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Here's some dispute: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/09/scripps-paper-ocean-acidification-fears-overhyped/

Well, first off, you've got the buffer solution model you can think of - the oceans essentially buffer CO2, so its concentration is governed by its temperature, not other outputs/inputs.

But more importantly, even if you assert additional CO2 creates additional warming, you've still got the hurdles of "is warming bad" and "how much will it warm". Jury seems out on that: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/26/lies-damn-lies-and-anoma-lies/

It is quite obvious that you are all talking out your asses because you know zero about the arctic and its weather. Yes the sea water freezes at a rate slower than fresh. In places like Alaska they did not have record temps. While the continental USA has a mild winter and has set a number of high temperature records in the last week and pundits ponder whether they will be blaming the dreaded “global warming” for those temperatures, Alaska and Canada have been suffering through some of the coldest temperatures on record during the last week. For example in Circle Hot Springs, AK on Sunday, 29 Jan 2012 the HIGH temperature was a blistering -49F, breaking the -44F record which has stood since 1917. It gets better. That same day in Circle Hot Springs the low temperature was -58F breaking the old record of -52F set in 1941 by six degrees. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/30/bitter-cold-records-broken-in-alaska-all-time-coldest-record-nearly-broken-but-murphys-law-intervenes/ The temperature of the surface of the Arctic Ocean is fairly constant, near the freezing point of seawater, slightly below zero degrees Celsius. If it is already near the freezing point just how much more cooling will it take to start ice formation....not friggin much. Move your happy asses to Barrow and watch the weather and then come back here and tell us all how nice and bath water warm the arctic ocean really is. Dont stay in too long as you have less than a couple of minutes before hypothermia sets in. Uninformed boobs...

I didn't read all the comments, but from the ones I read, no one has recognized that the US represents a mere 2% of the earth's surface. A few weeks of hot weather in one year on a tiny fraction of the earth's surface is hardly anything to get excited about. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/07/editorial-hansen-is-simply-wrong-and-a-complete-and-abject-failure/

"The press release is out, and the usual serial bloviators are rushing to trumpet the news. July 2012 was the hottest ever on record! “Yikes! We’re gonna roast! Global Warming!” ... Of course the first thing I do when I see these sorts of things is go look at the data. It tells a far more interesting and credible story. Here’s some graphs NCDC and Seth won’t ever put in a press release or AP story:"
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/08/dear-noaa-and-seth-which-1930s-were-you-referring-to-when-you-say-july-is-the-record-warmest

No because it's just not true.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/21/worlds-worst-heatwave-the-marble-bar-heatwave-1923-24/

So we're still cooler than the 1920s

Lots of hot air. Mostly complaining about things that don't exist.

The Watts, et.al. paper is a pre-release version that Mr Watts has made available for review purposes. The plan is that internet readers will find errors that can then be fixed before submission to a journal.

If the paper is garbage, then pop over to http://wattsupwiththat.com/ and explain, in detail, what is wrong with it. Mr Watts will be grateful for the help.

Insults and attacks on the paper or its author should be forwarded to http://127.0.0.1/dev/null.

Please also note that Mr Watts is not "denying" global warming (or anything else). He's trying to measure it. Sounds to me like a positive contribution.

The "science" is not settled. You're thinking of "history".

I have to LOL at this complaint. $44,000 doesn't really "fund" very much, less than Al Gore gets for a single speaking engagement. He's probably lucky to have gotten even that.

Because we don't have air temperature sensors at sea we rely on land sensors and then extrapolate to cover the 7/10 of the world that is ocean. Australia due to it's location has an effect far in excess of it's size. Combine that with the US measurements and the two of them point to some thing very wrong. You can't have two regions where the world doesn't heat as much as the rest of the world over long periods and blame the whole thing on CO2. The physics doesn't work that way.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/27/rumours-of-my-death-have-been-greatly-exaggerated/ and Anthony commented on that study as well, which was published with his data and NOT offered for his review previous to publishing. Do you make it a habit of "denying" any new data on the subject of global warming, now called climate change? Please.

Lol, I don't understand logic? Why would you attack me like that? It is uncalled for. Let me try again. As I tried to make clear in my previous comment, this entire comment tree has nothing to do with Watt's paper. It has nothing to do with proving or disproving the hypothesis he has set out. The original comment was an ad hominem, but made the mistake of saying that Watts was a meteorologist. The second comment pointed out the mistake. Then you stated that the correction was, in fact, an attack, when it was a correction of an attack. Not the same thing.

I am enjoying this comment (#40829841) BTW, where you accuse me of not understanding logic, while in the next breath using a false equivalence. Anthony Watts is not equivalent to James Hansen. James Hansen (from Wikipedia) "obtained a B.A. in Physics and Mathematics with highest distinction in 1963, an M.S. in Astronomy in 1965 and a Ph.D. in Physics, in 1967, all three degrees from the University of Iowa. He participated in the NASA graduate traineeship from 1962 to 1966 and, at the same time, between 1965 and 1966, he was a visiting student at the Institute of Astrophysics at the University of Kyoto and in the Department of Astronomy at the University of Tokyo. Hansen then began work at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in 1967."

Anthony Watts has no record of any formal education beyond high school. Here is a link to his own webpage which has no mention of education nor, when asked directly, has he stated that he has graduated from anywhere.

Do you really not see the difference?

Oh yeah, USCRN stations are sooo good, they put them in parking lots: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2007/11/23/tucson-update/

wow, that's quite the character assassination! You really have your hate on for this guy, don't you? FYI, he is not funded by the Heartland Institute. He requested a donation from them for a single project that required some significant investment in servers, programming, and bandwidth. And in regards to your "peer reviewed" article, they were using a small subset of the total stations. In fact, they got their data from Watts directly. However, he notes that it was an incomplete survey they worked off of, only 43% of the stations that he had surveyed up to that point, and the data hadn't been quality controlled. He also found issues with the algorithms that are being used to "adjust" the data. Also of note is the work of climatologist James Goodridge, who found an increase in temperature of 0.9F when thermometers were upgraded from from mercury to MMTS. These are discrepancies that still haven't been accounted for. Of course, for you global warming is clearly a religion, and it's not about the science at all. You believe wholeheartedly, so if someone questions the accuracy, he's a "denier" and in the pay of "big oil". He can't possibly have any valid input, can he?

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/a-closer-look-at-climate-studies-promoted-before-publicatio/

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/30/my-response-to-ncdcs-op-ed-in-the-new-york-times/#more-68408

More on CRN.

NOAA overstates warming: study

Fascinating backstory. Apparently a week ago, Anthony Watts and a few mates heard about Muller's pending announcement, and spent about a week rehashing their tired old station site argument, adding some new Excel / Powerpoint bling and respinning the PR.

You think I'm kidding? http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/29/backstory-on-the-new-surfacestations-paper/

He even suspended posts two days ago to build up anticipation within his 'yes men' crowd and provide the comments section with plenty of pent-up congratulatory ooze.

The guy is a jerk.

Watts squirming?

That ain't half of it. The tag wattsupwiththat.com/tag/berkeley-earth-surface-temperature/ should point to BEST but currently directs to Watts' OWN new paper.

The guy just went over 9000.

Imagine the climate is a glass of water, and the water level is temperature.

I was going to briefly post somewhere under this story to mention that measured temperature changes were accidentally doubled

But then I saw your post and realized that real science is totally lost upon the race of fear-inducing mouth breathers that are the core that remains of the AGW Warmists. I'll read no more Warming Cult stuff on Slashdot, you all are beyond hope.

I mean, can you even dress yourself? "Climate is like a glass of water, we are adding more water"....

HOLY CRAP SLASHDOT is 4CHAN.

There really isn't much at all.

Now, I can hear it now..."It's Watts...disregard".

But if you fuckers believe even a little bit of what you spout about science you will at least check the link. I doubt you will because you fucks are the most closed minded people around. If something doesn't support your position, you disregard it. Closed minded, dogmatic and ignorant.

Anthony Watts just posted some new information regarding errors in the BEST data. Perhaps Richard Muller will need to re-evaluate his "skepticism." http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/29/press-release-2/

You should at least consider some alternatives.

Climate is about the AVERAGE over many measurements in many places, and that average is indeed going up.

The average is going up, but how much of that is due to the end of the Little Ice Age, and how much is due to carbon dioxide? It was about as warm before 1945, which is when oil burning became popular -- but it was cool for 30 years after that. There has been an increase in average temperatures since the PDO switch in 1975. But how much of the recent warming is due to the PDO switch and how much is man-made? Much of that recent rise is due to an increase in nighttime temperatures, which has been claimed to be due to overall warming. But it might be due to more buildings and other increased bumpiness of terrain.

It never made sense to me how coral atolls survived the 300ft sea level rise over the past 20000 years, so perfectly just above the water line. Well, now I know:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/27/floating-islands/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atoll

So, the small number of people actually living on low-lying atolls in Oceania isn't even threatened by sea level rise.

The deeper one digs into this FUD the worse it gets.

Still don't buy it, and it doesn't take a conspiracy theory to realize that most journalists and police are clueless about technology. If you can ignore the source for this thorough forensic analysis of the leaked files and the description of the University's email architecture, it seems wildly improbable that "some hacker over the Internet" would have been able to obtain the files in that condition.

Please don't just attack the source - if you think the analysis is flawed, point out where.

I'd accept being conflicted if the AGW crowd will accept that the smallest blip of warming in a cooling trend according to the Vostok graph can easily last for more than 1000 years. It works both ways, of course, but since accurate measurements with modern equipment are less than a couple hundred years old, and subject to geographical bias, trying to use such short-term data as a predictor of long-term temperature is as meaningless as frying ants with a magnifying glass and calling it climate change.

Since you're too lazy to google "tree ring data proxy temperature" or some variation thereof...

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/10/30/yamal-treering-proxy-temperature-reconstructions-dont-match-local-thermometer-records/
http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2010/05/17/comments-on-the-tree-ring-proxy-and-thermometer-surface-temperature-trend-data/

Basically, tree ring width is sensitive to a LOT of factors, and generally, temperature doesn't affect them nearly as much as these other factors. Using tree rings as a proxy data is analogous to using a car's radiator temperature to determine its speed. It certainly affects it, but the signal is pretty low and the noise is rather high...

These arguments make sense to me regarding cagw, http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/06/22/a-response-to-dr-paul-bains-use-of-denier-in-scientific-literature/ And yes, the models used to make airplanes are obviously MUCH better because they have been proven by experiment where real data was generated. Additionally, these airplane models are not being used to introduce significant energy policy and taxing legislation on me.

Climate Change Twaddle:

Here's your Climate Change

Interesting that a Google search doesn't really show anyone in the AGW crowds addressing this.

The reason I suspect is that (a) ClimateAudit and WUWT aren't the contenders they think they are. Climate scientists go to the chicken coop to collect the eggs - not to engage in stimulating conversation. and

(b) It's obvious from the discussion following that something has gone wrong in the climateaudit analysis although it takes a while to sink in. Then some awkward questions start arising. Does the O18 data from the Law Dome actually match the assertion? What is the relationship between the O18 data and other datasets?

Conclusions:

1. The worthwhile henfolk at the WUWT chicken coop mistakenly assume that the presence of a medieval temperature variation will present a problem for climate science

2. The coop couldn't actually explain what the graph meant and didn't seem to understand it.

Here is a data set that wasn't cherry picked.

host wattsupwiththat.com
wattsupwiththat.com is an alias for cherrypickeddata.com

Yet, it doesn't seem to have had had any effect.

I'm wondering f the Daily Show has addressed this?

Why not go back a few thousand years?

Anyway, no need to read an opinion piece by a solidly-in-the-minority individual

In other words...LALALALALALA I don't want to hear it!

For fuck sake, open your mind to other ideas.

Here is a data set that wasn't cherry picked. Go ahead, check it out if it doesn't violate your sense of Tribalness.

Climate Change Twaddle:

Here's your Climate Change

Interesting that a Google search doesn't really show anyone in the AGW crowds addressing this. Of course since the information is hosted at your favorite EEEEvvvvil denier site, cowards will ignore it because they can't bear their religion to be questioned. Of course, the AGW crowd will mod this into oblivion. As the Colonel says, "you can't handle the truth!"

If you are REALLY open minded and scientifically literate, you will address this instead of dismissing it outright.

There is virtually universal agreement among scientists that the sea will probably rise a good meter or more before the end of the century, wreaking havoc in low-lying coastal counties. So the members of the developers’ lobbying group NC-20 say the sea will rise only 8 inches, because because well, SHUT UP, that’s because why.

Who is actually telling people to shut up here? When you wheel out the old "The science is settled" argument and tell people that you can not dare to question the science any more you have admitted that you have failed. As usual there are scientists questioning the party line. Link

NASA predicts ice-free North Pole by end of summer 2012

Which not only did not come to pass, but we're well within 1 standard deviation of the 1979-2000 average.

Actuallly, check out the "entertainment line" in the UAH lower tropospheric temperature series, which, in my mind is probably the only reliable data set that can be used to check on the earth's temperature...

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/02/uah-global-temperature-anomaly-goes-negative-2/

Can you think of any cycles that mirror that entertainment line?

I really wish the CO2 / Temperature / Atmospheric monitoring satellite had not blown up during lift off. Regardless of whether you are a tree hugger or not, more earth monitoring spacecraft and drones are desperately needed.

Heartland Inst. did that to themselves with those moronic billboards; even Anthony Watts over at WUWT, has been raking them over the coals for that little stunt. OBTW that billboard was taken down 3 days ago after a 24 hr run.

This could well render California's wine industry economically unsustainable with only a few degrees change

So one state's booze production qualifies as a national security issue? Ha ha, that's rich! :D 'Mericaaa FUCK YEAH!

Also how do you like hurricanes? Because increased surface temperature and sea level moisture directly drive stronger storms in the American "hurricane ally"

The world's leading predictor of hurricanes, Dr. William Gray has his well educated opinion. You have yours. Hmmm, a Ph.D who has been accurately predicting hurricane frequency and intensity for decades... or some AC preaching about disease, famine, and plagues of locutus? Sorry mate, but you sound a bit religious to me.

So allow me to pull a play out of the climate cult's playbook. Coorelation equals causation: In this graph we show the last 10000 years of human population. And in this one we show the global mean temperature over the same period. Population increases with temperature, therefore we can conclude warmer weather is resulting in more people. Obviously, there's no flaw in the logic, and we have a consensus among scientists regarding these two facts. So it is true. Global warming is good for the human race. Any argument about this point means you are a "denier."

Care to argue? Of course you do. That's the stupidest thing anyone has ever said. Yet, if you exchange population with CO2, it is the exact argument you are presenting.

It blows my mind how many people believe warming is such a dangerous thing. Far more people are killed by the cold each year. Give me warming any day.

There are all kinds of problems with the videos you presented. See here for a very clear step by step instructions and video showing what your videos are claiming to show, have results that have been fabricated:

Real CO2 in a bottle experiment

The problem is you and so many others not actually understanding the effects that CO2 really has, and only believing in a simplistic view of warming promoted by your cult leaders.

Inaccurate unscientific ramblings, sound bites and clichés do not support your argument. That not only goes for hkmwbz but also Soulskill (the author of this topic who so brazenly declares the science is all but settled), JD, Shavano and Blueg3 below. Global Warming / Climate Change is NOT scientific fact, it is THEORY presently being developed and there is still much to learn. Blind supporters of global warming make outrageous claims and forget that all of this is THEORY which must be backed up with evidence. There are no 'denialists' - that is not even a word! You offer NO LINKS to scientific studies to back up your outrageous claims, so I will.

Urban Heat Islands are definitely real, especially in rapidly growing countries like China. See this paper published by the Journal of Geophysical Research:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/07/28/new-paper-uhi-alive-and-well-in-china/

So hkmwbz you are certifiably wrong there. Then you persist with your clichés

there's a huge amount of evidence that the warming is caused by humans.

Really? Show us your evidence. Where are your links? What is definitely an undisputed scientific fact is how little scientists know and how much they are still learning today.

Then we have JD (below) making ridiculous statements like:

The current imbalanced rise in CO2 is much more troubling because studies show that plants do NOT like massive levels of CO2 unless they come combined with massive levels of O2.

JD what makes you think CO2 is presently imbalanced? Where is the evidence for your statement? Do you actually know what the present percentage of CO2 in our atmosphere is??? It presently is around 0.039445%. Do you have any idea how the increase in CO2 has increased during the last 50 years? It has increased from 0.032 to 0.0395, or by approximately 25%. Here is the data:

http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/

Look at that graph. Its a fairly straight line over a period of 50 years. Fairly straight line despite the dramatic jump in CO2 emissions since the mid-1800's (PDF). Even though human population has more than doubled during the last 50 years! Even though the number of cars has increased 800% from 122 Million in 1960 to over 1 Billion today. And yet somehow our planet's climate just keeps on balancing things out and the rate of increase of CO2 is fairly constant. But wait, JD definitely said "imbalanced rise".

JD continues:

CO2 rises alone, without any other alteration to the environment, will cause plant growth to decline and is eventually toxic.

Really? Where is your scientific evidence? The reality is CO2 is a fertilizer to plants. Plants LOVE CO2, even without a corresponding rise in O2 (wrong again). Even in high concentrations CO2 continues to act as a fertilizer. Here are some links from climate change advocates which you seem to blindly trust:

http://www.nicholas.duke.edu/thegreengrok/fertilizationeffect
http://www.good.is/post/rick-santorum-thinks-carbon-dioxide-isn-t-harmful-to-plants-tell-that-to-a-plant/

The calculation done in 1967 by Manabe and Wetherald

Does that calculation say that the ice caps will melt, the waters will rise, and we will all starve to death? Or does it predict a mild temperature rise like we have already observed?

I don't deny that the world has warmed. But I question the apocalyptic scenarios that say that feedbacks will amplify everything and we all will die.

This is my problem as a layman: I don't have time to read a whole bunch of papers, so I have no way of telling which papers are scientific and which are just insane. The public policy decisions seem to be driven by the insane papers, but AGW defenders like yourself seem to quote the sane ones.

If the science is as settled as you say, and the consequences are going to be dire, then why don't we have several Manhattan Projects going on to transition to nuclear power and decommission as many coal plants as possible as fast as possible?

Also, please, could you post your thoughts on this:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/26/the-skeptics-case/

Do you have any problems with the arguments in that paper? Is he lying when he shows the graphs from the models and the reality is not the same?

I didn't blindly accept these people as relevant to actual climate science. Besides, petitions are useless in a debate on facts, which is what I'm interested in. If you look behind the actual claims (instead of taking them on face-value), then you can quickly discern if a speaker knows what they are talking about, or the degree to which they live in a bizarro world. Lord Monkcton is a pathological liar and in denial about a great many things, for example.

What you seem to be saying is that the NOAA is able to predict the weather. Ha ha ha ha. That is a good one but lets look at the facts that you say I got so wrong.
Think-Tank Says Trained Chimp Can Predict Hurricanes Better Than NOAA And Puts it to the Test
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/05/18/think-tank-says-trained-chimp-can-predict-hurricanes-better-than-noaa%E2%80%A6-and-puts-it-to-the-test/

I like that you picked years that NOAA got sort of right. 2005 they said it was going to be a light year with around 7 and there were around 15. Plus I just checked your numbers on 2008 it was 7-10 not your 6-9. They still got it right but your numbers were wrong. Also these are the August forecasts. Also you need to break down their numbers a bit more. They don't just pick the number as there is an fairly consistent number of hurricanes each year with ups and downs from things like el nino. So lets look at 2007 where you say they were one off. Their detailed prediction was:
"NOAA's forecast called for seven to nine hurricanes, three to five major hurricanes, and 13-16 named storms."
There were six hurricanes during the season, only two of which were classified as major. And even then the last one Karen was a squeaker it came in on the last day or so and many argued wasn't even a hurricane.

Here is a wiki article on global cooling and ice age predictions in the 70's that you say I made up:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling

And here is a good one from the 70s proving my point of who really knows:
"The National Science Board's Patterns and Perspectives in Environmental Science report of 1972 discussed the cyclical behavior of climate, and the understanding at the time that the planet was entering a phase of cooling after a warm period. "Judging from the record of the past interglacial ages, the present time of high temperatures should be drawing to an end, to be followed by a long period of considerably colder temperatures leading into the next glacial age some 20,000 years from now."[26] But it also continued; "However, it is possible, or even likely, that human interference has already altered the environment so much that the climatic pattern of the near future will follow a different path."
It then goes on to talk about Time and Newsweek articles blah blahing about going into an ice age.

Here is where I get anxious about claims of man made global warming. I really believe that we need to cut way back on fossil fuels for a wide variety of great reasons ranging from their sources, pollution, to the costs. I don't particularly like power companies and would love if every house could go off the grid. I would love an electric car with a decent range and a battery that wouldn't end up being a pain. I see energy independence as a something that would strengthen most societies. So taking the flakiest of these beliefs I am still more certain of the benefits from less reliance on fossil fuels from dubious countries than I am as to the possible global warming reduction benefits. But my real anxiety comes from the worry that if it turns out that man made global warming is a crock of crap that many otherwise respectable organizations will loose huge amounts of credibility. NASA, New Scientist, Scientific American, etc will all have huge amounts of egg on their faces after their relentless and largely one sided support on this issue. This is not good in a time when teaching evolution in schools is not just debated but often prevented through legislation. But again, I don't debate that at least my part of the world is warmer and quite possibly the whole thing. But this whole issue is one of religion and no longer science. People who are religious about man made global warming grab every bit of supporting evidence and hold up like a religious tome and call

OTOH, economic fixes are notorious for backfiring and creating perverse incentives. For example, Los Angelos county suddenly boots "desert rats" (at their expense no less) for violating laws that LA County hadn't cared about for decades. Turns out Obama's green energy loans were being used to buy property for solar power that was required by california renewable energy mandates.So it appears that thousands of people were being made homeless (at their expense unless the action is challenged successfully in the courts) for nebulous AGW reasons.

And the significance of impacts is completely beside the climate science we're discussing, anyway.

Really? So if all the human CO2 emissions ever made only caused, say, an additional 0.01C warming per century, that's perfectly acceptable for you? Either magnitude counts, or it doesn't. I'm perfectly willing to stipulate to AGW as in *any* nonzero positive impact on global average temperature, in the same way I'm willing to stipulate to BYBGW (back yard butterfly global warming).

1. Increased temperature increases the evaporation-precipitation balance of an air-water system, and therefore the water vapor content of the atmosphere.

In the world most simple model, that is correct. In reality, we observe significant differences. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/08/support-for-the-saturated-greenhouse-effect-leaves-the-likelihood-of-agw-tipping-points-in-the-cold/

"If a positive water vapor feedback response existed in the climate system, you’d expect both the specific and relative humidity to increase with time. It didn’t. This ends up putting the kibosh on the idea of tipping points, and a lack of positive water vapor feedback pretty much takes all the scare out of CO2 induced climate change."

(see papers by Soden, Dessler, Santer, etc.)

Some great comments on that: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/16/nasa-says-airs-satellite-data-shows-positive-water-vapor-feedback/

"http://geotest.tamu.edu/userfiles/216/Dessler2008b.pdf than this is not worth a iota. Mesurements from 5 years is hardly something that would normally qualify as “climate”science. The results in the article are without any error analysis whatsoever and if you do one youre in for a surprise: http://landshape.org/enm/propagation-of-uncertainty-through-dessler/

“The confidence limits of the mean are then 1.96*3.16*0.37 or 2.29, giving a lower limits to the estimated 2.04 W/m2/K value of vapor feedback of -0.25 W/m2/K. Being less than zero, this indicates that zero feedback is within the limits of uncertainty.”

Dressler actually shows that there is room for a negative feedback, still."

Care to hang your hat on some other cherry trees? :)

They're not going to be able to do that unless you give them the historical forcings to at least that accuracy, which we don't know.

So...long story short...they've got no idea what natural climate change looked like in the past, so they can't distinguish it in the present.

They could do some of that if they were initialized with the current climate state, but the data assimilation methods necessary to do that on a global scale are still in their infancy.

So, we've got data networks that are still in their infancy, by the science is settled? :) Nice.

In order to prove that they can forecast warming 100 years to, say, 20% accuracy (about the IPCC range, assuming known forcings, etc.),

If an astrologist had 20% accuracy, would that make astrology science? Show me your necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement :)

And the significance of impacts is completely beside the climate science we're discussing, anyway.

Really? So if all the human CO2 emissions ever made only caused, say, an additional 0.01C warming per century, that's perfectly acceptable for you? Either magnitude counts, or it doesn't. I'm perfectly willing to stipulate to AGW as in *any* nonzero positive impact on global average temperature, in the same way I'm willing to stipulate to BYBGW (back yard butterfly global warming).

1. Increased temperature increases the evaporation-precipitation balance of an air-water system, and therefore the water vapor content of the atmosphere.

In the world most simple model, that is correct. In reality, we observe significant differences. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/08/support-for-the-saturated-greenhouse-effect-leaves-the-likelihood-of-agw-tipping-points-in-the-cold/

"If a positive water vapor feedback response existed in the climate system, you’d expect both the specific and relative humidity to increase with time. It didn’t. This ends up putting the kibosh on the idea of tipping points, and a lack of positive water vapor feedback pretty much takes all the scare out of CO2 induced climate change."

(see papers by Soden, Dessler, Santer, etc.)

Some great comments on that: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/16/nasa-says-airs-satellite-data-shows-positive-water-vapor-feedback/

"http://geotest.tamu.edu/userfiles/216/Dessler2008b.pdf than this is not worth a iota. Mesurements from 5 years is hardly something that would normally qualify as “climate”science. The results in the article are without any error analysis whatsoever and if you do one youre in for a surprise: http://landshape.org/enm/propagation-of-uncertainty-through-dessler/

“The confidence limits of the mean are then 1.96*3.16*0.37 or 2.29, giving a lower limits to the estimated 2.04 W/m2/K value of vapor feedback of -0.25 W/m2/K. Being less than zero, this indicates that zero feedback is within the limits of uncertainty.”

Dressler actually shows that there is room for a negative feedback, still."

Care to hang your hat on some other cherry trees? :)

They're not going to be able to do that unless you give them the historical forcings to at least that accuracy, which we don't know.

So...long story short...they've got no idea what natural climate change looked like in the past, so they can't distinguish it in the present.

They could do some of that if they were initialized with the current climate state, but the data assimilation methods necessary to do that on a global scale are still in their infancy.

So, we've got data networks that are still in their infancy, by the science is settled? :) Nice.

In order to prove that they can forecast warming 100 years to, say, 20% accuracy (about the IPCC range, assuming known forcings, etc.),

If an astrologist had 20% accuracy, would that make astrology science? Show me your necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement :)

I repeat point (5), you're an idiot.

Truly, a stunning, witty and convincing argument on your part. Hardly scientific, but amusing :)

"Catastrophic" is a non-falsifiable statement. I thought you were scientific?

If I can take it that you're willing to stipulate that "Catastrophic" is non-falsifiable, and that even if there is significant anthropogenic global warming in play, that it will be either benign or neutral, or merely slightly bad, then maybe we don't disagree all that much after all.

But, will you agree that Hansen believes that anthropogenic global warming is going to be catastrophic?

No reason to believe that, other than basic thermodynamics and observations of the water vapor content of the atmosphere.

So you're going to leap from basic thermodynamics, to a bold assertion that CO2 greenhouse effects get magically amplified by H2O greenhouse effects?

What observations would falsify that for you? Perhaps stable H2O levels, with increasing CO2 levels?

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/08/support-for-the-saturated-greenhouse-effect-leaves-the-likelihood-of-agw-tipping-points-in-the-cold/

Get to within 1% of what? And why is arbitrary request this a relevant test of anything?

Within 1% of the historical temperature record from 40,000BC to 2000AD. We're told GCMs can't predict 3 years, or 5 years out, but are supernaturally accurate at 100 years or more. Prove it by accurately forecasting 42,0000 years worth of temperature with your GCM.

The site says it is the abandoned wind farm in Kamaoa, Hawaii.

Here is another link with more pictures and video from California:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/19/the-reality-of-wind-turbines-in-california-video/

I don't read blogspots all day. I also would not characterize my arguments as "wise-ass". Do you think there are no abandoned stations in the U.S.?

History often repeats itself. In Oklahoma, during the oil booms of the early 20th century, drilling rigs popped up all over the place. Over the years, as the wells ran dry, the well sites were abandoned. Dangerous and unsightly equipment littered farms all over the state for decades. Until the Oklahoma Energy Resources Board was formed in 1993 there was no attempt by industry to clean up after themselves.

Like oil wells, wind farms need to be maintained and cleaned up after they have been abandoned. The Canadian landowners DO have a point.

Have you read Hansen's 1988 paper? If you're asserting an error range of 20C, I'm guessing the answer is NO.

Pray tell, what is the error range you'd like to claim for Hansen's 1998 paper? How cold would 2012 need to be before you accepted his basic conceit as falsified?

http://www.appinsys.com/globalwarming/Hansen_GlobalTemp.htm

Since he and John Christy were forced to correct their data, they've had to do so 6 more times, giving an overall significant positive increase in their readings.

Forced to correct their data? Forced? John Christy is a real scientist, he doesn't go back and change historical data points willy nilly to make some claim of "hottest year ever", he takes a close, skeptical look at even his own work, and corrects it as necessary: http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/01/15/1853/

The fact that John Christy actually fixes errors, rather than blindly defending errors (like Mann, et. al.), is a sign of *strength* :)

The model made 3 predictions that were verified - 1) about 0.5C cooling globally 2) lasting about 2 years 3) affecting primarily southern Europe and America.

First off, I'd wonder more about if they made any predictions, which if wrong, would have falsified their primary conceit - i.e., if they would have said "0.4C cooling globally means we're *wrong*", that would have been stronger. Simply making predictions is trivial - astrologists do that all the time.

That being said:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/29/prediction-is-hard-especially-of-the-future/

So their model predicted a large event, a “three-sigma” cooling from Pinatubo.

"But despite their prediction, it didn’t turn out like that at all. Look at the red line above showing the actual temperature change. If you didn’t know there was a volcano in 1991, that part of the temperature record wouldn’t even catch your eye. Pinatubo did not cause anywhere near the maximum temperature swing predicted by the GISS model. It was not a three-sigma event, just another day in the planetary life."

"Hansen predicted what is called a “three sigma” event. He got about a two sigma event (2.07 sigma). “Sigma” is a measure of how common it is for something to occur. However, it is far from linear."

Be careful playing the "unfalsifiable" trump - since that would mean that the anti-AGW hypotheses are ALSO unfalsifiable.

There is no anti-AGW hypothesis - the null hypothesis is natural climate change. We know that natural climate change happens from observation - it's happened well before humanity existed, much less had a significant CO2 output.

Until you can come up with a clearly stated, necessary and sufficient set of falsifiable hypothesis statements in support of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming, you're playing astrology, not science.

A greater concern is the level of chaotic complexity built into global climate as very, very small changes have the potential to cause dramatic shifts ( a real-world butterfly effect, if you will)

The butterfly effect isn't what you think it is - the idea that very small changes can cause very different *specific* outcomes (i.e., a storm that happened at 12:01am, versus a storm that happened at 2:43pm), is not the same thing as the idea that very small changes can cause huge changes in the *quality* of any given outcomes (i.e., a hurricane that is category 5, versus a tropical storm with top winds of 15mph). We do not live in a world where butterflies can create cat5 hurricanes - we live in a chaotic world that has a bunch of negative feedbacks that keeps things surprisingly stable at almost every timescale.