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Responding to you because I don't want to try arguing with someone who is using (primarily useless) IPCC data to back his point. CO2 levels follow temperature levels, not the other way around. Look up "CO2 vs Temperature" on Google, and you'll see several articles presenting this phenomenon. Check this page out; the graph shows this relationship perfectly.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-lags-temperature.htm

You are missing my point. So many here use the excuse to not listen to someone *regardless* if its not towing the AGW party line. I know plenty of National Academy of Science folks that don't tow the line

I think that if the elite independent scientific academies had come out stating that there is reason for doubt about the reality of global warming, there would be substantial basis for doubt. But the reality is that virtually every major National Academy of Sciences has endorsed the view that CO2 induced global warming is a real problem.

Big waves washing over cites like some high budget hollow flick is "mostly right". Perhaps you should read the peer reviewed stuff, where the scientists are required to back sweeping statements like "unprecedented" change. You get a different picture entirely, and they in fact don't use such language since the data doesn't really support it.

I don't think that anybody has claimed that the projected temperatures are unprecedented if you include prehistoric times, although such a massive injection of CO2 probably is, since we know of no natural source capable of this.

Here's a statement from the US NAS investigation of the "hockey stick," one of the most eminent peer-review groups every constituted:

"It can be said with a high level of confidence that global mean surface temperature was higher during the last few decades of the 20th century than during any comparable period during the preceding four centuries. This statement is justified by the consistency of the evidence from a wide variety of geographically diverse proxies."

"Less confidence can be placed in large-scale surface temperature reconstructions for the period from A.D. 900 to 1600. Presently available proxy evidence indicates that temperatures at many, but not all, individual locations were higher during the past 25 years than during any period of comparable length since A.D. 900. The uncertainties associated with reconstructing hemispheric mean or global mean temperatures from these data increase substantially backward in time through this period and are not yet fully quantified."

Al Gore should be totally trusted

I don't think that anybody should act on the basis of trust in any politician. But in this case, it turns out that Al Gore is merely repeating what the most authoritative scientific sources worldwide have already concluded.

'mon, really? You're going to sit there with a straight face and accept that not measuring 75% of the earth's surface temp is fine and dandy?

Sounds pretty good to me. Polls can obtain highly reliable statistical results by sampling a much smaller % of a population. Do you have any evidence that 75% is insufficient? For example, a model in which sampling 75% of the earth's surface yields substantially incorrect conclusions?

Sure. Volanoes

BZZZT! Wrong. It is a myth that volcanos emit anything approaching the CO2 released into the atmosphere by man . But it is true that one way in which climate models are tested is by examining whether the predicted climate effects of volcanos match observations.

They reproduce it by hard coding it in, not by actually running the simulation.

BZZZT! Wrong again

Yes, in the 1800s ships took temperature readings of the ocean. And just how accurate, precise and numerous were those readings?

There were about 280,000 such readings, covering most of the world's oceans. With that many readings, you'd expect the means to be pretty accurate and precise. Unless, of course, you have some kind of model that demonstrates that more readings are required?

I love Fermi as much as the next guy, but a systemic bias isn't going to "cancel out".

Any fixed bias cancels out in determination of a trend. Try it yourself. Take a set of x,y values, do a linear regression. Then add a fixed value to all of the y values and do it again. You'll find that the slope of the fitted line does not change at all.

I'm arguing that the default here is an assertion of ignorance, not an assertion of culpability. Identifying gaps does not mean I've got a better idea, it just means that your idea isn't as good as you think it is.

In other words, you are engaging in exactly the same reasoning as the creationists, pointing to "gaps," and trying to suggest that current theory would be unable to account for the unknown contents of those gaps. When you assert with no theoretical basis that the number, accuracy, and precision of measurements is inadequate to evaluate climate change, you are making just such a "gap" argument.

And here's the rub -> negative feedbacks. Is climate highly sensitive to CO2, or insensitive? And here's where your basic physics kick AGW in the nards -> CO2 has a specific maximum spectrum it can absorb, after which, you get no additional warming.

BZZZT! False. This was an error in early modeling which has been known to be mistaken for half a decade. See here, here, and here. But just like creationists, who are still trotting out arguments that were debunked in the time of Darwin, anti-AGW debaters continue to trot out ancient fallacies. For estimates of climate sensitivity derived from a wide variety of observations, see here.

Look, in the end, if you're really thinking like a scientist here, tell me what evidence, either in the various proxy records or in direct observation, would convince you that the climate is not highly sensitive to CO2?

To have even minimal credibility, you need a mathematical model showing that it is possible to reasonably model historical and prehistorical climate change and the climatic effects

You also know that CO2 has a maximum absorption limit, right? And that after that saturation point, it cannot possibly contribute to more warming, right?

However, CO2 is not saturated. Moreover, as you add more CO2 to the atmosphere, you increase CO2 at upper altitudes where CO2 is still below the saturation point.

Look, your big problem here is the lag time in the ice core record. CO2 increases lag temp changes by about 800 years. Not sure exactly what the world looked like 800 years ago since we only have proxy data, but there you go.

Not sure why you see this as a problem, as this is what the models predict. If something like increased solar radiation increases temperature, then CO2 rises as a response (due to decreased solubility of CO2 in warm water) and amplifies the increase in temperature, so the temperature increase leads the CO2 rise. On the other hand, if CO2 is added directly to the atmosphere, then temperature rises as a response (and amplifies the increase in CO2). So in this case CO2 leads temperature.

The planet is warming due to the sun.

Nope. We are actually in a solar cooling phase, which is masking somewhat the increase due to CO2 emissions. Unfortunately, the solar cooling trend will eventually reverse, and we'll then have solar heating on top of CO2-mediated warming

The impact the rest of nature has astronomically outstrips the impact humans alone have.

Technically correct. The planet is estimated to be about 30 degrees C warmer than it would be if there were no natural CO2. The anticipated temperature increase due to man's emissions of CO2 is only a fraction of that, but still enough to be a serious problem.

These changes are only "unprecedented" if you describe "modern times" as spanning only the last few centuries. The planet has undergone more severe changes than any doomsayer has predicted - life, including human life, has done nothing but flourish.

Also correct. Current theory does not predict that global warming will wipe out humanity. But substantial sea level rises and changes in the climate in regions where most of the world's food is grown would be far more disruptive than in the prehistoric world.

Remember, back in the 70s, the climate scientists were telling us all that we were going to go into a massive ice age at any minute.

Actually they weren't. It is illustrative of the level of propaganda being generated by those who hope to discredit climate science either on ideological or financial grounds that this long-debunked urban myth continues to be repeated and believed.

When you also notice that nature itself creates a lot of global warming gases when it makes volcanoes

This too is a falsehood. But like the first it continues to be repeated. This is the hallmark of crank pseudoscience, whether it be creationism or AGW denial: no false argument ever dies, no matter how conclusively it has been debunked.

Remember, back in the 70s, the climate scientists were telling us all that we were going to go into a massive ice age at any minute.

Actually they weren't. It is illustrative of the level of propaganda being generated by those who hope to discredit climate science either on ideological or financial grounds that this long-debunked urban myth continues to be repeated and believed.

When you also notice that nature itself creates a lot of global warming gases when it makes volcanoes

This too is a falsehood. But like the first it continues to be repeated. This is the hallmark of crank pseudoscience, whether it be creationism or AGW denial: no false argument ever dies, no matter how conclusively it has been debunked.

Over 10% in such a short period of time? That's pretty impressive. Of course, virtually every major scientific society in the world has previously come out in support of climate science and concerns about global warming

Oh FFS. The overwhelming majority of the data are available. If you think CRU are wrong, run your own analysis and see if you can come up with a significantly different answer. No-one has been able to do that yet, as pretty much any way of analysing the data comes up with pretty much the same answer. For instance excluding all the skeptics' hand-picked poorly-sited stations (surfacestations.org) gives exactly the same answer for US temperature: http://www.skepticalscience.com/On-the-reliability-of-the-US-Surface-Temperature-Record.html So are the skeptics too stupid, too lazy, or already done it and know that CRU is correct?

I don't know - can you point me to one of them?

http://www.skepticalscience.com/broken-hockey-stick.htm

The difference is that the cooling position was mainly advanced by sensational media, while real scientists (at the same time - 1970s) were already starting to predict global warming - Just like they are today. http://www.skepticalscience.com/ice-age-predictions-in-1970s.htm

And several times in your post you emphasized that "you were taught" this. Did you independently verify it or did you just accept it as true because that's what you needed to do for your project? Do you know if the climate models in question were up to date with the latest climate science?

Here's a page that shows modeled surface temperature since the 1800s matching pretty well with observed data: http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-models.htm [skepticalscience.com]

Good observation. However, I had a particular reason for using that phrase. You see, I realize that I do not know everything. In fact, I realize that there is a metric crapton of information in this world that I do not know. That being said, I tend to preposition my claims with such phrases as: "I was taught, to my knowledge, so far as I understand..." etc in hopes that it will generate rational discussion form which I can further learn. I find this approach to be much more level headed and less arrogant than blatant, "This is how it is..." type of statements. Think of such prepositions as a meatspace compatible YMMV tag.

Regarding my independent verification of said teachings, yes, I did work very hard to verify this independently. In fact, I have two solid years of sleepless nights in the library spent digging through peer reviewed journal publications trying to determine if there were more accurate climate models out there. If you don't believe me, my general lack of sanity due to prolonged sleep deprivation can serve as evidence to my point. What I did NOT do, however, was go out and google the subject for 10 minutes and then pretend I had found anything useful.

You see, if I walked into an industry design review meeting with data backed up by skepticalscience.com, I would have been laughed out of the conference room, received a failing grade on my design project, and forfeited any chance I had at being taken seriously as a professional engineer. Nah, you see, in the real world, google search results don't cut it. Industry demands accurate, accepted, peer-reviewed sources for any claims made. It especially demands this for projects that cost upwards of $10B relying upon new/recent models or data. So, if I want to use a climate model developed in, say, the early 2000's I had damn well better have at least three peer-reviewed journal articles that I can point towards to back up my design claims. I cannot, point to one website and pretend that's in anyway acceptable in industry design applications.

While that may seem pedantic, it is, in fact, the reason we are capable of designing such complex beasts as spacecraft and cars and so on. Google, unfortunately, doesn't always cut it.

Perhaps the models were not accurate enough in the long-run in predicting albedo for aerospace engineering purposes, but that doesn't mean they aren't accurate enough in the long run in predicting global temperature mean and other variables important for climate change .

And several times in your post you emphasized that "you were taught" this. Did you independently verify it or did you just accept it as true because that's what you needed to do for your project? Do you know if the climate models in question were up to date with the latest climate science?

Here's a page that shows modeled surface temperature since the 1800s matching pretty well with observed data: http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-models.htm

It took me 1 minute to google for that information. It probably took you a lot longer to write your post.

Skeptical Science maintains a database of links to peer-reviewed papers. There is currently discussion about which journals are 'peer-reviewed' but this is a good step towards providing information for everyone.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/resources.php?peer=1

I'll warn you though - unless you have strong statistics chops, some of this stuff is hard to plow through. But, there is plenty out there for any _honest_ skeptic.

What a lousy initial post regarding sea level causing this little disputed bump to disappear. It is such an outrageous lie as is the associated image. Sea levels have been rising slowly and steadily for well over a century. Check out http://www.skepticalscience.com/Visual-depictions-of-Sea-Level-Rise.html for an excellent very recent article with a chart from back to 1870 along with very recent highly accurate data. Pretty minimal changes in past 140 years. At least seven author/sources are noted. Even the modest rate of change in continued rise since the 40's is well within natural variability in eon scale cycles. In the past 20 years the sea level has fallen in some areas!

During the dispute time frame, the sea level rose a bit less than 3 inches. Had this occurred in the late 1800's the sea level would have risen a bit more than 2 inches.
See: http://www.skepticalscience.com/images/sea-level-tidal-satellite.jpg for the first chart.

What a lousy initial post regarding sea level causing this little disputed bump to disappear. It is such an outrageous lie as is the associated image. Sea levels have been rising slowly and steadily for well over a century. Check out http://www.skepticalscience.com/Visual-depictions-of-Sea-Level-Rise.html for an excellent very recent article with a chart from back to 1870 along with very recent highly accurate data. Pretty minimal changes in past 140 years. At least seven author/sources are noted. Even the modest rate of change in continued rise since the 40's is well within natural variability in eon scale cycles. In the past 20 years the sea level has fallen in some areas!

During the dispute time frame, the sea level rose a bit less than 3 inches. Had this occurred in the late 1800's the sea level would have risen a bit more than 2 inches.
See: http://www.skepticalscience.com/images/sea-level-tidal-satellite.jpg for the first chart.

While I do not entirely buy anthrocentric global warming... this site reduced my belief in helio centric global warming a bit.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots-global-warming.htm

I'm still deciding whether i think the site is biased or not.

However, the solar activity page shows the solar output has dropped since 1980.

And the mars page addresses martian warming. This particular page feels a bit more like an argument than a statement of facts but it's a reasonable argument.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-on-mars.htm

So keep your own skeptical blinders on- but give the site a look.

While I do not entirely buy anthrocentric global warming... this site reduced my belief in helio centric global warming a bit.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots-global-warming.htm

I'm still deciding whether i think the site is biased or not.

However, the solar activity page shows the solar output has dropped since 1980.

And the mars page addresses martian warming. This particular page feels a bit more like an argument than a statement of facts but it's a reasonable argument.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-on-mars.htm

So keep your own skeptical blinders on- but give the site a look.

the "Climategate" models are indeed broken, because they have failed to accurately predict the weather in the last eight years.

Climate and weather are different things. It would help your arguments if you sounded much like you knew the difference.
You also display an ignorance of statistics, I'm afraid. 8 years is too short a time to talk about a high confidence level. The much vaunted "cooling trend" is actually perfectly reasonable within a warming model. But to discuss it requires something called "statistics," which I detect will overwhelm you. LOL
I recommend this page

Perhaps your should educate yourself, instead of blindly accepting propaganda:

I'm sorry, but random YouTube videos featuring well known liars does not count as "education". I tried to see what Bob had to say, and it was the old "not a pollutant" canard. How predictable. Again, you need to educate yourself. You could also read up on Bob The Liar Carter over at scienceblogs.com.

This disgusting liar claims that it is not warming.

This one is particularly interesting, as it exposes that most alarmists completely ignore the scientific evidence and choose to believe unequivocally what most of these vested interest groups propagate verbatim:

I'm sorry, but what on earth does this have to do with anything? Never mind the fact that Monckton is an insane liar, but what difference does it make what some random female on the street has to say?

I think it's becoming clearer now... You don't actually listen to the scientists. You prefer to base your opinions on random ignoramuses on the street (one example being Monckton).

By the way, I notice that instead of addressing my comment, you are doing a Gish Gallop.

A recent study* using Anthony Watts surfacestations.org list of well and poorly sited weather stations found that the poorly sited stations actually introduced a slight cooling bias to the record. I guess they overcompensated for the UHI effect. Again, even if a thermometer is located in a poor site it can still measure temperature trends accurately. The events that lead to the UHI effect are usually rather abrupt such as putting up a building. The effect can often be seen in the record for the station and compensated for. I'd love it if you could show me actual scientific evidence that rural (presumably you mean well sited) stations have been corrected to mimic urban (presumably poorly sited) stations.

*The actual paper is On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record (Menne 2010) [PDF]. A synopsis of the findings can be read here. Of course the study only covers the continental USA, a mere 1.5% of the Earth's surface.

Awww, you poor thing! Maybe if you educated yourself insead of spewing straw men, people would stop treating you like the ignoramus that you are.

Maybe if the climate "researchers" would open up their methodologies, source code and data, I might be able to understand it.

Possibly, but I doubt it. There's a wealth of information available to you now (the above article alone cites 5 different studies), yet you continue to focus on "motive" as a reason to disbelieve the science. As was evidenced by the ClimateGate scandal, when the general public is given free access to data, they misinterpret it. In all of the information that was released to the public, not once is there a single e-mail or reference that says "our AWG conspiracy is on track...muwahahah!" Instead, you have statisticians talking about "tricks" as "proof" of AGW fraud. My wife showed me a "trick" this weekend for making better pancakes, the result was still pancakes.

I think that what "Climategate" shows us is that if you have a position on either side of this issue that holds there's no possibility that the other side MIGHT be right and thus completely unacceptable to investigate the possibilities, you're an idiot. Do the "deniers" monkey with their data? I have no doubt. Do the "warmers" monkey with their data? We have "peer reviewed" evidence of that.

We're not discussing science. We're discussing politics. This is a holy war. I'm just a conscientious objector.

that would seek to replicate and evaluate your results, you're not practicing science.

But, as stated, that's not what happens. What happens is you get deniers nitpicking over irrelevant details (the Himalayan glaciers thing of the last few weeks springs immediately to mind). They don't attempt to replicate the experiments or studies, they simply denigrate them without any empirical evidence to back it up. It turns into...well, the situation we have today...

Do you think hiding data and methodologies so that people can't look at it has less of a negative impact to your cause than being transparent and dealing with legitimate criticisms in the open?

If there's anything we should learn from human history, it's to not trust people when they are hiding things from us... and certainly not when they're doing it in "our best interest." Keeping it hidden makes people inherently suspicious. It's much better to give them something they can't understand than to give them the boogeyman their imagination will create to fight against.

When I hear someone talking out of both sides of their mouth explaining exception after exception to their mythical model that has all the answers, I assume I am dealing with a charlatan.

Who is explaining exceptions? What I see is false claims being raised and then disproven with actual evidence.

Who's evidence? There's so much made up shit all over the Internet, I wonder if anyone here really knows. Everyone has their position and the data to back it up. I hear about it every time this subject comes up. There's dogma all over the place on this issue.

Science is ENTIRELY about being a skeptic. The AGW crowd demean skeptics. Thus, the AGW crowd must not be scientists.

Not true, we demean deniers, completely different. Simply playing John Cleese' role in the Argument Sketch does not make one a skeptic. Simply denying everything as true does not make one a skeptic.

The only thing I'm denying is myself the duty of joining either cult. I want to be right. But, I don't have to be the source of that answer.

How you choose to view my comment will determine in which camp you reside. If you choose, for example, to peruse the site I've linked to a couple of times and review the cited studies to construct one view of the argument and then find contradictory studies to construct the oth

The funniest thing about the whole debate to me is those that "believe in" AGW demean those that don't "believe" by calling them "skeptics."

Nonsense it's the anti-science guys who call themselves "skeptics." Scientists call the climate science deniers, "denialists." The denialists then get all huffy and demand to be called "skeptics."

But really given all the crazy pseudo-scientific arguments which AGW denialists accept without the least bit of skepticism, how can you call them that? At least without using inverted commas. If you were a true skeptic you would be highly skeptical of the arguments of Global Warming "Skeptics."

Do you "believe in" electricity?

The coldest period in the last half billion years had atmospheric CO2 levels 10 times what we have today. Why wasn't the CO2 driving the change then? It certainly wasn't the temperature.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-higher-in-past.htm

Maybe if the climate "researchers" would open up their methodologies, source code and data, I might be able to understand it.

Possibly, but I doubt it. There's a wealth of information available to you now (the above article alone cites 5 different studies), yet you continue to focus on "motive" as a reason to disbelieve the science. As was evidenced by the ClimateGate scandal, when the general public is given free access to data, they misinterpret it. In all of the information that was released to the public, not once is there a single e-mail or reference that says "our AWG conspiracy is on track...muwahahah!" Instead, you have statisticians talking about "tricks" as "proof" of AGW fraud. My wife showed me a "trick" this weekend for making better pancakes, the result was still pancakes.

that would seek to replicate and evaluate your results, you're not practicing science.

But, as stated, that's not what happens. What happens is you get deniers nitpicking over irrelevant details (the Himalayan glaciers thing of the last few weeks springs immediately to mind). They don't attempt to replicate the experiments or studies, they simply denigrate them without any empirical evidence to back it up. It turns into...well, the situation we have today...

When I hear someone talking out of both sides of their mouth explaining exception after exception to their mythical model that has all the answers, I assume I am dealing with a charlatan.

Who is explaining exceptions? What I see is false claims being raised and then disproven with actual evidence.

Science is ENTIRELY about being a skeptic. The AGW crowd demean skeptics. Thus, the AGW crowd must not be scientists.

Not true, we demean deniers, completely different. Simply playing John Cleese' role in the Argument Sketch does not make one a skeptic. Simply denying everything as true does not make one a skeptic.

How you choose to view my comment will determine in which camp you reside. If you choose, for example, to peruse the site I've linked to a couple of times and review the cited studies to construct one view of the argument and then find contradictory studies to construct the other side and then build a reasonable stance from that...you're a skeptic. If, however, you choose to continue to worry about things like "hiding methodologies" and "who called whom what"...you're a denier. It really is that simple. The only evidence that counts to a skeptic is evidence. Ad hominems tu quoque (Ad hominem tu quoques? Hmmm...) are not.

The coldest period in the last half billion years had atmospheric CO2 levels 10 times what we have today. Why wasn't the CO2 driving the change then? It certainly wasn't the temperature.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-higher-in-past.htm

Maybe if the climate "researchers" would open up their methodologies, source code and data, I might be able to understand it.

Possibly, but I doubt it. There's a wealth of information available to you now (the above article alone cites 5 different studies), yet you continue to focus on "motive" as a reason to disbelieve the science. As was evidenced by the ClimateGate scandal, when the general public is given free access to data, they misinterpret it. In all of the information that was released to the public, not once is there a single e-mail or reference that says "our AWG conspiracy is on track...muwahahah!" Instead, you have statisticians talking about "tricks" as "proof" of AGW fraud. My wife showed me a "trick" this weekend for making better pancakes, the result was still pancakes.

that would seek to replicate and evaluate your results, you're not practicing science.

But, as stated, that's not what happens. What happens is you get deniers nitpicking over irrelevant details (the Himalayan glaciers thing of the last few weeks springs immediately to mind). They don't attempt to replicate the experiments or studies, they simply denigrate them without any empirical evidence to back it up. It turns into...well, the situation we have today...

When I hear someone talking out of both sides of their mouth explaining exception after exception to their mythical model that has all the answers, I assume I am dealing with a charlatan.

Who is explaining exceptions? What I see is false claims being raised and then disproven with actual evidence.

Science is ENTIRELY about being a skeptic. The AGW crowd demean skeptics. Thus, the AGW crowd must not be scientists.

Not true, we demean deniers, completely different. Simply playing John Cleese' role in the Argument Sketch does not make one a skeptic. Simply denying everything as true does not make one a skeptic.

How you choose to view my comment will determine in which camp you reside. If you choose, for example, to peruse the site I've linked to a couple of times and review the cited studies to construct one view of the argument and then find contradictory studies to construct the other side and then build a reasonable stance from that...you're a skeptic. If, however, you choose to continue to worry about things like "hiding methodologies" and "who called whom what"...you're a denier. It really is that simple. The only evidence that counts to a skeptic is evidence. Ad hominems tu quoque (Ad hominem tu quoques? Hmmm...) are not.

However, it has not been shown that humans are the primary cause of this warming.

Incorrect, it has: Empirical evidence that humans are causing global warming

Nope, 85%. Also, this might be the debate she was talking about. I tend to agree with CapitalistImperialistPig: dendrochronology seems kind of spooky. Research involving living matter just strikes me as softer and somehow ickier than "pure" physics like boreholes, ice cores, instrumental records, etc. For instance, the divergence after 1960 makes me uncomfortable, but mainly because I don't know much about it. I also don't know how many cores are "enough" for reliable temperature reconstruction (even aside from all the other considerations), and the thought of taking enough time to try to understand that question makes me shiver. I'm comfortable relegating tree ring data to the status of "supporting evidence" which happens to correlate well (before 1960) with other proxies.

"I'm not saying this to be faceious..."

Ditto, a few points...

I do not agree that there has been virtually no warming since 1995, the trend is still 0.11 ~ 0.15DegC/decade. What Phil Jones actually said in his BBC interview (linked in the skeptical science article) was that the confidence level for the trend over that 15yr period does not quite reach the magical 95% level of certainty. The same is true for ANY 15yr period. It comes as no surprise to me that the Daily Fail is the source of the misquotes and confusion.

Arctic melt is mainly driven by the rise in ocean temps (see the graph in the skeptical science link above), ocean currents, and a phenomena called polar amplification that was first predicted by models in the 1980's and was later confirmed by regional analysis of observations.

Both the ocean and the ice have a thermal inertia many orders of magnitude larger than the atmosphere. This means that if the atmosphre were to somehow drop 10DegC off the global average (say a freak run of consecutive volcanic eruptions) the ice would still continue on a melting trend for quite a few years.

There is some weak evidence that the heat going into the recent "dramatic" melting of the Arctic ice may be responsible for the flattening of the curve over the last couple of years but this is far from certain. What is a lot more certain is that, like the long term atmosphereic trend, the long term melting trend is virtually unchanged by the recent dramatic melt.

The PDO (El-Nino/El-Nina) is an internal fluctuation of the Earth's climate system, it is not a root cause for anything. It randomly redistributes existing heat in the ocean/atmosphere. It has nothing to do with the heat budget because it is basically large scale turbulence, I would also be very impressed if anyone could predict turbulance with any degree of accuracy.

Solar flux was counted as a minor positive forcing in the IPCC reports. There is some evidence it has become weaker since the 1990's. But I agree that the forcing effect of the sun can be considered stable in a "spherical cow" analysis.

None of this changes the radiative forcing properties of CO2 that have been understood now for nearly 200yrs. Nor does it change the fact we have pumped half a trillion tons of the stuff into the atmosphere and are on track to double that tonnage in the next 40yrs.

The only thing humans have any control over is our emmissions of GHG's (long term warming) and areosols (short term cooling). According to Fourier (1824 - explained in my link above), a trillion tons of CO2 will result in a rise of ~1.5degC. This 1.5degC will be added to the heat budget regardless of all the other forcings and feedbacks we don't have control over. The same laws of physics will continue to operate after 2050. We could blanket ourselves in smog to balance the heat budget but that seems to me to be a case of the cure being worse than the disease.

Simple risk analysis says we need to drastically cut our emmission, technically and financially I don't believe it's a difficult 40yr goal, I also don't believe anyone has the political solution to the tradgedy of the commons.

How big or small the amount of CO2 seems to you as a person has no importance whatsoever. If you disagree, please drink a glass of water with 0.117% nerve toxin and see if small things can have big effects.

"It's the water vapour" is an old argument that has been debunked and explained thouroughly:

Water vapour is the most dominant greenhouse gas. Water vapour is also the dominant positive feedback in our climate system and amplifies any warming caused by changes in atmospheric CO2. This positive feedback is why climate is so sensitive to CO2 warming.

I think by the 80's they were pretty certain that the cooling effect wasn't sufficient to overwhelm the warming, and since then, for the past four decades, we've had increasing certainty in warming.

And here's another rebuttal.

I am assuming you're referring to Phil Jones statement and obviously, you did not bother to actually understand the context of what he was trying to say http://www.skepticalscience.com/news.php?n=141

The IPCC did royally frak up on the himalayan glaciers, that is indisputable. However, the DailyMail distorted the issue to its own ends.

And the fact is saying that human CO2 emissions are "infinitesimal" is to miss the point entirely.

An analogy (that does not involve cars). Imagine the balance between CO2 sources and sinks is like a funnel. Into this funnel, you pour one litre per second of liquid. The funnel can allow up to 1 litre per second to leave, too. Therefore, the level of liquid in the funnel remains the same although 1 litre per second is constantly being added. However, add an infinitesimal increase, let's say, just 0.1% more - just one mililitre extra per second, and as sure as night follows day, the level in the funnel increases and eventually it will overflow. What is more, what we have done is effectively not only added more liquid to the funnel, we have also constricted the exit (by removing carbon sinks). The rate compared to other things is totally irrelevant. The only thing that's relevant is - is the CO2 being added at a rate higher than which it is being removed?

Before coming up with convoluted rationalizations, it's best to do a little basic fact-checking first:

"Volcanoes emit around 0.3 billion tonnes of CO2 per year. This is about 1% of human CO2 emissions which is around 29 billion tonnes per year." -- source: http://www.skepticalscience.com/volcanoes-and-global-warming.htm

I don't think you could have misunderstood the GP's point more if you had tried.

Let me simplify it: A system in equilibrium is being displaced from that equilibrium. Since that equilibrium is what our entire species and civilization and economy are based on, do you really think it's an unambiguously good thing?

Before coming up with convoluted rationalizations, it's best to do a little basic fact-checking first:

"Volcanoes emit around 0.3 billion tonnes of CO2 per year. This is about 1% of human CO2 emissions which is around 29 billion tonnes per year." -- source: http://www.skepticalscience.com/volcanoes-and-global-warming.htm

No, it makes me think you have no clue what you're talking about. Climate is not weather, and if you don't know the difference, then I'm sorry to say that your opinion on climate science is not worth much. Have a nice page that explains the difference. If you roll a die a million times, I won't be able to predict any of the results. But if you roll a die a million times and average the results, I'd be willing to bet good money that I could get damn close to that average.

*sigh* Multiple reconstructions have been done that have come up with similar results to the original hockey stick graph. There was even a paper by Mann (you know, the guy from the original hockey stick) et al. in 2008 doing a reconstruction with a better dataset and without tree rings, coming to much the same results. Here is a nice post on the subject. Denialist arguments against the hockey stick can be compelling at first glance, but under a bit of examination quickly fall apart.

And the CRU emails, really? Any claims of there being scientific misconduct in them, especially of this scale, have been pretty thoroughly disproven at this point. I've seen a lot of the emails myself, especially the ones denialists have picked out as the worst of the worst, and rather than show wrongdoings, all they've shown is the ignorance and ideological biases of those holding them up as such.

we know with certainty that CO2 concentration has changed drastically due to us more info here : http://www.skepticalscience.com/human-co2-smaller-than-natural-emissions.htm
and CO2 has an effect on global temperature (without CO2 temp would be about 18-19 C lower than it would be now) you say somehow a larger concentration has not a greater effect ? explain.

One of the funnier things, actually, is the resolute attempt by the CRU and IPCC to discount the Sun as a source of climate variability. None of the IPCC models take into account the sunspot cycles, nor are there "what if" runs based on possible variability. That's not entirely surprising given that the mechanism for sunspot minima causing lower temperatures isn't understood. However, we do know historically that minima such as the Maunder Minimum produced sharply lower temperatures.

As I understand, solar activity correlated for most of the time we have direct temperature records, but the correlation diverged markedly in the last two decades. Solar activity having reduced in that time is unable to explain the continued rise in temperature. http://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots-global-warming.htm Solar activity is therefore not something I can use to explain currently warming trends.

The graph at your link has some problems. First off, the "global temperature average" is poorly known before satellite records. Then, in recent years the GISS temperature record has been skewed, both from cherry-picking data and siting climate stations in urban heat islands while not applying appropriate corrections. It's well known that 1998 was the warmest year on record, while the chart shows 2005 as quite a bit warmer, eh?

Further, your graph is of "solar radiance", not "sunspot number". The mechanism for cooling during solar minima is apparently more complex than simple differences in radiant output. One theory is that high cosmic ray activity spawns more cloud formation - but the jury is still out on that. Regardless, we do know that during the Maunder and Dalton minima, temperatures fell sharply.

True, although the "greenhouse effect" applies to closed systems (bounded in the case of a greenhouse, with glass). It's not at all clear the IPCC is modeling the open "greenhouse effect" here on Earth properly.

The "greenhouse effect" in any sense of the word not a closed system. Even a glass greenhouse has external energy input via sunlight and output via the gradual dissipation of heat into its environment via the contact of glass with air. The distinction is false.

My use of "open" and "closed" wasn't scientific, sorry. The glass walls of a greenhouse don't permit convection, whereas the atmosphere does. Some highly nonlinear things happen in the atmosphere when convection occurs - mainly falling under the category of "clouds". Clouds reflect a lot of solar energy back into space. So, the comparison between a conventional greenhouse, and the Earth's atmosphere is not straightforward at all.

To equate climate change to phlogiston or egg cholesterol is a long stretch indeed.

Not really so much, but the other thing to keep in mind is that phlogiston was never used as a justification for spending trillions of dollars, permanently changing the world economy, and affecting the standard of living of billions of people. So, the standard for the science used to "prove" anthropogenic global warming should be high indeed.

As if changing the world economy is a bad thing. The standard of living of billions of people is already poor and developed nations grapple with traffic congestion, pollution, rising grocery prices due to poor planning and energy security. Trillions of dollars were spent on saving the economic system from collapse and bailing out banks to preserve a world economy that didn't work particularly well. Commitments to save the planet pale in comparison by orders of magnitude.

There are quite a few problems with your "logic" here. First of all, the trillions spent to save the economic system from collapse have already been spent - they're gone. We don't have trill

One of the funnier things, actually, is the resolute attempt by the CRU and IPCC to discount the Sun as a source of climate variability. None of the IPCC models take into account the sunspot cycles, nor are there "what if" runs based on possible variability. That's not entirely surprising given that the mechanism for sunspot minima causing lower temperatures isn't understood. However, we do know historically that minima such as the Maunder Minimum produced sharply lower temperatures.

As I understand, solar activity correlated for most of the time we have direct temperature records, but the correlation diverged markedly in the last two decades. Solar activity having reduced in that time is unable to explain the continued rise in temperature. http://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots-global-warming.htm Solar activity is therefore not something I can use to explain currently warming trends.

True, although the "greenhouse effect" applies to closed systems (bounded in the case of a greenhouse, with glass). It's not at all clear the IPCC is modeling the open "greenhouse effect" here on Earth properly.

The "greenhouse effect" in any sense of the word not a closed system. Even a glass greenhouse has external energy input via sunlight and output via the gradual dissipation of heat into its environment via the contact of glass with air. The distinction is false.

To equate climate change to phlogiston or egg cholesterol is a long stretch indeed.

Not really so much, but the other thing to keep in mind is that phlogiston was never used as a justification for spending trillions of dollars, permanently changing the world economy, and affecting the standard of living of billions of people. So, the standard for the science used to "prove" anthropogenic global warming should be high indeed.

As if changing the world economy is a bad thing. The standard of living of billions of people is already poor and developed nations grapple with traffic congestion, pollution, rising grocery prices due to poor planning and energy security. Trillions of dollars were spent on saving the economic system from collapse and bailing out banks to preserve a world economy that didn't work particularly well. Commitments to save the planet pale in comparison by orders of magnitude.

IMO, the current state of the art is not even close. Fortunately, given the state of the Sun's sunspot cycles we may be in a multi-decade timeout on warming, anthropogenic or no. We should know quite a bit more twenty or thirty years down the road.

By which time projections say we will be too late.

Funny how you so easily dismiss the tree ring data, but desperately latch onto the sunspot data as if it was proof of the causation between solar activity and temperature.

Guess what? It diverges too:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots-global-warming.htm

Recent data totally disproves your thesis that solar activity is the prime driver of climate change in recent history. Yet the meme persists in climate skeptic circles and highlights the bankruptcy of the movement.

Tree ring data however is not settled yet. The divergence happens in some trees - especially in those found in the northern hemisphere where the majority of the world's population lives, but not in the southern hemisphere. It is certaintly plausible that human activity is causing the divergence, and if so, the tree ring data would be likely fine in a pre-industrial era.

We don't know for sure, but a person genuinely interested in the science would want to know why - perhaps even favoring more funding to investigate the discrepancy.

Yet instead of teasing out the real cause of the divergence, you'd rather have all tree ring data tossed out so that we can never know the truth.

That there exist people who think that way is truly sad.

1. Answered by CRU already:

The Climatic Research Unit holds many data series, provided to the Unit over a period of several decades, from a number of nationally-funded institutions and other research organisations around the world, with specific agreements made over restrictions in the dissemination of those original data. All of these individual series have been used in CRU’s analyses. It is a time-consuming process to attempt to gain approval from these organisations to release the data. Since some of them were provided decades ago, it has sometimes been necessary to track down the successors of the original organisations. It is clearly in the public interest that these data are released once we have succeeded in gaining the approval of collaborators. Some who have requested the data will have been aware of the scale of the exercise we have had to undertake. Much of these data are already available from the websites of the Global Historical Climate Data Network and the Goddard Institute for Space Science.

2. It's unusually warm where I am, so AGW must be true by your logic.

3. This is called the divergence problem and is explained here and has been discussed on Slashdot before.

7. The Medieval Warming Period is not eliminated, just nuanced.

8. When you tell climate scientists they're wrong and you propose an alternative explanation, it's your job to prove the alternative. Climate scientists are busy proving their own stuff.

1. Answered by CRU already:

The Climatic Research Unit holds many data series, provided to the Unit over a period of several decades, from a number of nationally-funded institutions and other research organisations around the world, with specific agreements made over restrictions in the dissemination of those original data. All of these individual series have been used in CRU’s analyses. It is a time-consuming process to attempt to gain approval from these organisations to release the data. Since some of them were provided decades ago, it has sometimes been necessary to track down the successors of the original organisations. It is clearly in the public interest that these data are released once we have succeeded in gaining the approval of collaborators. Some who have requested the data will have been aware of the scale of the exercise we have had to undertake. Much of these data are already available from the websites of the Global Historical Climate Data Network and the Goddard Institute for Space Science.

2. It's unusually warm where I am, so AGW must be true by your logic.

3. This is called the divergence problem and is explained here and has been discussed on Slashdot before.

7. The Medieval Warming Period is not eliminated, just nuanced.

8. When you tell climate scientists they're wrong and you propose an alternative explanation, it's your job to prove the alternative. Climate scientists are busy proving their own stuff.

This is a perfect example of what I'm talking about.

You bring out examples of supposed flaws in global warming as a "gotcha" argument, but ignore the fact that each and every one of these arguments has been repeatedly debunked.

Again - you're ignoring rebuttals to denialist arguments, then pretending they don't exist. It's not that no-one's listening to your arguments, it's that they are scientific nonsense.

Uhh, please check your facts. There are several proxy records available, such as stalactites, bore holes, ice cores and lake sediments. Tree rings are just one part of paleoclimate observational data. Global temperature records are available from 1850 onwards (from 1880 if you only include NOAA and GISS).

Between 1850 and 1960, all proxy reconstructions fully agree with the direct temperature readings. The only problematic one is the tree rings after 1960. Before 1960, all proxy reconstructions agree with each other, within experimental uncertainty. All proxy reconstructions except for tree rings show a dramatic increase in global temperatures.

It's also well-known and well-documented, and well-published, that some tree rings show a fall in temperature after 1960. This is not a new problem, and you are not the first person to suggest there may be a problem. Mind you, even if we had to scrap all tree ring data, or even all proxy reconstructions, it's still only a drop in the ocean of evidence.

Where is the fraud?

Uhh, please check your facts. There are several proxy records available, such as stalactites, bore holes, ice cores and lake sediments. Tree rings are just one part of paleoclimate observational data. Global temperature records are available from 1850 onwards (from 1880 if you only include NOAA and GISS).

Between 1850 and 1960, all proxy reconstructions fully agree with the direct temperature readings. The only problematic one is the tree rings after 1960. Before 1960, all proxy reconstructions agree with each other, within experimental uncertainty. All proxy reconstructions except for tree rings show a dramatic increase in global temperatures.

It's also well-known and well-documented, and well-published, that some tree rings show a fall in temperature after 1960. This is not a new problem, and you are not the first person to suggest there may be a problem. Mind you, even if we had to scrap all tree ring data, or even all proxy reconstructions, it's still only a drop in the ocean of evidence.

Where is the fraud?

"And first most important greenhouse gas is water vapor

The water vapour red-herring is #26 on this list of the most common bogus arguments repeated ad-nausem by "skeptics". Sure the water vapour in the atmosphere warms the planet signifigantly. However the atmosphere is basically saturated with water vapour, pump as much water vapour into the atmosphere as you like and it will fall out as rain with a few days.

You cannot staurate the atmosphere with CO2 (re: Venus) or N20, however you can saturate the oceans with CO2 to form carbolic acid and severly disrupt the very roots of the global food chain.

"I believe in AGW but let's not claim the climate science is easy to understand or obvious.

I agree, the science is not settled, philosophically speaking science is never settled.

"This is why I get angry when AGWers equate those that disbelieve in AGW with creationists; the principles behind evolution are much easier and more intuitive to understand than climate science is."

Every scientists is a skeptic and the best of them are self-skeptical. However what people like me get angry about is the huge amount of deliberate and coordinated disinformation from lobbyists such as the CEI and the heartland institute. It's bad enough that the intellectually incurious simply accepted their crap on face value and endlessly repeat but what really pisses me off are the large number of politicians who actively push the same nonesense (Senator Inhofe is a particularly bad example).

There is a name for this kind of propoganda it's called "teaching the contraversy" They teach their contraversy in exactly the same manner as creationist teach their's; ie: via paid astroturfer's and web sites such as icecap, WUWT, ClimateAudit and countless other fronts for the FF industry. These are the people I routinely refer to a psuedo-skeptics, many others call them deniers.

Agrguing with these people and their avid followers is very much like arguing with creationists, evolution may seem a simple idea these days but when I went to school in the 60's it was every bit as contraversial and complex as climate science is today.

More recently the well established fact that smoking causes cancer was also vigoursly disputed by so called scientists. It should come as no surprise that some of the "scientists" spreading FUD on climate are the very same "scientists" who spread FUD for the tabcoo industry in the 80's and 90's (eg: Fred S Singer).

If we are at the 1934 levels of average global temperature then why are none of the 1930s in the top ten warmest years? http://www.nicholas.duke.edu/thegreengrok/2008temps

If global temperatures have been record for the last 150 years why are of the top 10 years from the last dozen years?

Apparently, 2009 is going to make it into the top 10.
http://www.zeenews.com/news581998.html

Also, the year 1934 isn't in the global top 10, it is in the U.S. top 10 warmest years.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/1934-hottest-year-on-record.htm

Allow me to extensively quote John Cook (http://www.skepticalscience.com/What-do-the-hacked-CRU-emails-tell-us.html), as he is closer to the topic than I am.

What do the suggestive "tricks" and "hiding the decline" mean? Is this evidence of a nefarious climate conspiracy? "Mike's Nature trick" refers to the paper Global-scale temperature patterns and climate forcing over the past six centuries (Mann 1998 http://www.elmhurst.edu/~richs/EC/FYS/Mannetal.OriginalPaper.pdf), published in Nature by lead author Michael Mann. The "trick" is the technique of plotting recent instrumental data along with the reconstructed data. This places recent global warming trends in the context of temperature changes over longer time scales.

The "decline" refers to the "divergence problem". This is where tree ring proxies diverge from modern instrumental temperature records after 1960. The divergence problem is discussed as early as 1998, suggesting a change in the sensitivity of tree growth to temperature in recent decades (Briffa 1998 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1692171/pdf/43XA8LK6PCMVMH9H_353_65.pdf). It is also examined more recently in Wilmking 2008 ( http://www.clim-past-discuss.net/4/741/2008/cpd-4-741-2008.pdf ) which explores techniques in eliminating the divergence problem. So when you look at Phil Jone's email in the context of the science discussed, it is not the schemings of a climate conspiracy but technical discussions of data handling techniques available in the peer reviewed literature.

In the skeptic blogosphere, there is a disproportionate preoccupation with one small aspect of climate science - proxy record reconstructions of past climate (or even worse, ad hominem attacks on the scientists who perform these proxy reconstructions). This serves to distract from the physical realities currently being observed. Humans are raising CO2 levels ( http://www.skepticalscience.com/human-co2-smaller-than-natural-emissions.htm ). We're observing an enhanced greenhouse effect ( http://www.skepticalscience.com/empirical-evidence-for-co2-enhanced-greenhouse-effect.htm ). The planet is still accumulating heat ( http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-cooling.htm ). What are the consequences of our climate's energy imbalance? Sea levels rise is accelerating ( http://www.skepticalscience.com/sea-level-rise.htm ). Greenland ice loss is accelerating ( http://www.skepticalscience.com/greenland-cooling-gaining-ice.htm ). Arctic ice loss is accelerating ( http://www.skepticalscience.com/Arctic-sea-ice-melt-natural-or-man-made.htm ). Globally, glacier ice loss is accelerating ( http://www.skepticalscience.com/himalayan-glaciers-growing.htm ). Antarctic ice loss is accelerating ( http://www.skepticalscience.com/antarctica-gaining-ice.htm ).

When you read through the many global warming skeptic arguments ( http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php ), a pattern emerges. Each skeptic argument misleads by focusing on one small piece of the puzzle while ignoring the broader picture. To focus on a few suggestive emails while ignoring the wealth of empirical evidence for

Allow me to extensively quote John Cook (http://www.skepticalscience.com/What-do-the-hacked-CRU-emails-tell-us.html), as he is closer to the topic than I am.

What do the suggestive "tricks" and "hiding the decline" mean? Is this evidence of a nefarious climate conspiracy? "Mike's Nature trick" refers to the paper Global-scale temperature patterns and climate forcing over the past six centuries (Mann 1998 http://www.elmhurst.edu/~richs/EC/FYS/Mannetal.OriginalPaper.pdf), published in Nature by lead author Michael Mann. The "trick" is the technique of plotting recent instrumental data along with the reconstructed data. This places recent global warming trends in the context of temperature changes over longer time scales.

The "decline" refers to the "divergence problem". This is where tree ring proxies diverge from modern instrumental temperature records after 1960. The divergence problem is discussed as early as 1998, suggesting a change in the sensitivity of tree growth to temperature in recent decades (Briffa 1998 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1692171/pdf/43XA8LK6PCMVMH9H_353_65.pdf). It is also examined more recently in Wilmking 2008 ( http://www.clim-past-discuss.net/4/741/2008/cpd-4-741-2008.pdf ) which explores techniques in eliminating the divergence problem. So when you look at Phil Jone's email in the context of the science discussed, it is not the schemings of a climate conspiracy but technical discussions of data handling techniques available in the peer reviewed literature.

In the skeptic blogosphere, there is a disproportionate preoccupation with one small aspect of climate science - proxy record reconstructions of past climate (or even worse, ad hominem attacks on the scientists who perform these proxy reconstructions). This serves to distract from the physical realities currently being observed. Humans are raising CO2 levels ( http://www.skepticalscience.com/human-co2-smaller-than-natural-emissions.htm ). We're observing an enhanced greenhouse effect ( http://www.skepticalscience.com/empirical-evidence-for-co2-enhanced-greenhouse-effect.htm ). The planet is still accumulating heat ( http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-cooling.htm ). What are the consequences of our climate's energy imbalance? Sea levels rise is accelerating ( http://www.skepticalscience.com/sea-level-rise.htm ). Greenland ice loss is accelerating ( http://www.skepticalscience.com/greenland-cooling-gaining-ice.htm ). Arctic ice loss is accelerating ( http://www.skepticalscience.com/Arctic-sea-ice-melt-natural-or-man-made.htm ). Globally, glacier ice loss is accelerating ( http://www.skepticalscience.com/himalayan-glaciers-growing.htm ). Antarctic ice loss is accelerating ( http://www.skepticalscience.com/antarctica-gaining-ice.htm ).

When you read through the many global warming skeptic arguments ( http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php ), a pattern emerges. Each skeptic argument misleads by focusing on one small piece of the puzzle while ignoring the broader picture. To focus on a few suggestive emails while ignoring the wealth of empirical evidence for