I take your point about short term variations masking longer term trends, however does this observation not invalidate alarmist claims in itself? To put this another way, I’d guess that temperatures where I live (the UK) vary by say 40C over the course of a year…

How does that invalidate anything? Yes the temperature has gone down slightly, down from an already high level. It may have masked the warming trend, briefly, but it did not come anywhere close to erasing the warming that has already happened. It is still way above what it had been before this all started. In the end the warming was delayed slightly, not reversed and not stopped. When the solar cycle goes on the upswing again, as it invariably will, temperatures will start increasing faster than the trend. That is what a trend means. So I fail to see that invalidates anything.

Regarding your post 124, sorry but I don’t agree that you are establishing that humanity is the cause of GW, only that we are releasing CO2 into the atmosphere.

First, CO2 is a known greenhouse gas. Releasing it into the atmosphere can’t help but increase the temperature. Even if we aren’t causing the warming now, we will eventually.

But ignoring that, I established three things. One, we are releasing CO2 into the atmosphere. Two, it is primarily greenhouse gases that are causing the warming. Three, it is the CO2 that we are releasing that is the primary greenhouse gas responsible. I guess you can draw any conclusion you want from that, but for me the implications are clear.

You agree that over geological time the average temperature (and sea level) has been much higher than the present?

Yes. There are many reasons that can lead to substantial change in temperature (although there are few that can cause as rapid a change as we are seeing now). Those include, amongst other things, the position of the continents, changes in Earth’s orbit, growth or weathering of mountain ranges. But changes in climate do not happen randomly, they happen for a reason. Looking at the pattern of warming and the various factors that can lead to a warming, CO2 is the only one we know of that can account for most of the warming. If you want to say it isn’t CO2, you need to provide another mechanism that is responsible.

I couldn’t resist that ‘weathermen’ jibe, although it has been noted that the IPCC reports are full of forecasting-based language despite claiming otherwise. I think that my opinions on research funding are simple observations of human nature, not conspiracy theories. I have HUGE respect for science but would have to admit that there is enourmous variation in the quality of research, ranging from measuring the age of the universe at one extreme, to chocolate is good for you/makes you fat/thin/sexy/etc at the other end.

You are accusing pretty much every scientist in several large branches of science of not admitting they are wrong just to save face. That does not indicate a very high degree of confidence in science.

With regard to sea levels – looking around on the internet, you’re right and I’m wrong. Sea levels are rising at maybe 1 – 2mm per year. But the tidal range where I live is 22 feet (sorry for the mixed units!) so I don’t think I need to worry yet. Maybe during the next hundred years the sea walls where I live will be rebuilt a few inches higher.

Tell that to island countries that are going to disappear. Tell that to most of our major cities that are right at sea level. We have the habit of building our major cities at natural ports, which tend to be low-lying, fairly flat areas on large bodies of salt water.

Regarding your post 124, sorry but I don’t agree that you are establishing that humanity is the cause of GW, only that we are releasing CO2 into the atmosphere.

You agree that over geological time the average temperature (and sea level) has been much higher than the present?

I couldn’t resist that ‘weathermen’ jibe, although it has been noted that the IPCC reports are full of forecasting-based language despite claiming otherwise. I think that my opinions on research funding are simple observations of human nature, not conspiracy theories. I have HUGE respect for science but would have to admit that there is enourmous variation in the quality of research, ranging from measuring the age of the universe at one extreme, to chocolate is good for you/makes you fat/thin/sexy/etc at the other end.

With regard to sea levels – looking around on the internet, you’re right and I’m wrong. Sea levels are rising at maybe 1 – 2mm per year. But the tidal range where I live is 22 feet (sorry for the mixed units!) so I don’t think I need to worry yet. Maybe during the next hundred years the sea walls where I live will be rebuilt a few inches higher.

“past 7 or so years, it’s not, it’s cooling
wow talk about cherry picking data. Look up sun cycles. You have not bothered to understand the basics of climate change.

Or the first several paragraphs of post 135, which deal exclusively with this issue.

What is more, the comment immediately before your first comment, post 154, also deals with this claim.

To put it simply: 2001 was near the peak of a solar cycle. Right now we are near the bottom of a solar cycle, so it is cold relative to the trend. So what we have is, if anything, an extremely tiny cooling trend, based on a well-known phenomena, over a very short period of time superimposed an a much larger increase over the last century. If you actually look at a plot of temperature over the last century, there are numerous small periods of time where the cycle is increasing faster than average, and numerous small periods of time where it increasing slower than average or even decreasing slightly. These period cancel out over longer periods of time, leading to a significant net warming. Pulling out a few years of a decades-long trend and saying that this somehow disproves the trend is cherry-picking because it ignores the whole point of looking at trends: to filter out smaller, short-term changes so we can see the long-term pattern. I could do the same thing at numerous points of time over the last century.

Pulling out a single winter, as you did, is even more extreme case of cherry picking. There will be cold winters and warm winters, cold summers and warm summers. We are talking about a trend here.

As for your other claims:

evidence of rising temperatures IS NOT evidence that we are responsible.

I’ve already explained that this is a strawman argument. There are a number of different lines of evidence pointing to humans being the culprit, and the mere fact that the world is warming is not one of them. Please see my post 124.

CO2 levels in the past have been far higher than now and so on and so on…

Yes, during periods where the world was much warmer, there were few or no glaciers, and the sea levels were much higher. Humans have not lived through such a period, though, as I have already pointed out. Rapid rises in CO2 (probably related to methane hydrate release, which has not happened this time yet, thankfully) appears to generally be associated with mass extinctions (not the big 5, but some of the larger ones in the cenozoic era). So it is not really something we should be hoping for.

The ’scientists’ (weathermen?) who’ve cried wolf won’t admit they’re wrong because they’ll lose funding and won’t be listened to again.

First the ad hominem attacks (dismissing several entire branches of science as “weathermen). Then, despite the fact that you claim not to believe in conspiracy theories, you dismiss the scientific consensus on the issue using a conspiracy theory. You claim to support science, yet you seem to have an extremely low opinion of scientists.

Sea levels ARE NOT RISING.

Do you have a source for this. Because what I can find says the exact opposite. For example:
http://nsidc.org/sotc/sea_level.html

TheBlackCat: I have read the comments. How do you deal with (to pick one example) the ‘claim’ that temperature is actually falling? (other than with a silly comment about ‘cherry-picking’ data) I thought that we were supposed to be worried about the temperature increase during the 20th century because of its’ unusual and unnatural rapidity – now it seems that natural climate cycles and/or solar cycles can overwhelm this and cancel it out – that does not make sense.