I dare a politician to run on "dumpster food ain't so bad; stop complaining; and veterinarians make better doctors for humans than human doctors in the middle ages."
Just be sarcastic and the media will lap it up. But I wouldn't take the act much further than that, or you'll start getting sarcastic pro-tips from people who've actually done the activities in question and can see your cluelessness in action.
With jobs becoming more scarce, to the point where someone who doesn't have specific experience in a topic has zero chance of employment
I notice that several posters in the overall discussion have merely assumed that this is going to happen. But it's not a thing in the developing world which continues to see the usual increase in demand for labor when automation is increased. Maybe it's time to figure out what the developing world is doing right rather than assume the end of world is yet again upon us.
Oh right. hoarding it in assets and dodgy tax evading bank accounts is somehow not hoarding money.
Yes, that is right. Investments aren't money. An investment has a positive return. Money has a negative return due to inflation.
There is a reason I say that complaining about money hoarding is one of the most ignorant things you can talk about in economics. For starters, it demonstrates that you don't know what money is and are conflating a huge bunch of non-money assets, capital, etc with money. Just because you can trade something doesn't make it money. Second, that you are ignorant of inflation and its effects.
How does Chapter 13 bankruptcy encourage landlords to risk their businesses on a guaranteed-failure model,
It's part of the incentive system for encouraging them not to do that.
and in general promote a stable housing market that profits from the lowest-income and most-disadvantaged among us?
You haven't demonstrated that there is a problem here. And add me to the list of people who aren't particularly impressed by the idea of creating a basic income just so we can have more expensive housing.
The middle/working class its not like the 1%ers - we're not going to sit on all this money and remove it from the economy.
The "one percenters" don't either. "Money hoarding" is one of the top indicators on Slashdot and in the real world for economic ignorance.
As to basic income for middle/working class. You already work for a living and thus, you've already figured out how to get that money and how to send it forth into the economy again.
the appointment of friends and associates to positions of authority, without proper regard to their qualifications.
Other then committing perjury for two years without ever being caught, there was some questionable circumstances about how he got his contractor license.
The former is run of the mill corruption, it's not cronyism. And the latter doesn't sound like it either, even assuming the contractor's license covered a legitimate societal need rather than just being another government feed tube.
Ironically, he did that because he couldn't find a doctor to certify that he was disabled in the knees after being an auto body specialist for 30 years.
The problem is: what happens when renting at what the market will bear means taking huge, multi-million-dollar losses until you have to file Chapter 13 bankruptcy?
Chapter 13 bankruptcy is already the solution to the problem you just stated.
No, that's a standard approximation for inflation given a fixed demand for money. Inflation != GDP.
Second, what is the value of increasing GDP? It's just another example of a broken window-type fallacy where increasing GDP is considered a higher priority than what is actually done with the increased economic activity.
What government/NGO spends more to lobby (itself?) than the energy industry lobbyists?
The UK MET (lobbying "itself" via researchers like the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit or researchers involved with the IPCC). As to NGOs, there's the World Wildlife Fund and Greenpeace International.
There are many more subtle ways the service could become counterproductive in some regions/cultures/economies, though.
Well, let's see those ways then.
As far as what is and is not "their job," well there are certain responsibilities everyone, including corporations, share, whether or not they want to admit it.
And whether or not these responsibilities only exist in your head, amirite? The obvious rebuttal here is that dealing with slavery is the job of the local government not Amazon.
While the free market can eliminate most bad models, some of the ways they get eliminated can be completely disastrous, and in those cases, it is to everyone's benefit if other mechanisms outside the free market short circuit that before the default solution of a collapsing economy, poverty, and civil unrest kicks in.
Let's hear of some real world examples then rather than this vague talk.
Which is why the word "exploitation" often has negative connotations. It won't shed these by trying to institute goodspeak, only by solving the underlying issues.
Which apparently is now Amazon's unpaid job to do.
Let's go back to your first example. Slaves being forced to toil in the MTurk salt mines. Ignoring for a moment, the cost of supervising a clicking horde and providing them with computers, how exactly is Amazon to know whether a user is a slave or not? Fill out a questionnaire? "Click yes, if you are a slave and are being forced to do this job by some dude with a whip." "Click yes, if you just lied about the previous question." There's all this talk about Amazon's "responsibility", but no means for Amazon to do something about it (aside from blocking IP addresses when someone brings it up to their attention). You haven't even been able to show it is a problem. How is Amazon going to do better than you?
Second, sure, slavery and similarly coercion is a known failure mode for markets. If a market participant isn't choosing, then they, of course, aren't able to take advantage of the strengths of the market. But even then, it sometimes is better than the alternative uses for slaves who might be digging in hazardous coltan mines rather than clicking in front of a desk. Amazon could block IP addresses from known slavers, should that ever be determined, but that might not be better for the slaves!
And of course, there's the cost of the infrastructure to support MTurk slaves. They need a good connection, a decent computer, they need supervision, and the usual care. And the slaver runs the risk of having the whole effort go for naught, if the developed world gets wise to what's going on (the US or the EU can interfere with such an arrangement in more ways than just having Amazon block access). It's possible, but I don't see that it would be better than the usual uses for slaves.
Which is why the word "exploitation" often has negative connotations. It won't shed these by trying to institute goodspeak, only by solving the underlying issues.
And my point is that those connotations are usually way off the mark. After all, this thread wasn't about slaves being exploited by MTurk. It was about virtually everyone being exploited by MTurk. But those people are on MTurk by choice, meaning that they have determined that it's better than their other uses of their time.
Everybody who is scientifically literate and looks at the primary literature (and by than I don't mean propaganda blogs) can easily determine the prevailing position.
And everybody who can do that, can also go straight to the evidence. And when we do so, we see things like a factor of three error in the most important parameter in climate science, the temperature sensitivity of a doubling of CO2. We also see important disagreements in opinion on AGW and what, if anything to do about it.
What we don't see are significant publications providing alternative explanations.
I already mentioned one such study. Actual polling of scientists is far superior.
So now we have meta-analyses, where people go to great length to analyse papers, to count positions, to interview scientists, and to publish their findings in the peer-reviewed literature. But that apparently is not good enough either, and we get nit-picking from people who don't like the consensus. What we don't see are significant academic publications showing that there is indeed no consensus - the best we get is the occasional opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal or the 17 year old fraudulent Oregon Petition.
Consensus on what again? You're doing that thing again, where you speak of consensus, but not of what the consensus is about. For example, I believe that there is AGW (so I would be part of that consensus), I just also happen to believe that current climate research has greatly exaggerated the problems and understated the costs of the would-be solutions (so I'm not part of that imaginary consensus).
You do understand that by casting a wide net, Powell increases the chance of finding sceptical papers, right?
Powell makes a subjective judgment as to what counts as "Skeptical" papers. And the glaring problem, he already acknowledges that his methodology doesn't count consensus, it only counts researchers who bothered to put a relatively extreme claim in their research. Read the section on "Consensus in the Scientific Literature" where Powell shows how terrible his approach is for other fields. There's a bit of research on censensus out there that isn't deeply broken. Why can't you use that instead?
As to your Fermi approximation, I think you are off greatly in number of research universities, number of research universities that have a climate research program, and the number of people who actually publish relevant climate research. Hence, my claim that you are off by two orders of magnitude.
and now you reject evidence simply because the numbers are too big based on....what?
First, that many researchers is equivalent to the US's entire PhD production annually.
in a world of 7 billion people you think there cant be that many climate scientists?
Yes.
Let us also note that the paper doesn't actually do what it claims. Just look at the methodology. There's no way the author is finding climate researchers or climate research with the search they're doing.
burying research that agreed with the research of others, but was detrimental to their bottom line, and then discrediting the similar findings of other groups for the same reason....that's the admission of guilt.
Which let us note, is a story that has been blown way out of proportion. The basic facts are that Exxon did some research on the matter a few decades back and found the usual inconclusive results that have been kicking around in climate change the whole time. Then they spent small amounts on groups that certain critics don't like.
Exxon makes a vast amount of profit. Yet we don't see spending on these alleged activities proportional to that profit in any way. They could have spent a hundred times as much as they supposedly did on the alleged activities, and still make that huge profit. They could have a huge propaganda operation hounding climate researchers, politicians, etc. But they don't. Exxon is a scapegoat not the cause of the ongoing failure of the climate change message.
I first wanted to say thank you for holding your scientific position here in the face of ignorant objections.
AthanasiusKircher, this sort of research is as profoundly unscientific as it comes (including the stuff you quote from Cook et al). And your comments are just as bad. For example, consensus about what?
Notice that the alleged 97% consensus is relatively accurate when the claim is that there is global warming. It goes down once you add that the global warming is human-induced. And then it goes down much further when the claim is that the impact is catastrophic or severe over the next 50 to 100 years to 41%. 41% is a bit less than 97%, right?
I suspect you will find similar divided opinion on the matter of whether immediate mitigation efforts are required right now.
James L. Powell's 99.99% paper is ridiculous and you can see that just by looking through the methodology. It doesn't measure what it claims to measure. You can't get more damning than that. Yet once again, we have these slashdot posts talking about scientific positions and holding the line in the face of "ignorant objections".
Bullshit. There aren't that many climate researchers in the world. And Stephan, I have a bit of hate for you right now for making me read this stupid piece of shit just so I could refute your argument. Here's the problem right in the methodology:
To find the number of recent articles that reject AGW, I used the following method:
Web of Science Core Collection
Enhanced Science Index
Publication Years: 2013 and 2014
Document Type: Article
Topics: âoeGlobal warmingâ or âoeglobal climate changeâ or âoeclimate change.â
Remove duplicates by combining searches using the OR command.
Export the search results to an Excel file.
Review titles and abstracts looking for clear statements of rejection or that some process other than AGW better explains the observations.
Notice that the author does not actually count climate research papers, doesn't actually find authors who refute or affirm AGW or other climate change theory, and doesn't actually count climate researchers.
Scientific theories need to be proven as true before anyone can try to disprove them.
"Proof" is very different matter in the empirical world. There one would look for data and tests that allow one to distinguish between rival hypotheses.
Which step is the anthropogenic global warming theory (AGW) on?
Which AGW theory? We actually have strong evidence that there is an AGW effect. For example, isotope concentrations of carbon isotopes (C14 having a short half life, is not present in fossil fuels, but is present in surface carbon due to solar radiation) indicate that in the last couple of centuries, there has been a considerable increase in atmospheric carbon from geological sources like fossil fuels or volcanoes (with human generated sources overwhelming all other known sources of geological carbon). It's varies in difficulty to determine the human contribution of some other greenhouse gases, methane tends to be harder since geological carbon contributes far less to that, but CFCs are easier (since non-human contributions are very low).
This demonstrates the first pillar of any AGW theory, that humans have made a significant contribution to the growing CO2 concentrations in Earth's atmosphere.
Second, we can directly observe the radiative and reflective properties of default atmosphere (excluding clouds and other weather effects). These indicate that CO2 does indeed block certain infra-red spectrum gaps of water vapor and thus, causes the atmosphere to retain heat. That demonstrates the second important part of any AGW theory, namely, that increased levels of CO2 do result in some degree of warming of the Earth.
There are plenty of issues with determining the human contribution past that, but it remains that the key two aspects of any AGW theory are pretty much nailed down qualitatively.
The real problem comes in with what the effects of increased concentrations of greenhouse gases are and how much harm those effects will cause. There, I think climate research has gone off the rails completely. For example, short term warming from a doubling of CO2 is around 1.5 C per doubling, based on the actual temperature changes of the past century and a half and the actual changes in the concentration of CO2. The IPCC claims that the long term warming from a doubling of CO2 is 3 C per doubling (actually 1.5 C to 4.5 C per doubling due to the huge errors in the estimate) due to positive feedback mechanisms, most which have not been demonstrated as existing while simultaneously downplaying negative feedback such as weather.
There there's the accounting games played with estimating the harm of global warming. For example, a common ploy is to greatly deflate time value via a discount rate. For example, the Stern Review, an early attempt to calculate the cost of global warming used a 1.4% discount rate (I believe derived from the historical growth rate of UK GDP at the time the report was issued) versus roughly 3% discount rate (derived from the growth rate of world GDP over a similar time frame), if we assume that GDP is roughly proportional to the size of an economy and that the current global growth rate continues for a century (aside from climate change-related adjustments), we get roughly that a 10% reduction of the global economy now is equivalent in the Stern report to a 5% reduction in the global economy in 50 years or a little over a 2% reduction in 100 years.
Other sorts of harm are similarly exaggerated such as rising sea levels, movement of agriculture, or extreme weather. The last is particularly notorious for being a textbook confirmation bias thing, in particular with the moral hazard of US public flood insurance (which has long encouraged humans to live in flood zones and is responsible for a huge increase in US property damage from floods and hurricanes to the extent that it swa
The latest analysis among actually publishing scientists [sagepub.com] (by James Powell [wikipedia.org]) finds "above 99.99%", or what he calls "virtual unanimity".
In other words, a crap study. There aren't that many climate researchers in the world to maintain a 10,000 to 1 ratio over the publishing skeptics by probably two orders of magnitude.
Slashdot Mirror
I know the effects of inflation. It's not rocket science that money decays over time. So hording money is always a losing proposition.
STFU. They're hiding TRILLIONS in the the Bahamas, Cooks Islands, Isle of Man, Isle of Wight.....
Inflation.
I dare a politician to run on "dumpster food ain't so bad; stop complaining; and veterinarians make better doctors for humans than human doctors in the middle ages."
Just be sarcastic and the media will lap it up. But I wouldn't take the act much further than that, or you'll start getting sarcastic pro-tips from people who've actually done the activities in question and can see your cluelessness in action.
With jobs becoming more scarce, to the point where someone who doesn't have specific experience in a topic has zero chance of employment
I notice that several posters in the overall discussion have merely assumed that this is going to happen. But it's not a thing in the developing world which continues to see the usual increase in demand for labor when automation is increased. Maybe it's time to figure out what the developing world is doing right rather than assume the end of world is yet again upon us.
Oh right. hoarding it in assets and dodgy tax evading bank accounts is somehow not hoarding money.
Yes, that is right. Investments aren't money. An investment has a positive return. Money has a negative return due to inflation.
There is a reason I say that complaining about money hoarding is one of the most ignorant things you can talk about in economics. For starters, it demonstrates that you don't know what money is and are conflating a huge bunch of non-money assets, capital, etc with money. Just because you can trade something doesn't make it money. Second, that you are ignorant of inflation and its effects.
Ever heard of inflation? It's not as bad in the US as elsewhere, but it is there. Holding on to money loses money. It is why nobody rich hordes money.
How does Chapter 13 bankruptcy encourage landlords to risk their businesses on a guaranteed-failure model,
It's part of the incentive system for encouraging them not to do that.
and in general promote a stable housing market that profits from the lowest-income and most-disadvantaged among us?
You haven't demonstrated that there is a problem here. And add me to the list of people who aren't particularly impressed by the idea of creating a basic income just so we can have more expensive housing.
The middle/working class its not like the 1%ers - we're not going to sit on all this money and remove it from the economy.
The "one percenters" don't either. "Money hoarding" is one of the top indicators on Slashdot and in the real world for economic ignorance.
As to basic income for middle/working class. You already work for a living and thus, you've already figured out how to get that money and how to send it forth into the economy again.
the appointment of friends and associates to positions of authority, without proper regard to their qualifications.
Other then committing perjury for two years without ever being caught, there was some questionable circumstances about how he got his contractor license.
The former is run of the mill corruption, it's not cronyism. And the latter doesn't sound like it either, even assuming the contractor's license covered a legitimate societal need rather than just being another government feed tube.
Ironically, he did that because he couldn't find a doctor to certify that he was disabled in the knees after being an auto body specialist for 30 years.
Still not cronyism.
The problem is: what happens when renting at what the market will bear means taking huge, multi-million-dollar losses until you have to file Chapter 13 bankruptcy?
Chapter 13 bankruptcy is already the solution to the problem you just stated.
GDP is roughly money supply * velocity of money
No, that's a standard approximation for inflation given a fixed demand for money. Inflation != GDP.
Second, what is the value of increasing GDP? It's just another example of a broken window-type fallacy where increasing GDP is considered a higher priority than what is actually done with the increased economic activity.
What government/NGO spends more to lobby (itself?) than the energy industry lobbyists?
The UK MET (lobbying "itself" via researchers like the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit or researchers involved with the IPCC). As to NGOs, there's the World Wildlife Fund and Greenpeace International.
There are many more subtle ways the service could become counterproductive in some regions/cultures/economies, though.
Well, let's see those ways then.
As far as what is and is not "their job," well there are certain responsibilities everyone, including corporations, share, whether or not they want to admit it.
And whether or not these responsibilities only exist in your head, amirite? The obvious rebuttal here is that dealing with slavery is the job of the local government not Amazon.
While the free market can eliminate most bad models, some of the ways they get eliminated can be completely disastrous, and in those cases, it is to everyone's benefit if other mechanisms outside the free market short circuit that before the default solution of a collapsing economy, poverty, and civil unrest kicks in.
Let's hear of some real world examples then rather than this vague talk.
Which is why the word "exploitation" often has negative connotations. It won't shed these by trying to institute goodspeak, only by solving the underlying issues.
Which apparently is now Amazon's unpaid job to do.
Let's go back to your first example. Slaves being forced to toil in the MTurk salt mines. Ignoring for a moment, the cost of supervising a clicking horde and providing them with computers, how exactly is Amazon to know whether a user is a slave or not? Fill out a questionnaire? "Click yes, if you are a slave and are being forced to do this job by some dude with a whip." "Click yes, if you just lied about the previous question." There's all this talk about Amazon's "responsibility", but no means for Amazon to do something about it (aside from blocking IP addresses when someone brings it up to their attention). You haven't even been able to show it is a problem. How is Amazon going to do better than you?
Second, sure, slavery and similarly coercion is a known failure mode for markets. If a market participant isn't choosing, then they, of course, aren't able to take advantage of the strengths of the market. But even then, it sometimes is better than the alternative uses for slaves who might be digging in hazardous coltan mines rather than clicking in front of a desk. Amazon could block IP addresses from known slavers, should that ever be determined, but that might not be better for the slaves!
And of course, there's the cost of the infrastructure to support MTurk slaves. They need a good connection, a decent computer, they need supervision, and the usual care. And the slaver runs the risk of having the whole effort go for naught, if the developed world gets wise to what's going on (the US or the EU can interfere with such an arrangement in more ways than just having Amazon block access). It's possible, but I don't see that it would be better than the usual uses for slaves.
Which is why the word "exploitation" often has negative connotations. It won't shed these by trying to institute goodspeak, only by solving the underlying issues.
And my point is that those connotations are usually way off the mark. After all, this thread wasn't about slaves being exploited by MTurk. It was about virtually everyone being exploited by MTurk. But those people are on MTurk by choice, meaning that they have determined that it's better than their other uses of their time.
big numbers are scary, therefore they don't exist!
I too can make straw man arguments. Does that make you wronger?
Everybody who is scientifically literate and looks at the primary literature (and by than I don't mean propaganda blogs) can easily determine the prevailing position.
And everybody who can do that, can also go straight to the evidence. And when we do so, we see things like a factor of three error in the most important parameter in climate science, the temperature sensitivity of a doubling of CO2. We also see important disagreements in opinion on AGW and what, if anything to do about it.
What we don't see are significant publications providing alternative explanations.
I already mentioned one such study. Actual polling of scientists is far superior.
So now we have meta-analyses, where people go to great length to analyse papers, to count positions, to interview scientists, and to publish their findings in the peer-reviewed literature. But that apparently is not good enough either, and we get nit-picking from people who don't like the consensus. What we don't see are significant academic publications showing that there is indeed no consensus - the best we get is the occasional opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal or the 17 year old fraudulent Oregon Petition.
Consensus on what again? You're doing that thing again, where you speak of consensus, but not of what the consensus is about. For example, I believe that there is AGW (so I would be part of that consensus), I just also happen to believe that current climate research has greatly exaggerated the problems and understated the costs of the would-be solutions (so I'm not part of that imaginary consensus).
You do understand that by casting a wide net, Powell increases the chance of finding sceptical papers, right?
Powell makes a subjective judgment as to what counts as "Skeptical" papers. And the glaring problem, he already acknowledges that his methodology doesn't count consensus, it only counts researchers who bothered to put a relatively extreme claim in their research. Read the section on "Consensus in the Scientific Literature" where Powell shows how terrible his approach is for other fields. There's a bit of research on censensus out there that isn't deeply broken. Why can't you use that instead?
As to your Fermi approximation, I think you are off greatly in number of research universities, number of research universities that have a climate research program, and the number of people who actually publish relevant climate research. Hence, my claim that you are off by two orders of magnitude.
and now you reject evidence simply because the numbers are too big based on....what?
First, that many researchers is equivalent to the US's entire PhD production annually.
in a world of 7 billion people you think there cant be that many climate scientists?
Yes.
Let us also note that the paper doesn't actually do what it claims. Just look at the methodology. There's no way the author is finding climate researchers or climate research with the search they're doing.
burying research that agreed with the research of others, but was detrimental to their bottom line, and then discrediting the similar findings of other groups for the same reason....that's the admission of guilt.
Which let us note, is a story that has been blown way out of proportion. The basic facts are that Exxon did some research on the matter a few decades back and found the usual inconclusive results that have been kicking around in climate change the whole time. Then they spent small amounts on groups that certain critics don't like.
Exxon makes a vast amount of profit. Yet we don't see spending on these alleged activities proportional to that profit in any way. They could have spent a hundred times as much as they supposedly did on the alleged activities, and still make that huge profit. They could have a huge propaganda operation hounding climate researchers, politicians, etc. But they don't. Exxon is a scapegoat not the cause of the ongoing failure of the climate change message.
Plus the IPCC is notorious for exaggerating things. Just not feeling the urgency either.
I first wanted to say thank you for holding your scientific position here in the face of ignorant objections.
AthanasiusKircher, this sort of research is as profoundly unscientific as it comes (including the stuff you quote from Cook et al). And your comments are just as bad. For example, consensus about what?
Notice that the alleged 97% consensus is relatively accurate when the claim is that there is global warming. It goes down once you add that the global warming is human-induced. And then it goes down much further when the claim is that the impact is catastrophic or severe over the next 50 to 100 years to 41%. 41% is a bit less than 97%, right?
I suspect you will find similar divided opinion on the matter of whether immediate mitigation efforts are required right now.
James L. Powell's 99.99% paper is ridiculous and you can see that just by looking through the methodology. It doesn't measure what it claims to measure. You can't get more damning than that. Yet once again, we have these slashdot posts talking about scientific positions and holding the line in the face of "ignorant objections".
Powell counted 69406 to 4
Bullshit. There aren't that many climate researchers in the world. And Stephan, I have a bit of hate for you right now for making me read this stupid piece of shit just so I could refute your argument. Here's the problem right in the methodology:
To find the number of recent articles that reject AGW, I used the following method:
Web of Science Core Collection
Enhanced Science Index
Publication Years: 2013 and 2014
Document Type: Article
Topics: âoeGlobal warmingâ or âoeglobal climate changeâ or âoeclimate change.â
Remove duplicates by combining searches using the OR command.
Export the search results to an Excel file.
Review titles and abstracts looking for clear statements of rejection or that some process other than AGW better explains the observations.
Notice that the author does not actually count climate research papers, doesn't actually find authors who refute or affirm AGW or other climate change theory, and doesn't actually count climate researchers.
Waste of my time.
Who in the scientific community is spending more than the energy industries to influence the government and electorate?
Governments, NGOs. But I guess they're no more the "scientific community" than energy industries are.
To take an extreme example, what do these systems do to ensure labor input to the system is not slave labor?
Not their job. And I don't believe that is a credible problem either.
Scientific theories need to be proven as true before anyone can try to disprove them.
"Proof" is very different matter in the empirical world. There one would look for data and tests that allow one to distinguish between rival hypotheses.
Which step is the anthropogenic global warming theory (AGW) on?
Which AGW theory? We actually have strong evidence that there is an AGW effect. For example, isotope concentrations of carbon isotopes (C14 having a short half life, is not present in fossil fuels, but is present in surface carbon due to solar radiation) indicate that in the last couple of centuries, there has been a considerable increase in atmospheric carbon from geological sources like fossil fuels or volcanoes (with human generated sources overwhelming all other known sources of geological carbon). It's varies in difficulty to determine the human contribution of some other greenhouse gases, methane tends to be harder since geological carbon contributes far less to that, but CFCs are easier (since non-human contributions are very low).
This demonstrates the first pillar of any AGW theory, that humans have made a significant contribution to the growing CO2 concentrations in Earth's atmosphere.
Second, we can directly observe the radiative and reflective properties of default atmosphere (excluding clouds and other weather effects). These indicate that CO2 does indeed block certain infra-red spectrum gaps of water vapor and thus, causes the atmosphere to retain heat. That demonstrates the second important part of any AGW theory, namely, that increased levels of CO2 do result in some degree of warming of the Earth.
There are plenty of issues with determining the human contribution past that, but it remains that the key two aspects of any AGW theory are pretty much nailed down qualitatively.
The real problem comes in with what the effects of increased concentrations of greenhouse gases are and how much harm those effects will cause. There, I think climate research has gone off the rails completely. For example, short term warming from a doubling of CO2 is around 1.5 C per doubling, based on the actual temperature changes of the past century and a half and the actual changes in the concentration of CO2. The IPCC claims that the long term warming from a doubling of CO2 is 3 C per doubling (actually 1.5 C to 4.5 C per doubling due to the huge errors in the estimate) due to positive feedback mechanisms, most which have not been demonstrated as existing while simultaneously downplaying negative feedback such as weather.
There there's the accounting games played with estimating the harm of global warming. For example, a common ploy is to greatly deflate time value via a discount rate. For example, the Stern Review, an early attempt to calculate the cost of global warming used a 1.4% discount rate (I believe derived from the historical growth rate of UK GDP at the time the report was issued) versus roughly 3% discount rate (derived from the growth rate of world GDP over a similar time frame), if we assume that GDP is roughly proportional to the size of an economy and that the current global growth rate continues for a century (aside from climate change-related adjustments), we get roughly that a 10% reduction of the global economy now is equivalent in the Stern report to a 5% reduction in the global economy in 50 years or a little over a 2% reduction in 100 years.
Other sorts of harm are similarly exaggerated such as rising sea levels, movement of agriculture, or extreme weather. The last is particularly notorious for being a textbook confirmation bias thing, in particular with the moral hazard of US public flood insurance (which has long encouraged humans to live in flood zones and is responsible for a huge increase in US property damage from floods and hurricanes to the extent that it swa
The latest analysis among actually publishing scientists [sagepub.com] (by James Powell [wikipedia.org]) finds "above 99.99%", or what he calls "virtual unanimity".
In other words, a crap study. There aren't that many climate researchers in the world to maintain a 10,000 to 1 ratio over the publishing skeptics by probably two orders of magnitude.