arrogant.

If you want to know why I showed contempt for your "intellectual capacity" it is because you're a damn idiot.

Dr. Crichton, the US Senate would love to hear your views on the subject.

A word to the wise: if you read realclimate.org, you owe it to yourself to also read climateaudit.org. The discussions at realclimate.org don't include some of the more prominent critics of their work because realclimate.org silently deletes their postings. A lot of what the folks at climate.org publish doesn't hold up very well to close scrutiny. They tend to hide their data and methods from researchers who want to reproduce their results, which is never a good sign. Many of their statistical methods are highly questionable. And their results are a good deal less robust than they make them out to be.

As usual there is a better discussion on realclimate.org.

As I understand it the situation is that the mechanism proposed for sudden climate change by Broecker some 15 years ago (and exaggerated beyond recognition in a silly movie lately) shows some signs of actually occuring. New measurement expeditions have reinforced the evidence in this direction. Though the evidence isn't absolutely conclusive, it's starting to weigh in that direction and the new evidence makes the case stronger. There is well-understood physics at work, but it involves delicate small-scale structures that are hard to capture in global scale models.

Though most scientific opinion expects it won't be enough to trigger a European ice age (unlike the YD event some 11KA ago) it could lead to a great deal more climate variability in our lifetimes especially in Europe and the northern reaches of the Atlantic than has been captured in most climate models, and in the extreme it may even cool Europe a bit as the rest of us get hotter.

You might be interested to know that some climatologists did just that; its called ReadClimate. A vast improvement over the usual "AGW is going to kill us all! No its not! I don't understand a damn thing about testing hypotheses about complex systems, but I have a strong opinion anyway! Those dumb scientists are forgetting about water vapour - where's my Nobel Prize?!" gibberish that attends any climate posting here.

The Sun is known to be a variable star,

But the variations in the Sun's output can not account for the changes in temperature that have been measured.

MYTH: If Earth has warmed since pre-industrial times, it is because the intensity of the sun has increased.

FACT: The sun's intensity does vary. In the late 1970's, sophisticated technology was developed that can directly measure the sun's intensity. Measurements from these instruments show that in the past 20 years the sun's variations have been very small. Indirect measures of changes in sun's intensity since the beginning of the industrial revolution in 1750 show that variations in the sun's intensity do not account for all the warming that occurred in the 20th century and that the majority of the warming was caused by an increase in human-made greenhouse gas emissions.

[IPCC, 2001. Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis, pp. 380-82, Table 6.6.]

But hey, what would the IPCC know about climatology.

Mars is thought to be currently undergoing global warming.

It's not the scientists who think that Mars is undergoing global warming, just the ignorant pundits in the blogosphere. The known facts point towards seasonal change.

Thus inferring global warming from a 3 Martian year regional trend is unwarranted. The observed regional changes in south polar ice cover are almost certainly due to a regional climate transition, not a global phenomenon, and are demonstrably unrelated to external forcing. There is a slight irony in people rushing to claim that the glacier changes on Mars are a sure sign of global warming, while not being swayed by the much more persuasive analogous phenomena here on Earth... -- http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=192

But hey, keep repeating those myths if it makes you feel better.

Greenland got its name because, within recorded history, it had a moderate climate with lots of green growing things.

You know, I don't mind when you tell lies about climatology because it seems to the "hip new thing" to do on the Internet, but it really boils my blood when you tell lies about history. Greenland was not called Greenland because it had green growing things. Greenland was called Greenland because Erik the Red couldn't convince settlers to join him there if he called it "bloody cold place with lots of rock and not a fucking green thing in sight".

The name Greenland comes from those Scandinavian settlers. In the Norse sagas, it is said that Eiríkur Rauði (Erik the Red) was exiled from Iceland for murder. He, along with his extended family and slaves, set out in ships to find the land that was rumored to be to the northwest. After settling there, he named the land Greenland in order to attract more people to settle there. -- Wikipedia

No more lying about history, OK?

If you're really interested in what people who know what they're talking about on this issue have to say do the research. One place already mentioned by other posters is http://www.realclimate.org/ and another is http://www.begbroke.ox.ac.uk/begbroke/Display/page /Climate.Basics.html which is the Oxford University site Climate Basics. RealClimate includes information on pretty much every objection that some of the people here have posted. They also explain a lot of the misinformation that's out there and also take suggestions on subjects to post about. It's definitely interesting to see here how many technically knowledgable people aren't really scientifically literate.

  Mars is warming, too! Thusly human activity isn't the cause and we can go right on exhuming fossil carbon here just like we have for the last hundred years.

  That is completely and utterly wrong, despite the fact that Mars is warming.

  The earth has gigantic oceans. Mars likely has a little frozen water here and there. The earth has a sizeable atmosphere. Mars has 1% of our air pressure. The Earth's orbit is regular, the orbit of Mars is quite eccentric.

  So little water and next to no air means ... come on ... think people ... LOW THERMAL INERTIA. There just isn't much mass on Mars involved in cooling/warming.

  Earth's eccentricity is 0.016, Mars' is 0.093. We're at 91 - 94 million miles annually, Mars wanders from 128 - 154 million miles which makes its climate much more variable.

  If you really and truly want to know what is going on you'll ignore Slashdot and scoot over to http://realclimate.org/

Why did you say you'd not seen an explanation, and then admit you had?

Human contributions are small relative to the natural cycles (biology, oceans, volcanoes), but enough to put things out of balance. That's what the fuss is all about. Without any greenhouse gases in our atmosphere, Earth's average temperature would be about -20 degrees C, so there's obviously a major natural greenhouse effect. We're providing an artificial perturbation that has recently amounted to enough to be noticeable, and will continue to grow relentlessly unless we start perturbing the system less.

I strongly recommend Real Climate and The Discovery of Global Warming, sites that explain the science in understandable terms from real experts (I would take stuff from Wikipedia with a big lump of salt).

...they're the ones who told the rest of us!

Its modelled as feedback, not forcing, because it has a relatively short residency in the atmosphere ie about 10 days (vs decades or centuries for perturbations in C02 levels)

More here: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=142

Hope you're still there - here's the explanation:

the nowadays accepted interpreation [is] that the cooling was largely caused by sulphate aerosols

Those particulates that the clean air act got rid of in the 80's and 90's, caused cooling up to the 70's. They also caused smog, acid rain, lots of health problems etc. so it's a good thing we got rid of them. But the aerosols masked the warming trend for a while. Pretty well understood in the models.

Hold it. Do you assume that the anonymous coward you replied to is a climate scientist? Sure, there may be people who accept the reality of man-made global warming who make ridiculous statements. However, as far as I can see, the experts say what they always said, and it isn't as complex as you would have it.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=142

Quote: "While water vapour is indeed the most important greenhouse gas, the issue that makes it a feedback (rather than a forcing) is the relatively short residence time for water in the atmosphere (around 10 days)."

So if you're going to be skeptical, then perhaps you ought to be skeptical about Crichton's claims as well. Do some opposition research.

And no, I haven't read State of Fear yet, but I do intend to.

So if you're going to be skeptical, then perhaps you ought to be skeptical about Crichton's claims as well. Do some opposition research.

And no, I haven't read State of Fear yet, but I do intend to.

Every climate scientist knows that water is responsible for most of the greenhouse effect -- this is not news.

The important point to remember is that in the lingo of the climate scientists, water is a "feedback" rather than a "forcing". CO2 is considered a forcing because you can affect the climate by adding to or removing it from the environment -- the levels of CO2 in the environment are not affected much by climate processes.

Water is completely different: there is so much water available on the surface of the earth that adding extra water to, or removing it from, the environment -- say, by building big condeners that feed storage tanks, or by building pumps that spray water into the air -- won't make much difference, at least once you turn the pumps or condensers off.

You can read all about it here.

Check http://www.realclimate.org/ for further comments.

Why is it that media has to give equal time to both sides and this makes people think that there is the same credibility to both sides ?

B

But there is a problem, which I've never seen adequately addressed, with the IPCC Hockey Stick curves. This the controversy with Mann et al. We do know from historical evidence that there actually was a Medieval Warm period, and the evidence is that it was hotter than now. There was also a cool period in around 1700. Both of these vanish from the record with the IPCC hockey stick curves. Then, if you get into how these curves were derived, lets say just that the derivation is very remote from any observational evidence.

That's a fairly strong claim. I think you'll find that Mann recognises medieval warm periods and cooler periods in the 1700s. The medieval warm period just isn't warmer than present temperatures in his reconstruction based on proxy data. In fact, that's the case for most reconstructions based on proxy data from a wide variety of sources. There are differences in the different reconstructions, but in general there's a reasonable amount of agreement. Don't take my word for it though, here's a plot with 10 different reconstructions along with full citations of the source papers for each so you can check the methodology on each of them. Given the variety of methods used for derivation amongst those reports, from glacier records to tree rings, it's at least resonably convincing.

As to alternative views - the only evidence I've seen for a significantly warmer medieval period is derived from exactly the same data as Mann's, in roughly the same manner, so if you think one is suspect... What we do have is one report by two Canadians, one an economist the other a businessman, claiming radically different results from everyone else using different slightly techniques. I'm not writing them off, but I would be interested to see a little more work on the issue, especially when there are discussions of issues with their techniques (and nice simplified versions) that seem quite reasonable.

None of this is to say that McIntyre and McKitrick are wrong, but one has to ask why you believe them and dismiss the ten other reports by different people that generally agree quite well.

Jedidiah.

But there is a problem, which I've never seen adequately addressed, with the IPCC Hockey Stick curves. This the controversy with Mann et al. We do know from historical evidence that there actually was a Medieval Warm period, and the evidence is that it was hotter than now. There was also a cool period in around 1700. Both of these vanish from the record with the IPCC hockey stick curves. Then, if you get into how these curves were derived, lets say just that the derivation is very remote from any observational evidence.

That's a fairly strong claim. I think you'll find that Mann recognises medieval warm periods and cooler periods in the 1700s. The medieval warm period just isn't warmer than present temperatures in his reconstruction based on proxy data. In fact, that's the case for most reconstructions based on proxy data from a wide variety of sources. There are differences in the different reconstructions, but in general there's a reasonable amount of agreement. Don't take my word for it though, here's a plot with 10 different reconstructions along with full citations of the source papers for each so you can check the methodology on each of them. Given the variety of methods used for derivation amongst those reports, from glacier records to tree rings, it's at least resonably convincing.

As to alternative views - the only evidence I've seen for a significantly warmer medieval period is derived from exactly the same data as Mann's, in roughly the same manner, so if you think one is suspect... What we do have is one report by two Canadians, one an economist the other a businessman, claiming radically different results from everyone else using different slightly techniques. I'm not writing them off, but I would be interested to see a little more work on the issue, especially when there are discussions of issues with their techniques (and nice simplified versions) that seem quite reasonable.

None of this is to say that McIntyre and McKitrick are wrong, but one has to ask why you believe them and dismiss the ten other reports by different people that generally agree quite well.

Jedidiah.

But this vapor is just a feedback effect, not an atmospheric forcing. This is due to the incredibly short residence time of water in the atmosphere of ~10 days. This means that even if you could somehow instantly cause the earth to have 0% humidity everywhere, things would stabalize back to "normal" within about 20-30. True forcings like CO2 have residence time of decades, which makes them the greenhouse gas to worry about.

Everyone posting here should first read this article for the full explination. The site in general is excelent.

Regarding your link to Climate Audit, what about RealClimate? Which blog is to be believed?

The IPCC report is published roughly every four years.

From your post it is obvious you have not seen the horse let alone have any evidence as to it's state of health. The credibility problems do not belong to the IPCC, you may find it surprising that a large proportion of the the reaserch in the reports has come from the cream of US institutions. Read or even just skim the reports, find out who wrote them, find out why they are so confident and compare their previous predictions to the actual outcomes. Don't just spam people with "junk science" propagnda, it makes you look nieve.

Thanks for the link but I already knew about the MET conference. I don't know where you got your information about the "presence of a large number of falsifiable hypotheses" at the MET confrence. Can you provide a link that gives a concrete example or perhaps one that points out the "serious proplems" with the 1991 IPCC report.

BTW, due to past experience I consider links that simply parrot the FUD from Fred Singer and/or ExxonMobil as SPAM and will ignore them. Here are a few myth busting links from Real Climate to get you started.

The IPCC report is published roughly every four years.

From your post it is obvious you have not seen the horse let alone have any evidence as to it's state of health. The credibility problems do not belong to the IPCC, you may find it surprising that a large proportion of the the reaserch in the reports has come from the cream of US institutions. Read or even just skim the reports, find out who wrote them, find out why they are so confident and compare their previous predictions to the actual outcomes. Don't just spam people with "junk science" propagnda, it makes you look nieve.

Thanks for the link but I already knew about the MET conference. I don't know where you got your information about the "presence of a large number of falsifiable hypotheses" at the MET confrence. Can you provide a link that gives a concrete example or perhaps one that points out the "serious proplems" with the 1991 IPCC report.

BTW, due to past experience I consider links that simply parrot the FUD from Fred Singer and/or ExxonMobil as SPAM and will ignore them. Here are a few myth busting links from Real Climate to get you started.

The IPCC report is published roughly every four years.

From your post it is obvious you have not seen the horse let alone have any evidence as to it's state of health. The credibility problems do not belong to the IPCC, you may find it surprising that a large proportion of the the reaserch in the reports has come from the cream of US institutions. Read or even just skim the reports, find out who wrote them, find out why they are so confident and compare their previous predictions to the actual outcomes. Don't just spam people with "junk science" propagnda, it makes you look nieve.

Thanks for the link but I already knew about the MET conference. I don't know where you got your information about the "presence of a large number of falsifiable hypotheses" at the MET confrence. Can you provide a link that gives a concrete example or perhaps one that points out the "serious proplems" with the 1991 IPCC report.

BTW, due to past experience I consider links that simply parrot the FUD from Fred Singer and/or ExxonMobil as SPAM and will ignore them. Here are a few myth busting links from Real Climate to get you started.

The IPCC report is published roughly every four years.

From your post it is obvious you have not seen the horse let alone have any evidence as to it's state of health. The credibility problems do not belong to the IPCC, you may find it surprising that a large proportion of the the reaserch in the reports has come from the cream of US institutions. Read or even just skim the reports, find out who wrote them, find out why they are so confident and compare their previous predictions to the actual outcomes. Don't just spam people with "junk science" propagnda, it makes you look nieve.

Thanks for the link but I already knew about the MET conference. I don't know where you got your information about the "presence of a large number of falsifiable hypotheses" at the MET confrence. Can you provide a link that gives a concrete example or perhaps one that points out the "serious proplems" with the 1991 IPCC report.

BTW, due to past experience I consider links that simply parrot the FUD from Fred Singer and/or ExxonMobil as SPAM and will ignore them. Here are a few myth busting links from Real Climate to get you started.

hours and hours too late to mention this, but Real Climate,where the stores are written by serious academic climate prediction/modelling/reasearch types, had a piece on the hurricane/GW connection (or IS it?) that appeared just before Katrina, IIRC. Here it is: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=181. If I recall correctly the bottom line is that models indicate loose coupling between the number of storms and GW factors, but that storminess (how energetic a storm is.) It's a couple of months since I read it and my memory's not great, though, so I wouldn't take my word for it ;)

hours and hours too late to mention this, but Real Climate,where the stores are written by serious academic climate prediction/modelling/reasearch types, had a piece on the hurricane/GW connection (or IS it?) that appeared just before Katrina, IIRC. Here it is: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=181. If I recall correctly the bottom line is that models indicate loose coupling between the number of storms and GW factors, but that storminess (how energetic a storm is.) It's a couple of months since I read it and my memory's not great, though, so I wouldn't take my word for it ;)

So what you're saying, is that Michael Chrichton doesn't know science.

Could of told you that before.

A fairly short rebuttal of this argument by actual climatologists (as opposed to the hacks at Fox News) can be found here. And please don't reply that the rebuttal was published almost a year ago - Milloy's argument has not changed.

"Facts"? It's about as factual about climate change as Team America is about terrorism, only not so entertaining. See, for instance, Michael Crichton's State of Confusion.

Things similar to what you have just posted are backed up with footnotes

Checking Crichton's footnotes: "Crichton supplies references. But UMass-Amherst climatologist Douglas Hardy, a coauthor of the 2004 paper on Kilimanjaro cited, says Crichton is distorting his work. Crichton is doing ''what I perceive the denialists always to do,'' says Hardy. ''And that is to take things out of context, or take elements of reality and twist them a little bit, or combine them with other elements of reality to support their desired outcome.''"

Methane is certainly effective. See http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=186 , in particular the graph, which puts it at number two in the list of primary forcings (behind CO2). But control of it's production is far harder than with CO2.

CH4 is produced primary by agriculture, and organic waste decomposition. The waste decomposition issue can be dealt with in more industrialised nations - just burning waste turns it into CO2, which is less damaging per volume. Using biogas reactors can also be effective - and there has been alot of research into it. But the more significant effect of agriculture is decentralised. You can't collect all of the gas that comes out of the world's cows, or the world's paddyfields. Peasant farmers the world over cannot be regulated at the stroke of a pen. Unlike CO2, the worst offenders are the least able to adopt any sort of change, because it would mean starvation for them and their dependent populations. In many cases, the worst of the damage - the creation of terrain and ecosystems that produce methane have already been done centuries ago. And for the forseeable future, there is no alternative to it - people will always have to eat.

Only 60 years of data? Please, read up on paleoclimate, like here and here.