There are a lot of other examples, and this is just one.

Secondly, models don’t matter anymore. We are already locked into loss of glaciers and surface ice sheets that must set in motion permanent temperature and sea water rises that will feed on themselvs. Even if all causes were reversed to year 1850 levels, it would require thousands of years to re-form those lost sun-reflecting areas. And if the methane trapped in Greenland and the most vulnerable portins of Antarctica get released, we are talking about an additional 5 degree rise globally, because CH4 has 38 times the impact of CO2.

But suppose the wingnuts really wanted to offer up a credible argument against reducing carbon emissions. Well here’s one free of charge:

There’s a good chance mankind has already dawdled too long. Then, it could be too late to act if we’ve gone past the point of no return. If so, we’d be throwing good money after bad with carbon sequestration or emission taxes that reduce our standard of living and economic growth rate. We be poorer and still not save our decendents from destitution or worse (an uninhabitable planet). So, wingnut and lobbyists — if you are struck by a miraculous bout of sanity or ethics, use that argument. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow our grandchildren will die.

Tim Lehay rapture nuts could even advocate hastening the process of climate changing emission so they could experience the 2nd coming in their lifetimes. Those folks in the Middle East are taking too much time fulfilling the biblical prophesies: the holier than thou fanatics are beginning to fear that Obama fellow might get a peace treaty and de-nuke things, spoiling all their fun. So Plan B is help things along to ensure the rapture occurs before they die from all that fried food and obesity.

1. I’m a member of the left-wing tribe.
2. My tribe opposes the right-wing tribe.
3. The left-wing tribe thinks that AGW is true.
4. I am loyal to my tribe.
5. Therefore, I conclude that AGW is true.
6. I’ll concoct a morass of rationalizations to create the impression that I arrived at this conclusion by logical means.

The way to differentiate this kind of thinking from the truly rational approach is to determine the degree of knowledge that the person has about the topic. Have they read the IPCC reports? The NAS reports? Do they understand the basic underlying science? Are they familiar with the primary arguments from both sides?

The single biggest mistake you make is that you desire proof. There’s no such thing as proof in science. Proof is a logical concept that can be applied to logical or mathematical theorems. It can’t be used in science. Nothing in the history of science has ever been proven. Plenty of things have been disproven, but nothing has been proven, or could be proven. So by demanding proof, you establish an unrealistic criterion. What really happens in science is that hypotheses are offered, poked at, modified, refined, and those hypotheses that don’t take a body blow are eventually accepted by the majority of scientists. And what is the criterion for acceptance? The opinion of the majority of scientists. A lot of non-scientists seem to think that science is some sort of mathematical game in which experiment leads inevitably to proof or disproof. They’re wrong. It’s just a matter of scientists as a group coming around to accepting an idea. Read the classic work by Thomas Kuhn, “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”.

On the matter of AGW, the opinions of the great bulk of scientists are very clear: the basic AGW hypothesis is sound, and if we continue on our present course, by the end of this century civilization will face environmental problems that will be hugely expensive to cope with.

So why would a non-scientist such as yourself reject the considered judgement of the bulk of the scientists? It cannot be because your scientific judgement is superior to theirs; clearly, you’re an amateur denying the judgement of the professionals. What would motivate somebody to take such an illogical position? I can’t say what the answer is in your case, but I can say that the majority of AGW deniers that I have spent time with eventually reveal their reasoning. It goes something like this:

1. I’m a member of the right-wing tribe.
2. My tribe opposes the left-wing tribe.
3. The left-wing tribe thinks that AGW is true.
4. Therefore, my tribe thinks that AGW is false.
5. I am loyal to my tribe.
6. Therefore, I conclude that AGW is false.
7. I’ll concoct a morass of rationalizations to create the impression that I arrived at this conclusion by logical means.

I don’t know if this is the reasoning in your head, but I know of very few AGW deniers who DON’T follow this reasoning.

I’ll quote myself and your answers below just to show you how bad your reasoning is and how you misrepresent what I say:
Arrow: “1. In the history of science the vast majority of models and theories produced by scientists have been proven wrong by experiments, only a tiny fraction survived.”
Erasmussimo: “in your first step, you claim that the “vast majority” of models and theories produced by scientists have been proven wrong. What do you consider a model or theory? A quick suggestion at a conference? An idea broached over lunch? Something that gets written up as a paper?”

If you don’t know what models and theories mean look it up instead of winding up a silly rhetoric.

A: “2. Due to 1 trustworthy scientific predictions can only be based on those theories and models which repeatedly passed experimental verification.”
E: “2. The overall AGW hypothesis has been subjected to literally thousands of tests.”

My second point doesn’t even mention AGW.

A: “3. So far there is not a single climate model which has been shown to make accurate predictions concerning average global temperature on timescales relevant to global warming problem (5-100 years)…”
E: “3. This argument turns on your use of the term “accurate”.”
No, it relies on the fact that there was not enough time since the models where developed for their predictions to be repeatedly tested.

A: “4. From 2 and 3 it naturally follows that there are no credible scientific predictions concerning future average global temperatures.”
E: “4. Since 2 and 3 are incorrect, 4 is also incorrect.”
You have yet to show they are incorrect.

A: “5. To prove an effect of a certain perturbation on a complex system one has two options: experiment or simulation. If one choses experiment one has to perform it at least twice, once without perturbation and once with it and then compare results (actually it has to be performed many more times if the system is not 100% deterministic, but that’s not important).”
E: “5 & 6: You’re way off the mark here. You don’t need to perform experiments on the entire system — you need only carry out experiments on parts of the system….”
Since Sorbet already answered those points, I’ll get to your next reply:
E: “Sorbet, I wasn’t equating either stellar interiors or nuclear weapons with global climate; I was confuting this claim:
To prove an effect of a certain perturbation on a complex system one has two options: experiment or simulation. If one choses experiment one has to perform it at least twice, once without perturbation and once with it and then compare results
In fact, scientists have been able to evaluate plenty of difficult situations using indirect data.”

The claim is of course correct, the key is the word “prove” with indirect experiments you cannot prove much unless the system is simple. If it is as complex as climate you have to make hundreds of assumptions to try to deduce anything from fragmentary or indirect data, this makes your conclusions completely unconvincing to those who don’t buy your assumptions.

E: “That’s the key point here: you don’t need to literally reproduce every detail in order to obtain reliable results…The complexity of the system doesn’t make it inscrutable. ”

You do need to reproduce every detail if the system is sufficiently complex (unless you can *prove* the detail to be irrelevant). Complexity is the key. If that was not the case we wouldn’t need chemistry, material science, biology, sociology, climatology, etc because we would be able to derive all of their results from physics. In reality we need them because when a system reaches a certain level of complexity it ceases to be a simple combination of it’s constituents and completely new qualities emerge.

Anyway Errasmussmio, I don’t expect to convince a global warming zealot such as yourself, so I probably won’t devote any more time to this pointless discussion.

“The Earth has been cooling since at least 1998, with a massive average drop in temperature from 2006 to today of .75 degrees F”

AWRK! Polly want a cracker? Wow – talk about parrots. Aside from the ‘facts’ being outright wrong, the claim of cooling is utterly ridiculous if one merely looks back 30 years to see how much cooler the globe was then.

AWRK! Do you own research! AWRK!

I just have to laugh at those people who parrot “do your own research – I did and …”; it reminds me a lot of religious zealots who swear they were once godless fornicators who were saved one day …