150 years of warming...are we dead yet?

Not true. The warming period before 1940 was very similar to the warming rate after 1975. That happened BEFORE our CO2 output increased so much after 1950.

Here’s an idea. Let’s cite our sources. That’s fair, isn’t it?

True or false? The 2007 IPPC stated that it is “very unlikely” that the earth is warming due to a “recovery from a pre 20th century cold period.”

The IPCC also states that “the global average surface temperature has increased, esp. since about 1950. …The rate of warming averaged over the last 50 years … is nearly twice that for the last 100 years.”

OK, your turn. On what source or sources are you basing your assertion?

Another hole in the theory is that it appears to be based on the idea that correlation equals causation (not sound science)....but there is not even correlation. Temps FELL after 1950 when our CO2 output dramatically increased. So we have rising temps BEFORE CO2 and falling temps AFTER CO2. Pretty poor correlation.

To begin with, temps were cooling since the 1940s in the North Atlantic only.
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/20ctrend.htm#S2

In the southern hemisphere they continued to warm. Secondly, if you learn just one thing about climate science, learn that there is no such thing as monocausation or linearity in climate science! It’s obvious to me that you’ve just parroted a classic denialist argument but it’s utter nonsense.

Here’s your chance to redeem yourself. What variables could explain a cooling trend in the North Atlantic notwithstanding increases in atmospheric CO2?

Not to mention going back further in climate history reveals times when CO2 levels were above 4000ppm...during an ice age! We are currently in an era of CO2 scarcity in terms of geological time

Once again, it would be more honest if you would show your sources. Let me be clear, I’m not disputing the PPMs or ice age conditions you reference; in fact, it so happens that I have a special interest in that particular geological period – you know the name of it, right? What I’d like to see, before we go any further, is the source you used to make what you imagine is a devastating argument against CO2-temp correlation.

Are you familiar with the papers of the scientists who’ve done the leading research in this area? If you’re not, I’d be happy to cite them. Will you read them if I do?

Interesting that you mention a common fallacy before resorting to one yourself. Attempting to make the conversation about me and the books I've read is a common tactic by AGW believers. You know the name of it, right? Ad hominem

I see. You haven’t read so much as a single book on global warming by a peer-reviewed climate scientist. Why not just say so? Are you trying to hide something?

Speaking of common fallacies, it’s a common fallacy to assert that merely inquiring into a person’s expertise and background knowledge is an ad hominem argument. It only becomes so if I were to argue that your are wrong merely because you’re ignorant. I’m doing no such thing. I plan to show that you are wrong through citation of peer-reviewed science and logical argument.

However, it is certainly germane to the conversation. Reading nothing but predigested propaganda about climate science and little or no actual climate science does tend to leave one vulnerable to manipulation. The person will tend to parrot snippets of arguments without having enough domain knowledge to interpret and contextualize them. I’ll give you a concrete example of this when you answer my above questions about that high-CO2-levels-in-ice-age comment.

The way AGW believers act like religious people was the first red flag for me

Climate scientists act like religious people? Really? I hope this is not the beginning of an ad hominem argument.
I‘m certainly sure that some lay proponents of AGW are True Believers, but we don’t need to concern ourselves with them. (Why the libertarian, non-scientist deniers of AGW didn’t raise countervailing red flags to someone as fair-minded as you are is another question.) The only red flag that need concern us is the quality of the climate science.

But if you must know, one of the most prominent and credentialed among the climate scientist deniers is Roy Spencer, an avowed creationist.

I’m not aware of any creationists among AGW-endorsing climate scientists. Are you?

I admittedly harbor a little contempt for religion and AGW puts itself in the same category.

Kindly explain to me how F Keller et al’s 2005 article “Sensitivity analysis of snow cover to climate change scenarios and their impact on plant habitats in Alpine terrain” is an exercise in religious faith or zeal? Remember, to steer clear of the ad hominem argument you appear to dread, you’ll have to focus on specific scientific data, methodology and interpretations.

he same old "the world will end because of man's sins" mantra,

Which climate scientist said that? Name one. The planet is not in jeopardy. The well-being of civilization in the 21st century is what is being considered, and climate scientists talk in terms of probabilities, not certainties.

Doomsday predictions that don't come true

Specifically? Don’t tell me that you’re about to repeat the “They warned of another Ice Age” canard?

ostracising of dissenters

Lindzen made that claim and his arguments were shown to be fallacious. Allow me to give you the shorter Lindzen:
Climate skeptics who were treated like outcasts: Sir John Mason, Prof Hubert Lamb; Dr Henk Tennekes, Aksel Wiin-Nielsen, all except Tennekes have disappeared from public discourse. Tennekes was dismissed and Wiin was tarred by Bert Bolin as a tool of the coal industry. Kiril Kondratyev died in 2006 and Yuri Izrael continue to oppose climate alarm. Respected Italian professors Alfonso Sutera and Antonio Speranza disappeared from the debate in 1991, apparently losing climate-research funding for raising questions.

This has been picked apart many times. Just off the top of my head there is this

http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2007/12/sutera_and_speranza.php

which shows that the only younger researchers on the list never lost funding and didn’t drop from sight. The rest were superannuated researchers, at least one of whom was fond of quoting biblical texts as an argument against increasing computing power for medium-range weather forecasting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hendrik_Tennekes

and Yuri Izrael is an international joke, known as the "fossil communist fighting for fossil fuel."
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Yuri_Izrael

, the desire for absolution and atonement, prophets, sacrifice, guilt

Again, which AGW-endorsing climate scientists are guilty of that?

....and above all...the idea that we are by far the most important species on the planet who control everything that happens through our actions. It's all about boosting the ego.

Utter nonsense. Your source for this absurd generalization, please? Climate scientists are very specific about the roles that water vapor and the sun play in global warming. Do you think climate scientists believe man-made global warming is responsible for the preponderance of heat on the planet?

Did you know that religious leaders in the early centuries of the Little Ice Age blamed the climate change on us too?

Yet another fallacious argument – guilt by association? And what a strained association it is! Religious leaders did not do climate science. Stick to the science.

warming sure is terrible, isn't it?

Another inchoate argument apparently cribbed from a denialist blog or editorial. Warming per se is not necessarily terrible, it’s the rate of change which is of particular concern. Can you articulate a few of the reasons why, based on your familiarity with climate science?

Declarations that "the science is settled" are another one. Since when is science settled? Since when is the debate over? That's religion, not science.

All I keep hearing from you is parroting of anti-AGW propaganda. “The science is settled” is a rhetorical tool that misrepresents the issue.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:William_M._Connolley/The_science_is_ settled

What is clearly established and not debated by any climate scientists is that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and that the earth is warming. Moreover no alternative explanations of this warming have proven to have adequate explanatory power. Much beyond that, the science is not “settled.” Climate science deals in probabilities and complexity, not certainty.

Since we don't yet understand how the climate works it would be pretty arrogant of me to claim to know those answers, wouldn't it?

Actually, I consider it the height of arrogance to claim that climate scientists have no understanding of how the climate works when you yourself haven’t read a single book on climate science. You couldn’t even identify alternative forcings when I asked you to. My high schooler could have done that in middle school.

You have indeed made many claims. I have yet to see one supported by a source of any kind. If that isn’t arrogance, what is?

I find it fascinating that you are so opinionated on a subject you apparently know so little about.

I know of no other field making that type of claim and attempting to squash all dissenting opinion.

What other fields do you know of? I hope you know them better than climate science because you’ve completely misrepresented the work that atmospheric physicists, biologists, palynologists, oceanographers, etc do.

It's the fact some are claiming to know all the answers with such certainty

This is not a fact, but unfounded prejudice. You can’t back up your assertion.
What the IPPC actually says, should you ever take some spare time away from IMDb to peruse it, is that

“Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.”

The rest of p. 10 makes distinctions between various “likely” “extremely unlikely” and “likely” explanations and attributions. I just typed that from my hard copy. But here’s a link with more of the same:
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch9s9-es.html

Now let’s see if we can agree on one thing. Isn’t a True Believer someone who resists evidence and scientific argument, and who uncritically repeats the unfounded rhetoric of others?

(Oh, and just for fun, not as a buttress to the AGW argument) may I point out that noted libertarian and skeptic Michael Shermer (I'll bet you've heard of him ) believes the phenomenon of AGW has been demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt?

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-flipping-point


~There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in.~

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