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... you must FIRST disclose the raw data.

Most raw data and source code is available and has been for several years. To claim otherwise is to show your ignorance. You can start here.

As for methodologies, read the scientific papers.

Now, I'm not saying AGW is real or unreal. What I am saying is that to even presume to be in the same category as Darwin you must FIRST disclose the raw data. Now. Just do it. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain if you're right. The only reason to not release the data is if you're in fact hiding something or there are many different wants to interpret the data. That leads us to methodology. You then have to explain exhaustively why your method of handling the data is correct. Then after both data and methodology are verified we can look at the conclusions.

As a scientist, I can tell you that climate science is one of the most open fields of science in making raw data available to the public. There is more than enough data available so that anybody willing to spend a few years developing the appropriate expertise can verify the major conclusions of climate science. Here's a starting point

...until they hit a tripping point in the arctic that'll release megatons of frozen methane which will lead to a catastrophic warming event.

These articles from realclimate.org suggest that the methane feedback is not catastrophic:

The worst-case methane scenario stands comparable to what CO2 can do. What CO2 will do, under business-as-usual, not in a wild blow-the-doors-off unpleasant surprise, but just in the absence of any pleasant surprises (like emission controls). At worst comparable to CO2 except that CO2 lasts essentially forever. - An Arctic methane worst-case scenario

The fact that the ice core records do not seem full of methane spikes due to high-latitude sources makes it seem like the real world is not as sensitive as we were able to set the model up to be. - Much ado about methane

...until they hit a tripping point in the arctic that'll release megatons of frozen methane which will lead to a catastrophic warming event.

These articles from realclimate.org suggest that the methane feedback is not catastrophic:

The worst-case methane scenario stands comparable to what CO2 can do. What CO2 will do, under business-as-usual, not in a wild blow-the-doors-off unpleasant surprise, but just in the absence of any pleasant surprises (like emission controls). At worst comparable to CO2 except that CO2 lasts essentially forever. - An Arctic methane worst-case scenario

The fact that the ice core records do not seem full of methane spikes due to high-latitude sources makes it seem like the real world is not as sensitive as we were able to set the model up to be. - Much ado about methane

Thanks; in the same spirit of mutual respect, let me point out that it's just as unlikely for the layperson to have an insight that has never occurred the academic community in a particular field, as it is for a "civilian" to come up with some clever technique that plumbers or carpenters or electricians or mechanics or programmers never thought of. This includes such insights as the everpopular "the AGW people forgot to take into account the changes in the sun!" of course, but also such runner ups as "they didn't account for heat islands".

"3.2.2.2 Urban Heat Islands and Land Use Effects ...
Studies that have looked at hemispheric and global scales conclude that any urban-related trend is an order of magnitude smaller than decadal and longer time-scale trends evident in the series (e.g., Jones et al., 1990; Peterson et al., 1999). This result could partly be attributed to the omission from the gridded data set of a small number of sites (http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter3.pdf p.243

see also
the famous Peterson 2003 paper, abstract only http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/population/article2abstract.pdf

"We show examples of the UHIs at London and Vienna, where city center sites are warmer than surrounding rural locations. Both of these UHIs however do not contribute to warming trends over the 20th century because the influences of the cities on surface temperatures have not changed over this time." (abstract only; The graphs of temp vs time for several urban vs rural areas are absolutely parallel in rises and drops, but you don't get to see them for free)
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2008/2008JD009916.shtml

"Since the UHI effect is reduced in windy conditions, if the UHI effect was a significant component of the temperature record, then we would see a different rate of warming when observations are stratified by calm or windy conditions. The absence of such an effect (which is what Parker finds) is, conversely, evidence of a minimal UHI effect on the record."
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=43

" We find evidence of local human effects ("urban warming") even in suburban and small-town surface air temperature records, but the effect is modest in magnitude and conceivably could be an artifact of inhomogeneities in the station records."
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/abstract.cgi?id=ha02300a

Of course, one picture etc. etc.... so look here http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2005/2005cal_fig1.gif and try to correlate that with urbanization; Note that the urbanized areas of the globe tend to be middle of the pack for warming; when the oceanic areas (which naturally warm less) are eliminated, you see that the urban areas tend to be on the low side of land surface warming estimates, which makes sense since the warming is, as predicted, larger near the poles, where urbanization is minimal. To put it another way; if you deleted all urban areas from the warming estimates on the grounds of eliminating urban heat islands, that would have the effect of raising the land warming estimate, not reducing it.

That is something no AGW scenario dreams of, and yet it happened.

Actually, there's mass methane poisoning of our atmosphere if the gas melts out of glaciers faster than the biosphere can handle it:

The juiciest disaster-movie scenario would be a release of enough methane to significantly change the atmospheric concentration, on a time scale that is fast compared with the lifetime of methane. This would generate a spike in methane concentration. For a scale of how much would be a large methane release, the amount of methane that would be required to equal the radiative forcing of doubled CO2 would be about ten times the present methane concentration. That would be disaster movie.

Methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. And, in mass quantities, could supplant other gases like oxygen and nitrogen in the Earth's atmosphere. That by itself would be a mass extension event.....

Hopefully they're right. This older review from Real Climate comes to the same conclusion.

But we'll know for sure one way or another in a couple of years, by watching the atmospheric methane concentrations
.

No. Those who requested the data requested that if all the data couldn't be provided, then the freely available data should be provided. They were refused.

Bzzt. Wrong. Try again.

30.First, in answer to the question of whether the raw data are accessible and verifiable, Professor Jones told us that:
The simple answer is yes, most of the same basic data are available in the United States in something called the Global Historical Climatology Network. They have been downloadable there for a number of years so people have been able to take the data, do whatever method of assessment of the quality of the data and derive their own gridded product and compare that with other workers.

31.In addition, of course, there are the sources of the data, the weather stations, to which any individual is free to go and collect the data in the same way that CRU did. This is feasible because the list of stations that CRU used was published in 2008.

41. Professor Jones contested these claims. According to him, “The methods are published in the scientific papers; they are relatively simple and there is nothing that is rocket science in them”. He also noted: “We have made all the adjustments we have made to the data available in these reports; they are 25 years old now”. He added that the programme that produced the global temperature average had been available from the Met Office since December 2009.

51. Even if the data that CRU used were not publicly available—which they mostly are—or the methods not published—which they have been—its published results would still be credible: the results from CRU agree with those drawn from other international data sets; in other words, the analyses have been repeated and the conclusions have been verified.

When asked for a list of what data was used, but not the data itself, they refused. Even if the data is available for free on the net, how can the results be replicated if they will not say which data was used?

Jones PERSONALLY refused. The information about what data was used has been available since the original papers and research were performed! IT'S IN THE RESEARCH, DURRRR. Have you ever read any of it?

It has only been replicated by his buddies.

Bzzt! Wrong. Try again.

BEST was funded by the Koch brothers, owners of a giant oil/petrochemical company. Most DEFINITELY NOT "buddies" with Mann. Even still, being "buddies" in science doesn't mean diddly-squat; it's not about WHO you know, but WHAT you know, and HOW WELL you know it. So far, Mann's work has been REPEATEDLY vindicated.

There can be no vindication for trying to "hide the decline".

Ya know, for a minute there, I thought you might be trying to be genuinely serious and skeptical. Then you trot THAT out. /facepalm

It is a well established rule of science that you don't leave out data that casts doubt on your conclusion.

You are correct, it is, and the vast majority of climate scientists and their research faithfully follow that rule, no matter how many intellectually dishonest, ignorant, and gullible idiots falling for charlatans and snake oil salesmen lke Watts, Michaels, Singer, et cetera ad nauseum, try to spin otherwise.

You've fallen for their story.

No, I've fallen for the FACTS of the matter. I've done my homework; I've looked beyond anyone's story; what's YOUR excuse?

Many of us used to think the alarmists were good willed, and we assumed they were honest. I still think they are good

And continues. Phil Jones, for example, has stonewalled requests for the raw data used to e.g. create HadCRUT3 etc, although recently it seems that one reason he hasn't shared it is that he lost it and literally can't share it.

That is complete and utter bullshit.

First, he has never stonewalled requests for the raw data. It's been out there for ANYONE to obtain. The problem is that, for some of it, you have to PAY to get it, and UEA was forbidden by contract to give away said data for free because then people wouldn't PAY for it anymore. So, if you want to piss and moan about access to the raw data, then apply your angst and woe to the most responsible parties, the Met offices which want to profit from their weather data-gathering businesses.

Second, the "lost data" canard is a crock. Since the raw data is not owned or generated by UEA, but instead obtained from outside sources, they have NO mandate to keep the original raw data once they have processed it. They (and you and anyone else) can go and get it from the same sources at any time. Whip out your checkbook and get to it.

So we have a rather important temperature series, openly available on the web and used by many, many climate researchers and nobody can reconstruct it, including the original author. The problem continues -- it is like pulling teeth, getting members of the hockey team to share data and/or methods so anyone can check them.

You (and they) most certainly can get the original raw data and reconstruct it. There are literally mountains of data that have been released to the public on a large part of climate science. You just need to learn who and how to ask properly and, in some cases, how much it costs.

Here's a huge FREE repository of all kinds of climate-related data, from the climate scientists themselves.

Since the few times somebody has bulled through until they've succeeded, e.g. Steve Mcintyre vs Michael Mann, what has been discovered is that the published result (the infamous MBH "hockey stick") is nothing but amplified, distorted white noise that has absolutely no correlation with the data used to produce it, let alone skill at reconstructing actual past temperatures, it doesn't bode well for the discipline.

Mann's work has been vindicated and replicated time and time again, McIntyre's (and others') quixotic attempts to discredit it notwithstanding.

I've recently written a guest article on WUWT..

That explains the ignorance of your previous comments a bit.

..calling for data/methods transparency in climate research. By transparent, I mean that you should not be allowed to publish a paper that could potentially influence lawmakers and public policy to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars unless you simultaneously publish all contributory raw data (including any data you for any reason left out) and the actual computer code used to process it into figures and conclusions. Something this important needs full open source open data transparency even more than medical research (another discipline where reproducibility of results is abysmal, where there are vested interests galore, and where we spend/waste a phenomenal amount of both money and human morbidity and mortality on crap results.

In large part, this is precisely what happens, with a few exceptions. Those exceptions usually revolve around whether any kinda of contracts with private entities to obtain said data, or to develop software/hardware, are in effect that would preclude giving them away. That said, the research should (and usually does) document the specifications for said hardware/software, and include where the original data came from for anyone to pay to obtain it themselves.

As a software developer who actually writes software for scienti

I'm afraid that you are the one who is incorrect.

And what I said is completely relevant to the discussion at hand (global warming), as well as your assertion. Part of the big picture is that the poles are expected to show the effects of warming more quickly. Alaskans are predicted to observe more rapid changes. And they are.

Polar bears normally range far out onto the pack ice. Sightings are up because there's less pack ice. This is alluded to in your linked article, which falls far short of being evidence for anything.

Glacial retreat is anything but anecdotal. It is an easily verified fact. You can argue the reasons for the retreat. You'd be an idiot, but you could argue that greenhouse gases don't have certain physical properties, or that human emissions get cleaned up by a magic sky dragon. When you're willing to disregard the factual, anything is possible!

Idiot: These are all extrapolations which are barely worth the paper they are written on

There, fixed it for you. These certainly aren't "extrapolations".

Thats amazing because hansen's original didn't have those error bars

And even when "Real climate"

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/05/hansens-1988-projections/

They somehow manage to leave them off.

Climate scientists are providing context to the leaked emails here: http://www.realclimate.org/?comments_popup=9931

You say CO2 increases lag warm periods.

Yes -- here's the ice core data showing it.

Oddly enough, climate scientists are aware of this and it's not a concern.

Not exactly. You still haven't grasped the idea of feedbacks, which is why the units are W per cubic metre per degree C -- i.e. they represent the increase in thermal conductivity per degree of warming (and thus are feedbacks, including upon themselves). You simply can't tie feedbacks accurately to a doubling of CO2, since the greater the temperature increase, the greater the feedbacks feedback upon themselves and the less important CO2 becomes. (Also, the graph you cited is the direct net change in anthropogenic forcings since 1750, and does not include atmospheric feedbacks).

Realclimate has a two-part introduction to feedbacks here and here if you're interested. The end of the second article explains how a runaway greenhouse effect can happen (as, to return to my original comment, is thought to have occurred on Venus).

Not exactly. You still haven't grasped the idea of feedbacks, which is why the units are W per cubic metre per degree C -- i.e. they represent the increase in thermal conductivity per degree of warming (and thus are feedbacks, including upon themselves). You simply can't tie feedbacks accurately to a doubling of CO2, since the greater the temperature increase, the greater the feedbacks feedback upon themselves and the less important CO2 becomes. (Also, the graph you cited is the direct net change in anthropogenic forcings since 1750, and does not include atmospheric feedbacks).

Realclimate has a two-part introduction to feedbacks here and here if you're interested. The end of the second article explains how a runaway greenhouse effect can happen (as, to return to my original comment, is thought to have occurred on Venus).

I'm a scientist and a skeptic by nature. Not of global warming, I've read enough scientific papers myself to convince me; of the fact that humans are solely responsible.

Here ya go, all the evidence a rational person needs:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/how-do-we-know-that-recent-cosub2sub-increases-are-due-to-human-activities-updated/

Hansen's 1988 projections used a climate sensitivity of 4.2 C which wasn't an unreasonable value to use at the time. Current estimates put the value from 2 - 4.5 C with the value most likely around 3 C. Using a sensitivity of 3 C in Hansen's 1988 model would put his projections, particularly using Scenario B, more in line with what actually happened. At the bottom of this post they discuss Hansen's 1988 model in light of the data up to 2010 and here they give a more detailed discussion of Hansen's model specifically.

Hansen's 1988 projections used a climate sensitivity of 4.2 C which wasn't an unreasonable value to use at the time. Current estimates put the value from 2 - 4.5 C with the value most likely around 3 C. Using a sensitivity of 3 C in Hansen's 1988 model would put his projections, particularly using Scenario B, more in line with what actually happened. At the bottom of this post they discuss Hansen's 1988 model in light of the data up to 2010 and here they give a more detailed discussion of Hansen's model specifically.

CO2 outpaces worst-case scenarios yet the heat doesn't show up.

I can't tell if you're trolling, or if you're actually that fucking ignorant.

Perhaps the computer models were wrong*. [* actually, computer models give you whatever result you want if you tweak them the right way, so they technically, they gave the 'right' results]

Likewise, climate models are designed to simulate the physicsof the global ecosystem, and not just perform statistical regressions.

Perhaps next time you might consider having the slightest fucking clue of what you're talking about before joining a discussion with adults?

Ok, I've made an error like that before. Never the less, GISS is up the the Model E now which is part of the ensemble referred to in the link I cited. There is a commentary on Hansen's 1988 projections here. Considering the relative primitiveness of the Model C it didn't do that bad.

No, you could run the current models on your PC. All you have to do is increase the grid size enough to reduce the number of calculations to a practical level. The main thing they do when they get a faster computer is reduce the grid size so they can get a finer detail. The CRU's GCM is a physical model as well. Statistical models don't do well on that large a scale. Here are a couple of FAQ's on climate models from the guys that write them:

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/

No, you could run the current models on your PC. All you have to do is increase the grid size enough to reduce the number of calculations to a practical level. The main thing they do when they get a faster computer is reduce the grid size so they can get a finer detail. The CRU's GCM is a physical model as well. Statistical models don't do well on that large a scale. Here are a couple of FAQ's on climate models from the guys that write them:

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/

Your ignorance is showing. Michael Mann's field is not climate models that predict future warming. It's paleoclimatology, the study of past climates. Here is a comparison of model output to actual temperature data up to 2010 from one of the scientists who does do climate modeling. Total warming is still well within the range projected by climate models.

An Al Gore film is not a theory. It's not even science. Instead of assuming all climate scientists hold Al Gore's film as a scientific prediction why don't you find out what real climate scientists say?

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/05/start-here/

If you don't want to then I'll just point out that climate scientists don't believe the catastrophe in the Al Gore films will occur during the 21st century. Now that's a long prediction so will continually be adjusted, but what we can conclude is that the consensus you say there isn't actually exists, and it's that it's not going to happen any time soon.

Sorry to ruin your straw man.

However, are YOU saying that just because these numbers were listed by him, that they are wrong? An ad hominem argument?

1. Yes. 2. No, it's a rational prediction based on his track record.

I will thank you to look at the references contained on that page and show that THEY are wrong.

I can throw a thousand links at you and it won't change your mind, however if you would just practice a little self scepticism and google debunk Inhofe for yourself, you might be able to eventually extract yourself from the anti-science cult you find yourself supporting.

You're wasting your time posting tabloid rumours from the daily fail at me. Go over to realclimate and read the actual article by Gavin Schmidt. Muller was never on the realclimate bus so they can hardly be accused of throwing him under it, although they did laugh and say "We told you so" while his colleges ran him over

I would be very interested to see a refutation of the idea that grant money has in fact been spent preferentially for pro-global-warming ideas.

WTF does "pro-global-warming idea" even mean in the scientific sense? Also read how the grant system works from the perspective of someone who has actually sat on them.

If you're interested in a rebuttal to the NOAA paper you can find it here. It basically says the NOAA paper did not properly account for the Moscow urban heat island effect. It used a yearly average for the UHI rather than computing it by the month. The UHI has a greater effect on temperatures in the winter than it does in the summer.

Of course they came up similar. But BEST noted that 1/3 showed cooling, not warming.

"Global warming" doesn't mean absolutely every place gets warmer.

See: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/antarctic-cooling-global-warming/

It was not CRU's data. The CRU is not running monitoring stations, or even collecting data. The data was from the World Meteorological Organization, via the UK Met Office. Neither the CRU or the Met Office magically have permission to give away that data. In fact, CRU didn't even have that data anymore.

But, nevertheless, after all this happened, the Met Office went and asked for permission to release it. And the raw data they were allowed to release (Which appears to be every station but the 19 in Poland for some reason, insert your own conspiracy theory there.) is here.

It's a real good job you did with the Google there, looking for that data. You looked real hard. Or at least read some pages that said the data hadn't been released, and isn't that really good enough?

Of course, almost all that data was already public anyway via World Monthly Surface Station Climatology and the GHCN before the Met Office released the uncorrected data. So people ran statistical sampling by comparing the CRU data to those data sources to see if the corrections introduced any sort of biases. They didn't.

But, hey, I love climate change deniers. In fact, I love all deniers. It's so much fun when they don't get memos and run around demanding that people 'release' information that was released in 2009.

I am well aware of the paper publishing process. I make a living providing both corporate and government scientists with solutions to advance their research, and often get to see the results of their work that I was involved with published or put into use.

While it is true that not all experimental data is published with the paper, ANYone most certainly can contact the author(s) of said paper and request the data, or get pointed to the source. I've never heard a single one talk about the data being their "property" or that they don't want someone doing analytics on their data. The latter is quite absurd, since any review of their research often requires such. If the research is experiment-based, they may or may not provide it, depending on the nature of the experiment, but they do provide enough information that new experimental data can be obtained through repeating the experiment.

The real point here is that most of the data and code used in the majority of the core AGW/climate change papers IS available. See here for a huge list of data sources for many climate models and papers.

Then tell me this, how would you discern between something acting as a feedback, and something acting as a forcing. Be specific.

"Feedback" vs. "forcing" is not something that is written into the models, but rather a qualitative description of the way it behaves, based upon its fundamental physics (which is what the models are based upon). An explanation of what the terms mean may be found here.

Yes, there *is* a correlation between temperature and CO2, and the historical record clearly shows CO2 changing *after* temperature. It is a novel assumption that suddenly, this behavior has changed, and as for causality, until you get a time machine, causes have to come before effects :)

This is nonsense. In physical systems, it is most commonly observed that coupling is two way. Like a see-saw. Which is cause and which is effect, the left side of the see-saw or the right side of the see-saw? Does the right side go up because you are pushing down on the left side, or does the left side go down because you are pushing up on the right side? It depends upon what the forcing is (which side you are pushing on). Has the fundamental behavior of a see-saw changed depending upon what side you pushed upon? Perhaps to a cargo cult scientist, it might seem so.

In climate models, the linkage between CO2 and temperature emerges naturally from the fundamental physics: either can lead, depending upon which side you are "pushing" on. If you push on the CO2 side, by adding CO2 to the atmosphere (from a temperature-independent source) then temperature subsequently follows by rising. If you push on the temperature side (by adding energy by a mechanism not dependent on CO2, such as an increase in solar radiation then temperature, then CO2 will follow by rising. This has been explained to you before. Which part of it do you not understand?

Note that this has nothing to do with "null hypotheses." Once you acknowledge that there is a correlation of any kind between CO2 and temperature, the null hypothesis has been rejected. A hypothesis about why there is a correlation cannot be can never be a null hypothesis. So if you want to propose that there is a "natural" mechanism that can account for these changes, you face the same challenges that climate scientists have met: develop a physically realistic model, show that it is consistent with historical data, test it by observation.

One does not need a competing model to demonstrate problems with an existing one.

No model is perfect. That's why we call them "models." The question is whether it is good enough to make useful predictions. For example, our soldiers calculate their trajectories using a physical model that has problems--it uses incorrect equations that do not properly deal with relativity. Yet it turns out that these problems are inconsequential with respect to targeting artillery shells. So nitpicking a model is easy to do, but has little scientific value--the challenge is to criticize a model in a meaningful way. That's why real scientists (unlike cargo cult scientists) always think in terms of competing models. To criticize a model in a scientifically meaningful way, you have to show that the "problem" that you have imagined that you have identified actually makes a difference in the conclusions. How do you do that? Fix the problem, and show your improved models is superior in terms of its ability to predict the results of real-world observations.

What you're proposing here is cargo cult science, with the demand that unless I can create a better model than the coconut radio transmitters and the bamboo landing fields, that I have no right to insist that you're barking up the wrong tree.

And indeed, that's one way we know that the coconut radio transmitters and bamboo landi

In regards to warming trend over the past 15 years, and how well models predicted it:

Because you only read the works of liars, all you get is lies. A better reference is here. We are well within the forecast temperature envelope. But models do significantly underpredict current sea level rise rates.

You've made the assertion that you know, with absolute certainty, the ratio of non-natural forcing to natural forcings.

I have made no such assertion. As usual you are misrepresenting what I say. What I have essentially said is that we can measure the temperature change over time and we know how the human caused forcings have varied over time. The total natural forcings can be determined from those two items. It's a bit more complicated than simple subtraction, but it's a well understood procedure.

There's no way to know anything with absolute certainty, but with high probability (P>98%), the anthropogenic forcings are much larger in magnitude than the natural forcings. And it is likely (P>70%) that the natural forcings have decreased in the last 50 years.

Realclimate has a couple of articles summarising the research on CO2 absorption here and here, with links to more writings on the subject and a bibliography if you're interested. It's fascinating stuff.

It is a shame that people approach climate science trying to cherry pick points to support their preexisting beliefs rather than trying to get informed about the state of the science, and then forming an opinion.

I think the problem is that the consequences of AGW are downright scary, and also quite costly to solve. There's also the problem that global warming is gradual and insidious -- you can see it on a plot of temperatures over a hundred year span, but you can't feel it day-to-day or even year-to-year. Without a sudden catastrophe to make people stop and think, most would rather shove their heads in the sand and pretend it isn't happening. It's a bit like the link between smoking and cancer a few decades ago ... or possibly the boiling-frog principle. Thus climate denialism becomes popular -- it's more important to believe in a fallacy that makes everything alright, than to accept the reality and deal with it, regardless of how costly that may be.

Realclimate has a couple of articles summarising the research on CO2 absorption here and here, with links to more writings on the subject and a bibliography if you're interested. It's fascinating stuff.

It is a shame that people approach climate science trying to cherry pick points to support their preexisting beliefs rather than trying to get informed about the state of the science, and then forming an opinion.

I think the problem is that the consequences of AGW are downright scary, and also quite costly to solve. There's also the problem that global warming is gradual and insidious -- you can see it on a plot of temperatures over a hundred year span, but you can't feel it day-to-day or even year-to-year. Without a sudden catastrophe to make people stop and think, most would rather shove their heads in the sand and pretend it isn't happening. It's a bit like the link between smoking and cancer a few decades ago ... or possibly the boiling-frog principle. Thus climate denialism becomes popular -- it's more important to believe in a fallacy that makes everything alright, than to accept the reality and deal with it, regardless of how costly that may be.

# What is tuning?

We are still a long way from being able to simulate the climate with a true first principles calculation. While many basic aspects of physics can be included (conservation of mass, energy etc.), many need to be approximated for reasons of efficiency or resolutions (i.e. the equations of motion need estimates of sub-gridscale turbulent effects, radiative transfer codes approximate the line-by-line calculations using band averaging), and still others are only known empirically (the formula for how fast clouds turn to rain for instance). With these approximations and empirical formulae, there is often a tunable parameter or two that can be varied in order to improve the match to whatever observations exist. Adjusting these values is described as tuning and falls into two categories. First, there is the tuning in a single formula in order for that formula to best match the observed values of that specific relationship. This happens most frequently when new parameterisations are being developed.

Secondly, there are tuning parameters that control aspects of the emergent system. Gravity wave drag parameters are not very constrained by data, and so are often tuned to improve the climatology of stratospheric zonal winds. The threshold relative humidity for making clouds is tuned often to get the most realistic cloud cover and global albedo. Surprisingly, there are very few of these (maybe a half dozen) that are used in adjusting the models to match the data. It is important to note that these exercises are done with the mean climate (including the seasonal cycle and some internal variability) â" and once set they are kept fixed for any perturbation experiment.

source: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/11/faq-on-climate-models/

So, even with the half-dozen parameters that are left to tune the model to the observed climate, perturbations are not tuned, so they can still be falsified.

Um, no they weren't.

What are you talking about? Of course they were talking about global cooling in the 1970's. Can't Google?

Wikipedia: Global Cooling.

It's been 150 years, and they haven't been able to prove it so far, and the theory of evolution hasn't done so well either.

You mean clouds?, the effect you're referring to is highly dependent on the size of the water droplets. So high levels of water vapour do not necessarily entail high levels of solar reflectance but it does directly entail a positive feedback effect on global temperatures. If you've got references to back-up your assertions, by all means, provide them. But I suspect that anyone using the phrase "Global Warming Alarmists" whilst arguing a point related to climate science has little actual interest in the Science.

What makes me sad is that one can ignore that some of the same people who are howling about global warming today were howling about a man-made ice age in the seventies, and expect the rest of us to blindly follow along. It's a bit disingenuous to claim that global warming was predicted 150 years ago, when a mere 40 years ago the alarmists were predicting the opposite.

Um, no they weren't.

My money is on "global warming" being listed as "discredited" in a few years as "global cooling" is now.

Then you're likely to lose some money there, I'm afraid.

Oh look another "informed skeptic."

CO2/temperature lag:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/04/the-lag-between-temp-and-co2/

Some articles on periods with unusual CO2/temperature differences:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-higher-in-past.htm
http://www.skepticalscience.com/CO2-has-been-higher-in-the-past.html

Actually foresight is working quite well for global warming. Foresight was working quite well for climate scientists when you claim "global cooling" was the rage. Most of them predicted warming at that time.

Getting raw data from climatologists or researchers is impossible. In some infamous cases, the raw data was destroyed. In virtually every other case the requests for data are ignore or refused.

That argument is singularly disingenuous.

This is a lie.

Type "raw climate data" into google.

The first link is http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/data-sources/

Have an apropriate amount of fun.

don't hold out much hope for the models ever being able to predict the temperature to 4 significant figures but that is what "the experts" claim they can do. When they have a model that starts in 1980 and currently predicts through 2010, I will listen.

Nobody ever claimed a 4 significant figure temperature. Unless you're talking Kelvin. Here's the old 2000 IPCC ensemble compared with the record. http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/01/2010-updates-to-model-data-comparisons/ It's seems like starting in 1980, the ensemble average is within 0.1C of all of the data sets. IPCC does underpredict sea level rise. It also overpredicts sea ice.

There you go.

You do realize that there was no such thing as a climate scientists until the IPCC came about and global warming activists wanted to restrict who was commenting on it right? Go ahead and show me some degree information on becoming a climate scientists from before 2000 or so. i would be really surprised if you could come close to it.

I see you didn't do your homework then. Here you go, a brife history of Climatology as a Profession. Climatology formed as a separate field of science in 1960s from several related fields where research on the topic was going on since early 20th century. A lot of important breakthroughs for climate science took place during 1930s and 1940 but it took a few more decades before those results from separate fields of science were pieced together into a comprehensive theory of the climate.

The climate scientists we have today are invented specifically for climate change and i would suggest that the first thing they are going to do is not publish something contradicting it and lose the rest of their career being blackballed.

Bullshit.

lol.. This is the entire problem with global warming, it's all "trust me", I know what 'I'm talking about". You don't see a problem there? How about if a used care salesman had that attitude?

No. You wouldn't like the answer because it involves a lot of research-related work on your part. There's no "trust me" in it, quite the contrary.

are you dense or something? The CRU emails were full of it. They blatantly dismissed research because it didn't fit into what they wanted.

Ok, but I'm still waiting for a specific example. Mind you, I've already seen a lot of alleged examples from the CRU emails but all of them were either deliberately misquoted or innocent scientific jargon misunderstood by laymen bloggers and journalists.

the models are broken and do not work for predictions. That's a plain and simple fact. They can only validate historical information if tweaked enough and have not even come close to accurately predicting future climate.

Really? I'd say that IPCC AR4 did pretty well forecasting the past decade and hindcasting 20 more years before that. And what do you mean by "tweaking"?

If you meant your "no, that's bullshit" to be taken as regarding the interpretation of the emails rather than the fact it happened (as I took it), you could have specified. You could have also given a counter-argument, perhaps taken from the following: http://scienceblogs.com/islandofdoubt/2009/11/the_hacked_climate_science_ema.php or maybe http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/the-cru-hack/ . Do I need to do all your work for you?

"And once upon a time all scientists knew that the earth was flat."

Aw, come on. That is a total non sequitur. I challenge you to find a scientist who studied, in a scientific way, whether the earth was round or flat and actually concluded it was flat. As I gather, most natural "science" back in the days was actually philosophy. That's not an argument for anything.

"So far, none of the climatologists predictions have come true."

What? So no ice has melted?

"If you've studied just a little bit of chaos theory you know that it is impossible to forecast weather for more than a very limited time."

Sorry, but that's irrelevant. You are mistaken: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/11/chaos-and-climate/

Eh, could it be that perhaps climate scientists are already aware of the problems of chaotic systems given that weather is one of the prime examples of chaotic system or would that not fit into your nice little theory that it is all bogus?

I tried googling this, and lo and behold, the first hit is this which patiently explains the problem of chaos and the difference between weather prediction and long-term climate prediction:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/11/chaos-and-climate/

Please do not spread misinformation. You are a good example of what the OP is objecting too, someone who doesn't know anything about the field at all but still think he/she is qualified to discredit it.