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yet we are at a stage where it is impossible to explain warming in the last 50 years without it.

That's an odd statement. I doubt we're at a stage where we can explain the climate in the last 50 years, in terms of all the variables that effect it, and we may *never* get to that level of certainty. This is the argument of ignorance - "we can't think of anything else, therefore it must be CO2". I still don't buy that one.

As for fire insurance -- it costs you money, and isn't what all the AGW-opposition is about? Really it is a question of cost-benefit analysis.

Fire insurance is a fraction of a fraction of total income. AGW mitigation "cap and trade" or other subsidies for inefficient energy is an order of magnitude higher.

Would you buy fire insurance if it cost 50% of your paycheck? 75% of your paycheck? *That* is the kind of economic impact you'll have if you pursue policies that increase real energy prices by subsidizing inefficient forms of energy, and restricting cheap forms of energy.

Everybody who actually knows something about climate science agree on the major details, except for a handful of people.

Appeal to Unnamed Authority. I've certainly found well more than a handful of people here: http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/3214

Is 31,000 not enough? Or are we simply going to denigrate their POV because they don't agree with our Unnamed Authorities?

I am not insisting that any change is due to human activity. I am insisting that there is a strong argument that some change is due to human activity.

I can agree with your second proposition, until it is asserted that this "some change" is "catastrophic change". We certainly have an effect (both up and down in temp) - but we are simply noise compared to natural drivers. Perhaps your definition of "some" is different than mine :)

As for temperature driving CO2 -- this is a often repeated denialist argument, that has been studied and responded to over a decade ago.

I'd be interested in your reaction to the latest study coming out this year that makes the case for that rationale.

. The oil price jumped, and everybody ran for foreign cars which are sometimes twice as efficient. Then GM screamed for a government bailout. That is what laissez-faire economics gives you.

Um, no, that's what socialist policies give you - laissez-faire economics would let GM fail, have its resources liquidated to other companies that would pursue economically profit driven activity.

The bottom line on the economics is that cheap energy is what brings people out of poverty. Your average person on this planet isn't affected by US subsidies to hybrid vehicles, a country that apparently has money to burn on unprofitable pursuits. They are, however, affected by the cost of energy, and if that goes up, their lives get incredibly worse. If we cared about the plight of most of humanity, we'd be drilling as much cheap petroleum as we can, from wherever we can, to provide the lowest cost energy for the most amount of people. Imagining high tech "clean" solutions unaffordable to the billions of people on this planet is simply fantasy.

That being said, I can imagine that having these expensive policies to destroy 1st world economies (while allowing unchecked development in impoverished countries) is a form of wealth distribution, so if you're into that, it might sit well with your proclivities. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/08/07/worldwide-co2-emissions-and-the-futility-of-any-action-in-the-west/

CO2 has almost doubled since the industrial revolution, and is increasing exponentially. What type of measurement do you want?

A measurement that shows that the heat trapping ability of CO2 is a dominant driver of climate. Leaping from the spectral behavior of CO2 in a lab, to how it would react in the complex real world is not a straightforward step.

Onto probability of CAGW: even though your house has a 1% chance of burning down, you probably have fire insurance.

Having fire insurance isn't going to cause me harm. Radically shrinking the energy available to humanity is. The precautionary principle only works if the proposed remedy has *zero* chance of harm. I'm not convinced that working towards a cooler world, much less increasing the real price of energy, has a zero chance of harm (in fact, I'll bet it's got a very high probability of harm).

So even though your house has a 1% chance of burning down, you probably won't remove every electric or gas powered appliance in your house, and eat all your food raw and unrefrigerated.

AGW was established by consensus in 1979

Science is not consensus.

+ More powerful storms (warm the oceans, and storms get worse)
+ Changes in nature (plant hardiness zones, bird migrations, glacial retreats, melting ice-caps)
+ Temperature record
+ Rising sea level

+ no evidence of more powerful storms (in fact, global cyclonic activity has *dropped*)
+ nature *always* changes - head's I win tails you lose isn't a valid argument
+ a temperature record may show correlation, not causality
+ seas always rise and fall

You've limited your vision to what you feel confirms your position, when in fact, you've essentially insisted that any change can be attributed to man's actions.

Do you really not believe that CO2 concentrations have risen?

Sure they've risen - temperature drives CO2.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/08/05/the-emily-litella-moment-for-climate-science-and-co2/

In particular, most of our cities are at sea level, and all of that investment in infrastructure will come under a cloud in the next 100 years.

Off the top of your head, how old is the city of Venice :)

Working on infrastructure, great. Destroying our economy and driving people into abject poverty with high cost energy on a *guess* about a gas that is measured in parts per million? Not so great.

Your thought experiment fails to account for the period of time when we know the sun rose, but the electronic rooster wasn't invented yet, or had broken down :)

Of course, if you'd like to posit an electronic rooster that existed before the sun did, that will last longer than the sun does, I suppose that's just as likely as anthropogenic CO2 having a significant effect on global average temperature :)

Fun pending paper showing temp drives CO2, not the other way around: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/08/05/the-emily-litella-moment-for-climate-science-and-co2/

After all, maybe the infallible eternal electronic rooster only crows because the sun rose the day before :)

I call BS. Your cited graph claims a forecast from 2000, but IPCC AR4 was from 2007. And did you note the huge error bars?

Tell me, what's the difference between hindcast and forecast when you run a computer simulation?

Huge error bars? I see 0.2 degrees in either direction up to 2000 and then it slowly fans out to 0.4 degrees in 2011. If there was just 0.4 degree cooling since 2000, it'd still drop out of the confidence interval.

Let's hear your response to this: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/06/09/comparing-ipcc-1990-predictions-with-2011-data/

My only response is that when you click through to clivebest.com, figure 1 doesn't look so impressive. BTW, what exactly was I supposed to see on the picture? Put the meaning of that graph into more specific terms.

Orbital mechanics are orders of magnitude simpler than weather and climate predictions. Newtonian Gravity is only 43 arcseconds off *per century* for predicting the orbit of Mercury, for example. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton's_law_of_universal_gravitation#Problems_with_Newton.27s_theory)

So? It's still just a model, a "toy" as you say. And what about electronics?

Perhaps you can suggest what useful information I can get if I knew that next year the global average temperature would be .01C greater than this year.

For instance, it might tell you which crop you want to sow next year if you're a farmer. If you can get a more localized prediction from the model, even better.

Really? I'd say that IPCC AR4 [realclimate.org] did pretty well predicting the past decade.

I call BS. Your cited graph claims a forecast from 2000, but IPCC AR4 was from 2007. And did you note the huge error bars?

Let's hear your response to this: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/06/09/comparing-ipcc-1990-predictions-with-2011-data/

If you can come up with a climate model which has much tighter confidence intervals than current AGW models but with real measurements still fitting in, you might win the Nobel Prize.

I think you hit the nail on the head right there - with such sloppy confidence intervals in the *actual* science, the alarmist claims of accuracy are are highly exaggerated. This might just be a communication problem (dumbing things down until they lose their original meaning), or it could be that it is an intentional misleading. I leave that decision as an exercise for the reader.

And another thing you're forgetting, one of those "toys" helped put man on the Moon and space probes in orbit of various planets in our solar system, hundreds of millions of kilometers away.

Orbital mechanics are orders of magnitude simpler than weather and climate predictions. Newtonian Gravity is only 43 arcseconds off *per century* for predicting the orbit of Mercury, for example. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton's_law_of_universal_gravitation#Problems_with_Newton.27s_theory)

As for the utility of models that predict the statistic "global average temperature", I'll refer you to this: http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/globaltemp/GlobTemp.JNET.pdf

Perhaps you can suggest what useful information I can get if I knew that next year the global average temperature would be .01C greater than this year.

So, 30 year periods. Got it. In another 15 years, if there is no statistically significant warming, you'll finally stop believing in CAGW (or AGW, your choice).

You could also look at the ice core records and find a few 30 year periods where CO2 fell, but temps rose (or CO2 rose, but temps fell). Or hey, maybe we can see a link in the *opposite* direction: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/06/09/a-study-the-temperature-rise-has-caused-the-co2-increase-not-the-other-way-around/

You deny that the MWP existed?

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/29/the-medieval-warm-period-a-global-phenonmena-unprecedented-warming-or-unprecedented-data-manipulation/

The alarmist trope that there was no MWP was a fanciful invention of Mann, and has been thoroughly refuted :)

My problem is that the tragedy of the commons does not always give us an unambiguous interpretation of what action we should take. If you're right, and warming == terrible bad, and we end up doing things that are *intended* to make more warming, we do great damage. If you're wrong, and cooling == terrible bad, and we end up doing things that are *intended* to reverse or stop warming, we do great damage. For the fuzzy conditions, the precautionary principle is *dangerous*, and we cannot blithely assert we understand the unintended consequences.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/04/lawrence-solomon-on-consensus-statistics/

"To their embarrassment, most of the pundits and press discovered they were mistaken — those 2,500 scientists hadn’t endorsed the IPCC’s conclusions, they had merely reviewed some part or other of the IPCC’s mammoth studies. To add to their embarrassment, many of those reviewers from within the IPCC establishment actually disagreed with the IPCC’s conclusions, sometimes vehemently."

Smoke that :)

Still waiting for you to make a concise statement of a falsifiable hypothesis for AGW or CAGW, so we can start playing science, and stop playing religion :)

I call BS.

1) plants certainly increase in yield if the previous temperature was too cold for them to grow at all;
2) there is no evidence that warmer means "less regular climate" - in fact, most of the warming has been documented to be a *narrowing* of the temperature range, rising the cools, and doing very little to the highs;
3) http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/06/26/global-hurricane-activity-at-historical-record-lows-new-paper/

Good. One anecdote. One that isn't even worth considering, because it's false:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/03/19/despite-popular-opinion-and-calls-to-action-the-maldives-is-not-being-overrun-by-sea-level-rise/

Now, a citizen of Greenland might associate higher temperatures that allowed agriculture with good, and cooler temperatures and no agriculture as bad.

Want to trade another set of anecdotes? Or shall we play the science game and come up with a falsifiable hypothesis?

As for government subsidies, as I understand there are far more subsidies for coal, gas and oil than there are for solar.

Wrong.

Many jurisdictions provide HUGE, unsustainable and ridicules subsidies to solar. For example, Ontario Hydro has been legislated to buy rooftop solar PV power @ 81c/kWh. That is equivalent to subsidizing gasoline ($$/equal energy content) @ close to $35-$40/gal. In Germany, they have 0.31 euro/kWh feed-in fees. That's $20/gal or so compared to gasoline. No wonder that there are "solar plants" in parts of the world that operate day or night - they use diesel generators to feed into the system at night and leech these subsidies and that counts as "renewable"!!

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/04/13/the-insanity-of-greenery/

Fossil fuel sector receives almost no direct subsidies (as % of revenue). On the contrary, they pay lots and lots of resource royalties. The only real subsidy fossil fuels get is using air almost for free as a dump.

Or is it better to just attack and hurl names at those who do what the Scientific method calls for - skeptical, independent confirmation?

Do those pieces of code have comments in it like these: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/25/climategate-hide-the-decline-codified/

Story

Meanwhile in the AGW camp, the same thing is going on

Let's not forget AL Gore is heavily invested in "green" companies and has his own carbon credit company.

I think with the "follow the money" argument, it's a draw.

Turns out Greenpeace, Environmental Defense Fund, Natural Resources Defense Council, the Nature Conservancy and the World Resources Institute all receive significant funding from ExxonMobil, BP, and other "Big Oil" companies as well. I assume then - in terms of fairness - you'll also discount any of their publications based upon your perceived taint from their financiers?

NASA’s Hansen asked to account for outside activities

$250,000 7th Annual Heinz Award
$50,000 29th Annual Common Wealth Awards
$1,000,000 (split three ways) Dan David Prize
$100,000 Sophie Prize
$25,000 Nierenberg Prize
$5,000 AAAS Award

etc. etc.

By April, 2011 his (publicly known) prize money amounts to $683,000

That is prize money, a.k.a income, not research grant money.

As far as the perjury goes, the "taken advocacy positions with respect to the Kyoto protocol or the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change" bit has no legal significance. A prosecutor would have to prove that some actively was advocacy and that Soon knew about it and understood it to be advocacy. Good luck with that.

You couldn't guess?

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/06/29/the-log-in-the-eye-of-greenpeace/

Further analysis on tipping points:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/06/20/tipping-points-easy-come-easy-go/

this might help connect the dots...

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/06/14/nasa-jpl-on-new-insights-on-how-solar-minimums-affect-earth/

No you wont, because the temperatures are well within the prediction envelope. As is sea level rise. Sea level rise stands a chance of breaking through the top of the prediction envelope soon.

Actually, we're well out of the bounds of the 1990 IPCC estimate. Even well below the "lowest" estimate.

When observed data doesn't match the model, it's time to change the model, not ignore the observed data.

More food for thought about "hottest year ever":

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/14/according-to-ncdcs-own-data-2010-was-not-the-warmest-year-in-the-usa-nor-even-a-tie/

"While there’s been a lot of attention given to the recent NOAA and NASA press releases stating that 2010 was tied for the warmest year globally, it didn’t meet that criteria in the USA by a significant margin according the the data directly available to the public from the NOAA National Climatic Data Center. (NCDC)"

Of course, the US != the whole world, but when they make alarmist claims, they'll use whichever one is convenient...for example: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/09/AR2007010901949.html

Put simply, the "hottest year ever" metric is a cherry pick of a cherry pick that offers no particular support to any hypothesis, but it makes for great headlines.

Ok, so you agree that the trend over the last century is upward but you feel that selecting all data from all reconstructions is cherry picking

Absolutely. Selecting all data from all reconstructions is still an arbitrary choice. Perhaps if we had all 4 billion years of data, and each reconstruction had all 4 billion years of data, I couldn't make that statement, but the history of climate and weather certainly exceeds our reconstruction history, don't you agree?

IRT to 1934, I may be mistaking claims of "warmest year ever for the US" versus "warmest year ever for the world":

http://www.dailytech.com/Blogger+finds+Y2K+bug+in+NASA+Climate+Data/article8383.htm

Although honestly, as I look through the press regarding those kinds of claims, they're often blurring the line between the two. Someone may say "hottest year in US ever!" and have it turn into a headline that says "hottest year ever!"

And again, I refer you to http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/16/the-past-is-not-what-it-used-to-be-gw-tiger-tale/ and look forward to your ad hoc explanation of the adjustments they made to make the alarmist position more tenable :)

Here's a good article explaining the problem with attempting to model chaotic systems:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/06/13/the-chaos-theoretic-argument-that-undermines-climate-change-modelling/

"So, to summarize, climate researchers have constructed models based on their understanding of the climate, current theories and a series of assumptions. They cannot test their models over the short term, as they acknowledge, because of the chaotic nature of the weather.

They hoped, though, to be able to calibrate, confirm or fix up their models by looking at very long term data, but we now know that’s chaotic too. They don’t, and cannot know, whether their models are too simple, too complex, or just right, because even if they were perfect, if weather is chaotic at this scale, they cannot hope to match up their models to the real world, the slightest errors in initial conditions would create entirely different outcomes."

A) Yes, that specific cherry picked trend is upward.

B) Yes, for that specific cherry picked trend, the five series are in agreement with each other.

C) No, simply seeing agreement does not give us particular reason to believe that the data has not been tampered with, *specifically* because with cherry picking, a slight tamper here and there can become necessary to fulfill the propaganda needs at any particular point in time. Was 1934 the warmest year ever? By what series? Have fun reading this post that shows the kinds of data manipulation made to fit the alarmist agenda:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/16/the-past-is-not-what-it-used-to-be-gw-tiger-tale/

The more important point, though, regardless of what cherry pick you make, is what does the data, assuming its veracity, tell us? Looking at the graph you present, we see two periods of cooling, and three periods of warming. Some of the cooling actually occurs during some of the most increase in CO2 levels emitted by humans, and some of the warming happens before CO2 levels emitted by humans were of any significance. Logic would dictate that such a pattern would indicate that CO2 is not a very good holistic explanation of the graph we observe.

Hey lazyej :)

Let's correct some of your misperceptions:

1) Occam's razor dictates that we should not favor a hypothesis which requires more assumptions (http://jeffreyellis.org/blog/?p=44). Your hypothesis that a trace gas measured in ppm is the primary driver of temperature requires all kinds of assumptions regarding amplification of effect by water vapor, and ad hoc explanations to deal with the historical record which shows CO2 lagging temperatures, not leading them.

2) Seasonal temperature differences *require* more than just an axial tilt - your original statement, while attempting to relate to Occam's razor, was simply "seasons are defined by the axial tilt of the earth" - a tautology, not a cause/effect relationship. Your poor rhetoric and misunderstanding of *definition* versus *cause and effect* clouds your argument here.

3) The heat from the earth's core is not evenly distributed in either time or space - it's specific distribution certainly can effect weather patterns, on all number of scales.

4) Lazyej misunderstands that the slope you get is highly dependent on what endpoints you pick: http://www.masterresource.org/2009/10/a-cherry-pickers-guide-to-temperature-trends/

Another conundrum for the CO2 is responsible for all theory:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/02/21/co2-does-not-drive-glacial-cycles/

"Consider the earth 14,000 years ago. CO2 levels were around 200 ppm and temperatures, at 6C below present values, were rising fast. Now consider 30,000 years ago. CO2 levels were also around 200 ppm and temperatures were also about 6C below current levels, yet at that time the earth was cooling. Exactly the same CO2 and temperature levels as 14,000 years ago, but the opposite direction of temperature change. CO2 was not the driver."

CO2 at 200ppm behaves the same way as CO2 at 200ppm. It does not care whether or not the jump from 180-200ppm came from a volcano, outgassing from oceans, or through forest fires. Asserting that it does is a special pleading that requires ad hoc additions and assumptions to explain past climactic variation.

Another conundrum for the CO2 is responsible for all theory:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/02/21/co2-does-not-drive-glacial-cycles/

"Consider the earth 14,000 years ago. CO2 levels were around 200 ppm and temperatures, at 6C below present values, were rising fast. Now consider 30,000 years ago. CO2 levels were also around 200 ppm and temperatures were also about 6C below current levels, yet at that time the earth was cooling. Exactly the same CO2 and temperature levels as 14,000 years ago, but the opposite direction of temperature change. CO2 was not the driver."

CO2 at 200ppm behaves the same way as CO2 at 200ppm. It does not care whether or not the jump from 180-200ppm came from a volcano, outgassing from oceans, or through forest fires. Asserting that it does is a special pleading that requires ad hoc additions and assumptions to explain past climactic variation.

I believe that is the cause because it's bleeding obvious, and so well accepted that it is part of the definition of seasons.

Again, your rhetoric failed. You were trying to compare a tautological definition to competing hypotheses with Occam's razor. The fact that you didn't express yourself well isn't my fault.

I know! And then to complete the analogy, you would have said "Well, we can't be certain. It was once the province of California and the borders have changed over time, and/and/and" Priceless!

Again, your comprehension here is lacking. I did not take your poorly phrased statement as a simple assertion of a tautological definition (since that was incongruous with the idea of comparing it to competing hypotheses, and I assumed that you *meant* what you said). To interpret my response to the poorly worded statement you made as if I understood that you were talking about a tautological definition is a mistake.

Would we notice the equivalent of 56,000 nuclear bombs/hour leaking from Mt. St. Helens?

You're drunk now, aren't you? :) I simply asserted that the back of the napkin equation regarding the energy coming from fission internal to the earth could affect climate by having a spatial temporal distribution other than perfectly even everywhere. How you get to 56,000 nuclear bombs an hour is a testament to whatever hallucinogen you're currently ingesting :)

As the temperature of a black body increases, the emission of infrared radiation back into space increases with the fourth power of its absolute temperature. This keeps the gain under 1.

You're still not making sense. You want to assert that the climate of the earth cannot have runaway cooling or warming because...you think it acts like a blackbody? Isn't the whole GHG argument that the earth does *not* behave the way we would calculate a perfect blackbody would act?

How can you conclude that CO2 is not the primary driver of the current warming without knowing the basics of climate science?

I do know the basics (and quite a few of the advanced features) of climate science, which is why I conclude that CO2 is not the primary driver of any warming in history. You seem to be missing some very basic understandings though.

Oh dear. I've confused you with a double negative.

I understand - you're not very good at being clear...let me restate for you:

"it still begs the question, what is the *relative* strength of CO2 to other forcings?"

"Yes, another good question. One to which there is a clear answer."

Okay, what is the clear answer? How, for example, do you compare the relative strength of CO2 to the specifics of cloud formation? Here are a few more thorough indications that the answer you believe is not the truth:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/06/02/earth-itself-is-telling-us-there’s-nothing-to-worry-about-in-doubled-or-even-quadrupled-atmospheric-co2/

http://www.drroyspencer.com/research-articles/satellite-and-climate-model-evidence/

If the CO2 is released as a result of warming then it's a feedback. If it is released as the result of burning fossil fuels then it is not a feedback. Duh!

Again, you're making a special pleading that the *source* of CO2 will somehow determine its effect. This is clearly false. A molecule of CO2 does not know or care about its origin before it decides to absorb or radiate energy.

IRT climate sensitivity on GHG:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/06/02/earth-itself-is-telling-us-there’s-nothing-to-worry-about-in-doubled-or-even-quadrupled-atmospheric-co2/

"So there it is: every Watt per meter squared of additional GHG forcing, during the last 50 years, has increased the global average surface air temperature by 0.09 C.

Spread the word: the Earth climate sensitivity is 0.090 C/W-m^-2."

This is just about the same ballpark as the geothermal average values we were talking about earlier.

sure mindcontrolled - suck on this:

It's because of knee-jerk, thought-free BS like yours that we are in the sorry condition that we are right now.

If we had just built nuclear power plants like we had planned, global warming would not only be a thing of the past, we would have been well on our way to curing our addictions to fossil fuels.

You claim that Occam's razor dictates that the easiest answer is always right, and of course the easiest answer is "We don't know". Thank God scientists don't share your understanding of Occam's razor or we would know nothing at all.

You're misunderstanding the application of Occam's razor, and more particularly, how we could possibly apply it to chaotic systems. In order to understand the PDO and ENSO, we don't simply measure things, and then attribute all of our observations of ignorance to those two phenomena. We ruthlessly filter, challenge and try to falsify our assertions. Your interpretation of Occam's razor is "if I have a hypothesis, and nobody else does, it automatically must be true because it's simpler than the alternative that we don't know". This is a faulty interpretation.

For instance, let's apply our understandings to the seasons. I believe that the seasons are caused because the earth's axis is tilted with respect to it's orbit. Summer happens in the hemisphere tilted towards the Sun.

So by that token, would you explain the Year Without a Summer in 1816 as a change in the tilt of the earth's axis?

By your hypothesis, you would've predicted that 1816 would have had a normal summer. As it turned out, an unknown factor entered the equation, and modified the results. Attributing the unknown factor instead to your original hypothesis would have required a special pleading for a anomalous change in the tilt of the earth's axis.

Here's another interesting note:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/05/26/evidence-that-early-antarctic-circumpolar-current-development-affected-global-climate/

Here, the evidence shows that without significant ocean currents, heat distribution throughout the world would be more even, leading to less notable seasons, despite the earth's axial tilt.

With respect to whether or not the temperature has been rising, you are alone in thinking that it has not. Every temperature reconstruction shows the same trend.

Wrong again. Look carefully at the global temperature trend graph here:

http://www.masterresource.org/2009/10/a-cherry-pickers-guide-to-temperature-trends/

1) The reason we over sample is so that errors in trends will cancel each other out. Watts has found that this strategy is working.

Agreed, however I still hold that the increased uncertainty discovered by Watts is important to understand the trend.

2) You are the only one who ever suggested that there should be a statistically significant trend over any timescale no matter how small. This idea is ludicrous.

I believe you're misunderstanding me - I merely suggest that there *could* be a statistically significant trend over any timescale. As for small timescales with statistically significant trends, I'll simply offer the temperature difference over your house from 9am to 12 midnight.

Spencer is referring to climate sensitivity, not to the known forcing of CO2. That is, given that the world will warm by about 1C for a doubling of CO2, how much more should we expect from feedbacks? Spencer does not dispute the known forcing of CO2.

I don't think anyone disputes the "known forcing of CO2" as measured in a laboratory - the question is, is this significant when in the real world, and we have the possibility of both more *and less* due to competing feedbacks. More pointedly, the question being posed to the layperson is, "will this be a bad thing?"

I would argue the following - the expectation of more warming due to positive feedbacks with additional CO2 is grossly overstated, and l

More interesting notes on the topic:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/07/05/going-down-death-rates-due-to-extreme-weather-events/

"Despite the recent spate of deadly extreme weather events – such as the 2003 European heat wave and the 2004 and 2005 hurricane seasons in the USA – aggregate mortality and mortality rates due to extreme weather events are generally lower today than they used to be.

Globally, mortality and mortality rates have declined by 95 percent or more since the 1920s. The largest improvements came from declines in mortality due to droughts and floods, which apparently were responsible for 93 percent of all deaths caused by extreme events during the 20th Century. For windstorms, which, at 6 percent, contributed most of the remaining fatalities, mortality rates are also lower today but there are no clear trends for mortality. Cumulatively, the declines more than compensated for increases due to the 2003 heat wave."

Also see:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/19/devastating-non-trends-in-us-climate/

More interesting notes on the topic:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/07/05/going-down-death-rates-due-to-extreme-weather-events/

"Despite the recent spate of deadly extreme weather events – such as the 2003 European heat wave and the 2004 and 2005 hurricane seasons in the USA – aggregate mortality and mortality rates due to extreme weather events are generally lower today than they used to be.

Globally, mortality and mortality rates have declined by 95 percent or more since the 1920s. The largest improvements came from declines in mortality due to droughts and floods, which apparently were responsible for 93 percent of all deaths caused by extreme events during the 20th Century. For windstorms, which, at 6 percent, contributed most of the remaining fatalities, mortality rates are also lower today but there are no clear trends for mortality. Cumulatively, the declines more than compensated for increases due to the 2003 heat wave."

Also see:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/19/devastating-non-trends-in-us-climate/

I would say that insisting that global warming can't be caused by CO2 is hubris.

Interesting. Stating that our current state of knowledge is insufficient to definitively assert that CO2 is the primary driver of climate changes is prideful? Or perhaps I wasn't clear -> I'm not insisting that global warming absolutely cannot be caused by changes in CO2 levels, I'm expressing doubt that the proposition is true. I could be convinced, if every change in CO2 levels, both contemporary and historical, preceded a similar change in temperature. As far as the data shows at this point, this burden of proof has not been met, so I express what I would consider well founded skepticism.

Do you really think the more than 95% of climate scientists [uic.edu] who accept the consensus of CO2 causing global warming would risk that?

Yes. I think that that promise of funding and financial security is a corrupting influence on results. I believe that prima facie evidence for this can be easily found in the Climategate emails, which showed a cabal of climate scientists defending their turf not with data or argument, but with politics and editorial influence.

Furthermore, I would look closer at that 95% assertion:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/09/25/where-consensus-fails/

March 2000 to February 2010 is 10 years of data.

My apologies, misread that - still, my point holds, as you note: "He also said they need more data for longer periods to improve the conclusions."

The transfer of heat between the surface of the ocean and the depths isn't very fast.

True, which makes for variability based on a situation based 1600 years ago rather than variability based on the past 150 years. Now, you might make the case that there is heat we've pumped out for the past 150 years that is now entering the ocean system, and in 1600 years from now it'll come home to roost, but it sounds like you've got a significant time buffer there.

Perhaps you're also trying to make the case that besides being a slow transfer, it is also an insignificant transfer? That is to say, are you asserting that not only does it take 1600 years for currents to well up and affect the surface, but that the effect after 1600 years is negligible?

I'd point out again the gulf stream warming England, and ask the question if we should believe that it is england's warm atmosphere that causes the water to be warm, rather than the other way around.

there is no evidence of enough undersea volcanic activity to make a difference.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/03/19/undersea-volcanic-eruption-in-tonga/

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/06/25/surprise-explosive-volcanic-eruption-under-the-arctic-ice-found/

"A major part of Earth’s volcanism happens at the so-called mid-ocean ridges and, therefore, completely undetected on the seafloor. There, the continental plates drift apart; liquid magma intrudes into the gap and constantly forms new seafloor through countless volcanic eruptions. Accompanied by smaller earthquakes, which go unregistered on land, lava flows onto the seafloor. These unspectacular eruptions usually last for only a few days or weeks."

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12218

"The true extent to which the ocean bed is dotted with volcanoes has been revealed by researchers who have counted 201,055 underwater cones. This is over 10 times more than have been found before.

The team estimates that in total there could be about 3 million submarine volcanoes

I would say that insisting that global warming can't be caused by CO2 is hubris.

Interesting. Stating that our current state of knowledge is insufficient to definitively assert that CO2 is the primary driver of climate changes is prideful? Or perhaps I wasn't clear -> I'm not insisting that global warming absolutely cannot be caused by changes in CO2 levels, I'm expressing doubt that the proposition is true. I could be convinced, if every change in CO2 levels, both contemporary and historical, preceded a similar change in temperature. As far as the data shows at this point, this burden of proof has not been met, so I express what I would consider well founded skepticism.

Do you really think the more than 95% of climate scientists [uic.edu] who accept the consensus of CO2 causing global warming would risk that?

Yes. I think that that promise of funding and financial security is a corrupting influence on results. I believe that prima facie evidence for this can be easily found in the Climategate emails, which showed a cabal of climate scientists defending their turf not with data or argument, but with politics and editorial influence.

Furthermore, I would look closer at that 95% assertion:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/09/25/where-consensus-fails/

March 2000 to February 2010 is 10 years of data.

My apologies, misread that - still, my point holds, as you note: "He also said they need more data for longer periods to improve the conclusions."

The transfer of heat between the surface of the ocean and the depths isn't very fast.

True, which makes for variability based on a situation based 1600 years ago rather than variability based on the past 150 years. Now, you might make the case that there is heat we've pumped out for the past 150 years that is now entering the ocean system, and in 1600 years from now it'll come home to roost, but it sounds like you've got a significant time buffer there.

Perhaps you're also trying to make the case that besides being a slow transfer, it is also an insignificant transfer? That is to say, are you asserting that not only does it take 1600 years for currents to well up and affect the surface, but that the effect after 1600 years is negligible?

I'd point out again the gulf stream warming England, and ask the question if we should believe that it is england's warm atmosphere that causes the water to be warm, rather than the other way around.

there is no evidence of enough undersea volcanic activity to make a difference.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/03/19/undersea-volcanic-eruption-in-tonga/

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/06/25/surprise-explosive-volcanic-eruption-under-the-arctic-ice-found/

"A major part of Earth’s volcanism happens at the so-called mid-ocean ridges and, therefore, completely undetected on the seafloor. There, the continental plates drift apart; liquid magma intrudes into the gap and constantly forms new seafloor through countless volcanic eruptions. Accompanied by smaller earthquakes, which go unregistered on land, lava flows onto the seafloor. These unspectacular eruptions usually last for only a few days or weeks."

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12218

"The true extent to which the ocean bed is dotted with volcanoes has been revealed by researchers who have counted 201,055 underwater cones. This is over 10 times more than have been found before.

The team estimates that in total there could be about 3 million submarine volcanoes

I would say that insisting that global warming can't be caused by CO2 is hubris.

Interesting. Stating that our current state of knowledge is insufficient to definitively assert that CO2 is the primary driver of climate changes is prideful? Or perhaps I wasn't clear -> I'm not insisting that global warming absolutely cannot be caused by changes in CO2 levels, I'm expressing doubt that the proposition is true. I could be convinced, if every change in CO2 levels, both contemporary and historical, preceded a similar change in temperature. As far as the data shows at this point, this burden of proof has not been met, so I express what I would consider well founded skepticism.

Do you really think the more than 95% of climate scientists [uic.edu] who accept the consensus of CO2 causing global warming would risk that?

Yes. I think that that promise of funding and financial security is a corrupting influence on results. I believe that prima facie evidence for this can be easily found in the Climategate emails, which showed a cabal of climate scientists defending their turf not with data or argument, but with politics and editorial influence.

Furthermore, I would look closer at that 95% assertion:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/09/25/where-consensus-fails/

March 2000 to February 2010 is 10 years of data.

My apologies, misread that - still, my point holds, as you note: "He also said they need more data for longer periods to improve the conclusions."

The transfer of heat between the surface of the ocean and the depths isn't very fast.

True, which makes for variability based on a situation based 1600 years ago rather than variability based on the past 150 years. Now, you might make the case that there is heat we've pumped out for the past 150 years that is now entering the ocean system, and in 1600 years from now it'll come home to roost, but it sounds like you've got a significant time buffer there.

Perhaps you're also trying to make the case that besides being a slow transfer, it is also an insignificant transfer? That is to say, are you asserting that not only does it take 1600 years for currents to well up and affect the surface, but that the effect after 1600 years is negligible?

I'd point out again the gulf stream warming England, and ask the question if we should believe that it is england's warm atmosphere that causes the water to be warm, rather than the other way around.

there is no evidence of enough undersea volcanic activity to make a difference.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/03/19/undersea-volcanic-eruption-in-tonga/

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/06/25/surprise-explosive-volcanic-eruption-under-the-arctic-ice-found/

"A major part of Earth’s volcanism happens at the so-called mid-ocean ridges and, therefore, completely undetected on the seafloor. There, the continental plates drift apart; liquid magma intrudes into the gap and constantly forms new seafloor through countless volcanic eruptions. Accompanied by smaller earthquakes, which go unregistered on land, lava flows onto the seafloor. These unspectacular eruptions usually last for only a few days or weeks."

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12218

"The true extent to which the ocean bed is dotted with volcanoes has been revealed by researchers who have counted 201,055 underwater cones. This is over 10 times more than have been found before.

The team estimates that in total there could be about 3 million submarine volcanoes

Also, here's another critique of the temperature record used by the NCDC:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/26/a-new-paper-comparing-ncdc-rural-and-urban-us-surface-temperature-data/

Some very interesting graphs there.

A consequence of warming due to CO2 is polar amplification. This was stated well before any warming due to CO2 was observed. Once we started to see the warming we check for the fingerprints. If we saw amplification near the equator we would have concluded that increased solar radiation is suspect. This is not what was found.

The fingerprint is off:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/06/another-look-at-polar-amplification/

Your statement that flood detection is increasing and your link that states we are detecting less floods is contradictory.

Not necessarily. We can get better at detecting floods, and also have less of them due to natural variation.

That being said, how does a reduction in floods manage to be "consistent with" claims that warming (which has been observed), will create more floods?

There is uncertainty regarding sensitivity to those forcings, but even that is within a limited range.

I would assert that the uncertainty in a very large range, and a significant portion of that uncertainty is probably because we don't understand all of the forcings at work in our system.

When both water and air are warming, you need to look for a reason that is neither the water or the air. This is not a case of energy moving around, but of energy being added.

Okay, I follow, but I don't think you can be certain. When both water and air are warming, it could very well be the motion of energy from the core of the earth towards the surface, and therefore the oceans, and therefore the air.

Do you have a global average temperature metric for the entire solid mass of the planet? Has there been any trend?

Except that none of these are sufficient.

Known forcings being insufficient does not lead us to the conclusion that all of the rest of the warming must be driven by CO2. That's arguing that anything we don't know (which is legion), must be explained by a magical gas.

When we derive the effect of CO2 by observation, and elimination of all other known effects, we are inconsiderately ignoring unknown effects.

Perhaps there are unknown forcings, but not certainly, and certainly not at a level where they make any kind of measurable contribution. Otherwise we would need them to explain observations.

That doesn't follow. The assumption that unknown forcings have no measurable contribution is an assertion, not an observation. It is quite possible that we *need* them in order to *properly* explain observations, and that currently, we are *improperly* explaining observations.

Surely you are aware that CO2 is not the only driver of climate.

Yes, I am. I also assert that it is only a minor driver of climate, whereas, if I was to infer from your argument thus far, you believe it is a major driver of climate. I would assert that the fact that we have, on every scale of observation, seen any asserted contribution of CO2 overwhelmed by other drivers (which naturally occur on every timescale), we have no reason to believe that this won't continue to happen in the future, both on the upside and the downside.

If the data showed something different, then every scientific society would change their tune.

That's very optimistic of you. I tend to see most of the scientific societies and their recommendations as encumbered by institutional inertia, but here's one example of a turnaround:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/07/17/aps-edito-reverses-position-on-global-warming-cites-considerable-presence-of-skeptics/

A consequence of warming due to CO2 is polar amplification. This was stated well before any warming due to CO2 was observed. Once we started to see the warming we check for the fingerprints. If we saw amplification near the equator we would have concluded that increased solar radiation is suspect. This is not what was found.

The fingerprint is off:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/06/another-look-at-polar-amplification/

Your statement that flood detection is increasing and your link that states we are detecting less floods is contradictory.

Not necessarily. We can get better at detecting floods, and also have less of them due to natural variation.

That being said, how does a reduction in floods manage to be "consistent with" claims that warming (which has been observed), will create more floods?

There is uncertainty regarding sensitivity to those forcings, but even that is within a limited range.

I would assert that the uncertainty in a very large range, and a significant portion of that uncertainty is probably because we don't understand all of the forcings at work in our system.

When both water and air are warming, you need to look for a reason that is neither the water or the air. This is not a case of energy moving around, but of energy being added.

Okay, I follow, but I don't think you can be certain. When both water and air are warming, it could very well be the motion of energy from the core of the earth towards the surface, and therefore the oceans, and therefore the air.

Do you have a global average temperature metric for the entire solid mass of the planet? Has there been any trend?

Except that none of these are sufficient.

Known forcings being insufficient does not lead us to the conclusion that all of the rest of the warming must be driven by CO2. That's arguing that anything we don't know (which is legion), must be explained by a magical gas.

When we derive the effect of CO2 by observation, and elimination of all other known effects, we are inconsiderately ignoring unknown effects.

Perhaps there are unknown forcings, but not certainly, and certainly not at a level where they make any kind of measurable contribution. Otherwise we would need them to explain observations.

That doesn't follow. The assumption that unknown forcings have no measurable contribution is an assertion, not an observation. It is quite possible that we *need* them in order to *properly* explain observations, and that currently, we are *improperly* explaining observations.

Surely you are aware that CO2 is not the only driver of climate.

Yes, I am. I also assert that it is only a minor driver of climate, whereas, if I was to infer from your argument thus far, you believe it is a major driver of climate. I would assert that the fact that we have, on every scale of observation, seen any asserted contribution of CO2 overwhelmed by other drivers (which naturally occur on every timescale), we have no reason to believe that this won't continue to happen in the future, both on the upside and the downside.

If the data showed something different, then every scientific society would change their tune.

That's very optimistic of you. I tend to see most of the scientific societies and their recommendations as encumbered by institutional inertia, but here's one example of a turnaround:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/07/17/aps-edito-reverses-position-on-global-warming-cites-considerable-presence-of-skeptics/

You seem keenly aware of the fingerprints of warming due to GHG. You also seem keenly aware that these fingerprints have been observed in the real world. How do you reconcile this with your idea that the temp rise is not caused by GHG?

Good question. The problem I have is that the "fingerprint" analogy isn't scientific. We often hear the phrase "is consistent with" when it comes to AGW, but that's a cop out. Every climate change and weather pattern "is consistent with" the hypothesis that a wrathful and arbitrary God causes all weather and climate changes - that doesn't mean that this hypothesis is true.

What I'm interested in hearing is "if you don't see this fingerprint, AGW is falsified" or "if you do see this other fingerprint, AGW is falsified". To date, about the only thing I've heard AGW proponents here on slashdot state is "if you see falling temperatures (not merely stable ones), during an increase in CO2, over the next 20 years, I'll reconsider". Now, at least that's a stick in the ground, but I'd argue that we can take a look at history and find periods of 20 years of falling temperatures, and increased CO2, therefore fulfilling that falsification request. Of course any period I cite would probably be asserted as anomalous, or require some other special pleading...which gives me even more reason to doubt the utility of any AGW hypothesis.

"Much of the increase in the number of hazardous events is probably due to significant improvements in information access and also to population growth, but the number of floods and cyclones being reported is still rising compared to earthquakes."

Sounds like our detection rate of floods and cyclones has improved faster than our detection rate of earthquakes. See:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/04/19/why-it-seems-that-severe-weather-is-getting-worse-when-the-data-shows-otherwise-a-historical-perspective/

You are neglecting the fact that we know from physics that adding CO2 does increase the temperature of the atmosphere.

The question is, by how much, and how does that compare to other drivers (such as the ocean). We know from physics that the gulf stream current, which drives warm water towards england, increases atmospheric temperatures there. Would we assume that it is the warm atmosphere around england that drives the current?

You think that because temperature can move around from one part of the world to another via currents - somehow this means that even though both the ocean and the atmosphere are heating up the cause of the warming is due to the ocean heating up?

We have a concrete example here of water warming air. Why can't that also be true on a global scale? Does the interaction of water and air change based on region? If so, what causes this change in behavior?

It is a perfectly reasonable hypothesis to posit that the ocean heating up causes the atmosphere to heat up. As to the question "where does the energy for the ocean to heat up come from?", you can posit tidal forces, undersea volcanoes, and even incoming solar energy not blocked by clouds or other atmospheric molecules. No need to violate any laws of thermodynamics here at all.

Now, how would you falsify this hypothesis? I might suggest an experiment where you take a ratio of water to air similar to the ratio of ocean water to atmospheric content, and try to heat the air to warm the water, and try to heat the water to warm the air, and observe the effects.

Redistributing the heat will throughout the system cannot heat up the system. This really doesn't make any sense.

You're missing the corollary: Heating up the system will not necessarily distribute the heat in a predictable w

while water vapor is necessary for thunderstorms, extreme weather events, including those without precipitation, such as tornadoes, are driven by pressure and temperature differentials.

Two points to consider: 1) We haven't eliminated the diurnal temperature differential but we have increased water vapour which does feed storms. 2) It is possible to eliminate the diurnal temperature differential and still have spacial differentials - and we have increased water vapour which does feed storms.

You are taking a curious position. When faced with facts that are in conflict with your theory, you chose to change the facts rather than your theory. The facts are that diurnal temperature differential is decreasing, but severe weather events are increasing. You seem to think that this system is too complex to understand, but you know for sure that these facts must be wrong because they don't align with your understanding. I'm not trying to be confrontational here but you may want to step back and think this one through. It doesn't seem like your method of inquiry will direct you towards the truth.

why would we assume that the atmosphere is driving ocean temperatures, rather than the other way around?

1) Because we are increasing the temperature of the atmosphere 2) Because equilibrium is required in the system 3) What do you propose is increasing the temperature of the ocean surface? The energy needs to come from somewhere. This is a very significant amount of energy - the equivalent of the energy released by about 56,000 nukes every hour. You are not proposing free energy are you?

As examples, see PDO, ENSO, ADO, etc.

This is an exchange of heat between atmosphere and ocean or northern and southern hemisphere. How do you propose that an exchange of heat between different parts of the system will add heat to the system?

Why would we assume that a trend of 30 years or more eliminates any trends caused by natural variables?

Well, it will eliminate ENSO and solar cycle, it will not eliminate Milankovitch cycles

The logarithmic rate will always limit any linear progression

No, you could have an accelerated input which dwarfs the logarithmic rate. You need to count all GHG, and you need to count feedbacks (including the release of methane (a GHG) from the arctic).

I believe your point is "the temperature is increasing *and* it's because of human produced CO2".

No, go back through the history. You stated that the temperature is not increasing. I stated that it must be because we just had the hottest year in the hottest decade. You stated that this only shows that the temperature is increasing. I stated that yes, that's what I said.

And on the scale that matters to me and my neighbors, we have been seeing dropping temperatures.

So which is it? Do you agree that the temperature has been rising (as you stated in the previous quote, or that temperature is not rising, as you stated in this quote?

They can adjust their global average temperature to whatever they want

Please, no more of this crazy conspiracy talk. Here is the temperature reconstructions from Spencer: http://www.drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures/

here is the analysis by Richard Mueller and the BEST team (funded by oil interests no less!): http://berkeleyearth.org/Resources/Muller_Testimony_31_March_2011

Here is the analysis by Anthony Watts: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/05/11/the-long-awaited-surfacestations-paper/#more-39705

Three vehement skeptics wh

Interesting paper, looks like it was a bit premature though:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/27/rumours-of-my-death-have-been-greatly-exaggerated/

"Menne et al 2010 mentioned a “counterintuitive” cooling trend in some portions of the data. Interestingly enough, former California State Climatologist James Goodridge did an independent analysis ( I wasn’t involved in data crunchng, it was a sole effort on his part) of COOP stations in California that had gone through modernization, switching from Stevenson Screens with mercury LIG thermometers to MMTS electronic thermometers. He sifted through about 500 COOPs in California and chose stations that had at least 60 years of uninterrupted data, because as we know, a station move can cause all sorts of issues. He used the “raw” data from these stations as opposed to adjusted data.

He writes:

Hi Anthony,
I found 58 temperature station in California with data for 1949 to 2008 and where the thermometers had been changed to MMTS and the earlier parts were liquid in glass. The average for the earlier part was 59.17F and the MMTS fraction averaged 60.07F.

Jim

A 0.9F (0.5C) warmer offset due to modernization is significant, yet NCDC insists that the MMTS units are tested at about 0.05C cooler. I believe they add this adjustment into the final data. Our experience shows the exact opposite should be done and with a greater magnitude."

So your null hypothesis is to assume that it's all magical, that we don't know enough to attribute the temperature change to anything?

Nothing needs to be magical for us not to know enough about what causes a given behavior in a chaotic system. Admitting that we don't know the reasons for something is humility; asserting that anything we can't explain must be caused by a magical gas called CO2 is hubris.

Scientists didn't decide that CO2 was the cause of global warming and then look for evidence to support that supposition.

Actually, that's *exactly* what most climate scientists (and anyone trying to get on the global warming gravy train) does. You start with the assumption that anthropogenic CO2 is the explanation for any unexplained warming. You then look for evidence to support that assumption. Any evidence found contrary to that assumption is discarded.

If you want to dispute that you have to come up with a better scientific argument than they have.

They don't have a scientific argument if they don't have a falsifiable hypothesis. Simply looking for additional data points to confirm original assumptions isn't science -> ruthlessly looking for *any* possible refutation of your hypothesis is.

Clouds effects on global warming has been pretty intensely studied for the past decade. Dessler (2010) [tamu.edu] used cloud measurements over the whole planet from the CERES satellite from March 2000 to February 2010

Less than a year's worth of data, and we're supposed to come to conclusions about climate and cycles that can happen over decades, centuries and even millennia?

If the ocean is absorbing heat from the atmosphere it's going to get warmer. The ocean is not an infinite heat sink.

I'd say it's effectively infinite, given the 4000+ to 1 ratio of heat capacity of the oceans to the atmosphere. An order of magnitude really does mean something here.

You really ought to drop the undersea volcanoes argument. It is a hypothesis with no evidence to back it up. It makes it sound like your grasping at straws to support your position.

I'm not sure why we would assume that only above ground volcanoes can affect climate...certainly, the aerosol effects of ash are relatively short lived, and the heat fro

I took a look at your graphs. They conveniently have the years for the minimum and maximum points flagged. They show about 10 degrees C rise in about 10,000 years which is about 1 C per thousand years. Right now the slope is more like 1 C in less than 200 years. That is considerably steeper.

You're making the assumption that the 10 degrees of rise was regular and even. As for 1C in less than 200 years, we've seen this during the MWP, when human CO2 emissions were negligible.

Here, check this out:
http://theinconvenientskeptic.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/moberg-last-1000-550x388.png
http://theinconvenientskeptic.com/2011/04/2000-years-of-rate-of-temperature-change/

"Several items stick out to me.

Ten times in the past 1,000 years the rate of warming has been significant for at least a 50 year period.

The most extended period of warming was during the 1700s when warming happened for almost the entire 100 year period.

Since 1600, the rate of cooling has never been below -0.005 C/yr. In effect, the strong cooling took place prior to 1600 AD.

The strongest cooling was in 1440 when the 50 yr rate was -0.0141 C/yr.

So in the past 400 years the rates of cooling been lower than average, but such periods have happened before. The net result is that the modern warm temperatures have been 400 years in the making, not 40 years. Absolutely nothing in the past 100 years is abnormal in the rate of temperature change."

All I can say about natural cycles is that they account for all known ones. There may be ones we don't know about yet but you can't just assume that they exist.

That's ludicrous. We can, with great certainty, assert that there are natural cycles we don't know about yet. In fact, we could probably go so far as to say with great certainty that there are *significant* natural cycles we don't know about yet. Simply attributing every observation to our prime suspect, anthropogenic CO2, rather than the null hypothesis of "we don't know what drove that", is unsupportable.

Sea surface temperatures are not part of the atmospheric temperature record.

Which is particularly problematic, given that most of the earth is not land. Constructing, or reconstructing, a temperature record that does not include 2/3rds of the earth's surface seems, on its face, insufficient.

No, water vapor is the gaseous form of water. I think you're conflating it with clouds.... The net effect of clouds on the greenhouse effect is thought to be slightly positive although it's still an area of some uncertainty.

My apologies, you're correct, it is water vapor available for cloud formation that I was referring to. That all being said, the effect of clouds, and the distribution (both contemporary and historical) of clouds is *completely* uncertain.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/10/06/aerosols-and-cloud-lifetime-effect-cited-as-enormous-uncertainty-in-global-radiation-balance/

"To date, however, it has not been possible to quantify the influence of the cloud lifetime effect on climate. The estimates vary hugely and range from no influence whatsoever to a cooling effect that is sufficient to more than compensate for the heating effect of carbon dioxide."

A comparison of the stations that surfacestations.org considered poorly placed (mostly because of UHI issues) vs. ones they considered well placed actually found a slight cooling bias for the poorly placed stations. (I'll dig up the paper if you want.)

I'd love to see t

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/13/results-lab-experiment-regarding-co2-snow-in-antarctica-at-113%C2%B0f-80-5%C2%B0c-not-possible/

I googled a bit.

Of course I have. I also know better than to claim things I cannot source, here you go:

How was Briffa doing this if all communication with the authors had to be part of the official record?

At the time, in May of 2008, McIntyre assumed that Briffa was getting information from Casper Ammann since Ammann was listed as a contributing author to chapter 6. It did not occur to McIntyre that Wahl was the source of the text. Thanks to the individual who liberated the Climategate emails, we now know that Wahl was the source of that text. The Climategate emails, quoted above, show Briffa and Wahl exchanging emails about the way McIntyre’s arguments should be handled. Confidentially, outside the process of the IPCC which is designed to capture reviewer objections and authors’ responses to those objections. Wahl is brought in by Briffa to defend his own work. And defend it with literature that has not been published yet.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/08/to-serve-mann/

There are more examples. It seems your knowledge of Climategate comes from less than honest sources.

Gavin Atkins != Anthony Watts.

The problem is that we are now starting to get a long trail of predictions from the global warming advocates that have failed to come true. Another favourite of mine is that hurricanes were going to be rampaging across the Atlantic due to the warming. Catrina being just the start. That is why Al Gores book is covered with photoshopped hurricanes including one turning in the wrong direction. Only problem is that hurricane activity has dramatically dropped since Catrina. Yet we are expected to spent trillions with a T of dollars based on these predictions from computer models that can't be verified in any way, haven't had their code released for review or had their algorithms reviewed. This "Just take my word for it" mentality is what we are supposed to bankrupt our countries on. Just look at the disaster wind power has become for the UK and others to see what the problems are.

1. During the study period, wind generation was:

* below 20% of capacity more than half the time;

* below 10% of capacity over one third of the time;

* below 2.5% capacity for the equivalent of one day in twelve;

* below 1.25% capacity for the equivalent of just under one day a month.

Link

The head of the UK power grid is saying that homes are going to have to get used to not always having power at home.

Link

Then there is the actual life expectancy of windmills. Is this really what we should be spending money on?

Link

The problem is that we are now starting to get a long trail of predictions from the global warming advocates that have failed to come true. Another favourite of mine is that hurricanes were going to be rampaging across the Atlantic due to the warming. Catrina being just the start. That is why Al Gores book is covered with photoshopped hurricanes including one turning in the wrong direction. Only problem is that hurricane activity has dramatically dropped since Catrina. Yet we are expected to spent trillions with a T of dollars based on these predictions from computer models that can't be verified in any way, haven't had their code released for review or had their algorithms reviewed. This "Just take my word for it" mentality is what we are supposed to bankrupt our countries on. Just look at the disaster wind power has become for the UK and others to see what the problems are.

1. During the study period, wind generation was:

* below 20% of capacity more than half the time;

* below 10% of capacity over one third of the time;

* below 2.5% capacity for the equivalent of one day in twelve;

* below 1.25% capacity for the equivalent of just under one day a month.

Link

The head of the UK power grid is saying that homes are going to have to get used to not always having power at home.

Link

Then there is the actual life expectancy of windmills. Is this really what we should be spending money on?

Link

The problem is that we are now starting to get a long trail of predictions from the global warming advocates that have failed to come true. Another favourite of mine is that hurricanes were going to be rampaging across the Atlantic due to the warming. Catrina being just the start. That is why Al Gores book is covered with photoshopped hurricanes including one turning in the wrong direction. Only problem is that hurricane activity has dramatically dropped since Catrina. Yet we are expected to spent trillions with a T of dollars based on these predictions from computer models that can't be verified in any way, haven't had their code released for review or had their algorithms reviewed. This "Just take my word for it" mentality is what we are supposed to bankrupt our countries on. Just look at the disaster wind power has become for the UK and others to see what the problems are.

1. During the study period, wind generation was:

* below 20% of capacity more than half the time;

* below 10% of capacity over one third of the time;

* below 2.5% capacity for the equivalent of one day in twelve;

* below 1.25% capacity for the equivalent of just under one day a month.

Link

The head of the UK power grid is saying that homes are going to have to get used to not always having power at home.

Link

Then there is the actual life expectancy of windmills. Is this really what we should be spending money on?

Link

What happens is that the global warming is causing the ocean water to become less dense, both by dilution by melted ice and by thermal expansion from the increased temperature.

That would be a heck of a story if there actually was warming to create this expansion. Melting glaciers put cold water into the ocean not warm water. If you think the air is some how heating the water you should have a look at the graphic over here.

Link