China systematically scuttled international agreement. Period. A solution lies there, not here.

PhilipM - just caught up with all the responses. None of your replies did anything to help the article. The issue of the shrinkage or growth of the major ice sheets is essentially irrelevent, and only referred to by greenhouse writers because the temperature trends do not bear out their various gloomy predictions. Overall volumes of ice are shrinking because temperatures are still comparatively high, when climate cools you would expect volumes to grow again.
Glaciers are actually better because with them scientists can track the ebb and flow of climate cycles - on average, local conditions vary - by analysing markings on the rocks around the site. I have yet to see any evidence from those who track glaciers that present warming is higher than medieval times.
And now temperatures are expected to cool, leaving aside the present el nino effect.
Yes, the solar magnetic stuff can, potentially, explain recent high temperatures. That is the point. Activity was high and now it seems to have fallen off the edge of a cliff. Admittedly the theory is lacking a lot of details but at the very least it explains far more than CO2. The reason more isn't know about it is because, as I have discovered, researchers in the field cannot get funding.
In any case, as noted, the oceanic cycles have gone into cool modes (more or less) - which may be connected to solar magnetic, but no one really knows - so we are looking at cooling, not warming. The only really successful forecast in this area have come from those who track the ocean cycles, therefore we pay attention to those forecasts and dump the IPCC.
Yes, I am talking about two seperate issues there - solar magentic and ocean cycles. No I'm not going to link, but search on the names Keenlyside, Latif and Don Easterbrook. Also happy to send you a copy of my book when it comes out, which explains much of this. Send me an address on ecocriminal@optusnet.com.au.
Mark Lawson

rpg: you are very hard on my prediction yet consider it irrelevant that you have a factual error. This is a common bias: anyone arguing for the environment must be 100% correct 100% of the time, whether the point they are making is relevant to the science or not, whereas the opposition is permitted to argue based on fabrications and errors and corrections are nitpicks. I'd call an error of fact more serious than an error of prediction. If you disagree, give me a sound reason.

Curmudgeon: you are predicting cooling but that's not very specific. When? How much? If you can quantify these things you are way ahead of climate science professionals who freely admit they can't give accurate projections of these cycles and hence aim to model the shift in the long-term average. The various cycles and oscillations (which means variations that cancel out in the long run) can over a few years exceed the long-term CO_2-driven trend. The point of my recent articles here and on my blog is that we should be at a relatively cool point of both the solar and ENSO cycles yet temperatures remain at or near all time instrument record highs, and ice loss is accelerating. No one claims these natural cycles don't exist. That's why climate change is generally taken to be shifts in the long-term average. My worry is that if we are currently in a cool phase of natural variability but still setting records, what will happen in the warm phase?

Phil, I can admit to being wrong by 2% on the 2008 US election.

What were you wrong by in your prediction, or as I have said your serial exaggeration?

You can't just cop out and say, I was predicting the future and got it wrong, but this time I'll get it right, or I'm nearly right, or when I said "landslide of historic proportions", you can't hold me to account because I'm just trying to market or sell an idea, or you made an error too.

Did you or did you not make a HUGE stuffup?

Do you or do you not make HUGE exaggerations?

Mate there is only one way out for soothsayers, don't predict, and if you do and get called - don't try to weasel your way out of it.

That's a cop out and you know it, BS is BS, it smells like it and looks like it.

So why would anyone believe anything you "predict" now? As we can see, you don't stand behind it.

Get out of the prediction business, you don't have the backbone for it.

PhilipM - at the cool point of both the ENSO and the solar cycles? Where did that come from? the first point about the ENSO cycle is clearly wrong. We are in fact deep in an El Nino, which may be moderated by a cool phase Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO).. the El Nino is warming things up somewhat, and that has led to hopeful pronouncements that this year will be very warm. We shall see, but its very clearly a warm part of the PDO. However, the PDO is, in turn, just a short term cycle. They recently releaised that its the PDO that matters.
Now as for the solar part, I think that's wrong too, but its a lot fuzzier because different scientists will tell you different things, no-one's quite sure what they should be measuring, and we are looking at the current activity in high resolution. But ther are indications that activity was high until comparatively recently.
As for specifying the degree of cooling, that's impossible! Climate science is in its infancy. All scientists will tell you is that its meant to be cooler. the IPCC projections require heaps of computer modelling and even then are so vague as to be meaningless.

Mark, your confirmation bias is simply unparalleled. I am not an expert in atmospheric physics like Raycom's geologist hero (I am awaiting an email to confirm this fossil fuel geologist's opinion is warped). However, I do have a tad more expertise on the guff you have been sprouting about. Please, take some advice for once; stop trying to confuse yourself and everyone else with something that is way over your head. Easterbrook and Latif, oh pulease! Noel, yes - but you have completely misunderstood what he has said to suit your own preconceived POV - as did the 'denialosphere'.