With all the flaming taking place, what more evidence is needed of Anthropogenic Warming?
On the other hand, a draught of cool, calm logic is available on the knowns, unknowns, and probabilities from the Australian Academy of Science website. Personally, I like that one.

I am a scientist. I have a PhD in Upper Atmosphere Physics and experience in statistics, fluid dynamical numerical modeling and thermodynamic modeling.
The so-called greenhouse effect is a furphy because temperature of lower atmosphere is determined by convection not radiation. Even if troposphere gases were completely opaque, sea level air temperature and the adiabatic lapse rate would be much the same. The proportion of triatomic gases such as H2O and CO2 is the controlling factor but this has to do with their thermodynamic properties not with infrared absorption. The only “evidence” for anthropogenic global warming comes from coupled OAGCMs run by applied mathematicians and computer programmers who have a complete disregard for the scientific method and accepted methods of statistical inference. Differences between model predictions (hindcasts) and observations are attributed to mysterious “internal climate variation” (ICV) which is itself not modeled and cannot be predicted. ICV is a classic instance of Popper’s ad hoc auxiliary hypotheses by means of which failed theories are propped up in the face of contradictory evidence such as the present sequence of cold winters in the Northern Hemisphere. Comparison of variances of observed gridded sea level temperatures with OAGCM variances shows that the latter are significantly smaller indicating that these models do not fit the observations and are grossly over-damped. They therefore tend towards a trend line which is determined by model parameterization. In this case an assumption of “water vapour positive feedback” is used to fit the models to observed global temperature increases which occurred in the last 3 decades of the 20th century. This assumption is still hotly debated. NASA nadir radiometer data due to Spencer indicates that it is not justified.

These and other arguments are presented more comprehensively in my magazine “Science Heresy” – www.scienceheresy.com

Paleoclimate data from ice-cores and the Milankovic theory of orbital forcing are used, erroneously, by Hanson and others to determine “climate sensitivity”. My statistical analysis shows that Milankovic cycles account for less than 4 percent of the observed temperature variance and the fact that CO2 lags temperature by about 800 years has been known for decades. Hence CO2 must be a tracer of global temperature change not the cause. Ice age temperatures varied by 15 deg C over the last half million years which makes the 0.8 deg C variation of the last century look rather insignificant. We live at a time when the climate is particularly benign. To attribute this insignificant variation to some sort of human influence is simply ludicrous.

My papers on climate model variances and on Milankovic were rejected by peer reviewed journals. Any paper or funding application which does not genuflect towards man-made climate change is unlikely to succeed. This may not be a conspiracy but it certainly looks like one. We do not yet understand climate and we never will while one particular PC theory gets all the funding and all the kudos.

Science does not grow out of consensus it grows out of controversy.

thankyou john for speaking out as one who knows the science

your not alone of course
seems someone been playing numbers games
likely one of the many economists pushing for their new tax

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/12/30/lawrence-solomon-75-climate-scientists-think-humans-contribute-to-global-warming/

the epa has become the dept for missinformation

From the EPA website :

The portion of North America covered by snow
has generally decreased since 1972

http://www.epa.gov/

http://climate.rutgers.edu/

while yet others are saying a new iceage is here
http://theintelhub.com/2010/12/31/ice-age-is-here-says-geophysicist-global-warming-hoax-exposed-again/

meanwhile
a hard freeze is expected in tucon
http://azstarnet.com/news/local/article_2ee61ad5-90ee-5d1c-9772-d74db92cc25f.html

and a blizzard in oklahoma
http://www.kpho.com/news/26323705/detail.html

and the man who invented the scam
thinks its time to end the life of the useless eaters
[i think we know which half of the population..he is thinking of]

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100069775/the-man-who-invented-global-warming/

its sad the global warming mob...dont actually read..the links you put up
they been ignoring mine too..but such is life

how about this one
denmark took the bait..and gave away 7 billion to the scam..[so far]
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/denmark-gives-away-7b-usd-or-2-gdp-carbon-credit-traders

This whole global warming hysteria
is about selling you things you do not really want,
such as carbon credits..that are the feedstock for Enron-like scams,

global government that is already clearly fascistic,
ethanol fuels that provide less power cost more and wreck your car fuel system,
windmills that take more power..to keep from freezing than they provide, "Green" batteries that cost more while providing less power, and now "green" heating systems that will not actually heat in the middle of a cruel winter the global warming cultists assured us was a thing of the past.

How many more times will you stand for these frauds
being foisted at you before you decide enough is enough?

it has had its funny moments of course
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/yet_another_frostbitten_alarmist_cant_find_global_warming/

http://thewhitedsepulchre.blogspot.com/2008/09/lewis-gordon-pugh-unable-to-kayak-to.html

http://www.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov/snow/

even the data shows ice thickness has doubled
https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2010/12/31/area-of-thick-arctic-ice-has-doubled-in-the-last-two-years/

here is a list of the other top ten scams
http://myamazingfact.blogspot.com/2010/12/protect-yourself-from-top-10-frauds-and.html

all that greenie funding by govts globally should top the list

but not to worry
we got the next scare ready to go
http://www.activistpost.com/2010/12/experts-food-and-fuel-shortages.html

here is a flash back..for those who only caught onto the joke recently
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/19990602/

Thank you Alice Thermopolis and John Reid for beautifuly written and succinct posts.

Don't expect you'll get any coherent responses from the warmists, though.

Firesnake's post demonstrates that he doesn't even know the difference between an appeal to authority and a reference to a source article.

Let me explain for your benefit, Firesnake: an example of an appeal to authority is when people like you say they "believe" in AGW because the IPCC or "the science" says it's so. No personal input required, get it?

A reference directs the reader's attention to another source of information, such as the Dennis Ambler article, "Climate Consensus Opiate: The 97% Solution", which I referenced via the Bolt blog. An intelligent person can then read that article and make the effort to check whether the figures add up. Obviously, you did not, which speaks volumes and explains your attack on Bolt, as well.

Checking a reference requires a bit more effort than simply adopting the pose.

The rest of Firesnake's post was seriously unhinged, as you might expect from somebody using such a pseudonym. Everybody should read it.

The quality of Rowan's article can be seen in this statement: "There just is no rival theory to global warming. Full stop."

As many would infer from, for example, John Reid's post, no theory is required, since 0.8degC warming is inconsequential. However, there are rival theories.

It is likely that earth's "average" temperature, whatever that might mean in practice, is determined primarily by variations in solar activity. Ice ages and warm periods come and go and anthropogenic carbon dioxide clearly has nothing to do with that process. We have been in a period of very low sunspot activity for several years and, hey, lots of ice and snow!

If AGW theory was as obviously sound as Rowan has claimed, why all the dodgy "adjustments" of the temperature record? Why the bullying and the scamming of the peer review process by the Climategate gang?

Thanks, OUG, for that revealing article:

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100069775/the-man-who-invented-global-warming/

I usually work for the Greens on election days, but I am very seriously thinking of winding that down - especially after reading that article.

There is a sort of logic in the progression from a belief in massive human impacts on the atmosphere (0.8 degree temperature rise and 5 cm sea-level rise in sixty years), despair that anything can really be done, and an ultimate belief that in order to restore some natural 'balance', humans should be expunged from the earth, preferably by attrition (starvation, wars, disease) or by other means if necessary.

So until the Greens explicitly denounce such neo-Malthusianism, and champion the right of developing nations to commit the same sins as the rest of the world has already, then I will stay home and watch the elections on TV :)

[To give the Greens credit where it is due, at least they do have a policy on refugees whose population implications go against neo-Malthusian control and reduction, but we'll see.]

Hopefully, we can cast hysterical nonsense aside and get back to fighting air and water pollution, land degradation, threats to entire species and so much else that accompanies 'development' and degrades the environment. Humans are ingenious, we can walk and chew at the same time.

Joe Lane