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Comments 69501 to 69550:

  1. Economic Growth and Climate Change Part 1 - Factors Influencing CO2 Emissions
    A correction to #27, read : humanity produces (rather than consumes) approx 500 EJ/y. There is a lot of energy losses (approx 200 EJ/y) during the conversion and distribution of primary energy sources so as to provide energy services for final consumption. But these losses are not specific to fossil fuel energy, and affect also renewable energy or traditional biomass, so the term of our choices (more or less primary energy / final energy) for the future are unchanged. #28, #29 : I don't clearly understand the issue... there are annual variations of CO2 atm. concentrations due to variability of climate (efficiency of biological-physical pump) and of economic activity (for example 2008-2009 recession), but the long term trend is due to economic activity, and it is correlated to the multidecadal growth of our fossil-based economy.
  2. Climategate 2.0: Denialists Serve Up Two-Year-Old Turkey
    So if I understand Mango-Chutney' precious WUWT article correctly, a climate scientist who was chair of the IPCC consulted with other members of the IPCC about the contents of an IPCC assessment report, and this is considered proof of a conspiracy by the World Bank? The two most absurd things about this whole manufactured controversy is the absolute refusal by deniers to all any context to effect their interpretation of the emails; and the shere paucity of the results. If you have access to a data base of 22,000 emails from a small group of people involved in a conspiracy, you would expect that conspiracy to receive frequent mention. Your proof of conspiracy would not be limited to 20 or 30 vaguely worded emails that could possibly be considered proof of conspiracy if you remove all context, look at them from the right angle, squint and make sure your tongue is in the right position. In this case, if the World Bank was co-ordinating the IPCC response to global warming (surely a complicated excercise if it where to be undertaken), they would have needed far more than 32 emails and far more than three of those emails would have contained information related to that effort. But for Mango-Chutney and WUWT, innuendo is an adequate substitute for evidence so long as they get to confirm their bias against the IPCC.
  3. What's Happening To Tuvalu Sea Level?
    Very clear and interesting. The abstract says : "Besides this sub-decadal ENSO signature, sea level of the studied region also shows low-frequency (multi decadal) variability which superimposes to, thus in some areas amplifies current global mean sea level rise due to ocean warming and land ice loss." Do we know the cause of this regional low-frequency variability? Have climate models any predictive skill about that in the Tuvalu area, for the coming decades?
  4. What's Happening To Tuvalu Sea Level?
    Perhaps the people of Tuvalu will follow suit.. The battle between some of the world's most powerful energy companies and an Alaska village that's losing ground to climate change heads to federal appeals court on Monday. Nine Kivalina residents, having survived the recent mega-storm that walloped western Alaska, will be at the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco to watch their lawyers argue that ExxonMobil Corp., BP, ConocoPhillips and other corporate Goliaths owe the village at least $95 million in damages. A key Kivalina argument charges that the energy companies are engaged in a conspiracy to cover up the link between their emissions and the earth's warming temperatures. A similar argument proved pivotal decades ago in helping smokers prevail in court against tobacco giants. “Alaska village alleges climate change cover-up by Exxon, other energy companies” Alaska Dispatch, Nov 25, 2011 To access this article, click here.
  5. The Debunking Handbook Part 5: Filling the gap with an alternative explanation
    pirate, This series of articles requires facts to debunk myths. It doesn't work the other way round; myths don't debunk facts. Example: when shown data points representing surface temperature, people correctly judged a warming trend irrespective of their views towards global warming. You'd have a hard time establishing 'it's cooling' with those facts.
  6. apiratelooksat50 at 10:05 AM on 26 November 2011
    The Debunking Handbook Part 5: Filling the gap with an alternative explanation
    I, too, find this article very interesting. The old adage "a knife cuts two ways" comes to mind.
  7. Economic Growth and Climate Change Part 1 - Factors Influencing CO2 Emissions
    28, MA Rodger, I didn't ask for a line showing CO2 levels, I asked for the change in emissions (you know, the other factor that contributes to the wobble in CO2 levels).
  8. Climategate 2.0: Denialists Serve Up Two-Year-Old Turkey
    53 - scaddenp Mango has already posted that the wuwt article looks iffy in post 45... Probably he/she knows the rest of the site is iffy as well.
  9. Climategate 2.0: Denialists Serve Up Two-Year-Old Turkey
    Scaddenp @53, Probably no amount of rubbish and refutation will convince some people that WUWT is not credible. Even if the conspiracy theories were true, they would have no bearing whatsoever on the theory of AGW (i.e., the physics, the chemistry et cetera). The planet does not give one iota about "the emails", and the theory of AGW is not "threatened" by any of this nonsense. All the climate system will do is continue warm (with ups and downs) in response to the cumulative effect of humans pumping gigatonnes of tonnes of CO2 (and other GHGs) into the atmosphere each year. Sadly people like Mango appear to believe that the Two-Year-Old Turkey magically makes AGW a non issue. I wish. Actually, they probably think from the outset that it is a non issue and are using Two-Year-Old Turkey to rationalize their misguided beliefs.
  10. Climategate 2.0: Denialists Serve Up Two-Year-Old Turkey
    Mango, just a quick question, how much rubbish on WUWT would have to be debunked before you gave up reading it? 1, 5, 50, 100 articles?
  11. Memo to Climategate Hacker: Poor Nations Don't Want Your Kind of Help
    Global leaders will gather next week in Durban, South Africa to determine how to cap global warming at two degrees Celsius. This limit would entail de facto agreement to a global carbon budget of no more than 660 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions between now and 2050, climate science says. But at the current pace of emissions, countries will blow through the entire carbon budget before 2025. After 17 years of negotiations, the 193 nations in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) charged with developing a strategy to ensure global warming does not exceed two degrees Celsius have failed to curb the growth of carbon emissions. In Durban, they will engage once more in what has ballooned into extraordinarily complex negotiations mired in political blame games and arguments over money. No one thinks that situation will change anytime soon. Source: “Radical Change Needed at Durban Conference, Experts Say” by Stepehn Leahy, IPS, Nov 24, 2011 To access this in-depth article, click here.
  12. The Debunking Handbook Part 3: The Overkill Backfire Effect
    TruthatLast posted the cosmic ray nonsense before here and I suggested he/she take it to the appropriate thread. It would appear he/she has not read the article (or possibly is just posting without reading following ups). Given this is repeat behavior, perhaps moderators should delete TruthatLast comments till they appear in the appropriate thread with a willingness to discuss.
    Moderator Response: [DB] Agreed.
  13. Memo to Climategate Hacker: Poor Nations Don't Want Your Kind of Help
    Speaking of Africa... While Africa has successfully avoided conflict over shared water courses, it will need greater diplomacy to keep the peace as new research warns that climate change will have an effect on food productivity. Climate change introduces a new element of uncertainty precisely when governments and donors are starting to have more open discussions about sharing water resources and to consider long-term investments in boosting food production," Alain Vidal, director of the CGIAR’s Challenge Programme on Water and Food (CPWF) told more than 300 delegates attending the Third International Forum on Water and Food being held in Pretoria, South Africa from Nov. 11 to 18. GCIAR unites agricultural research organisations with the donors. "To prevent this uncertainty from undermining key agreements and commitments, researchers must build a reliable basis for decisions, which takes into account the variable impacts of climate change on river basins." Source: “A Threat to Food Security in Africa's River Basins” IPS, Nov 15, 2011 To access this in-depth article, click here.
  14. Memo to Climategate Hacker: Poor Nations Don't Want Your Kind of Help
    Patrick, this is a science blog where assertions, especially outrageous ones, are expected to be supported by data. That poorer countries are the one most vulnerable to climate change is very well documented (see AR4 for starters). Your opinion piece by contrast appears to be a political narrative designed to appeal to right-wing sensitivities without supporting evidence.
  15. Memo to Climategate Hacker: Poor Nations Don't Want Your Kind of Help
    Patrick @14, "The poorer countries are the noisiest on this issue because they have their eyes on the massive transfers of money from the developed countries." What an offense statement. You provide no evidence for your hypothesis other than an opinion piece from a blog. You are also forgetting to mention that the poor nations are the ones demanding a drastic reduction in GHG emissions. They do not need or want your kind of "help", do not claim to speak for them or know what they wish based on one person's rant on a blog.
  16. Memo to Climategate Hacker: Poor Nations Don't Want Your Kind of Help
    While you say that the poorer countries are the ones most concerned about climate change, that is not really the case. (-snip-)
    Moderator Response: [DB] Political/ideological statements snipped. Please see the warning you were given here.
  17. Climategate 2.0: Denialists Serve Up Two-Year-Old Turkey
    @DB I was talking about the World Bank connection not Watson (yes I know his connection with the IPCC and the World Bank etc)
  18. Arctic Sea Ice Hockey Stick: Melt Unprecedented in Last 1,450 years
    #52 : Pauls : I'm with Skept.fr on being skeptical of these findings Oh, hem, I'm not particularly skeptic of the paper we're discussing, I just quoted its findings. For the MWP or MCA in general, I think our level of understanding will progress, the paleoclimate community is very active. All studies conclude that the 1970-present period is unusually hot in the past thousand years on a hemispheric or global scale, it seems unlikely this result will substantially change. But the precise signature and mechanisms of past variability at centennial scales are still unclear and reconstructions may diverge for the amplitude of pre-industrial temperature changes (eg the 'spaghetti' schema in AR4). Mike Mann himself continuously refines his work (Mann 2009 differs in many details from Mann 1999) and so do the other teams working on past climates. Jan Esper 2010 made an interesting synthesis of the progress accomplished since the IPCC AR1 and the current research priorities of paleoclimate community.
  19. Climategate 2.0: Denialists Serve Up Two-Year-Old Turkey
    Sphaerica @49, Like the refuted and Delingpole, most "skeptics" and those who deny the theory of AGW are no more than "interpreters of interpretations". Anything to help them deal with their cognitive dissonance I suppose. And they also seem to very much enjoy misrepresenting and distorting stolen emails. Nice hobby. Not. History will not look favourably on the hackers and people like Watts and McIntyre. Quite the partnership they have going-- Watts and McIntyre were amongst the first recipients of the second release of stolen emails. So Watts and McIntyre and the hackers make quite the misinformation team. I wonder if Norfolk police have spoken with Watts and McIntyre yet and if so, if they are cooperating?
  20. Climategate 2.0: Denialists Serve Up Two-Year-Old Turkey
    Mango... try reading this: Too hot for head of climate panel. I particularly like this section:
    But the US wants him out... The oil industry seems to be behind the move.
    So you are mortified and trembling at the thought of some bizarre global conspiracy by the World Bank to undermine American democracy, while you give a free pass to the wealthy corporate interests that are actually undermining American democracy. And at the same time, America has enough control over who is in power at the World Bank to replace anyone they wish who has an opinion and approach that they (or their corporate puppet-masters) dislike. Like Anthony, I too wonder what the Occupy Wall Street movement thinks of this, but unless they're as shallow in their approach to research as he is, I doubt they come to the same conclusion that he does.
  21. Climategate 2.0: Denialists Serve Up Two-Year-Old Turkey
    47, MangoChutney, Wow. That's a laughable interpretation and misrepresentation. Yes, I read the (-snip-) "article." Did you follow the link to see who Robert Watson actually is and why he would write such e-mails? Did you bother to do any such simple research yourself before coming here, (-snip-)? Have the black helicopters passed, rumbling and screeching, over your house yet? I can't wait until history looks back on AW and labels him clearly and harshly for what he truly is.
    Response:

    [DB] Inflammatory snipped.  We must model what we wish others to emulate.

  22. Climategate 2.0: Denialists Serve Up Two-Year-Old Turkey
    Personally, I find it an exceeding waste of my time to peruse known disinformationist websites such as that. Root canal therapy would be favored.
  23. Climategate 2.0: Denialists Serve Up Two-Year-Old Turkey
    that was a quick answer. you've read the article already?
  24. World Energy Outlook 2011: “The door to 2°C is closing”
    Tom : ‘energy consumption for direct heating in industrial processes is included in estimates of total energy use. Therefore this is not an additional requirement on top of those already being discussed’ I agree with that, but often (here adelady or Agnostic), energy transition examples are limited to substitution from gas or coal electricty to RE electricity, although electricity is not the major part of energy end-use in our societies. For industry in particular, IPCC SRREN recalls : 'The potentials and costs for increasing the use of RE in industry are poorly understood due to the complexity and diversity of industry and the various geographical and local climatic conditions.' (Technical Summary, 118). There are opportunities, specially for low-heat demanding industries, but it is uneasy to determine the pace of transition. For example, Germany must presently deal with a problem of this kind, after the nuclear ban. Windy places are located at the North of the country, but industrial regions are rather in the South. So, the cost is not just to install on- and offshore farms in the windy Baltic, but also to build high-voltage lines across the country and modify the grid. All is feasible of course, but as you say, there are 'economic, social and ecological costs' : climate issues are not the sole factor of human decision. There have been much debate about these topics when Nicholas Stern published his report, some years ago : if you take the worst (but still uncertain) trajectories of climate change models' estimates and the lowest discount rate, you conclude that benefits largely exceed costs, even with the most ambitious energy plan ; if you take the best (but still uncertain) trajectories of the same models' estimate and the highest discount rate, you may well conclude that some scenarios of energy transition will cause unuseful harm to present and next generations. For the rest, and notably GDP related to energy choices, I think the debate will continue with the 2nd part of perseus post.
  25. Climategate 2.0: Denialists Serve Up Two-Year-Old Turkey
    Mango, WUWT is known to not be a reliable/credible source of information. I'm surprised that you are taken in by their spin and misinformation.
  26. Climategate 2.0: Denialists Serve Up Two-Year-Old Turkey
    what do you guys think about the World Bank connection? http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/24/world-bank-global-warming-journals-and-cru/ Looks iffy to me
    Response:

    [DB] "what do you guys think about the World Bank connection?"

    Much ado about nothing (the usual WUWT fare). A few nanoseconds on Google: Robert Watson

    "Looks iffy to me"

    Then why post it here?

  27. Economic Growth and Climate Change Part 1 - Factors Influencing CO2 Emissions
    It has been deemed off topic but Sphaerica @14 & @16 did ask for an extra line (which did take more than one tea break to draw). Image and video hosting by TinyPic
  28. Climategate 2.0: Denialists Serve Up Two-Year-Old Turkey
    skywatcher at 09:49 AM on 25 November, 2011 caerbannog #39, I've seen you post your excellent reconstruction in quite a few places now, and am yet to see a skeptic reply with an alternative of his own. I'm guessing you haven't seen one either? Thanx for the thumbs-up on this. I know that I risk "sounding like a broken record" by posting my results all over the place, but I think that it's important for as many people as possible to see how easy it is to replicate the global-temperature results that so many deniers insist are the product of "secret data manipulations". I started playing around with the temperature data a few months ago, mainly out of curiosity. Found that I could get pretty decent "in the ballpark" results via "straight dumb averaging" of the station temperature anomalies. At the time, I didn't even consider coding up a proper geospatial gridding/averaging routine (figuring that it would be too much work). But a little later, I decided to take a closer look at the gridding/averaging procedure -- turned out to be quite a bit easier to code up than I expected. I took some "lazy man" shortcuts, like setting my grid-cell size to 20 degrees x 20 degrees (at the Equator, with adjustments to keep the grid-cell surface areas approximately equal as you moved north/south). With such big grid-cell sizes, I didn't have to bother with interpolating to empty grid-cells, since the grid cells were large enough that almost all of them contained station data. Took a couple of other shortcuts as well, mostly motivated by laziness on my part. Given the shortcuts/approximations that I made, I was quite surprised to how well the output of my crude little program matched the official NASA results. I didn't do any kind of "tweaking" or "experimenting" to get the results that I've been posting -- what you see above is what popped out of my program on the "first try". Then when the CRU released its raw "climategate" temperature data, I ran that data-set through my program. Got nearly the same results. My results really are the product of just a few days of "wing and a prayer" programming. There is nothing particularly clever or sophisticated in my code -- it's all very straightforward. Most of the coding work was "book-keeping" stuff -- i.e. keeping track of data gaps and accounting for the varying station data record lengths. If all station data record lengths were identical, and there were no missing temperature samples (i.e. no data gaps), this would have been a super-simple "programming in your sleep" exercise. The bottom line is, the Muir Russel Commission was correct -- validating the published global-average temperature results is really quite straightforward; it is something that someone with reasonable coding skills can do in just a few days (starting from scratch). This really is a project that could be broken up into a sequence of homework assignments for first-year programming students. You know, deniers really love to repeat that "31,000 scientists signed a petition doubting global-warming" talking-point. But in all the years that deniers have been attacking the surface temperature record, why didn't even one of those 31,000 "scientists" ever roll up his/her sleeves and actually *analyze* the temperature data? The really big "take home" lesson here is -- deniers often spend *years* making claims that take no more than a few *days* of work to disprove. And it's always someone else who ends up doing that work.
    Response:

    [DB] The lay reader will note that Caerbannog is the author of A Quick and Dirty Analysis of GHCN Surface Temperature Data, wherein he documents his efforts in great detail.

  29. Climategate 2.0: Denialists Serve Up Two-Year-Old Turkey
    I'm sure someone must have noted this above, but I'm pleased to notice that my lazy Google search did not bring up any headline about this in the mainstream media. Actually, the only one regarding this "second release" on the first Google page was RealClimate. That's an improvement..
  30. The Debunking Handbook Part 3: The Overkill Backfire Effect
    TatL#17: "creates a "rock-paper-scissors" scenario-- and that presents a wild-goose chase ... In turn, complex relationships evade such thinking, creating a "blind man touching an elephant" scenario," Wow. Three hoary old chestnuts at one go. Well done, sir; you've exemplified the statement in this post: A simple myth is more cognitively attractive than an over-complicated explanation. Some simple explanations, then: a. Science is not 'rock-paper-scissors.' Any time spent reading the complicated literature of climate science will demonstrate that. b. There are no wild geese to chase here. There is a clear objective: understanding what is happening and why, using the best available scientific references. By contrast, the denial-world loves to put up whole flocks of wild geese; they are distractions from the real questions. To answer your specific, see 'It's cosmic rays.' c. The parable of blind men and the elephant doesn't apply. We're not blind; we recognize that observations from multiple disciplines must be reconciled. That provides the familiar 'multiple lines of evidence' so clearly in evidence on this website. I will see your three chestnuts and raise you one: “A frog at the bottom of a well” is a common Chinese idiom, referring to a person with a limited outlook."
  31. Northern hemisphere warming rates: More than you may have heard
    JeeBee @70, as has already been pointed out by DB inline, the NH is warming overall, and indeed is warming with regard to all four seasons. As you have now acknowledged the current effect of the milankovitch cycles would be a continuation of the NH cooling that started approximately 6000 years before present, and continued up until the start of the industrial age. These two fact together contradict your claim in 67 and 68 that "The increasing tilt of earth due to the 41,000 year cycle is responsible for 67-80% of heating we initially thought was due to global warming". Ergo that claim is false. While I agree that climate change is "not currently a major threat" in the very limited sense that if all CO2 emissions where to cease immediately, the danger to humans from CO2 would be limited, and partly balanced by some gains; still it remains the case that continuing business as usual for just 20 more years will take us to a situation in which climate change is a major threat, and continued BAU through to the end of this century would be catastrophic. Because of both social and thermal inertia, that means we need to act now.
  32. Pete Dunkelberg at 03:04 AM on 26 November 2011
    Arctic Sea Ice Hockey Stick: Melt Unprecedented in Last 1,450 years
    Moderator (DB) way back at 11, thanks for the link to Kobashi et al. 2011. When I first heard of that paper I didn't find a pdf. It follows Kobashi et al. 2009: Persistent multi-decadal Greenland temperature fluctuation through the last millennium. Here is a free pdf link to Flanner et al. 2011 mentioned by Tom Curtis. One more hockey stick: Tingley and Huybers' bayesian approach The spatial mean and dispersion of surface temperatures over the last 1200 years: warm intervals are also variable intervals for which I still find only a manuscript, no publication.
    Moderator Response: [DB] Tingley has an identical copy here, but it is to be found nowhere else. Presumably still in review.
  33. Northern hemisphere warming rates: More than you may have heard
    67, JeeBee,
    Ugh!! I hate when people use the word "skeptical" vs "proponent". I wish people would drop those labels. Truth is what we seek, and its much more complex than a simple bipolar "I accept" or "I reject".
    Please leave concern-troll introductions like this out of your posts. Your position (in denial) is clearly evident. Don't pretend to straddle the fence because you think it will cause people to take you more seriously. It has quite the opposite effect. So you come in and trumpet a lot of the same, old, tired misinformation and misunderstandings that hundreds before you have tried. How are you different? How are you doing anything but contributing to the noise? Let me answer the question for you. You're not. If you want to be, you need to drop your preconceptions, recognize that you are speaking from a position of extreme ignorance, stop arrogantly commenting as if you know something no one else does, and instead start reading. This site hosts a wealth of information that you probably couldn't get through in a year (unless you have a whole lot of spare time on your hands). But you do need to understand every bit of it to truly understand what is going on, what the threats are, and who is lying and who is telling the truth. If you are allowing yourself to be fooled by nonsense and misdirection, you only have yourself to blame. Everything you need to learn is here. If you learn and understand it all and still have doubts, then so be it. But by speaking from the position of extreme ignorance and confusion you are in now all you are succeeding in doing is advertising very clearly how ignorant you are and how many misunderstandings you have. Quite honestly, it's embarrassing. I'm sorry to be harsh, but you have to understand how common and tiring your "insights" are. Please, please, please take the time to study and learn first, and develop strong opinions second, rather than the other way around (or just starting with opinions and stopping there).
  34. The Debunking Handbook Part 3: The Overkill Backfire Effect
    TruthAtLast @17: That's precisely why a proper understanding of climate-change requires the complex interaction between solar winds deflecting cosmic rays, and how the Earth's magnetic field can divert sunspot-plasma, but not the higher-speed cosmic radiation from supernovas. ...and sometimes Occam's Razor is required. Flights of fancy and highly speculative fairy-tales with no evidence to support them are completely different from "explanations". I suggest that you read the last two sentences in my comment #13.
  35. Memo to Climategate Hacker: Poor Nations Don't Want Your Kind of Help
    Is there any significance in the reference to FOIA? Wasn't the file named FOIA or something? In the UK the media etc. usually refer to the 'FOI Act', where as American media outlets often refer to 'FOIA'. Do a Google search and you'll see the difference. If I was an American hacker who hadn't thought about it to much, I would probably go straight for FOIA as a name.
  36. Northern hemisphere warming rates: More than you may have heard
    JeeBee#70: "Much scare tactic news comes from winter melt in the Arctic, even though the whole year overall is cooler." Arctic ice melt (which is a summertime thing) is discussed in great detail on a number of threads here - the data speak for themselves, no 'scare tactic news' needed. Please substantiate what 'overall year is cooler.' Claims such as these carry little or no weight in this forum. "At what point would carbon levels have to rise to become a major problem?" They already are. Read. Learn. Ask good questions. Read more. "can humanity mount an effective resolution before its too late?" The biggest hurdles to clear are those posed by the folks who blindly repeat 'no, it's not.'
  37. Northern hemisphere warming rates: More than you may have heard
    67, JeeBee,
    Both sides have valid points.
    No. One "side" has entirely valid points, called "the science," including those few, minor and generally contradicted points that point in different directions. The other "side" has bluster, obfuscation, misdirection and nonsense and tactics. Trying to equate denial with the science, as if the two are on par with each other, is yet another common denial tactic. The two sides do not have valid points. One side has valid points and an understanding of the areas in question, while the other side has nothing.
  38. Northern hemisphere warming rates: More than you may have heard
    Tom Curtis, yes I agree. It is trending towards cooler conditions in the Northern Hemisphere, and warmer conditions in the Southern Hemisphere *overall, but warmer winters in the Northern and cooler winters in the Southern*. Much scare tactic news comes from winter melt in the Arctic, even though the whole year overall is cooler. Sorry for that confusion. Please re-read http://www.skepticalscience.com/LIG5-1110.html. It does show the milankovitch cycle having quite an effect on *observed temperatures*, but not on climate change, again we agree. Yes, climate change is unaffected as far as we know. I assert that Climate change from the data we have gathered *is not currently a major threat to humanity*. However, my questions are these: 1. At what point would carbon levels have to rise to become a major problem? 2. If and when it does become a major problem, can humanity mount an effective resolution before its too late? I think when generating Climate Change *policy*, its important to take those questions into account, not just whether or not climate change is a major issue today due to current observations.
    Response:

    [DB] "It is trending towards cooler conditions"

    Wrt Milankovitch forcings, yes.  But that ignores the very real and sizeable anthropogenic forcings which are unprecedentally warming both hemispheres today.

    "Much scare tactic news comes from winter melt in the Arctic..."

    Please avoid ideological labels like "scare tactics"

    "...even though the whole year overall is cooler."

    Umm, no.  Use the search function again.  The 80s were warmer than the 70s, the 90s were warmer than the 80s, the "Aughts" were warmer than the 90s, etc.  This overall warming trend (not cooling) is well documented.  Or take this portion to the It's cooling thread.

    "Please re-read http://www.skepticalscience.com/LIG5-1110.html"

    If you disagree with the linked post (which you should re-read), take that portion of the discussion there, where it is better-suited.  Long-term forcings, like Milankovitch changes, will cause long-term changes in climate.  Again, well-known.

    "I assert that Climate change from the data we have gathered *is not currently a major threat to humanity*."

    Unsupported and  therefore baseless.  And OT here.  Please take this portion to the It's not bad thread.

    "At what point would carbon levels have to rise to become a major problem?"

    At no point in the past 800,000 years have atmospheric CO2 levels ever exceeded 298.7 ppm.  The last time CO2 levels were this high there was no mankind.  So who says that they are not too high already?

    Click to enlarge

    [Source]

    "If and when it does become a major problem..."

    IBID

    "...can humanity mount an effective resolution before its too late?"

    Who says it's not 40 years too late already (see the Climate Change: The 40 Year Delay Between Cause and Effect thread)?  Even acting now and holding all GHG emissions to zero for the next 40 years, the Earth will continue to warm and the climate will continue to change accordingly.

  39. Arctic Sea Ice Hockey Stick: Melt Unprecedented in Last 1,450 years
    Rob,
    Many climate change "skeptics" obsess over the 'hockey stick', and their discussion inevitably leads back to 1998, when climate scientist Michael Mann first published his paper indicating that current global warming was anomalous in the last 1000 years or so
    In 1998, Mann, Bradley and Hughes published a reconstruction going back 600, not 1000 years. The millennial reconstruction was done in 1999. These two papers often get confused, but usually by skeptics.
  40. Northern hemisphere warming rates: More than you may have heard
    JeeBee @68, the milankovitch cycle to which you appeal is currently trending in the opposite direction, towards cooler conditions in the Northern Hemisphere, and warmer conditions in the Southern Hemisphere. More importantly, it is irrelevant on decadal timescales. As you indicate, obliquity is on a 41,000 year cycle. Therefore over the last fifty years it has only progressed through 0.1% of a cycle, and hence has had negligible effect on change in climate over that period.
  41. Northern hemisphere warming rates: More than you may have heard
    Ok, it was my first post. No caps. >> Global warming is a valid theory from far more than that. Agreed. Just 1 example. >>>Umm, no. The axial tilt of the Earth is unaffected by its temperature. Thats not what I said. Rephrasing: The increasing tilt of earth due to the 41,000 year cycle is responsible for 67-80% of heating we initially thought was due to global warming. http://www.skepticalscience.com/LIG5-1110.html "It takes a lot more carbon to destabilize the planet than we thought." This follows from the previous assertion backed by your own hosted link, that global warming is much *weaker* and therefore more carbon would be required to cause a destabilization event.
  42. Northern hemisphere warming rates: More than you may have heard
    Ugh!! I hate when people use the word "skeptical" vs "proponent". I wish people would drop those labels. Truth is what we seek, and its much more complex than a simple bipolar "I accept" or "I reject". Both sides have valid points. From the graph, it shows both hemispheres have warmed. Therefore, global warming is a valid theory. In addition, there is enough methane on the bottom of the ocean to produce nightmare scenarios of runaway greenhouse effect. However! From data, we see that 67-80% of the warming we assumed was due to global warming was actually increased tilt of the Northern Hemisphere towards the Sun. So that leaves 2-33% for global warming. So what does that mean? It takes a lot more carbon to destabilize the planet than we thought. Thats a good thing, it gives us more time. But that doesn't mean we are not capable of destabilizing it! Just because we have much more leeway than we thought, there is absolutely no need to test the limits of what our planet can handle!!
    Response:

    [DB] "From the graph, it shows both hemispheres have warmed.  Therefore, global warming is a valid theory."

    Global warming is a valid theory from far more than that.

    "From data, we see that 67-80% of the warming we assumed was due to global warming was actually increased tilt of the Northern Hemisphere towards the Sun."

    Umm, no.  The axial tilt of the Earth is unaffected by its temperature.

    "It takes a lot more carbon to destabilize the planet than we thought."

    This is an unsupported assertion.  Please provide a supportative link.

    Please note that the use of All-Caps (which I have reverted back to caps & lower case for you) is a Comments Policy violation.  Please take the time to familiarize yourself with it.  Thanks!

  43. Memo to Climategate Hacker: Poor Nations Don't Want Your Kind of Help
    Whoever is really willing to help the poor I'm sure would not miss any chance. They need food AND water AND health care AND education AND ... [long list here]. A liveable environment is one of the prerequisites. The problem, then, is not who wants to help the poors and who does not, it's the perception that climate change is not a threat, which may turn out to be a fatal mistake. Providing food, water or whatever without helping them building their future will result in their being poor forever, surely not a desirable outcome, not to me at least.
  44. Arctic Sea Ice Hockey Stick: Melt Unprecedented in Last 1,450 years
    Rob Painting, Skept.fr: As discussed in an earlier SkS post, the MWP seems to have been a re-organization of the global climate. Despite the localized warming aroung Greenland, the global mean background state was much cooler than today. Also consider that the map is relative to 1961-90 and that the Greenland area was relatively cold during this period, even compared to earlier in the 20th Century. That said, I'm with Skept.fr on being skeptical of these findings. The MWP doesn't just show smaller change than today, but change in the opposite direction to what we would expect. And the previous lowest minimum occurring during the Little Ice Age? It's counter-intuitive at least. Could it be that cooling in Europe was due to some prolonged blocking pattern caused by, or resulting in, a warmer Arctic? I guess I'll have to check out the paper.. hope my Nature subscription hasn't expired yet.
  45. Memo to Climategate Hacker: Poor Nations Don't Want Your Kind of Help
    Most likely the thief does believe what he says about the poor countries but it is not his sole or even main motivation. If the time zone information is correct then he probably did it from ideological motives.
  46. Incredible time-lapse video of Earth from space
    @chriskoz #3, You're seeing 'airglow'. http://astrobob.areavoices.com/2009/02/25/is-there-true-darkness/
  47. Memo to Climategate Hacker: Poor Nations Don't Want Your Kind of Help
    My view is that the readme is a smockscreen to try to hide the identity of the hacker. He uploads the emails to a Russian server. He artificially sets the date on the files to hide his time zone in the newest batch of emails. He creates a readme file to suggest his aim is to protect the poor. Yet first time round he made a few mistakes. The most serious was leaving time zone information on the zipped files, where was his time zone? -5 GMT, most likely Eastern Canada or USA. He is not really interested in protecting the poor at all.
  48. The Debunking Handbook Part 5: Filling the gap with an alternative explanation
    I'm finding this handbook very useful indeed. Nice work!
  49. Arctic Sea Ice Hockey Stick: Melt Unprecedented in Last 1,450 years
    Arkadiusz at #48 is a good example of how the reading of scientific papers by people untrained in that specific topic may be tricky. In the conclusions of Kobashi et al. quoted by Arkadiusz, the authors highlight the possible reasons of the discrepancies between Central Greenland and the Arctic as a whole. This should sound as a ringing alarm bell to those who'd like to use their reconstructions as indications of a more general trend. Indeed, the authors are clearly trying to put central Greenland temperatures in the context of the Arctic as a whole to improve the understanding of the former. As already noted by Tom @50, Arkadiusz himself highlights the reason why his quote is irrelevant to the topic at hand, which makes me wonder why he extensively quoted it.
  50. Memo to Climategate Hacker: Poor Nations Don't Want Your Kind of Help
    That is absolutely correct Marcus. Distributed solar energy is economically a better option for many Africans: http://environmentalresearchweb.org/cws/article/news/47187

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