andyone "Those who wish to criticize climate science and scientists ought to look first at authentic datasets (NASA, Hadley, NSIDC, CSIRO, BOM, Potsdam etc.) and see whether they can interpret these data in any other way than climate change"

I don't doubt these datasets now all reflect climate change, but is it AGW? No one doubts the climate changes as it has always done, why do you keep changing tack here on this - you know it is not in dispute but AGW is - you flip back and forth on this as if skeptics of AGW are also skeptical on Climate Change - not very constructive and I wonder at your motives doing this.

If it is supposedly AGW, then let's get objective review of the datasets, because right now it looks like all the datasets have been manufactured to reflect AGW.

That's the issue with the CRU emails and data release into the wild.

Why did Phil Jones want to protect his carefully hand wrought dataset, because it is a magnificent construction isn't it - not reality, more a work of art reflecting his view of what climate is doing, rather than what it is doing. Same with Hadley, we've seen adjustments constantly of that dataset to steepen the rate of temperature rise - is it reality, not likely.

It makes people wonder, why are all the datasets different? Different goals, different fudge factors, different things to accomplish, like grants?

Let's go back to using actual measured data without the "special adjustments" that your little cliques may all find acceptable, but no one else seems to, hence the skepticism.

Therein lies a problem though, the temperature records, raw, do not show AGW do they? They are a huge amount of noiy measurement, that to get an average out of, you have to discard many results, who decides which to discard and which to use, and what's their motive? ($, grants booksales, directorships, special consultancies, advisorships, tenure, professorships etc, usual human nature drivers)

The author says:

"Because CO2 is cumulative, with atmospheric residence time
on the scale of centuries to millennia, stabilisation of the
climate through small incremental reduction in emissions
may not be sufficient to avoid runaway climate change
and possible tipping points."

Interestingly, he includes amongst his recommendations for remediation, in the last-but-one paragraph of the article, the ".... application of biochar.". This recommendation is particularly interesting in the light of a claim made by Scott Bidstrup in an essay titled 'Saving The Planet While Saving The Farm: How soil carbonization could save the planet while it restores agricultural profitability', that "Millions of farmers, all [carbonizing their farm waste and plowing the charcoal under], could have an enormous impact, bringing atmospheric carbon dioxide right back to its pre-industrial levels.". A basis for optimism?

Bidstrup offers prospects of avoidance of the stand-off between 'warmists' and 'denialists', one all too readily apparent even in this comments thread, in a short preface to his essay, which says:

"It is not enough to try to browbeat business as well as
the population into giving up fossil fuels... Fossil fuels
are simply far too convenient, cheap and easy to use for
their use to end anytime soon, no matter how repressive
government gets. If we are going to solve the problem of
global warming, it won't happen by denying the problem,
as conservatives tend to do, or by browbeating people into
spending more money on less convenient alternative energy sources,
as liberals would seem to prefer. The only realistic solution -
what must be done - is to make the addition of carbon dioxide
to the atmosphere a non-problem."

Bidstrup's essay can be viewed here: http://www.bidstrup.com/carbon.htm

It occurs to me that the large scale conversion of farm wastes and/or deadfall to biochar may also reduce methane emissions that would without such intervention normally result from the natural decomposition of such biomass. Is anyone able to post a link to any studies that may have been done on the methane contribution to GHGs from this source?

No wonder we won't pay any attention to these so called climate scientists, the self declared experts.

Last year they were claiming the warming was causing more cyclones.

Some real research, or simple collating, has disproved this, so now it's increased intensity that will get us all.

Get ALL the research released for scrutiny, if you want any acceptance of your stuff, otherwise pull the other one, it may yodel.

TO THOSE QUERYING WHETHER A CHANGE OCCURS IN THE INTENSITY OF TROPICAL STORMS:

Nature 455, 92-95 (4 September 2008) | doi:10.1038/nature07234; Received 25 January 2008; Accepted 27 June 2008
The increasing intensity of the strongest tropical cyclones
James B. Elsner1, James P. Kossin2 & Thomas H. Jagger1

Atlantic tropical cyclones are getting stronger on average, with a 30-year trend that has been related to an increase in ocean temperatures over the Atlantic Ocean and elsewhere1, 2, 3, 4. Over the rest of the tropics, however, possible trends in tropical cyclone intensity are less obvious, owing to the unreliability and incompleteness of the observational record and to a restricted focus, in previous trend analyses, on changes in average intensity. Here we overcome these two limitations by examining trends in the upper quantiles of per-cyclone maximum wind speeds (that is, the maximum intensities that cyclones achieve during their lifetimes), estimated from homogeneous data derived from an archive of satellite records. We find significant upward trends for wind speed quantiles above the 70th percentile, with trends as high as 0.3 0.09 m s-1 yr-1 (s.e.) for the strongest cyclones. We note separate upward trends in the estimated lifetime-maximum wind speeds of the very strongest tropical cyclones (99th percentile) over each ocean basin, with the largest increase at this quantile occurring over the North Atlantic, although not all basins show statistically significant increases. Our results are qualitatively consistent with the hypothesis that as the seas warm, the ocean has more energy to convert to tropical cyclone wind.

gosh you're a tricky one aren't you Andy - did anyone actually question he INTENSITY of storms in the US?

I said "The big storms in the US for instance are not becoming more frequent, but less frequent, but do go on predicting them, like Al Gore, we'll hold them up to ridicule you."

frequency not intensity - or couldn't you find anything on that so are skewing the debate, what a surprise!

Since you offering up an examination of that is "qualitatively consistent with the hypothesis that as the seas warm, the ocean has more energy to convert to tropical cyclone wind" Which may or may not support intensity, I haven't seen the caveats or assumptions on that paper.

let me respond with "Simulated reduction in Atlantic hurricane frequency under twenty-first-century warming conditions"

Thomas R. Knutson, Joseph J. Siruti s, Stephen T. Garner, Gabriel A. Vecchi & Isaac M. Held quote "Our results do not support the notion of large increasing trends in either tropical storm or hurricane frequency driven by increases in atmospheric greenhouse-gas concentrations."

frequency not intensity OK?

Off you go ..

RPG, I'm not sure what 'large increasing trends in either tropical storm or hurricane frequency driven by increases in atmospheric greenhouse-gas concentrations' (at end of your post) actually means. What, for example, qualifies as a 'large increasing trend'? I ask this because I know that a brain tumour can increase in volume by 25 percent before its growth is regarded as 'significant' by an oncologist, at which point your average patient is considering him or her self gravely ill. Also, does the reference to 'atmospheric greenhouse-gas concentrations' encompass sea surface temperature warming, - or was the author separating out air temperature from sea temperature?