The problem is that the amount of change is not at a level that would be obviously problematic. A pie chart of the atmosphere will show no visible change if CO2 goes from a tiny fraction of 1% to a doubled tiny fraction of 1%. So, sure, I imagine this fraction of a % change will indeed cause a fraction of a % perturbation in temperature dynamics, possibly even a few % if there is a 10X amplification but when you start claiming that it will cause catastrophic changes you claiming that a trace gas is the driving force of the whole system. That claim cannot be made in a flippant manner without making yourself ridiculous.

And there certainly *is* basis for climate as a stable system, namely one with negative feedbacks all over the place exactly because former atmospheres with positive feedbacks were unstable and were replaced by a stable one! This is such a simple concept that it needn’t be argued, being so obvious as to be about as controversial as a triangle being claimed to be the smallest polygon.

One example of a stable system that is in fact very fragile is the solar system. It’s like clockwork yet calculations show that if Mercury’s orbit was altered even a fraction of a % then the entire inner solar system would plunge into chaos like back when a planet hit the Earth to create the Moon. But the atmosphere is not like the solar system since it has all manner of +/- feedbacks, especially negative ones!

In hand-waving theory at least, the simple fact that plants consume C02 would completely counteract industrial emissions. It is only because we have measured a rise in CO2 that this obvious corrective mechanism does not sound obvious but in fact sounds silly. But it’s not silly. It’s just wrong, or at least wrong enough to not dominate the system.

Another “silly” idea is that if it warms, more clouds form due to water evaporating more and this will reflect sunlight away, and this will prevent catastrophe.

Ah, not so easy to debunk that one is it? Why? Because it will take another CENTURY or more of T data to make the answer obvious without computer models. There is too much variation in T over decades for T to match CO2 in an obvious manner over the mere single century in which undebatable data is available.

If you claim the Hockey Stick (there I go again…using a “talking point”) is good data, then YESTERDAY’S post of Lucy Skywalker pretty much kills Briffa’s new version of it. How? It shows that Briffa used an algorithm to cherry pick only ten (!) trees of which only one (!!!) is crucial to match thermometer records of global average temperature, *but* the area in Siberia where those dozen trees are located itself fails to track the global average temperature! The trees he chose by matching modern era temperature do not match the thermometer records for that actual area! This shows quite clearly that these Siberian trees cannot be indicating temperature after all, meaning they are not “showing a strong T signal”. Unless they are psychic that is. After all trees are mythologized as being spiritual entities. Perhaps they *do* detect the state of the planet. That and Astronomy are the sort of things that will now be required for the AGW side to continue to support the broken Hockey Stick. It was not enough to point out that using an algorithm to cherry pick trees that match recent RISING thermometer records will very likely result in a false Hockey Stick *if* those trees happen to be randomly matching the data because trees are lousy T proxies. It was also not enough to point out that temperature rises from increased sun activity will effect tree growth via photosynthesis and sunlight caused release of fertilizing CO2 from permafrost in Siberia. No correction was made for fertilization! And based on undergraduate science, if CO2 is in fact causing warming then trees are the last proxy you want to use since trees are expected to respond to CO2 variations much more than to T variations!

But such reasoning which has NOT been properly addressed (sorry but I *did* look and found nothing that to convince me despite being trained to accept a good argument) is “unscientific”?! I’m a Ph.D. chemist, so literally being a scientist means that if I have a valid point that I am in fact being “scientific” indeed.

How can you honestly scoff at people who notice that Briffa’s Hockey Stick is not just problematic but corrupt to the core? The act of matching data to modern thermometer records is atrocious on the face of it. It is bluntly bad science. If trees are not T proxies at *all* his method STILL gives a Hockey Stick due to random variations in INDIVIDUAL trees! Add the story that he WITHHELD his data for a decade and you have the making of a real fraud.

Here is a look at local thermometer records where Briffa selected trees from:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/ 2009/ 10/ 30/ yamal-treering-proxy-temperature-reconstructions-dont-match-local-thermometer-records/ #more-12283

And *where* was this quick study published, where comments act as a form of peer review? On WUWT.com, the very site you say is unscientific.

You want to convince us non-climatologists who will then convince our friends and family (likely 20-100 people who through word of mouth will no longer hear a skeptical view each month)? Then you must stop presenting such “maybe” quality research as being proof.

Let me close with saying that yes, the skeptical side I now see increasingly as dishonest in a petty way. For instance, the founder of WUWT did a huge, rather funky cool folk scientific (volunteer-based) study of temperature stations with the perfectly good hypothesis that the Urban Heat Island Effect was skewing the average T upwards. He turned out to be utterly wrong. It merely required a ten minute collection of his best-rated stations plugged into a graphing program to show that leaving out all but the very best stations resulted in…NO DIFFERENCE from the overall average that the NOAA had been publishing for years as a graph.

http://www.dailykos.com/ story/ 2009/ 6/ 24/ 746197/ -More-Proof-US-is-WarmingFrom-Global-Warming-Deniers

However, this fact is NOT mentioned on SurfaceStations.org. That’s an atrocious omission. Why? Because people like me who took AGW at face value, then became skeptics due to in my case discovering that so very many hundred year old station records trended DOWN instead of up over the whole century, we suddenly have to distance ourselves from the skeptics as a community because they are lying to us by omission. Think of how many people end up on SurfaceStations.org, contently thinking that his “upcoming paper” will blow AGW theory out of the water? I’d say *most* of newly minted skeptics, such as Glenn Beck viewers. And how long will it take for them to find out that the results are in fact already in and are negative? Months! In my case a couple years or more! I’m pissed off, I can tell you that.

I’m afraid what is forming, since I can’t be alone in this, is a group of people who are simply concluding that the data is simply not in and that AGW is a “maybe” and by rights must remain so not for lack of future developments but for BOTH side’s lack of ability to face up to developments. Shame on you both! You are BOTH unscientific. You are BOTH willing to massage statistical software to spit out what you want and you are both quite happy to conceal results from your own side that do not fit your pet theory. So stop calling WUWT “unscientific” until you let go of your own nasty side. At this point I still avoid AGW sites because they are MORE unscientific by a great degree than skeptic sites. Skeptics tend to poke fun at AGW sites, but only AGW sites truly character assassinate the other side.

1. “i’m not a denier”
2. “we need to collect more data before doing anything”

Which is utterly irrelevant, [snip].

“In science, the debate should NEVER be over.”

As with the other ASSes, you don’t understand science. The debates about geocentrism, flogiston, spontaneous generation, state steady theory, Young Earth Creationism, Lamarckian evolution, and much else are over; the proponents of these views were WRONG.

Sure. Global warming + CH4 explosion + species migration + permanent Australian drought (I live in Melbourne, I know what I am talking about) + no Australian alpine ecosystem (and other countries) + wars over food and water (arable land).

Sure thing. Global warming sounds delightful (if you live in pov, cold, NE USA).

Less pollution
Better food
Less energy intensity
More sustainability
Happy humans
Happy Earthlings
Better way of life

All this can be achieved under a framework of increased jobs, happier, healthier humans but probably not zillions of % growth.

I choose live long, slow, happy, sustainable.

1. Global warming is happening.
2. Global warming is bad.
3. Humans are causing global warming.
4. mostly by CO2 emissions.
5. The United States government can do something to stop it.
6. The harm that the US government will inflict on its own citizens in trying to stop global warming won’t be worse than doing nothing at all.
7. The resources that the US government will spend in trying to stop global warming wouldn’t be better spent elsewhere, addressing more serious and near-term concerns.

So sorry, I don’t believe in at least one of (1) — (7). Therefore, as a heretic, I must be burned. Oh, wait…

As this is written, on April 21, it is snowing in Chicago. I still can’t grow Lady Banks roses here.

As you define it: I am proud to be an ASS. It means I am still susceptible to data input and reason and don’t choose to rely on faith as pronounced by self-annointed, interest-conflicted Global Warmist priests.

You really need to get rid of the Goracle and anyone who talks like him. People who say “the debate is over” are well on their way out of science and into religion. In science, the debate should NEVER be over.

Disease is also perfectly natural. I do not accept that as a positive recommendation.

Your analysis of the Special Theory of Relativity is admirable, if rather pompous, and completely misses the point – as did JR’s response to my original comment. JR introduced the expression “Einstein’s Theory” btw -it wasn’t me. As it happens Maxwell’s equations did not, in themselves, contradict Newton. The orbit of Mercury did.

My point is that Einstein was not misled by a “consensus” of peer scientists – which indeed existed. He did not introduce any lab produced data – he didn’t have a lab. In fact, Einstein was not even a scientist at the time. He was a free thinking outsider. You may be familiar with the type. They are now called “sceptics” and “deniers”. Einstein revolutionised the world of physics against bitter opposition ( not least from politically motivated scientists who had other agenda ) by the sheer power of his intellect. We have forgotten the scientists who opposed him now because he was right and they were wrong.

Einstein would have been very comfortable with the labels sceptic and denier because that was precisely what he was. If he had followed the “consensus” believing that “the science is in” there would have been no Special Theory of Relativity or General Theory of Relativity or indeed any need for explanations from you.

After the suceess of special relativity, Einstein knew that this new ‘Special Relativity’ invalidated the models of gravity within classical mechanics and sought to find a solution for gravitational fields that was consistent with special relativity. That finally led to a model the predicted the correct behaviour of the precession of mercury’s perihelion, and the bending of starlight (confirmed by eclipse measurements during WWI). Many so-called ‘aether’ theories also claim to come up with the same numbers, but at the expense of injecting ad-hoc ‘make believe’ in to science.

In contrast to this transformation in fundamental science, Global warming is not about any such fundamental transformation. The relevant thermodynamics and characteristics of gasses are well settled and not in debate. What is being debated is the dynamics of a complex system.

The denialist “hypothesis” that we can change the structure of the atmosphere without disturbing the climate, has no scientific basis. There is no scientific model of climate as a stable system able to cope with perturbation in the composition of the atmosphere.
The science says that changing the mix of gases in the atmosphere should cause a change in the thermal dynamics, as will changing albedo etc.

I think the point of ASS is that many climate ‘denialists’ are purely political animals serving an agenda in such a way as they see fit, and have no regard for science except when it suits them. Personally, I think many ‘Greenies’ are also political animals, particularly those that chant the mantra ‘follow us, we know what to do’ and are just as blinkered to science that doesn’t suit them.

For example, the science and technology of control systems, an area that I work in. There is nothing about the proposed ‘Green’ programmes that gives me any confidence that any of their schemes will work at all. The system is non-linear and has many natural sources of greenhouse gas that will not ‘go back’, or stop cascading, if we cut down a little. The notion that the greens are ’saving the planet’ is just as barking mad as the denier programme that says that despite the thermodynamics and the well characterized responses of gasses to radiation, increased CO2 methane etc will have no effect.

If the modelling of the effect that greenhouse gases will have on climate, is so difficult, then the modelling of the non-linear control required to mitigate the effect is just pie in the sky right now.

I think that there is a need far more work on the ‘what to do’ end of the spectrum, and a public recognition that both sides of the debate are polluted with political animals that are science illiterate, and are merely selling their own self-serving versions of “We know what to do”.

John M

It is true that projections are made using computer models. The projections are made to test the model against real world data so that the model can be improved and hence improve understanding of the underlying processes. But you wouldn’t bet your mortgage on one. Personally, I use Met Office projections on a daily basis. I wouldn’t bet a nickle on one.

[JR: You are quite wrong about Einstein. When you say "Einstein's theory" you seem to be assuming that was just his (later) theory of General Relativity (1915). He changed physics a decade earlier with a variety of papers, including special relativity and the photoelectric effect, for which he won the Nobel Prize, and which is, ironically, one of the theoretical underpinnings of solar PV.

And, as always, climate ain't weather.]