Ok, confirmation that CO2 emissions are increasing...check
Confirmation that CO2 emissions are pretty much spot on in the middle of IPCC forecasts...check
Inclusion of a graph that confirms that the average rate of CO2 emissions have increased by approx. 3-fold since 1965 (taking the multiple year averages shown)...check
A figure legend that essentially says “the acceleration in the rate of increase of CO2 emissions has been modest for a decade”...check
For methane emissions, confirmation that methane emissions greatly increased since 1984...check
Denial that the short term ‘plateau’ in methane atmospheric concentration increase appears to stop in 2007 and that the trend is upward again since then...check

A short scientific question for you Mark: Do you think it is more scientifically valid to project long term outcomes from long-term data eg. the trend of increase in CO2 emissions from 1960 to 2010?
or
to project long term outcomes from short term trends eg. your outlining that the rate of increase of CO2 emissions has ‘paused’ at 2ppm per year in the last few years (maybe the last 7 or so?, it’s hard to tell exactly which years you are using).
Leave it with you.

Mark,
A well researched, well presented article. And an insight into some of the editing needed to create the polished cocksure pronouncements that are trotted out by politicians, to further their agendas.

Reminds me of similar by , PROFESSOR STEPHEN SCHNEIDER on SBS
http://www.sbs.com.au/podcasts/Podcasts/insight/episode/109997/The-Sceptics-part-1
He used an analogy to explain how human derived CO2 overloads the system.

“If you have a bath tub and you turn it on so you're getting in a gallon coming in a minute right, and now the drain has opened up to a point where a gallon is going out in a minute. So there's a flow in and there's a flow out. That's an analogy to the fact that that there is a very large flow of carbon dioxide naturally going into the system in the summer time and coming out in the winter. Much larger than the 3%, I agree with that. However, it's in balance. The amounts are the same. So when you add the 3% it's 3% this year and next year and next year and next year…And it accumulates. So if all of a sudden I go to the bath tub and I make the gallon into 1.2 gallons and don't change the drain size in the bottom the water in the bath tub is going to rise.”

While no doubt intended to simplify matters –it fed the common illusion that the world prior to industrialisation was in equilibrium.

The reality is there was/is never a goldilocks stasis, the system is always trending one way or another,and sometimes it goes to extremes, as happened in the ice ages or their reverse the medieval warming or mid-Pliocene warming- as might well be expected given the number and variability of natural inputs.

Horace
What Stephen Schneider had been trying to convey to ‘sceptics’ up until his recent death is very true. It appears that many people, including the author of this current article, still don’t understand the accumulation effects of ‘long lived green-house gases’, like CO2. Schneider simply said that the oceans, atmosphere and terrestrial biosphere (the collective bath tub) is not absorbing the extra carbon that is accumulating each year.

Horace, despite the author writing a “well presented” article, he has difficulty distinguishing between short term trends and long term projections, as Bugsy pointed out. For example, the global financial crisis actually had a negative effect on the bath tub analogy. Far from being “well researched”, the author also doesn’t acknowledge that the trends in shifting rainfall patterns, precipitation rates, desertification, extreme weather events, Arctic summer ice melt, and so on, are all tracking at the higher end of IPCC projections, contrary to what he says in his article.

The author is right in one respect, the economic scenarios (produced by econometricians, not scientists) that the IPCC use in some of their modeling do need to be revised, hopefully the revisions will be incorporated into the next IPCC report.

Horace, of course there is natural variability in a dynamic, non-linear climate system - always was, always will. In the geologic time frame that you allude to, yes - we are heading for another ice age. However, the problem (now) is the rate of change and the "trend" is for a warming planet. Unfortunately, it is people (like the author of this article) that find difficulty in separating the signal (climate) from the noise (weather or yearly CO2 concentration).

There's some people worried about the implications of doing anything about the amount of carbon being produced, rather than worring about doing nothing.
Forcasting the implications would be impossable.
Doing nothing could be drastic.
It would be far better to err on the side of caution rather than have any solutions held up by people who would rather do nothing.
Iron man Tony says it,s gods will therefor we should do nothing.
The sooner that " person " gets run over and Turnbull takes over the better off politics will be.

Mark Lawson fails to explore why short term variations to the strong continuing CO2 rise in the atmosohere occur or why he thinks they translate to long term trends that will continue to 2100. He appears to strongly oppose active measures to haul back emissions; does he think that unrestrained growth in fossil fuel use won't increase the rate of increase in atmospheric CO2? If not, where does he think the extra CO2 is going (ocean uptake?) and what will be the consequences of that? Does he think this problem stops at 2100 or at a doubling of CO2 levels?
Lawson merely attempts to keep the uninformed in a state of doubt in order to delay action on emissions and fails to explore the complexities - I think deliberately - in order to promote the impression that the unprecedented growth in CO2 levels is less significant or certain in the absence of real policy action than it is and that it won't have significant impacts. Cleverly done but his careless disregard for the climate consequences of successfully encouraging inaction on emissions deserves only condemnation.

I agree Ken.
It is the purveyors of FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) that are not only damaging science, but also the very real effort that is required to tackle the issues that science has shown to be a cognizant threat.

I was looking at this http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=11063 and see in the comments that Mark Lawson (Curmudgeon) is again trying his best at obfuscation. His efforts are aided and abetted by a political scientist (an oxymoron if ever there was one) who also engages in FUD. The political scientist gives the impression that there is so much doubt and uncertainty about (climate) science that we have to “analyse it first without reference to policy”. Well, hello – that is what the scientist’s have been doing. The scientists have and are still having a “really sober, sceptical and honest assembly of all the data, papers and other evidence for AGW”. They have a high level of certainty and confidence (not 100%) that we are facing some very serious times ahead. Sure, it will always be the case that politicians (and ‘political scientists’) and economists will determine the policies but as Arjay demonstrates (with more FUD), the conspiracy theorists will shout down good science all the time.

Mark Duffett’s link http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101006/full/467648a.html only adds to the importance of GRACE – it’s unfortunate (but typical) that people like Mark Lawson, Don Aitken, Arjay and other purveyors of FUD that they can’t see past their own ideological agenda.

Horus (not Horace) sorry for the typo.