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I simply refer you to these to expositions on the subject:

What ocean heating reveals about global warming

The global temperature jigsaw

I simply refer you to these to expositions on the subject:

What ocean heating reveals about global warming

The global temperature jigsaw

First of all, it's not ice core data that shows CO2 levels were higher in the past. Ice cores only go back around 800,000 years and the highest level they have ever showed was around 300 ppm. There are other less precise proxies that inform us about CO2 levels further back in time.

We know they balance out because for instance the last 8,000 years or so the CO2 level remained around 280 ppm varying seasonally by about 10 ppm. It wasn't until the industrial revolution when started burning a lot of fossil fuels that the levels rose about 280 ppm. We've released enough CO2 since the start of the industrial revolution to raise atmospheric concentrations to over 500 ppm if it had all remained in the atmosphere.

Here's a primer on why we know humans are the cause of rising CO2.

Even the Alarmists at Real Climate don't support Arctic methane tripping points.

Even the Alarmists at Real Climate don't support Arctic methane tripping points.

Time to turn them around. As pointed out in the IPCC WG III report Ch. 13 “Non-Annex I countries as a group have a share in the cumulative global greenhouse emissions for the period 1850 to 2010 close to 50%, a share that is increasing,” - See more at: http://www.realclimate.org/ind... Some countries are cutting emissions, but some are not. That has to change.

Everything the tax payer paid for is available.

...unless either you or Mann (prolly not both) are lying, which is more than possible given that no one can actually use that data to reproduce the results he originally presented.

But the kicker is that you don't seem to understand that this is just a fishing expedition, to find something, *anything*, to take out of context and shit-coat Mann's career.

You mean like Mann did when he sued Tim Ball, then watched as the case collapsed because he wouldn't, you know, hand over the research documents that would prove Ball was somehow committing libel?

Oh, wait... ;)

Everything the tax payer paid for is available. Mann is under no obligation to hand over proprietary documents, and the judge agreed. Think you know better than the judge? Of course you do.

But the kicker is that you don't seem to understand that this is just a fishing expedition, to find something, *anything*, to take out of context and shit-coat Mann's career. It is the recourse of people who cannot make an intellectual argument against AGW, but think they are correct anyway. The cognitive dissonance is resolved by asserting the Mann et al. are really corrupt, and then set out to prove it.

That would also satisfy climate skeptics IMO.

The American Tradition Institute who filed the suit are not skeptics, they are "for hire" lobbyists masquerading as a charitable institution. The only way they will be satisfied is if Mann is shut down permanently and his work expunged from the collective knowledge of mankind. Mann is the skeptic in this story by virtue of the fact that all scientists are skeptics. Lobbyists don't believe in anything but a pay check, they are paid liars, the very definition of "propagandists". If you want to be a real patriot there's no better place to start than by learning to spot political propaganda when you see it.

As defined by the World Meteorological Organization the classical climate period is 30 years, long enough for the short term variations to average out but short enough for longer term variations to be discerned. So a reasonable judgement would be how well the model output matches the 30 year running mean of global temperature. You'll have to wait 15 years to see how well they match 2014.

Better yet you can learn a bit more about how climate models work by reading these FAQs written by Gavin Schmidt, one of the principles for the NASA/GISS Model E, one of the worlds major climate models:

FAQ on climate models
FAQ on climate models: Part II

He also wrote a post On mismatches between models and observations that is very interesting. It shows that he understands very well the issues involved in models and data collection.

And finally here is an Ars Technica article on Why trust climate models? It's a matter of simple science.

As defined by the World Meteorological Organization the classical climate period is 30 years, long enough for the short term variations to average out but short enough for longer term variations to be discerned. So a reasonable judgement would be how well the model output matches the 30 year running mean of global temperature. You'll have to wait 15 years to see how well they match 2014.

Better yet you can learn a bit more about how climate models work by reading these FAQs written by Gavin Schmidt, one of the principles for the NASA/GISS Model E, one of the worlds major climate models:

FAQ on climate models
FAQ on climate models: Part II

He also wrote a post On mismatches between models and observations that is very interesting. It shows that he understands very well the issues involved in models and data collection.

And finally here is an Ars Technica article on Why trust climate models? It's a matter of simple science.

As defined by the World Meteorological Organization the classical climate period is 30 years, long enough for the short term variations to average out but short enough for longer term variations to be discerned. So a reasonable judgement would be how well the model output matches the 30 year running mean of global temperature. You'll have to wait 15 years to see how well they match 2014.

Better yet you can learn a bit more about how climate models work by reading these FAQs written by Gavin Schmidt, one of the principles for the NASA/GISS Model E, one of the worlds major climate models:

FAQ on climate models
FAQ on climate models: Part II

He also wrote a post On mismatches between models and observations that is very interesting. It shows that he understands very well the issues involved in models and data collection.

And finally here is an Ars Technica article on Why trust climate models? It's a matter of simple science.

LOLWUT?

http://www.realclimate.org/ind...

If anything, the IPCC errs on the conservative side.

Like hell they [sic] are.

https://www.skepticalscience.c... ".. the evidence suggests that changes in climate are occurring faster, and with more intensity, than the IPCC have predicted. It is not credible to suggest the reports were biased in favour of the theory of anthropogenic global warming when the evidence demonstrates the IPCC were, in fact, so cautious."

http://www.irinnews.org/report...

"The international scientific community’s new assessment of the estimated sea level rise caused by global warming is a significant development, but experts say the projections for higher sea levels in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate (IPCC) assessment report (AR5) are still on the low side. The projections are of immediate concern to low-lying countries and small island states."

http://www.realclimate.org/ind...

"This is where the “conservative” estimates of IPCC, seen by some as a virtue, have lulled policy makers into a false sense of security, with the price having to be paid later by those living in vulnerable coastal areas."

http://www.scientificamerican....

http://www.carbonbrief.org/blo...

What is done in these highly politicized reports, is take the 5% extreme case, say in California and report that. Then take the 5% most extreme case in NY and report that.. So on and so forth. Now even if these "confidence" things could be interpreted as probability of the event occurring, which they can't. They present all of these 5% things all over the world as if that is what could happen, while even with this poor interpretation of data, its a million to one that even a dozen of these predictions to come true. Its total misrepresentation of the model/data at best and scientifically dishonest.

Yes, yes. And at the bottom of your garden there are fairies as well! It must be true, because you said it was. No need to provide evidence or anything boring like that.

Removing data points that did not fit their model, apply transformations to the data points that are not uniform across the entire dataset, using a filter that generates the same output even if the input was noise. Need I go on?

Yes, because you are repeating hearsay. The GP requested citations. You have provided nothing.

As the GP, I never expect any, because there isn't that much.

I could point out that there has been some suspect or even bad work on AGW. They might cite the study performed by a group in Argentina - The Universal Ecological Fund - was so bad and actually quite preposterous claiming that the planet would warm by 2.4 C - round 4.3 F. Interestingly enough, also from the Guardian.

http://www.theguardian.com/env...

Scientists were all over this study as just plain bad.

And most surprising that the deniers do not quote from the paper "Misdiagnosis of Surface Temeperature Feedback" by Spencer and Braswell.

http://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/...

This is the touchstone for AGW deniers who love to claim that NASA's temperature figures are all wrong, and that more heat escapes from the atmosphere than predicted.

Their model had no realistic ocean, no El Niino, nor La Nina, and no hydrological cycle. And all the parameters could be adjusted to give an infinite number of "best fits" from CO2 insensitive to very sensitive.

Some critical reading on the matter:

http://bbickmore.wordpress.com...

http://www.realclimate.org/ind...

In the end, we can pick and choose. We can get our science teachings form Scientists, or we can get our science knowledge from politicians and religious leaders.

For several years Gavin Schmidt, one of the principals of the NASA/GISS Model/E climate model, has been doing a comparison of model output to observations. There isn't an update for 2013 yet but the comparison through 2012 is available here.

Cherries? Dude RealClimate.com is one of the top Warmist sites, it was/is ran by
Dr. Gavin Schimdt

a climatologist and climate modeler at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York. He works on the variability of the ocean circulation and climate, using general circulation models (GCMs). He has also worked on ways to reconcile paleo-data with models. He helped develop the GISS ocean and coupled GCMs to improve the representation of the present day climate, while investigating their response to climate forcing. The latest GISS GCM is called ModelE.

Michael E. Mann

an American climatologist and geophysicist,[3] currently director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, who has contributed to the scientific understanding of climate change over the last two thousand years. He has pioneered techniques to find patterns in past climate change, and to isolate climate signals from noisy data.

Eric Steig

an isotope geochemist at the University of Washington in Seattle. His primary research interest is use of ice core records to document climate variability in the past. He also works on the geological history of ice sheets, on ice sheet dynamics, on statistical climate analysis, and on atmospheric chemistry.

Stefan Rahmstorf

a German oceanographer and climatologist. Since 2000, he has been a Professor of Physics of the Oceans at Potsdam University. He received his Ph.D. in oceanography from Victoria University of Wellington (1990). His work focuses on the role of ocean currents in climate change.[1] He was one of the lead authors of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report.[1]

Rasmus Emil Benestad

enestad er Bachelor of Science (Hons) (1992) i fysikk og elektronikk fra University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (tidligere UMIST, nå University of Manchester) i Storbritannia og Master of Science (1994) i fysikk fra New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology i USA (hovedoppgave i skyfysikk). Han har doktorgrad (Doctor of Philosophy (D.Phil), 1997) i fysikk fra Universitetet i Oxford (Storbritannia). Emnet for avhandlinga var havmodellering, Kelvinbølger i Stillehavet og El Niño-fenomenet.

David Archer (who wrote the article)

a computational ocean chemist,[1] and has been a Professor at the Department of The Geophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago since 1993.[2] He has published research on the carbon cycle of the ocean and the sea floor. He has worked on the history of atmospheric CO2 concentration, the fate of fossil fuel CO2 over geologic time scales in the future, and the impact of CO2 on future ice age cycles, ocean methane hydrate decomposition, and coral reefs

Caspar Ammann

A paleoclimatologist, Caspar Ammann studies climates of the past centuries and millennia, including the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warm Period. His goal is to understand what caused climatic changes in the past in order to learn more about potential global warming in the future. He uses computer models to simulate climate history and compares the results to historical markers such as tree rings and ice cores to reconstruct the past. His research also looks at changes in the Sun's output, the influence of volcanoes on climate, and the extent to which 20th century warming is unprecedented in the recent geologic timescale. He is a researcher in NCAR's Research Appli

we are more concerned with methane tipping points
(you know, when we burn enough carbon to warm the oceans and atmosphere so the TRILLIONS of tons of
methane in permafrost and in undersea clathrate deposits are emitted). That promises runaway climate change.

Well what do real climate scientists have to say on this matter?

The possibility of a catastrophic release is of course what gives methane its power over the imagination (of journalists in particular it seems). A submarine landslide might release a Gigaton of carbon as methane (Archer, 2007), but the radiative effect of that would be small, about equal in magnitude (but opposite in sign) to the radiative forcing from a volcanic eruption. Detectable perhaps but probably not the end of humankind as a species. Much ado about methane

Also as I have just referenced RealClimate, you should go to hell and tell us if it to has frozen over this winter.

"you can't make a copy" - Hell, you can't even get a copy of the data or algorithms.

Sure you can if you're not too lazy to look for it. Here's a good place to start.

How stupid is it that we have regulations based on data that's isn't made available for independent verification?

Almost all of it is in fact available, so this is just more GOP BS.

A small part of it is under copyright protection or other NDA -- and that's dumb, and the cure is copyright reform that frees all publicly funded research, and a research funding process that doesn't rely on making researchers cover costs by selling their data. Copyright corrupts science. But Congress isn't doing that, and we can't make other countries do it.

As the University of East Anglias CRU explains,

Since the early 1980s, some NMSs, other organizations and individual scientists have given or sold us (see Hulme, 1994, for a summary of European data collection efforts) additional data for inclusion in the gridded datasets, often on the understanding that the data are only used for academic purposes with the full permission of the NMSs, organizations and scientists and the original station data are not passed onto third parties. Below we list the agreements that we still hold....Some date back at least 20 years. Additional agreements are unwritten and relate to partnerships we've made with scientists around the world and visitors to the CRU over this period. In some of the examples given, it can be clearly seen that our requests for data from NMSs have always stated that we would not make the data available to third parties....The inability of some agencies to release climate data held is not uncommon in climate science. The Dutch Met Service (KNMI) run the European Climate Assessment and Dataset (ECA&D, http://eca.knmi.nl/) project. They are able to use much data in their numerous analyses, but they cannot make all the original daily station temperature and precipitation series available because of restrictions imposed by some of the data providers...The problem is a generic issue and arises from the need of many NMSs to be or aim to be cost neutral (i.e. sell the data to recoup the costs of making observations and preparing the data).

We receive numerous requests for these station data...These data are not ours to provide without the full permission of the relevant NMSs, organizations and scientists.

And some of the data has been lost to bit rot, like a lot of computer data from decades ago. No surprise.

But the idea that there's some dark secret that a cabal of climate scientists are hiding is the usual denialist gibberish.

Yep. If you make assertions, but can't prove them, then you can expect some flack for not doing so. I fail to see why this would be a surprise.

Hence why we give all these climate "scientists" so much flack. They've made a bunch of wild assertions about the future that didn't come true

Which model was updated post publication and the published predictions modified secretly to reflect the actual observed climate shift?

Secretly? Who said anything about secretly? They're very open about all the changes they make to the model when they're proven wrong time and time again. Here's a long list of the changes made to models of shit they just don't understand (still): http://www.realclimate.org/ind...

I've never once heard a climate scientist predict a result and ascribe 100% certainty to it.

Oh? And what of this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... "The scientific opinion on climate change is that the Earth's climate system is unequivocally warming, and it is extremely likely (at least 95% probability) that humans are causing most of it through activities that increase concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere"

Sure as hell seems pretty certain to me...

This kind of hyperbole is exactly why your argument rings hollow.

Oh, the irony.

Now prove it.

Why is the onus on me to disapprove ridiculous assertions from a bunch of climate nuts? I'm not the one making the grandiose claim here. They're the ones saying they're certain the sky is falling. Then it doesn't happen...and I have to come up with a proof why their models didn't pan out? Fuck that.

The hockey stick has stood the test of time. The facts hold. The data continue to support it. Here's Mann recently, and discussion.

Here are myths about the hockey stick debunked.

I'm not denying that the climate is changing, or that we should burn every combustible material we can get our hands on. But we also don't need to throw society a tailspin either. From your link:

after a single study I co-wrote a decade and a half ago found that the Northern Hemisphere’s average warmth had no precedent in at least the past 1,000 years. Our “hockey stick” graph

Which would be pretty scary if the planet was 6,000 yeas old. But it's not, and this type of warming is not new. Even during the time that Homo Sapiens has been on the planet. Also from your link:

James Hansen, who has turned to civil disobedience ... ...in 2011 and 2013 in Washington protesting the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to the Texas Gulf. He has warned that the pipeline, which awaits approval by the State Department, would open the floodgates to dirty tar sands oil from Canada, something he says would be “game over for the climate.”

This is such over the top hyperbole it's ridiculous. The tar sands in Alberta are going to be extracted whether the XL pipeline is built, or not. IF it's not built, then the oil will be sent by another pipeline to the coast to be shipped to China. It will also be shipped to the US via rail instead of pipeline. Which means more fossil fuels will be used in transporting it by train and ship; and the likelihood of an accident will be increased as well as there will be a pipeline, trains and ships hauling it. .

Jeffrey Sachs, director of Columbia’s Earth Institute, and other scientists, making a compelling case that emissions from fossil fuel burning must be reduced rapidly if we are to avert catastrophic climate change. They called for the immediate introduction of a price on carbon emissions, arguing that it is our moral obligation to not leave a degraded planet behind for our children and grandchildren.

How scientific of them. We have a "moral" obligation? Yes, very scientific. Even if the planet is warming entirely because of man, there is no definitive proof that it will reach worst case. How do we know it will reach a cataclysmic event(s) if we don't' stop right this very second? I've been hearing that "if we don't fix things right now, we are all doomed" (from one thing or another) for almost my entire life. If that's the case, we're already too late. So if we can't leave our children a non-degraded planet, we must give them a pile of cash? Or who is supposed to get this money?

Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution for Science, who has argued that “the only ethical path is to stop using the atmosphere as a waste dump for greenhouse gas pollution,”

You know what else is a greenhouse gas? Water. So should we support the Stop Dihydrogen Mono-Oxide people too? What about CO2? Do we need to stop expiration by all animals on the planet? Should we all go on the Atkins diet? After all, herbivores expel more methane. Hmm, that's probably very sustainable.

This virulent strain of anti-science infects the halls of Congress, the pages of leading newspapers and what we see on TV, leading to the appearance of a debate where none should exist

The hockey stick has stood the test of time. The facts hold. The data continue to support it. Here's Mann recently, and discussion.

Here are myths about the hockey stick debunked.

I'm not denying that the climate is changing, or that we should burn every combustible material we can get our hands on. But we also don't need to throw society a tailspin either. From your link:

after a single study I co-wrote a decade and a half ago found that the Northern Hemisphere’s average warmth had no precedent in at least the past 1,000 years. Our “hockey stick” graph

Which would be pretty scary if the planet was 6,000 yeas old. But it's not, and this type of warming is not new. Even during the time that Homo Sapiens has been on the planet. Also from your link:

James Hansen, who has turned to civil disobedience ... ...in 2011 and 2013 in Washington protesting the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to the Texas Gulf. He has warned that the pipeline, which awaits approval by the State Department, would open the floodgates to dirty tar sands oil from Canada, something he says would be “game over for the climate.”

This is such over the top hyperbole it's ridiculous. The tar sands in Alberta are going to be extracted whether the XL pipeline is built, or not. IF it's not built, then the oil will be sent by another pipeline to the coast to be shipped to China. It will also be shipped to the US via rail instead of pipeline. Which means more fossil fuels will be used in transporting it by train and ship; and the likelihood of an accident will be increased as well as there will be a pipeline, trains and ships hauling it. .

Jeffrey Sachs, director of Columbia’s Earth Institute, and other scientists, making a compelling case that emissions from fossil fuel burning must be reduced rapidly if we are to avert catastrophic climate change. They called for the immediate introduction of a price on carbon emissions, arguing that it is our moral obligation to not leave a degraded planet behind for our children and grandchildren.

How scientific of them. We have a "moral" obligation? Yes, very scientific. Even if the planet is warming entirely because of man, there is no definitive proof that it will reach worst case. How do we know it will reach a cataclysmic event(s) if we don't' stop right this very second? I've been hearing that "if we don't fix things right now, we are all doomed" (from one thing or another) for almost my entire life. If that's the case, we're already too late. So if we can't leave our children a non-degraded planet, we must give them a pile of cash? Or who is supposed to get this money?

Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution for Science, who has argued that “the only ethical path is to stop using the atmosphere as a waste dump for greenhouse gas pollution,”

You know what else is a greenhouse gas? Water. So should we support the Stop Dihydrogen Mono-Oxide people too? What about CO2? Do we need to stop expiration by all animals on the planet? Should we all go on the Atkins diet? After all, herbivores expel more methane. Hmm, that's probably very sustainable.

This virulent strain of anti-science infects the halls of Congress, the pages of leading newspapers and what we see on TV, leading to the appearance of a debate where none should exist

No. This is a site where several prominent & practising climate scientists post.

For example, here's a translated one from Stefan Rahmstorf

No. This is a site where several prominent & practising climate scientists post.

For example, here's a translated one from Stefan Rahmstorf

The hockey stick has stood the test of time. The facts hold. The data continue to support it. Here's Mann recently, and discussion.

Here are myths about the hockey stick debunked.

The hockey stick has stood the test of time. The facts hold. The data continue to support it. Here's Mann recently, and discussion.

Here are myths about the hockey stick debunked.

Ah, I see, your objections are not based on science but rather political ideology. I've seen no reason to think that climate scientists are distorting the science because of political considerations. I find it hard to believe that they would be so stupid as to set themselves up to be shot down by someone who pointed out the reality behind the science for political reasons.

There is no question that they are better than no model at all. Here is a comparison of models to real world data up to 2012. The 2013 version should be out in a month or so.

Climate models are not curve fitted to past climate trends. They are merely used to test the output against.

Rather than try to paraphrase it I'll just quote a couple of entries from the Real Climate FAQ on climate models that explain it better than I ever could. They explain how climate models are physical models as much as possible and the role climate observations don't play in developing them. (Also see: FAQ on climate models: Part II.):

* What is the difference between a physics-based model and a statistical model?

Models in statistics or in many colloquial uses of the term often imply a simple relationship that is fitted to some observations. A linear regression line through a change of temperature with time, or a sinusoidal fit to the seasonal cycle for instance. More complicated fits are also possible (neural nets for instance). These statistical models are very efficient at encapsulating existing information concisely and as long as things don’t change much, they can provide reasonable predictions of future behaviour. However, they aren’t much good for predictions if you know the underlying system is changing in ways that might possibly affect how your original variables will interact.

Physics-based models on the other hand, try to capture the real physical cause of any relationship, which hopefully are understood at a deeper level. Since those fundamentals are not likely to change in the future, the anticipation of a successful prediction is higher. A classic example is Newton’s Law of motion, F=ma, which can be used in multiple contexts to give highly accurate results completely independently of the data Newton himself had on hand.

Climate models are fundamentally physics-based, but some of the small scale physics is only known empirically (for instance, the increase of evaporation as the wind increases). Thus statistical fits to the observed data are included in the climate model formulation, but these are only used for process-level parameterisations, not for trends in time.

* Are climate models just a fit to the trend in the global temperature data?

No. Much of the confusion concerning this point comes from a misunderstanding stemming from the point above. Model development actually does not use the trend data in tuning (see below). Instead, modellers work to improve the climatology of the model (the fit to the average conditions), and it’s intrinsic variability (such as the frequency and amplitude of tropical variability). The resulting model is pretty much used ‘as is’ in hindcast experiments for the 20th Century.

Climate models are not curve fitted to past climate trends. They are merely used to test the output against.

Rather than try to paraphrase it I'll just quote a couple of entries from the Real Climate FAQ on climate models that explain it better than I ever could. They explain how climate models are physical models as much as possible and the role climate observations don't play in developing them. (Also see: FAQ on climate models: Part II.):

* What is the difference between a physics-based model and a statistical model?

Models in statistics or in many colloquial uses of the term often imply a simple relationship that is fitted to some observations. A linear regression line through a change of temperature with time, or a sinusoidal fit to the seasonal cycle for instance. More complicated fits are also possible (neural nets for instance). These statistical models are very efficient at encapsulating existing information concisely and as long as things don’t change much, they can provide reasonable predictions of future behaviour. However, they aren’t much good for predictions if you know the underlying system is changing in ways that might possibly affect how your original variables will interact.

Physics-based models on the other hand, try to capture the real physical cause of any relationship, which hopefully are understood at a deeper level. Since those fundamentals are not likely to change in the future, the anticipation of a successful prediction is higher. A classic example is Newton’s Law of motion, F=ma, which can be used in multiple contexts to give highly accurate results completely independently of the data Newton himself had on hand.

Climate models are fundamentally physics-based, but some of the small scale physics is only known empirically (for instance, the increase of evaporation as the wind increases). Thus statistical fits to the observed data are included in the climate model formulation, but these are only used for process-level parameterisations, not for trends in time.

* Are climate models just a fit to the trend in the global temperature data?

No. Much of the confusion concerning this point comes from a misunderstanding stemming from the point above. Model development actually does not use the trend data in tuning (see below). Instead, modellers work to improve the climatology of the model (the fit to the average conditions), and it’s intrinsic variability (such as the frequency and amplitude of tropical variability). The resulting model is pretty much used ‘as is’ in hindcast experiments for the 20th Century.

It's not clear whether that quote is talking about the General Circulation Models (aka Global Climate Models) that climate scientists use or some other type of model. But if you're interested pointers to source code for several of the GCM's and the information needed to run the models is available here.

The heat was just moving to locations where it's hard to put a ground-based weather station. Add satellite measurements and the "pause" disappears.

I was just being snarky is why.

If you want a place to get the science straight from the scientists mouth you can't do much better than Real Climate. In particular I would recommend the Start Here page to get up to speed and the two Climate Model FAQ's pages to learn about how climate models work.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/11/faq-on-climate-models/
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/01/faq-on-climate-models-part-ii/

I was just being snarky is why.

If you want a place to get the science straight from the scientists mouth you can't do much better than Real Climate. In particular I would recommend the Start Here page to get up to speed and the two Climate Model FAQ's pages to learn about how climate models work.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/11/faq-on-climate-models/
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/01/faq-on-climate-models-part-ii/

I was just being snarky is why.

If you want a place to get the science straight from the scientists mouth you can't do much better than Real Climate. In particular I would recommend the Start Here page to get up to speed and the two Climate Model FAQ's pages to learn about how climate models work.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/11/faq-on-climate-models/
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/01/faq-on-climate-models-part-ii/

I was just being snarky is why.

If you want a place to get the science straight from the scientists mouth you can't do much better than Real Climate. In particular I would recommend the Start Here page to get up to speed and the two Climate Model FAQ's pages to learn about how climate models work.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/11/faq-on-climate-models/
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/01/faq-on-climate-models-part-ii/

Its not easy to validate when you cannot get your hands on their raw data. You only get summary reports from the "climate scientists"!

You can't?

Have you tried?

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/data-sources/#Climate_data_raw

What exciting analysis are you going to do with this data now I've told you how to get it?

How come you didn't find it using Google? It's the first result.

The warming trend DID continue past 1997 (which is a cherry picked year, to see why just look at the graph below).

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/01/2010-updates-to-model-data-comparisons/

That graph is out of date:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/01/2010-updates-to-model-data-comparisons/

Please read and understand the info linked here.
That should clear up what's a very common misconception

"Alker finds the models are dependent only on carbon dioxide (CO2) to change temperature. Incredibly, the models seem to be pre-programmed so that no other atmospheric variable is allowed to alter climate."

There many different models and different types of models, this claim is broad and easily falsified. From Real Climate:

Initially (ca. 1975), GCMs were based purely on atmospheric processes – the winds, radiation, and with simplified clouds. By the mid-1980s, there were simple treatments of the upper ocean and sea ice, and clouds parameterisations started to get slightly more sophisticated. In the 1990s, fully coupled ocean-atmosphere models started to become available. This is when the first Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) was started. This has subsequently seen two further iterations, the latest (CMIP3) being the database used in support of much of the model work in the IPCC AR4. Over that time, model simulations have become demonstrably more realistic (Reichler and Kim, 2008) as resolution has increased and parameterisations have become more sophisticated. Nowadays, models also include dynamic sea ice, aerosols and atmospheric chemistry modules. Issues like excessive ‘climate drift’ (the tendency for a coupled model to move away from the a state resembling the actual climate) which were problematic in the early days are now much minimised.

Here are some links to the myths most commonly spread by Murry Salby and Christopher Moncton. Moncton, in particular, is fond of a tactic called the Gish Gallop where you throw out reasonable sounding claims that are false in such rapid succession that the goal is make it nigh impossible for your opponent to rebut all the errors in your statements without sounding tedious and pedantic and losing the interest of the crowd.

Except that Jane Q Public wasn't stating an opinion (at least as I read it) but unsubstantiated facts:

I linked to substantiation in my earlier reply to you. So it's not accurate to say my facts are "unsubstantiated" unless you can refute those sources. I very much doubt you can. To be clear: It's true that I did not attempt to support my comment at first, but I did later.

Their big report reducing warming projections by half -- and now raising total accumulated warming by 100%

Which is not nearly what that report says and not nearly what TFS says.

2 issues with that sentence: I linked to sources that claim it *IS* what that report says, and here is a direct quote from TFA ["deg." substituted for the degree symbol which doesn't show up on Slashdot]:

"For 1997-2012 these data show a relatively small warming trend of only 0.05 deg. C per decade â" which has often been misleadingly called a 'warming pause'...

But after filling the data gaps this trend is 0.12 deg. C per decade and thus exactly equal to the long-term trend mentioned by the IPCC.

So yes... it does say that, in plain English. Not just 100%, either, but actually 140% higher than the IPPC report had claimed earlier for the last 15 years, in the IPCC report.

You are suggesting there has been this unending stream of scandals and duplicity.

At first I wrote that I had suggested nothing of the sort... but then I saw that you were actually replying to someone else. (I think I may have to change my settings in Slashdot... this has been a problem sometimes.) But just so it is clear to everyone, my claim was that this indicates some problems with their science. I didn't myself say it was false or duplicitous.

I was alive in the 70's when the great ice age was coming, but you never hear about that either :-)

You mean when you started making shit up? Repeating Big Lies - in this case the global cooling myth - doesn't make them true. It just makes you a bigger liar.

The raw data is just as available as the processed data. http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/data-sources/#Climate_data_raw

this one? By none other than Mr. Hansen who is wonderfully derided by the deniers.

And you know what? It even shows a shallowing of the temperate rise during your so called 'stalled global temp' growth. So yes he predicted something quite similar to what we're seeing.

There may be a short term slowing of temperature rise going on...but you're still flatly ignoring the rapid increase in the previous 30 years, just blindly assuming it won't resume going up. Scientists don't claim to know everything, but decades of consistent pattern followed by a few years of slightly less than predicted results don't change the overall situation.

There's more data available over this thing we call the internet than you could analyze in a lifetime. There are links to some of the major data sets and climate model code on this page. The IPCC lists references to all of the work it uses to make its conclusions. All it takes is a few clicks of the mouse to start looking at the data.

The unadulterated variety is a bit more difficult.

There's more data available over this thing we call the internet than you could analyze in a lifetime. There are links to some of the major data sets and climate model code on this page. The IPCC lists references to all of the work it uses to make its conclusions. All it takes is a few clicks of the mouse to start looking at the data.

H2 is made in commercial quantities from "cracking" fossil fuels. Splitting water with electricity is more expensive but if your source of energy is clean then there's no GHG problem with the technology on a large scale. Reducing GHG emissions is the main reason for all the interest in electric cars.

*cheap - For certain definiens of "cheap"

As someone rightly pointed out above, the current problem with hydrogen is not technical, not safety, not environmental, it's economic, it's our own human system that is shooting us in the foot. Personally I think that can be fixed by capitalism provided the market (rules of trade) punish polluters rather than reward them as they do now. - The "tragedy of the commons" in a nut-shell, if we can create a set of rules (a market) that efficiently rewards corporations for screwing up our little blue spaceship's life support systems, surely we could find a set of rules that reverses that trend. If not then (collectively) we are no smarter than a jar of fermenting yeast.

We have had a 50 meter rise in sea level in about 20,000 years

Sea level has risen over 120 meters (390 ft.) in the last 20,000 years. But only about 2 meters in the last 8,000 years and in the past 2,000 years about 0.4 meters and in the past less than 200 years about 0.2 meters. So after an average rate of sea level change of +/- 0.1 millimeter/year or less for the past 2000 years (and probably the last 6,000 years) in the past century sea level rise averages over 2 mm/year, a pretty drastic change.

Vary the sun up or down .01-.02% and the earth has large changes.

Considering that the sun output normally varies about 0.1% during the 11 year solar cycle and we don't see "large changes" because of that your wild ass guess has be be off by more than an order of magnitude. Solar variation.

Sheesh! Why should I believe anything you say when you get such basic things wrong?

Based on lack of Sunspots of late, we may have an inordinately cold hard winter (climate change?) and some areas in the upper midwest already had 20,000 steers freeze to death. Climate change? Well, the same thing happened back in the 1960s, so was it climate change? Tell me when the next Maunder Minimum will occur?

You're conflating weather with climate. What happens this year is weather. What happens over the next 30 years considered as a whole is climate. Scientists have said that the effects of a new Maunder Minimum like period from the Sun would only be to delay global warming by 10 or 15 years. I haven't found any reason to disbelieve that.

Because the raw data and computer models used are not published and quite jealously guarded ...

What a pile of crap by someone who is too lazy to look into it yourself. There is tons of both raw and cooked data and the code for climate models available if you just seek it out. I suggest you start by looking here.