There is no thermometer reading. Global average temperature is a statistical artifact, limited by our resolution of measurement, any biases in the system, and the choices we make on how to adjust and weight different measurements.
And that, probably more than anything else, drives me batty - we've got a pretty good handle on how to measure average CO2 levels in the air (it doesn't vary that much within the atmosphere, like cloud cover or humidity), but temperature? Turtles all the way down.
2) lower global temperatures (check - or at least half check, since warming has been stalled)
3) without any other factors (ad hoc special pleading - fail)
Your #3 is essentially a "get-out-of-jail-free" card. You could use #3 to show a 10C drop in average temps over 10 years, and still claim AGW (although perhaps not CAGW, which insists that warming of a certain amount must be catastrophic to humanity and the biosphere).
Why can't we use the #3 special pleading to assert that there are simply other natural factors to explain temperature rise, rather than CO2 levels? In fact, why can't we assert that the mechanism is reversed (temperature drives CO2), and discrepancies need to be explained in the *opposite* direction?
It sounds like you've developed a rationale that can survive any refutation, which is the very definition of religious faith.
The fact that the Big Bang occurred is in the realm of science, because it can be stated as a falsifiable hypothesis. Most famously, the prediction of the red shift (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redshift). I don't say that I believe in the Big Bang Theory because most cosmologists do (in fact, before the BBT, *most* cosmologists were wrong), I believe it in because the falsifiable hypothesis as stated has survived myriad attempts at falsification. We've *looked* for contradictory data, we've *looked* for failed predictions, and so far, the BBT holds true.
As for the Church of Global Warming, the same cannot be said. Believers believe because their authorities have told them to. They cannot state a falsifiable hypothesis, and for the most part, can't even *imagine* one. All data that contradicts their beliefs is ad hoc refuted with special pleadings, and they notoriously avoid looking for any data that would cast doubt on their beliefs.
"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:)
What observations would falsify your hypothesis that human emitted CO2 is causing warming of the earth that will have catastrophic consequences for humanity, assuming you exclude all proxy data?
Say, 15 years of no statistically significant warming, but continuously rising CO2 levels?
So, do *you* have any concise statements of a falsifiable hypothesis of AGW, or do you simply believe they're out there somewhere in the ether?:)
I would suggest to you that if you believe in AGW, and cannot identify those concise statements, you are operating in terms of a religion, not science.
I call BS - show your citations of a warmer world being less comfortable, with less carrying capacity, leading to a whole lot of death and dislocation. Refute the Holocene Optimum and Medieval Warm Period ages of prosperity for humanity. Show me the 50 million missing climate refugees. Refute the statistics regarding more death caused by cold weather than by warm weather.
For any of your scientific projections, tell me what observations would falsify those particular hypotheses - if we saw an increase in temps, but less death and dislocation, over say, 10 years, would that satisfy you that you were wrong? 20 years? 30 years? Make a prediction, and stand by it.
I call BS. You're yet *again* Appealing to an Unidentified Authority (http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to-authority.html)
"The authority in question must be identified. A common variation of the typical Appeal to Authority fallacy is an Appeal to an Unnamed Authority. This fallacy is also known as an Appeal to an Unidentified Authority.
This fallacy is committed when a person asserts that a claim is true because an expert or authority makes the claim and the person does not actually identify the expert. Since the expert is not named or identified, there is no way to tell if the person is actually an expert. Unless the person is identified and has his expertise established, there is no reason to accept the claim."
I'm saying two things, neither of which you've sufficiently disputed -
1) asserting that you'll change your beliefs when nasa.gov and "most climate scientists" change their beliefs is not science, it's religion; 2) since the Appeal to Unidentified Authority fallacy is not a useful argument, we should instead concentrate on making a concise statement of a falsifiable hypothesis of CAGW (or AGW, if you're a luke-warmer), and arguing the merits rather than authorities.
Citing "nasa.gov" as an authority is an Appeal to an Unidentified Authority, as per your citation. Furthermore, the "nasa.gov" quote, "Most climate scientists agree", is also an Appeal to an Unidentified Authority, as per your citation.
Sure, appeal to authority is not always fallacious - when the Pope says "don't kill people", just because he's the Pope doesn't mean he's giving bad advice.
But since appeal to authority is sometimes fallacious, and sometimes not fallacious, it's really a poor argument, don't you agree?
Why not have a real argument on the science, starting with a concise statement of a falsifiable hypothesis - anyone can play that game, not just Popes and auto mechanics:)
Not sure what libertarians you're talking to, but if you're asserting that libertarians carve out an exception for government regulation of pollution, I think you either misunderstood, or they're libertarian-lite.
That being said, if you can show a direct harm (say, from dumping heavy metals into a stream that is used by someone else downstream), the libertarian position is that the government can intervene to prevent that harm. That being said, a lot of things fall into the fuzzy category of "we're really not sure if there is direct harm" or "we can't definitively attribute any direct harm".
The real problem here is that the precautionary principle used in those fuzzy categories has *serious* consequences if you get it wrong. Imagine you believe that DDT *might* be dangerous (even though it is safe and non-toxic to humans and animals). You've got a fuzzy suspicion, fueled by an activist's book (Rachel Carson), and because of that, you decide that the safe thing to do is to take precaution, and ban DDT.
Now watch as over 40 years, malaria ravages Africa and kills tens of millions of babies, and keeps most of the continent in abject poverty.
Or imagine you're Ancel Keys, and you've got a fuzzy suspicion that fat intake causes heart disease. Your idea finally takes hold as official USDA advice in 1978, and for the next 40 years, as people eat a low-fat/high-carb diet, incidence of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer and other chronic diseases due to insulin skyrocket and cost trillions in health care costs.
Humans, in general, are terrible at weighing risk, and tend to see their "precautionary" actions as having zero other consequences. Until you can break through that myopia, it's probably best to just leave things alone.
Still no statement of a falsifiable hypothesis, although it seems like you're asserting a lesser form of AGW, rather than CAGW (the difference being, AGW could very well be benign, and something we should *encourage*).
Even if we cannot discern any other single factor that would "explain" observed warming does *not* mean that the default explanation *must* be CO2, nor does it prove that the results of warming (any warming) would be catastrophic. Tell me what observations would possibly shake your "absolute certainty" (either about AGW or CAGW) - don't just make four assertions and demand that the simple existence of those four assertions means that you're guaranteed to be right.
Appeal to authority. Very typical of religious movements - you've just replaced the Pope with nasa.gov.
I'll start believing in CAGW when *any* alarmist makes a clear, concise list of observations that would falsify their hypothesis, and then we all try *really hard* to look for those observations, and are completely unable to find any. That's called science.
I disagree with your premises. Why would we need any carbon tax if global warming is beneficial to the biosphere and humanity as a whole (see: Medieval Warm Period).
Put another way, how would you feel if I demanded that all governments around the world provide massive carbon *subsidies* (on the level of what they put, per MW, to say, solar and wind), because I believe that a warm world is a good world, and that CO2 helps warm the planet?
Frankly, the libertarian position of "leave me alone" works either way - the government intervention position has to be *completely correct* in order for it to be beneficial (and let's take a wild guess about how often that happens).
1) you can have a hypothesis about how fast the planet will warm over the next 10 years, regardless of what causes that warming;
2) you can have a hypothesis about whether or not the world will get *any* warmer over the next 10 years, regardless of what causes the warming.
Now, for us to assert that AGW is actually CAGW (and something we should do something about), the warming has to have a certain rate. If the world warms at.01C per century because of human CO2, who cares. If the world warms at 10C per century because of human CO2, everybody needs to care.
So let's split them up - for sure CAGW is falsified by the observation of a lower rate of warming.
AGW might not be falsified by the observation of a lower rate of warming, but we definitely need to revisit the assumptions that lead people to believe that AGW means CAGW.
I'd take it a step further - I think that they're making the claim that there is *no* particular technique that can accurately discriminate the feedback function. And even though that's actually a fairly trivial assertion to make, and one that isn't particularly disagreeable to any scientists (since models are only models, and models of particularly complex systems are so chock full of guesses that one can hardly use them to make any useful predictions), it is one that laypeople and CAGW activists tend to gloss over.
So sure, "blow holes in global warming" might be a bit over the top, but it certainly exposes the holes nobody really pays much attention to.
Now, perhaps this fudging of the data wasn't malicious (in fact, I'll argue that it was done with the best of intentions), and perhaps some of the fudges actually have a reasonable rationale that we can agree upon - but let's not pretend that there is a magical thermometer we can stick in the air, and get the current Global Average Temperature (much less a magical thermometer we can read from 1000 years ago to do the same thing). At best, this is a field over-reliant on proxy data, and *everyone* should be skeptical of that sort of weak science.
If the CAGW believers want to play the science game, let's hear their falsifiable hypothesis, and a concise list of observations of CO2 and temperature, or outgoing radiation from earth (as in this study), that would lead them to give up their belief.
For every hole they try to poke in Spencer's model, they're overlooking a dozen more in their own flawed models:)
As with many CAGW believers, you're confusing *necessary* with *sufficient*. It may be *necessary* for CO2 to have specific spectral properties for CAGW to be true, but simply because CO2 has spectral properties does not allow us to say that CAGW is real. In other words, it may be *necessary* for you to have money to buy something at a story, but it's not *sufficient* - the store also has to have the thing that you're trying to buy.
You want observations? I've laid them out for you, all you have to do is go look
I want you to specify what observations would falsify your hypothesis of CAGW. If you can do that in terms of CO2 levels and global average temperature, great. If you need to add in sea level, sea heat content, or extreme weather events, that's fine too. But specify, up front, what we could possibly observe that would prove you wrong. Until you do that, you're not doing science.
What a low bar for a miracle! Do you propose some mechanism by which the deity helped you to find your keys? I'll assume not, nobody ever bothers with that part, so we'll just have to rely upon the observations of the actual process that lead to you finding the keys which will be either you bumping into them by accident or suddenly remembering where you put them. God will be conspicuously absent as he has been in every observation ever.
Sure I can propose a mechanism - the deity simply arranged all the molecules in the world billions of years ago so that when we got to the moment in time where I lost my keys, I would spontaneously find them. The problem is, I *can't* propose a falsification. I cannot describe any set of observations that would prove me wrong - if my keys were found by someone else and given to me, I'd assert divine intervention on the other person. If my keys were found because I literally looked everywhere in the house, I'd assert divine intervention in the design of the house.
When you propose that human CO2 emissions use the mechanism of the greenhouse effect to cause catastrophic global warming, but cannot describe any set of observations that would shake your belief in that assertion, you're simply praying to a deity by another name.
"Look, for evolution, falsification is simple - show me a more complex life form that precedes simpler ones. A rabbit fossil in the pre-cambrian for example. This is science."
And how would this disprove evolution?
Having a more complex life form precede simpler life forms would contradict the premise of evolution, which is that complexity is not spontaneously derived, but naturally selected for over time. Now, you could make the special pleading that the rabbit was an implant from a different planet which did *not* have complex life forms preceding simpler ones, but you get the idea.
1) It may be that CO2 has specific spectral properties;
2) It may be that our estimates of our CO2 emissions are accurate;
Simply having 1 and 2 do not prove that humans are emitting so much CO2 as to overwhelm all other natural factors and cause warming that will be catastrophic to humanity as a whole, or even the biosphere as a whole.
3) How can you tell the difference between an "unobserved forcing" and the forcing you wish to attribute to CO2?
If you accept that AGW is unfalsifiable, all you have to do is take Roy Spencer's data, which contradicts the models that predict CAGW, and ignore it - assert some ad hoc pleading, and explain it away.
What Spencer has neatly done is specifically falsify specific models. Believers of CAGW will simply tweak the model, or make a special pleading.
Pray tell, which few are "critical" to anthropogenic global warming? That is to say, what few falsifiable hypotheses do we need in order to make the grand claims of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming?
If we know that humans breath out water vapor, and water vapor doesn't allow light to pass through and absorbs heat, have we established CAGW?
The problem you're having here is that you're asserting that a small few falsifiable hypotheses are not only necessary, but *sufficient* for us to believe CAGW is true. Any inspection of your few hypotheses will show that this demonstrably false - for example, CO2 can certainly have specific spectral properties, but it's behavior in the complex climate system may be completely overwhelmed by other factors, no matter if you're wrong or right about the spectral properties.
Simply state what observation of CO2 levels and temperature that would falsify your hypothesis. If you need to add more observation factors in (extreme weather, sea level, whatever), feel free - but make a clear statement as to what observed data will falsify your CAGW hypothesis. You can't simply state - "well, CO2 has a specific atomic weight, therefore it is the primary driver of global temperature" - it doesn't follow.
That special pleading can go either way - coming out of the LIA, temperature increases are to be expected (since they were anomalously low before).
Furthermore, if it's at a slightly slower pace than expected, doesn't that falsify the original hypothesis? Or shall we add additional special pleadings whenever we see data that contradicts our expectations?
As for "9 of the 10 warmest years", we're talking about the most insignificantly small margins. You can have technically 10 of the 10 warmest years, and *still* have a lack of expected warming - they simply have to be.0001 warmer than all other years, but compared to *each other*, flat or falling.
1) evolution is not a religion. it's science, and it's a falsifiable hypothesis. Find a rabbit in the pre-cambrian, and you've falsified evolution.
2) I am a scientist.
3) correlation is not causality - god I hope they're teaching you that in chemical engineer school.
Now, if you want to play the science game, simply give me a concise list of any observations that would falsify your hypothesis. Appealing to authority, asserting that we cannot possibly understand the complexities of this because you and I are simply less educated than experts, is the *hallmark* of religion, my dear friend.
At this point, it seems that the only refutation of the hypothesis you would accept is if an authority figure told you that the hypothesis of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming was wrong. Or is there any data that could convince you of your error?
I call double BS. First, you mistake correlation for causality - a "direct relationship" between CO2 levels and temperature can just as easily go the other way around (and in fact, ice cores show us *exactly that*).
Second, you're not telling us what observation would falsify your hypothesis. CO2 levels have continued to rise over the past 15 years, and we've seen no statistically significant warming trend. Either that represents a solid refutation of your hypothesis, or you have to come up with some ad hoc pleading, that it's too short of a time scale, or you've got some other factor that made it stall - and that game can be played even if we have rising CO2 for 100 years, and stable or falling temperatures.
Alarmists simply do not have any observations in CO2, or temperature, that they would accept as a falsification of their hypothesis. This means they're playing religion, not science.
Slashdot Mirror
There is no thermometer reading. Global average temperature is a statistical artifact, limited by our resolution of measurement, any biases in the system, and the choices we make on how to adjust and weight different measurements.
And that, probably more than anything else, drives me batty - we've got a pretty good handle on how to measure average CO2 levels in the air (it doesn't vary that much within the atmosphere, like cloud cover or humidity), but temperature? Turtles all the way down.
So let me try and break that down for you:
1) higher CO2 (check)
2) lower global temperatures (check - or at least half check, since warming has been stalled)
3) without any other factors (ad hoc special pleading - fail)
Your #3 is essentially a "get-out-of-jail-free" card. You could use #3 to show a 10C drop in average temps over 10 years, and still claim AGW (although perhaps not CAGW, which insists that warming of a certain amount must be catastrophic to humanity and the biosphere).
Why can't we use the #3 special pleading to assert that there are simply other natural factors to explain temperature rise, rather than CO2 levels? In fact, why can't we assert that the mechanism is reversed (temperature drives CO2), and discrepancies need to be explained in the *opposite* direction?
It sounds like you've developed a rationale that can survive any refutation, which is the very definition of religious faith.
The fact that the Big Bang occurred is in the realm of science, because it can be stated as a falsifiable hypothesis. Most famously, the prediction of the red shift (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redshift). I don't say that I believe in the Big Bang Theory because most cosmologists do (in fact, before the BBT, *most* cosmologists were wrong), I believe it in because the falsifiable hypothesis as stated has survived myriad attempts at falsification. We've *looked* for contradictory data, we've *looked* for failed predictions, and so far, the BBT holds true.
As for the Church of Global Warming, the same cannot be said. Believers believe because their authorities have told them to. They cannot state a falsifiable hypothesis, and for the most part, can't even *imagine* one. All data that contradicts their beliefs is ad hoc refuted with special pleadings, and they notoriously avoid looking for any data that would cast doubt on their beliefs.
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 :)
What observations would falsify your hypothesis that human emitted CO2 is causing warming of the earth that will have catastrophic consequences for humanity, assuming you exclude all proxy data?
Say, 15 years of no statistically significant warming, but continuously rising CO2 levels?
So, do *you* have any concise statements of a falsifiable hypothesis of AGW, or do you simply believe they're out there somewhere in the ether? :)
I would suggest to you that if you believe in AGW, and cannot identify those concise statements, you are operating in terms of a religion, not science.
I call BS - show your citations of a warmer world being less comfortable, with less carrying capacity, leading to a whole lot of death and dislocation. Refute the Holocene Optimum and Medieval Warm Period ages of prosperity for humanity. Show me the 50 million missing climate refugees. Refute the statistics regarding more death caused by cold weather than by warm weather.
For any of your scientific projections, tell me what observations would falsify those particular hypotheses - if we saw an increase in temps, but less death and dislocation, over say, 10 years, would that satisfy you that you were wrong? 20 years? 30 years? Make a prediction, and stand by it.
I call BS. You're yet *again* Appealing to an Unidentified Authority (http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to-authority.html)
"The authority in question must be identified.
A common variation of the typical Appeal to Authority fallacy is an Appeal to an Unnamed Authority. This fallacy is also known as an Appeal to an Unidentified Authority.
This fallacy is committed when a person asserts that a claim is true because an expert or authority makes the claim and the person does not actually identify the expert. Since the expert is not named or identified, there is no way to tell if the person is actually an expert. Unless the person is identified and has his expertise established, there is no reason to accept the claim."
I'm saying two things, neither of which you've sufficiently disputed -
1) asserting that you'll change your beliefs when nasa.gov and "most climate scientists" change their beliefs is not science, it's religion;
2) since the Appeal to Unidentified Authority fallacy is not a useful argument, we should instead concentrate on making a concise statement of a falsifiable hypothesis of CAGW (or AGW, if you're a luke-warmer), and arguing the merits rather than authorities.
Citing "nasa.gov" as an authority is an Appeal to an Unidentified Authority, as per your citation. Furthermore, the "nasa.gov" quote, "Most climate scientists agree", is also an Appeal to an Unidentified Authority, as per your citation.
In other words, you're talking out of your hat.
Sure, appeal to authority is not always fallacious - when the Pope says "don't kill people", just because he's the Pope doesn't mean he's giving bad advice.
But since appeal to authority is sometimes fallacious, and sometimes not fallacious, it's really a poor argument, don't you agree?
Why not have a real argument on the science, starting with a concise statement of a falsifiable hypothesis - anyone can play that game, not just Popes and auto mechanics :)
Not sure what libertarians you're talking to, but if you're asserting that libertarians carve out an exception for government regulation of pollution, I think you either misunderstood, or they're libertarian-lite.
That being said, if you can show a direct harm (say, from dumping heavy metals into a stream that is used by someone else downstream), the libertarian position is that the government can intervene to prevent that harm. That being said, a lot of things fall into the fuzzy category of "we're really not sure if there is direct harm" or "we can't definitively attribute any direct harm".
The real problem here is that the precautionary principle used in those fuzzy categories has *serious* consequences if you get it wrong. Imagine you believe that DDT *might* be dangerous (even though it is safe and non-toxic to humans and animals). You've got a fuzzy suspicion, fueled by an activist's book (Rachel Carson), and because of that, you decide that the safe thing to do is to take precaution, and ban DDT.
Now watch as over 40 years, malaria ravages Africa and kills tens of millions of babies, and keeps most of the continent in abject poverty.
Or imagine you're Ancel Keys, and you've got a fuzzy suspicion that fat intake causes heart disease. Your idea finally takes hold as official USDA advice in 1978, and for the next 40 years, as people eat a low-fat/high-carb diet, incidence of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer and other chronic diseases due to insulin skyrocket and cost trillions in health care costs.
Humans, in general, are terrible at weighing risk, and tend to see their "precautionary" actions as having zero other consequences. Until you can break through that myopia, it's probably best to just leave things alone.
Still no statement of a falsifiable hypothesis, although it seems like you're asserting a lesser form of AGW, rather than CAGW (the difference being, AGW could very well be benign, and something we should *encourage*).
Even if we cannot discern any other single factor that would "explain" observed warming does *not* mean that the default explanation *must* be CO2, nor does it prove that the results of warming (any warming) would be catastrophic. Tell me what observations would possibly shake your "absolute certainty" (either about AGW or CAGW) - don't just make four assertions and demand that the simple existence of those four assertions means that you're guaranteed to be right.
Appeal to authority. Very typical of religious movements - you've just replaced the Pope with nasa.gov.
I'll start believing in CAGW when *any* alarmist makes a clear, concise list of observations that would falsify their hypothesis, and then we all try *really hard* to look for those observations, and are completely unable to find any. That's called science.
I disagree with your premises. Why would we need any carbon tax if global warming is beneficial to the biosphere and humanity as a whole (see: Medieval Warm Period).
Put another way, how would you feel if I demanded that all governments around the world provide massive carbon *subsidies* (on the level of what they put, per MW, to say, solar and wind), because I believe that a warm world is a good world, and that CO2 helps warm the planet?
Frankly, the libertarian position of "leave me alone" works either way - the government intervention position has to be *completely correct* in order for it to be beneficial (and let's take a wild guess about how often that happens).
Wow. The Church of Global Warming must've saved up their mod points :)
Disagree != Troll
Wait, you missed a bit there -
1) you can have a hypothesis about how fast the planet will warm over the next 10 years, regardless of what causes that warming;
2) you can have a hypothesis about whether or not the world will get *any* warmer over the next 10 years, regardless of what causes the warming.
Now, for us to assert that AGW is actually CAGW (and something we should do something about), the warming has to have a certain rate. If the world warms at .01C per century because of human CO2, who cares. If the world warms at 10C per century because of human CO2, everybody needs to care.
So let's split them up - for sure CAGW is falsified by the observation of a lower rate of warming.
AGW might not be falsified by the observation of a lower rate of warming, but we definitely need to revisit the assumptions that lead people to believe that AGW means CAGW.
I'd take it a step further - I think that they're making the claim that there is *no* particular technique that can accurately discriminate the feedback function. And even though that's actually a fairly trivial assertion to make, and one that isn't particularly disagreeable to any scientists (since models are only models, and models of particularly complex systems are so chock full of guesses that one can hardly use them to make any useful predictions), it is one that laypeople and CAGW activists tend to gloss over.
So sure, "blow holes in global warming" might be a bit over the top, but it certainly exposes the holes nobody really pays much attention to.
http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/HARRY_READ_ME.txt
Now, perhaps this fudging of the data wasn't malicious (in fact, I'll argue that it was done with the best of intentions), and perhaps some of the fudges actually have a reasonable rationale that we can agree upon - but let's not pretend that there is a magical thermometer we can stick in the air, and get the current Global Average Temperature (much less a magical thermometer we can read from 1000 years ago to do the same thing). At best, this is a field over-reliant on proxy data, and *everyone* should be skeptical of that sort of weak science.
...not just a river in Egypt :)
If the CAGW believers want to play the science game, let's hear their falsifiable hypothesis, and a concise list of observations of CO2 and temperature, or outgoing radiation from earth (as in this study), that would lead them to give up their belief.
For every hole they try to poke in Spencer's model, they're overlooking a dozen more in their own flawed models :)
As with many CAGW believers, you're confusing *necessary* with *sufficient*. It may be *necessary* for CO2 to have specific spectral properties for CAGW to be true, but simply because CO2 has spectral properties does not allow us to say that CAGW is real. In other words, it may be *necessary* for you to have money to buy something at a story, but it's not *sufficient* - the store also has to have the thing that you're trying to buy.
I want you to specify what observations would falsify your hypothesis of CAGW. If you can do that in terms of CO2 levels and global average temperature, great. If you need to add in sea level, sea heat content, or extreme weather events, that's fine too. But specify, up front, what we could possibly observe that would prove you wrong. Until you do that, you're not doing science.
Sure I can propose a mechanism - the deity simply arranged all the molecules in the world billions of years ago so that when we got to the moment in time where I lost my keys, I would spontaneously find them. The problem is, I *can't* propose a falsification. I cannot describe any set of observations that would prove me wrong - if my keys were found by someone else and given to me, I'd assert divine intervention on the other person. If my keys were found because I literally looked everywhere in the house, I'd assert divine intervention in the design of the house.
When you propose that human CO2 emissions use the mechanism of the greenhouse effect to cause catastrophic global warming, but cannot describe any set of observations that would shake your belief in that assertion, you're simply praying to a deity by another name.
Having a more complex life form precede simpler life forms would contradict the premise of evolution, which is that complexity is not spontaneously derived, but naturally selected for over time. Now, you could make the special pleading that the rabbit was an implant from a different planet which did *not* have complex life forms preceding simpler ones, but you get the idea.
You're confusing necessary with sufficient.
1) It may be that CO2 has specific spectral properties;
2) It may be that our estimates of our CO2 emissions are accurate;
Simply having 1 and 2 do not prove that humans are emitting so much CO2 as to overwhelm all other natural factors and cause warming that will be catastrophic to humanity as a whole, or even the biosphere as a whole.
3) How can you tell the difference between an "unobserved forcing" and the forcing you wish to attribute to CO2?
If you accept that AGW is unfalsifiable, all you have to do is take Roy Spencer's data, which contradicts the models that predict CAGW, and ignore it - assert some ad hoc pleading, and explain it away.
What Spencer has neatly done is specifically falsify specific models. Believers of CAGW will simply tweak the model, or make a special pleading.
Pray tell, which few are "critical" to anthropogenic global warming? That is to say, what few falsifiable hypotheses do we need in order to make the grand claims of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming?
If we know that humans breath out water vapor, and water vapor doesn't allow light to pass through and absorbs heat, have we established CAGW?
The problem you're having here is that you're asserting that a small few falsifiable hypotheses are not only necessary, but *sufficient* for us to believe CAGW is true. Any inspection of your few hypotheses will show that this demonstrably false - for example, CO2 can certainly have specific spectral properties, but it's behavior in the complex climate system may be completely overwhelmed by other factors, no matter if you're wrong or right about the spectral properties.
Simply state what observation of CO2 levels and temperature that would falsify your hypothesis. If you need to add more observation factors in (extreme weather, sea level, whatever), feel free - but make a clear statement as to what observed data will falsify your CAGW hypothesis. You can't simply state - "well, CO2 has a specific atomic weight, therefore it is the primary driver of global temperature" - it doesn't follow.
That special pleading can go either way - coming out of the LIA, temperature increases are to be expected (since they were anomalously low before).
Furthermore, if it's at a slightly slower pace than expected, doesn't that falsify the original hypothesis? Or shall we add additional special pleadings whenever we see data that contradicts our expectations?
As for "9 of the 10 warmest years", we're talking about the most insignificantly small margins. You can have technically 10 of the 10 warmest years, and *still* have a lack of expected warming - they simply have to be .0001 warmer than all other years, but compared to *each other*, flat or falling.
A few facts:
1) evolution is not a religion. it's science, and it's a falsifiable hypothesis. Find a rabbit in the pre-cambrian, and you've falsified evolution.
2) I am a scientist.
3) correlation is not causality - god I hope they're teaching you that in chemical engineer school.
Now, if you want to play the science game, simply give me a concise list of any observations that would falsify your hypothesis. Appealing to authority, asserting that we cannot possibly understand the complexities of this because you and I are simply less educated than experts, is the *hallmark* of religion, my dear friend.
At this point, it seems that the only refutation of the hypothesis you would accept is if an authority figure told you that the hypothesis of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming was wrong. Or is there any data that could convince you of your error?
I call double BS. First, you mistake correlation for causality - a "direct relationship" between CO2 levels and temperature can just as easily go the other way around (and in fact, ice cores show us *exactly that*).
Second, you're not telling us what observation would falsify your hypothesis. CO2 levels have continued to rise over the past 15 years, and we've seen no statistically significant warming trend. Either that represents a solid refutation of your hypothesis, or you have to come up with some ad hoc pleading, that it's too short of a time scale, or you've got some other factor that made it stall - and that game can be played even if we have rising CO2 for 100 years, and stable or falling temperatures.
Alarmists simply do not have any observations in CO2, or temperature, that they would accept as a falsification of their hypothesis. This means they're playing religion, not science.