As to information on the post 2000 ceassation of temperature rise, I recommend http://www.climateaduit.com and http://www.wattsupwiththat.com. Or you can just go outside and actually experience the climate.

This is completely unfounded. We are not going to spend several generations of capital. Mitigation strategies, integrated over full decadal lifecycles, result in a cost of ~ 0.1% GDP, or roughly $20 year per person. Why? Most abatement measures have positive returns on their investment — i.e. energy efficiency.

Take three identical planets, to start with ….

Or do you doubt the basic science, which also makes a CO2 laser work?

Try these links. One of the main points is that Co2 is a tiny fraction of the atmosphere, without which, earth would be a frozen ball in space. Also, the fact that the fraction is so tiny means that it is easy to influence with industrial output of GHG’s

Context on the argument
http://www.uscentrist.org/about/issues/environment/john_coleman/the-amazing-story-behind-the-global-warming-scam

Tiny Fraction of Atmosphere
http://www.ossfoundation.us/projects/environment/global-warming/atmospheric-composition

CO2 is a tiny fragment of the atmosphere, if we are going to radically change our lifestyle and spend several generations worth of capital to correct this “problem”, we better know more than we know now about it.

For instance, it makes sense that ozone, even though its concentration is 2 to 8 parts per TRILLION, can filter out certain spectra of sunlight.

Poisons and medicines certainly do work, although their ratios are miniscule. But poisons, medicines and the ozone cycle use a different mechanism than CO2 and hard data backs up conjectures about them.

The conjecture about CO2 is that the cycle depends upon capture and retention of heat by individual CO2 molecules. Therefore, it would have to be dependent, for its theoretical effect, upon its ratio to the other gases. Which, I say again, would not seem to be enough to make any difference.

“I know what the IPCC says. They say the majority of the warming is human-induced, and they say this with 90 percent certainty. The odd thing is that even the IPCC does not try to say what this human-caused “majority” of warming consists of. Is it also 90 percent? Or is it 51 percent? After all, 51 percent is a majority.”

The IPCC is a consensus view, and needs to incorporate the views of nearly every participant. As a result, it tends to get watered down to the lowest common denominator. Note that the true percentage could also be more than 100% (offsetting natural cooling effects such as declining solar output). There’s a lot to consider – cooling from human-induced aerosols, volcanic activity, solar output, greenhouse gases, ocean cycles, etc.. The balance of evidence suggests that when all factors are considered, most of the recent warming is due to human activities.

“We certainly all hope that scientists like Dr. James Hansen do not purely base their theories on the last 30 years. Al Gore can allow himself that luxury, but a climate scientist cannot and should not.”

Considering climate scientists (like Hansen) have studies climate for longer than that, and the theory predates their births, I’m not sure where this contention comes from. You might want to read up on the history of global warming science.

http://www.aip.org/history/climate/

“So there is a great divide between science and politics perhaps mostly for the reasons identified here by you. We have so few scientists who can interpret science in layman’s terms. The late Carl Sagan comes to mind as one shining example.”

I disagree. It’s not that scientists can’t translate the science in layman’s terms – it’s just that most of them don’t have the inclination to speak to the general public about it, particularly on an issue with political implications. They are generally busy quietly conducting research in peer-reviewed journals. Dr. Hansen would be an exception. Many scientists are wary about crossing the boundaries between science and politics. Contrarians tend to not have such qualms.

> three of those inches
So put them in a bottle and test them — this isn’t the same as having that amount in a vertical column out to the edge of the atmosphere, but it’s proof of concept:
http://www.espere.net/Unitedkingdom/water/uk_watexpgreenhouse.htm
http://www.srh.weather.gov/srh/jetstream/atmos/ll_gas.htm
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/teachers/viewing/0302_03_nsn.html

Materials
* three thermometers
* three clear, sealable plastic bags
* 2 teaspoons baking soda
* 2 tablespoons vinegar
* one beaker
* black paper

Procedure …. look it up.

According to reserchers, an airborne cyanide concentration of 300 parts per million is lethal within a few minutes. But in that case, the fraction of cyanide in the air is just 1/3333. It seems that everyone has swallowed the idea that cyanide in the air makes a difference. I say it doesn’t, there’s just not enough of it.

I’m sure wildmon251 would be happy enough with my reasoning to breath in some air with 300 ppm cyanide just to prove our point about how such a tiny fraction of a material simply can’t have that much of an effect….

What I have found is that Carbon Dioxide gas is a tiny, tiny component of the Earth’s atmosphere. The fraction of CO2 in the air is 1/2632. To put that in perspective, a column of Earth atmosphere ten thousand inches long, (833 feet), only has enough CO2 to make 3 of those inches. It seems everyone has swallowed the idea that CO2 makes a difference. Absent evidence or experiments to the contrary, I say it doesn’t, there’s just not enough of it.

[Carl: The link was first made 150 years ago, and scientists have been investigating it ever since. A good place to jump into the history online is a site called "The Discovery of Global Warming."]

http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Image:Holocene_Temperature_Variations_Rev_png

Your graph shows that the curent Holocene interglacial(warm period) is actually cooler than the previous interglacial (Eemian), despite CO2.

[Carl: There are many sources of natural variability in the climate, and they operate on different timescales, from years to decades to centuries. They change the levels of sunlight reaching the surface, the amount of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere, and the capacity of the oceans to store energy and carbon. For example, the Earth is wobbling and moving slightly closer and further from the sun. There are also changes in the circulation of the ocean and atmosphere, which I've discussed a bit in this blog. Climate scientists study these factors to understand the climate over the past 8000 years. (You can read this book chapter pdf for more information.) If you seek explanations for every one of the bumps you count in the graph, please bear in mind the disclaimer from the people who made that graph: "The average shown here should be understood as only a rough, quasi-global approximation to the temperature history of the Holocene."

Your point about the current interglacial being cooler than the previous one "despite CO2" is unclear. If you're referring to the current levels of carbon dioxide compared to the ones 120,000 years ago, we've only reached those levels in the past 150 years or so--a quick jolt to the climate system. Climate scientists project higher temperatures in response to the rise in Co2, but not minutes after each bit of extra CO2 goes into the atmosphere.]

How do you explain all of these other “global warmings” over the last 12,000 years?

SEE GRAPH: http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Image:Holocene_Temperature_Variations_Rev_png

Did Aliens in UFO’s beam down giant canisters of CO2 ??

It looks pretty clear that our current “global warming” is not unprecedented in any way. In fact it is a small upward blip compared to the dozen or so pre-industrial global warmings during the Holocene interglacial.

Carl: The picture you’ve linked to actually shows a sharp upward trend ending at 2004, rising over the long-term average. You might also look at this image, which overlays the past 800,000 years in CO2 levels and temperature. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Co2-temperature-plot.svg No aliens necessary to increase CO2. And climate scientists recognize a link between the cycles of CO2 and cycles of temperature.

Here is the latest from NASA:

http://www.science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/23sep_solarwind.htm

Nasa says the sun is suddenly losing power and it is already “13% cooler”.

Throw another log on the fire. It’s record cold where I live.

[Carl: Norman, what trend is the changing solar wind supposed to explain? See here:
http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/ns/cms/dn11650/dn11650-3_738.jpg ]

When his paper says they stringently checked the facts, they probably mean that they simply verified the existence of said scientists and said studies. They don’t have the time or inclination to question a possibly fallacious conclusion Will has inferred from his limited understanding of those studies.

“Fact-checking” an opinion piece clearly is a different exercise than “fact-checking” a science article. I liken it to the difference in the use of the word “theory” in the common vernacular versus its use by the scientific community.

Got any evidence for this claim, Bob?

You know, in the interest of dealing with actual facts, rather than just making stuff up.

I don’t disagree with your sentiments about the need for fact-checking. However it seems to me that the referred-to writers were never trying to hold themselves up the level of science journalists.

Indeed, while I am not familiar with Jacoby, I am pretty sure that Mr. Will almost exclusively writes ‘opinion’ essays from a particular philosophical perspective. While this does not excuse the need to fact-check, it does allow some room for ‘editorializing’ IMO.

If Will or Jacoby are actually saying in their writing that AGW “climate scientists … concluded that global warming has been affecting the world based on a ‘run of hot weather’ …” then that would likely be incorrect, scientifically-speaking. But I never read that being said about Climate Scientists in Will’s article. Did you?

And even if Will had written this, some might excuse this if it was presented as an ‘opinion’. After all, Mr. Will never represented himself as a PhD in Climate Science.

We certainly all hope that scientists like Dr. James Hansen do not purely base their theories on the last 30 years. Al Gore can allow himself that luxury, but a climate scientist cannot and should not.

However aside from any in-depth discussion here of whether all AGW-promoting scientists are really looking “at long-term trends” I do have another problem with this blog.

It suggests that people like Will and Jacoby are even addressing (or attacking if you like) the small dedicated community of AGW scientists.

When I read these same articles I see more of an editorial primarily directed at the non-scientific movement that hangs on to the small community of real AGW scientists. IMO that movement does tend to misinterpret and exaggerate the conclusions that can justifiably be drawn from the underlying state of the science.

So I read a lot of what Will writes (for example) as questioning the ‘science’ as expounded by this much larger non-scientific community (foremost including the politicians and bureaucrats who constitute the IPCC group) — NOT as addressing what is specifically expounded by specific scientists in their scientific journals. Mr. Will probably only addressed what he himself read in the popular press about Swanson and Tsonis for example.

Perhaps some of this blog’s difficulties (for me) come from that observation above — i.e., Mr. Will is addressing non-scientists (countering their own non-scientific representations) with his own countervailing non-scientific observations.

In other words, is it not possible that Carl Zimmer is trying to ‘fact-check’ someone who is addressing other non-fact-checked essays and editorials, a sort of right versus left? If so, who would expect EITHER of those 2 sides to have scientific facts in mind, first and foremost?

So the blog is ultimately just saying in different words that it does not require much effort to find scientific errors in the popular press — what else is new? In fact it is kind of like intellectually taking candy from a baby. And sadly, this applies to both sides of the AGW debate held in the popular press. Or in the blogosphere for that matter.

While any science-literate person can always find errors in the modern popular press, on both sides of the climate debate, you are right; the debate could be improved if science-literate editors were available to vet all such opinion pieces.

So there is a great divide between science and politics perhaps mostly for the reasons identified here by you. We have so few scientists who can interpret science in layman’s terms. The late Carl Sagan comes to mind as one shining example.

You do realize that the map you are referring to here is now quite famous for the inaccurate data that produced it, don’t you?

Here’s one of the problems that shows the real agenda behing the AGW set; even once the work product, based on inaccurate data, is published, and then proved wrong; you continue to use the map or graph, or whatever. That, in and of itself, proves an unhealthy attitude toward science, a political rather than science based agenda, and the result should be to toss you out of the debate altogether.

But still you will not leave. That is why real scientists have turned against the AGW cause, and have begun to refer to it as a religeon.

Bob Kutz,
Osky, IA