This is an excellent article. The only constants I have been able to get out of the debate so far is that believers in anthropogenic global warming are fervently dogmatic and when confronted with alternative hypotheses immediately attack the proposer rather than countering the argument. Abusive ad hominem attacks always make me suspicious of the validity of the attacker's argument.s

EQ

Dogma is founded in blind faith. Contrary to what you imply, science is not.

"Alternative hypotheses" have been refuted time and time again.

"Attack the proposer"?

Tell me, who do you think "attacks" the vast majority of scientists that just go about their work testing the hypothesis and find AGW to be even more robust.

And who do you think "attacks" the the messenger (IPCC)?

The author shows the climatological incoherence underlying the carbon alarmism. In short, everything depends on picking utterly arbitrary time-frames.

But an equal incoherence affects the underlying ethical assumptions of the alarmists.

This is because positive science is incapable of supplying value judgements. So even if there were no issue as to the positive science, *nothing* would follow from that as a matter of policy, which requires value judgements. There would still remain all the ethical and positive questions underlying the use of coercion for social co-operation. Who would benefit? Who should? How would a given human life be balanced against a given non-human life? How would one know? Who should be authorised to judge? What if the person affected doesn't agree?

How would the ecological benefits of warming, for example in all micro-climates of Eurase and the Americas, be weighed against the ecological disadvantages? For humans? For non-humans? Would there be a discount for future utility as against present - would the life of a stranger a million years hence be counted equal to a life foregone now? If so, why? If not, why not?

What reason is there to think that the central planning of production required to control all carbon emissions, would not be worse for all relevant human values, than responding by way of more, not less economic and personal liberty?

The alarmist argument is ethically, economically and ecologically incoherent, as well as incoherent as a matter of climatology.

Q&A
In case you didn't notice, your post consists entirely of
a) personal argument, and
b) appeal to absent authority.

You make no attempt to deal with the substantive issues in the author's post, except to imply that someone, somewhere has got it satisfactorily covered. But that's not good enough.

The scam is up. Global warming will go down as the biggest pious fraud in the history of the world. The mediaeval selling of indulgences had nothing on this crowd.

Peter Hume,

Yes, the Earth's climate system is complex, we know that already. The author says we "really have no idea what drives climate".

Bollocks. We have a very good idea, the nuances are very much in debate but hey, that's how science works.

Mark Lawson cites the research by Meehl et al. They conclude (quote):

"The role of the Quasi-biennial Oscillation (QBO) in the response to solar forcing has been noted in earlier studies. A set of experiments with the two WACCM model versions with a prescribed QBO was carried out (results from those experiments will be presented in a subsequent paper).

However, the results for the climate system response to solar forcing are qualitatively similar to those presented here without the QBO, but the prescribed QBO shows improvements in the stratospheric response compared to observations.

Though the solar-forced eastern equatorial SST anomalies shown are about half the amplitude of those associated with ENSO, they are relevant for understanding decadal time-scale variability in the Pacific.

This response also cannot be used to explain recent global warming because the 11-year solar cycle has not shown a measurable trend over the past 30 years." End quote.

Now, which part needs further explanation?

Wait. Better still ... rock up to Copenhagen and spring this "biggest pious fraud in the history of the world" on them.

If the 'climate warmers' are wrong then the world will transition to a range of new, clean and mosty sustainable energy sources quite smoothly, at some expense but also at considerable profit to the early adopters. Just as it transitioned from timber to coal, canals to railroads, gas to electricity, ships to planes, pencils to computers.

If the 'climate skeptics' are wrong, there will be massive drought, inundation and famines, tens of millions will be displaced and hundreds of millions will starve. US and UK defence bodies warn of the possibility of nuclear confict.

Who would you prefer was wrong?

Oh dear yet another right winger who thinks he can smeer the facts and tell us the Earth is flat.