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Arrgh, return of the climate zombies.

Zombie #28
Zombie #43
Zombie #92

Arrgh, return of the climate zombies.

Zombie #28
Zombie #43
Zombie #92

Yes, but this is exactly the problem. You quote "minimum concentration", but there is also a maximum effective concentration, which is when the "CO2 hole" in the spectrum is closed. Any CO2 after that is basically just food for plants. There is some argument that CO2 is already at this level, and further CO2 doesn't matter. (other than greening the deserts)

That's an interesting argument, and apparently it took until 1956 until more work was done on that. I googled "CO2 extinction coefficient" and got: http://www.skepticalscience.com/saturated-co2-effect-advanced.htm. In short: the CO2 IR spectrum is not monochromatic, and there are plenty of wavelengths where the IR radiation still comes through and is dependent on concentration, so no.

You'll need to consult a real IR spectroscopist to study more, because this stuff is not trivial.

I do remember vaguely that there was this enormous C-O double bond stretch vibration band around 1800? reciproke centimeters. But it was a bit different in -COOH and aldehydes than in CO2 itself.

Perhaps sea ice extent oscillates between the North and South Poles

Yes, it's also been noted that the frequency of that (rough) oscillation seems to be synchronised with the seasons, weird huh?

Seriously, the ice at the two poles behaves in totally different ways. Just pause for a second and think about the geography, Antarctica is a land surrounded by deep oceans and a strong circumpolar ocean current, the Artic is a (relatively) shallow sea surrounded by land. Melting at the south pole INCREASES* the extent of the Antarctic sea ice.

This is because in Antarctica the majority of the sea ice comes from glacial outflows, this ice breaks up with the mechanical action of the waves and floats away as icebergs. Whatever bergs (or ships) that are still close to the coast in autumn become part of that years sea ice. The mouths of these glaciers are enormous and create permanent ice shelves that are several hundred feet thick.

These ice shelves are the best indicators that the warming trend is impacting Antarctica, we are seeing Antarctic ice shelves that have existed for at least 4kys breaking up disappearing at the rate of roughly one a year for over a decade now.

OTOH Greenland and the Antarctic peninsula have a lot in common and are both effected by something called Polar Amplification, a phenomena predicted by the much maligned climate models BEFORE it was observed in the data. There are a whole bunch of such phenomena that were predicted by models and subsequently observed in the real world, "stratospheric cooling" is another well known example.

In other words sea ice extent is basically meaningless without some context, What you really want to know for the Artic is sea ice volume. I've been following the subject for over 30yrs and the best estimates of volume that I have seen use data gleaned from cold war sonar maps that were declassified sometime in the last decade. According to those figures Artic sea ice volume is now less than 1/5th of what it was when I was born (1959).

Some (perhaps unwelcome) advise, forget about climate science for now and spend a year or two working on your technical research skills, the best way I know of doing that is to skip church (or some other overrated social club), and spend the time browsing WP and "double checking" the theories and assumptions you hold most dearly. Science is intelligently designed to evolve towards the ideal of "truth" (google "the relativity of wrong" and read it, I can't be bothered to link it). Not only that but for the last couple of centuries the rate of these changes has been increasing over time, Meaning that the older you get the faster it changes, and the more neural archives you will need to update (a personal "theory" that I use to explain my "senior" moments).
I jumped on the quote above because I first heard it in the mid-90's, I'll concede that on the surface it sounds plausible as it did to me when I first heard it. However as with most of the anti-science "talking points" pushed by a minority group within the FF industry via extremely effective (but surprisingly cheap) professional lobbyists, the theorised "oscillation" soon melts under a skeptical eye. This is why "deniers" don't normally give an alternative explanation. let alone one that stands up to rigor of broader peer-review process. I strongly suggest you use a reputable source to check out the next climate meme before you infect others with it. As stated in the title your particular meme is #113.

To be fair, some of those who started politicizing AGW early on didn't help

Concern trolling.

People should not have picked results, out of context, that were convenient at the time.

Which models you referring to - maybe the ones that have consistently understated the rate of change?

But when someone finds evidence that more ice is being formed somewhere else it looks suspect

Not as suspect as long-debunked denialist talking point, since warmer weather can carry more precipitation, which can result in increased snowfall. What's next, why can't we we see stars on shots from the lunar landing?

Some of the loudest proponents of AWG, have done the most damage to the cause. After trying to simplify the situation for the greater population and then having the over simplification shown to be questionable a couple of times; laymen have a heard time knowing what to think.

More concern trolling.

To make matters worse, people start calling each other names and ridiculing each other. When you start labeling non-believers: deniers, Luddites, planet-killers, etc. what do you think is going to happen. Hell, how would most people react?

Tone trolling for those who want willful ignorance and faith-based science respected. The anti-vaccers have earned their derision, but the climate change denialists are going to get a lot more people killed than the anti-vaccers.

Don't like it? Come up with a superior model based on science rather than ideology. Denialists and concern trolls love to talk about how newer theories have replaced older ones on the shape of the universe, just up thread, but ignore the part where better theories were developed.

But instead of taking a deep breath and discussing it like rational people, it's devolved into name calling.

It's been discussed rationally ad nauseum over the last 30 years. Rationality is not the problem, we've had that in spades, willful ignorance is. And for some people, it is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into" - Johnathan Swift.

Well actually, it has been warming over the past 200 months, whether you take the monthly averages
http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/Skeptics_v_Realists.jpg
Or the yearly averages
http://blogs-images.forbes.com/petergleick/files/2012/02/GlobalT-15yrs.png
It's funny that the same people who crow that the"hockey stick" graph has been "debunked" despite a 50 year long acceleration in increasing temperatures, are the first to identify a permanent downturn in temps on the basis of maybe a decade.

Do you think global warming has only been happening for 30 years? There's still a solid upward trend in temperatures in the longer term, regardless of what's happening with the pacific cycle:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/images/pdo_temp.gif

It didn't start around the point of industrialization either. To suggest that it's responsible for most of the apparently man-made global warming that's been observed is as wrong to suggest that it will lead to an ice age now that it's causing cooling rather than warming.

You didn't read what I linked to or don't understand the issue. Or you're one of those "only surface temps matter" types. The warming is still right on schedule, it's just being absorbed by the oceans and reduced temporarily by the La Nina effect.

If you look to climatology for weather forecasts it will always be wrong somewhere. Generally the predictions have been pretty good:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/comparing-global-temperature-predictions.html

But keep trying to mislead with fudged statistics (discussed elsewhere in this thread) and spread FUD. The great thing about science is that it doesn't care what you believe.

Oh hello, most used climate myth #59 again! They really ought to rank that on higher.

Congratulations, you just regurgitated most used climate myth #11. (I can do this the whole day.)

Congratulations, you just regurgitated most used climate myths #66 and #59. Please fact-check before showing off your ignorance.

Congratulations, you just regurgitated most used climate myths #66 and #59. Please fact-check before showing off your ignorance.

Or, the uneducated population believes that the majority of studies do not support anthropomorphic climate change and are naturally skeptical of conclusions drawn on shaky modeling.

FTFY.

Also, congratulations, you just credulously repeated most used climate myths #4 and #6.

Or, the uneducated population believes that the majority of studies do not support anthropomorphic climate change and are naturally skeptical of conclusions drawn on shaky modeling.

FTFY.

Also, congratulations, you just credulously repeated most used climate myths #4 and #6.

The Forbes article: congratulations, the writer just regurgitated most used climate myth #5. On a side note, he's the Director of Entitlement and Budget Policy for the Heartland Institute, which makes him close to the last person I would consider a credible source in climate science.

As for the other 3 news articles, you only read the headlines, didn't you? If you just would have taken the time to read the first few sentences, you would have seen the study they refer to directly opposes your standpoint.

From the USA Today article:
That leveling off fed part of the skepticism toward global warming predictions in recent years, but researchers behind the new report see this "hiatus" as a pause in an inevitable climb. "Our results strongly confirm the role that (man-made) emissions are having on the climate," says climate scientist Shang-Ping Xie, senior author on the Nature journal study. "At one point over the long term, the effect we are seeing in the Pacific will stop. I'm confident the bigger increases in warming will resume."

From the NBC article:
But scientists said a series of naturally occurring La Nina weather events in the Pacific in recent years, which bring cooler waters to the surface, had masked the global heat-trapping effect of rising emissions of greenhouse gases. "Our results show that the current hiatus is part of natural climate variability, tied specifically to a La Nina-like decadal cooling," according to the study by Yu Kosaka and Shang-Ping Xie at the University of California, San Diego. "Although similar decadal hiatus events may occur in the future, the multi-decadal warming trend is very likely to continue with greenhouse gas increase," they wrote in the journal Nature.

From The Guardian:
The scientists, using computer models, compared their results with observations and concluded that global average annual temperatures have been lower than they would otherwise have been because of the oscillation. But the observed higher summer temperatures of recent years show more of the true effects of global warming, according to the research. Global average temperatures are taken over the whole year, obscuring the effect of this seasonal variation.
Shang-Ping Xie, professor of environmental science at Scripps, said: "In summer, the equatorial Pacific's grip on the northern hemisphere loosens, and the increased greenhouse gases continue to warm temperatures, causing record heat waves and unprecedented Arctic sea ice retreat."
Dr Alex Sen Gupta, of the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales, who was not part of the study team, said: "The authors have set up some elegant experiments using a climate model to test whether a natural oscillation that has gone through a large swing in the tropical Pacific Ocean over the last decade can explain the recent halt in surface global warming the new simulation accurately reproduces the timing and pattern of changes that have occurred over the last four decades with remarkable skill. This clearly shows that the recent slowdown is a consequence of a natural oscillation."
(...)
The slowdown in the upward march of global average temperatures has been greeted by climate sceptics as evidence that the climate is less affected by greenhouse gases than thought. But climate scientists are much more cautious, pointing out that the trend is still upwards, and that the current temperature rises are well within the expected range. Past temperature records and computer predictions both show that periods of slower rises are to be expected as part of the natural variability of the planet's climate.

To put it simple, La Niña stirred up some cold water from the depths of the Pacific that has been acting as a heat sink, temporarily slowing down (not reversing!) the warming. But there's only so much heat that can be absorbed by this phenomenon before the temperatures will continue rising just like before.

Please, before you post anything on this topic, go to this site and check if it hasn't been debunked. By endlessly repeating long-discredited views, you're only adding noise to the discussion.

Please, before you post anything on this topic, go to this site and check if it hasn't been debunked. By endlessly repeating long-discredited views, you're only adding noise to the discussion.

Please, before you post anything on this topic, go to this site and check if it hasn't been debunked. By endlessly repeating long-discredited views, you're only adding noise to the discussion.

You might want to look at two things.

Or, you know, you might want to look in it, since if you are basing your theory on these things, then it's up to you to do the research which demonstrates how they are significant.

One is the actual thermal record over geological time, which shows intervals of extremely rapid natural warming and cooling. Second, you might want to consider the fact that much of that record is essentially smeared out by imprecision in the proxies used so that one is comparing two different kinds of averages -- one averaged over a very short time interval, and another where the average might well be over a period longer than the entire time we have had thermometers.

So, in fact, you have no proof of your assertion that there have been previous periods of warming in the same timescale as the present warming phenomenon? Thanks for letting us know.

Curiously, not even most climate scientists would assert such a thing, I don't think. Some might. For one thing, there hasn't been any statistically significant warming for roughly 16 years, in spite of "man".

Go for you, contradicting the actual observations. That puts your statements in the right light.

Ocean temperature sinking is not a suggestion or a projection. It's an observed phenomenon and by far the largest factor mitigating surface warming. It's not a guess either. But continue to stick your head in the sand, as long as things are nice there it doesn't matter what's happening on the other side of the surface, right?

I'm glad you appear to have made a cursory reading of the entire summary page at least. It's a start.

Ocean temperature sinking is not a suggestion or a projection. It's an observed phenomenon and by far the largest factor mitigating surface warming. It's not a guess either. But continue to stick your head in the sand, as long as things are nice there it doesn't matter what's happening on the other side of the surface, right?

I'm glad you appear to have made a cursory reading of the entire summary page at least. It's a start.

Watching a train wreck while you are on the train is one hell of a show, eh?

If a combination out of the methane feedback
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2013/jul/24/arctic-ice-free-methane-economy-catastrophe
and the lag of the temperature increase that is caused by the greenhouse effect mentioned here:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Climate-Change-The-40-Year-Delay-Between-Cause-and-Effect.html
happens, then we may have already triggered a number of positive feed backs that will be impossible to stop.

All those human actors that make the process so interesting are already poised to take action too, unfortunately I can't find any direct link to Snowden's info about military disaster preparations and action against green resistance movements, but hey there is talk about this.

OK. It doesn't sound like you're trolling, so I'll give a more useful post this time:

Check out this site. It has some really good material and references about the science behind this stuff.

You might also find this interview with one of the key scientists interesting.

I don't profess to be a climate change guru, but this stuff looks reasonably legit to me.

They probably did notice it was a volcano

http://www.skepticalscience.com/Measuring-CO2-levels-from-the-volcano-at-Mauna-Loa.html

>But how about gas from the volcano? It is true that volcanoes blow out CO2 from time to time and that this can interfere with the readings. Most of the time, though, the prevailing winds blow the volcanic gasses away from the observatory. But when the winds do sometimes blow from active vents towards the observatory, the influence from the volcano is obvious on the normally consistent records and any dubious readings can be easily spotted and edited out (Ryan, 1995).

Reminds me of "climategate" where the pundits gleefully reported that researchers admitted to using a "trick" to "hide" something. Of course, if you read more than those two words, you realized it wasn't anything shady. Nonetheless, the fossil fuel PR team had great fun with it and some idiots out there took it as reason to ignore climate change for longer.

You may be interested in this.

After enjoying the review of the creationist tactic of combating science by means of a letter signed by mostly non-experts, scroll down to the plot and consider it carefully. Notice anything?

OTOH, the link contains facts, which may cause you irreparable harm if you click it.

I suppose you've seen this already and simply chose to ignore it:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-positives-negatives-intermediate.htm

The problem is that the negatives heavily outweigh those positives:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-positives-negatives-intermediate.htm

For the simple minded: http://www.skepticalscience.com/human-co2-smaller-than-natural-emissions.htm

The climate is warming up over the entire earth.

No, it's not. We have not seen any warming for 15 years. Even the IPCC admits to this now that the evidence is overwhelming.

Cite?

And for the countercite, welcome to the escalator!

There is NOT scientific consensus on the fact that humans (we) are responsible for all of the global warming that's happening. More likely, we're a contributing factor, on top of a natural cycle of warming that would happen anyway.

Actually, when you count in natural factors, humanity is responsible for roughly 105% of the observed warming. Most of the natural factors are current acting in a negative direction, without human activity the climate would be cooling.

You're right, temperature isn't rising for me either. Though that might simply be because the sun just set here.

More relevantly, yes, the temperature is still trending upwards, despite natural cycles that slow or reverse this over shorter periods of time.

Let me direct you to this pretty graph that you might be able to understand.

You're right, temperature isn't rising for me either. Though that might simply be because the sun just set here.

More relevantly, yes, the temperature is still trending upwards, despite natural cycles that slow or reverse this over shorter periods of time.

Let me direct you to this pretty graph that you might be able to understand.

There is NOT scientific consensus on the fact that humans (we) are responsible for all of the global warming that's happening.

Yes, there is.

If "adapting" means "build a 1m seawall around New York", then sure, just as soon as people stop arguing. It's not going to happen around every coastal city & town in the US though, so that's a massive cost to relocate all those prime coastal buildings and infrastructure. But the real damage comes from occasional storm surges like Hurricane Sandy; add 1m to that and half the city would be flooded. And of course, strong storms like that will also get more common.

Then there's the developing world; no seawalls for them. Saltwater surges ruin essential cropland and will displace millions in places like Bangladesh, creating a flood of starving refugees and political turmoil. Some island nations are already becoming unviable (q.f. Tuvalu).

Yes, we can and will adapt. But it's sure as hell going to cost a freaking bundle to do so - and the price will be in human suffering for countries that can't afford the dollars. Far cheaper to mitigate the changes ASAP, as the costs are rising every year we delay.

And you didn't just ask about my motivations, you stated your false assumption in clear English.

I said nothing of your motivations. I really don't care what those are, though I would charitably assume that your interest in the truth of this matter would prompt your questioning (perhaps shown such charity you'll extend the same the scientists' motivations). I spoke of your assumptions and that because you make them clear. Consider the following:

It still seems to me that THEY (scientists, followed by the media) are playing self-serving word games.

This implies that you've concluded the scientist are self-interested. Your words; not mine.

[...] their predictions have gone so demonstrably awry.

Here you imply that they are consciously aware of their failings (otherwise, why would this be a plausible motivation, as you suggest). Combined with the previous statement, one can only concluded that scientists are potentially deceivers out of their own self-interest.

The motives are made questionable by the very act referred to.

This is the reason you give for both of the above claims. But you reject any explanation given to you about why scientists use the term "climate change" as unconvincing. These include (but are not limited to): 1) the term fits the data; 2) they've been using the term all along. I'd like to consider the second explanation, but allow me to provide context. Here's your claim:

They have certainly made arguments, which were largely baseless. And presented NO evidence whatever. The only actual evidence that was presented WAS irrelevant, because it was backing an argument that had nothing to do with the actual question I asked.

But FriendlyPrimate had provided a relevant response which included a citation with several helpful bits of evidence to support it:

The term "Climate Change" has been around since at least the 1950's (see http://www.skepticalscience.com/print.php?r=326).

To which you responded:

That has absolutely nothing to do with my comment. The phrase "climate change" has almost certainly been around a lot longer than that. So what?

The conversation began when you wanted to know why there was a big switch from "global warming" to "climate change". This assumes that there was a big change (and, please, don't tell me that since I infer an assumption here that is a necessary corollary to your question that I'm "assuming [YOUR] motivations"; if you're unfamiliar with how an inference is made then I can recommend several textbooks on this thing you call 'pseudo-logic'). When people--and FriendlyPrimate was not the only one--have pointed out that there was no such switch, that in reality the term has been in use all along and the press is just now catching up, you've dismissed their responses as irrelevant. Incidentally, you've never provided evidence for the shift you claim. You just state it. Sometimes, when you really want to make a point, you preface it with "Fact:". Maybe if you tried using capital letters when you say "Fact" it'd be more convincing, but I'd recommend evidence instead.

I could say more, but I should return to the first explanation offered you, i.e. that the term better fits the data. This you have rejected as "unconvincing." Now I will grant that you never said, "I think that's unconvincing because [...]" You just stated what "seems" to you, i.e. that the scientist play games with the public out of their own self-interest (see quote two above, your words). Now, if you think I have gone too far in inferring assumptions from this you have my apologies. After all, I was left with a riddle. But I can give you every assurance that I answered the riddle only with what you provided me. So,

"Heaven forfend" (forfend? wtf?) we stop using tricks and misleading data to try and justify our stance: http://www.skepticalscience.com/cherrypicking-deny-continued-ocean-global-warming.html

Recent warming has not remained flat. Some suggested reading: link .

Read that article carefully. It doesn't say "the models" have failed—it contrasts novel near-term models with "conventional climate projections", which are made on scales of decades rather than years and are of proven reliability. The radiation balance of the Earth is still positive, and even if not as much of the energy is going into the surface and atmosphere as some scientists have predicted, ocean temperatures show that the world is indeed getting much warmer. Both forcings and feedbacks are up, up, up, and we are in record-breaking territory right now, with every decade that goes by becoming the hottest decade on record. Anyone who thinks we don't have a problem is deluding themselves.

The Earth's climate has always been changing and will be changing while the planet is alive.

And you won't find a single climate scientist who would disagree with you. However, that in no way should imply that climate change NOW is a good thing. In fact, sudden climate changes often were a BAD thing to the existing life forms of the time.

It is uncertain whether humans have measurable influence on those changes at all;

No, it's pretty certain at this point. Fourier himself proposed greenhouse theory back in the 1820's, so it's been around for quite some time. Since then, mountains of research and data have been collected on the subject.

the fact that people with clear financial interests claim so does not make it certainty.

Oh stop with this tired bullshit, ok? Exxon by itself makes twice as much money in a quarter as the entire yearly NSF budget, of which only a small portion goes to climate related grants. The difference in money between climate science research and fossil fuel industry profits is orders of magnitude. Why the hell would "money grubbing" climate scientists bother fighting over scraps when they could be making bank shilling for an oil company?

Even if we suppose there is a measurable influence it is still uncertain whether the human influence is setting the current trends -- there have been warm ages in the past, too.

Because scientists aren't fucking stupid, despite what you and others like you think. We have proxies. We have satellite measurements. We have mathematical models built upon fundamental physical theories like thermodynamics and fluid dynamics. Climate science isn't some magical creation. It's built upon solid, provable, physics that have been used, in some cases, for centuries.

For instance, the Medieval Warm Period.

Which, if you'd bother reading any real peer-reviewed research on, was a REGIONAL PHENOMENA. You'd also see that the conditions that induced it were completely different from what we are seeing now, and what we're seeing is GLOBAL.

When I was growing up, i.e. the 70ies and the 80ies, the climate scare was The Big Bad Global Cooling.

It was bullshit then, and it's bullshit now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling
http://www.skepticalscience.com/ice-age-predictions-in-1970s.htm

At the end of the 90ies and until recently, the climate scare was The Big Bad Global Warming.

If by 90's you mean 1890's, then yes you're approximately correct. http://www.skepticalscience.com/history-climate-science.html

The theory of global warming is older than Einstein's theory of relativity.

Then the scare mongers got smarter and now the scare is The Big Bad Climate Change Whatever It Is.

Global warming refers to rising average global temperatures. Climate change refers to the impacts caused by global warming. Of course, you could have just looked that up but you don't strike me as the type of person to do that.

Since the climate is always changing it is a perfectly safe bet it is going to change, somehow.

And that means it shouldn't be a concern? Exactly how the hell does that logic work? The last time the planet underwent a climate shift our species almost went extinct. Before that, every major climate shift has been catastrophic for the life that existed at the time. It shear idiocy to think that global climate change, anthropogenic otherwise, should not be a MAJOR FUCKING CONCERN to everyone on the planet.

To prevent the climate from changing is about as possible as to prevent the Earth fro

The Earth's climate has always been changing and will be changing while the planet is alive.

And you won't find a single climate scientist who would disagree with you. However, that in no way should imply that climate change NOW is a good thing. In fact, sudden climate changes often were a BAD thing to the existing life forms of the time.

It is uncertain whether humans have measurable influence on those changes at all;

No, it's pretty certain at this point. Fourier himself proposed greenhouse theory back in the 1820's, so it's been around for quite some time. Since then, mountains of research and data have been collected on the subject.

the fact that people with clear financial interests claim so does not make it certainty.

Oh stop with this tired bullshit, ok? Exxon by itself makes twice as much money in a quarter as the entire yearly NSF budget, of which only a small portion goes to climate related grants. The difference in money between climate science research and fossil fuel industry profits is orders of magnitude. Why the hell would "money grubbing" climate scientists bother fighting over scraps when they could be making bank shilling for an oil company?

Even if we suppose there is a measurable influence it is still uncertain whether the human influence is setting the current trends -- there have been warm ages in the past, too.

Because scientists aren't fucking stupid, despite what you and others like you think. We have proxies. We have satellite measurements. We have mathematical models built upon fundamental physical theories like thermodynamics and fluid dynamics. Climate science isn't some magical creation. It's built upon solid, provable, physics that have been used, in some cases, for centuries.

For instance, the Medieval Warm Period.

Which, if you'd bother reading any real peer-reviewed research on, was a REGIONAL PHENOMENA. You'd also see that the conditions that induced it were completely different from what we are seeing now, and what we're seeing is GLOBAL.

When I was growing up, i.e. the 70ies and the 80ies, the climate scare was The Big Bad Global Cooling.

It was bullshit then, and it's bullshit now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling
http://www.skepticalscience.com/ice-age-predictions-in-1970s.htm

At the end of the 90ies and until recently, the climate scare was The Big Bad Global Warming.

If by 90's you mean 1890's, then yes you're approximately correct. http://www.skepticalscience.com/history-climate-science.html

The theory of global warming is older than Einstein's theory of relativity.

Then the scare mongers got smarter and now the scare is The Big Bad Climate Change Whatever It Is.

Global warming refers to rising average global temperatures. Climate change refers to the impacts caused by global warming. Of course, you could have just looked that up but you don't strike me as the type of person to do that.

Since the climate is always changing it is a perfectly safe bet it is going to change, somehow.

And that means it shouldn't be a concern? Exactly how the hell does that logic work? The last time the planet underwent a climate shift our species almost went extinct. Before that, every major climate shift has been catastrophic for the life that existed at the time. It shear idiocy to think that global climate change, anthropogenic otherwise, should not be a MAJOR FUCKING CONCERN to everyone on the planet.

To prevent the climate from changing is about as possible as to prevent the Earth fro

In the sixties and seventies, the climate hucksters were selling us on a man-made ice age.

Bullshit. The media sensationalized a couple of crackpots claiming a new ice age was coming. Check the peer-reviewed scientific literature during that time period. Just about every paper discussing the subject was in regards to warming. http://www.skepticalscience.com/news.php?n=11

In the eighties, they told us California would be underwater by 2000. It's still there.

Bullshit. No credible peer-reviewed research ever stated anything REMOTELY close to that possibility either during the 80's or anytime before or after. I'm pretty sure this is a crock that you just made up as there is no physically possible way for California to go "underwater" short of a massive asteroid impact. Even if all of Greenland and Antarctica melted, most of California would still be above sea level

Maybe alot of people twist and exaggerate the evidence for their own reasons when $ billions are on the line. A $100k grant ? Just in the Obama years alone, he's handed hundreds of millions of your money to fake greenies. By fake , I mean ones that took the money and ran, never living up to any of their promises.

Oh, you're one of the conspiracy nutters. Ok, you want to play the money game? The National Science Foundation (NSF) has a yearly budget at the moment of $5 billion, and that covers all the sciences. Exxon has a QUARTERLY profit of $9.5 billion. So in a given year just Exxon by itself is making nearly 8 TIMES the entire budget for the NSF. And that is just one fossil fuel company.

The fossil fuel industry profits dwarfs climate research budgets by orders of magnitude. If climate scientists wanted money, they would drop this "conspiracy" in a heartbeat and go work for Exxon and the like saying how everything is just peachy.

Not so. Read the Newsweek article, Time, etc. the contemporaneous press shows the coming ice age was quite the thing on the 70s.

The media isn't a good guide to what scientists actually think.

Meanwhile, back in reality, cooling never was the dominant opinion in scientific publications.

Also note that until we figured global warming out, global cooling was a reasonable prediction, since we appear to be in an interglacial that can be expected to go back toward cold at some point.

In fact, the last I read on the topic (several years ago) said we're experiencing forcing toward warmth due to greenhouse gasses and forcing toward coolth due to the interglacial cycle, and it happens that the forcing toward warmth is stronger, so we're warming up rather than cooling down.

The term "Climate Change" has been around since at least the 1950's (see http://www.skepticalscience.com/print.php?r=326).

"Climate Change" is more common now thanks to conservative think tanks who made a concerted effort to use that term in the early 2000s because it was considered "less scary" than global warming. Scientists went along with it because "Climate Change" is technically more accurate anyway and they are not particularly good at playing politics.

You've got to envy the Republicans in their ability to twist language to suit their needs.

Plants hovering up the CO2 is a common Denier Myth. Do you have cites for how that works?

And do we need to release 100% of CO2 before it is a problem? Or are you just trying to spin the argument?

But the indications are not great.

The title of the linked article is "Can animals and plants adapt to global warming?" It is worth noting here that most existing animals and plants already have adapted to the considerable global warming that followed the end of the last glacial period. What is different this time is the widespread habitat destruction of a global human presence.

So my view is that we already know that the answer to the question is a qualified "yes" (some organisms don't have other places to go). The existing plants and animals can for the most part adapt to global warming, if they have some options of long term migration. In that light, I think this particular alleged harm of global warming could be substantially mitigated by creating connected zones of wild areas.

Also, there's no discussion of harm to human society which IMHO should be valued higher than species preservation. Here, I think the argument is far weaker because the usual proposed solutions (radically cutting back on carbon emissions) would cause substantial harm to poor people throughout the world. It also has little support in the developing world which is currently responsible for most greenhouse gas emission increases.

It's also worth noting that we're on track to fail to achieve even the low end of the temperature range increase (2C by 2100) claimed by that link. There has been a consistent bias to overestimate the effects of global warming. I think it has to do with the considerable public spending that can be released if it is considered a significant and urgent danger.

That is a fair question and the answer is not completely known. But the indications are not great. I can turn this around, why are you confident that all will be fine?

Sure, read Skeptical Science. Those quoted figures are from one single location and may not reflect what was happening elsewhere. This site is an excellent example of good science and they have extensive responses to the common denier arguments. I would recommend spending some time there.

Also, keep in mind that the issue is what is forcing the increase. The 400PPM is not going away in our lifetime nor our grandchildren's lifetime. This problem will get worse not better. And of course 12,000 years ago the population was a lot smaller. The total world population probably never exceeded 15 million inhabitants before the invention of agriculture so with 7 Billion people alive today the impact of a warmer environment is likely to be higher than it was 12,000 years ago.

I also realize that the fucking Sun has much more effect on the climate than we ever will.

True, if there were no Sun, the temperature would be roughly 2.7 Kelvin. Right now it's 86 degrees Fahrenheit where I live, or 303.15 Kelvins, so about a 11,228% increase for where I live, at the moment. So yeah, humans have come up with no feasible method of heating up our own entire planet by that amount without using nearby star undergoing nuclear fusion. If that's how you want to look at it.

Most people are fucking retarded when it comes to climate.

Again, totally true. For example, if someone were to think a valid point to make in a climate debate was that the Sun is affecting our climate more than humans. Problem is, the Sun has reached a relatively static heat output for the functional purpose of generating and sustaining life. That is, temperature hasn't changed rapidly enough within the lifespan of any species to fundamentally alter their environment in a way that the species could not adapt through the natural course of evolution. The last Ice Age was over a period of 100,000 years, plenty of time for most species to adapt. But now we're talking about global warming, on a scale that can be felt within someone's lifetime. Earth's ecosystems have been fine tuned to a temperature equilibrium that is changing faster than they can adapt. And the Sun, of all things, is cooling, so we know (for a plethora of other reasons, too) it's man-made.

and you know the suns temp as far back as when? maybe the ice age? how about distance to the sun?

I also realize that the fucking Sun has much more effect on the climate than we ever will.

True, if there were no Sun, the temperature would be roughly 2.7 Kelvin. Right now it's 86 degrees Fahrenheit where I live, or 303.15 Kelvins, so about a 11,228% increase for where I live, at the moment. So yeah, humans have come up with no feasible method of heating up our own entire planet by that amount without using nearby star undergoing nuclear fusion. If that's how you want to look at it.

Most people are fucking retarded when it comes to climate.

Again, totally true. For example, if someone were to think a valid point to make in a climate debate was that the Sun is affecting our climate more than humans. Problem is, the Sun has reached a relatively static heat output for the functional purpose of generating and sustaining life. That is, temperature hasn't changed rapidly enough within the lifespan of any species to fundamentally alter their environment in a way that the species could not adapt through the natural course of evolution. The last Ice Age was over a period of 100,000 years, plenty of time for most species to adapt. But now we're talking about global warming, on a scale that can be felt within someone's lifetime. Earth's ecosystems have been fine tuned to a temperature equilibrium that is changing faster than they can adapt. And the Sun, of all things, is cooling, so we know (for a plethora of other reasons, too) it's man-made.