bonmot

"There is much research being conducted in the hope of poking holes in the findings of climate scientists. Unfortunately, the science is becoming more robust."

rubbish, nearly all research,being funded by governments is to prop up alarmist climate science .. not to poke holes in it, where do you get such idiocy .. that's 24K gold stupid talk I'm afraid. Who is doing this research into the findings of climate scientists.

"Of course, people of your ilk typically want to withdraw funding from climate science. Go figure."

You have no idea what I "typically" want to do .. go figure.

Of course people of your ilk arrogantly think any skeptic fits into a range of set views .. go figure

honestly you prattle on with your own self importance, telling people what they think .. grow up

bonmot

Agreed that the properties of GHG’s are well understood. Problem is, as you point out, climate is a very big system which, if perturbed, will move towards a new equilibrium. Many complex processes are involved, and none are well understood. This is what climate modellers attempt to do. Good on ‘em, but in addition to the effects of GHG’s, they need to account for solar input, heat transfer to/from oceans, behaviour of clouds ... listing the variables alone would exceed my 350 words. It’s perfectly possible to build a model in which GHG’s cool the planet by increasing cloud cover and reflecting solar energy. I doubt that’d be the case, but we badly need discussion of what assumptions/simplifications were made when constructing these models. That’s not happening. Until it does, scientists are right to be sceptical, i.e., not disposed to uncritical acceptance.

I strongly disagree with you about UHIE calculations, though. That was Phil Jones’ brief — his analysis was based on Chinese temperature records from before 1990. He refused to release his data for many years before finally admitted it was 'lost'. There's also much dispute about the quality of even US and European data — defective weather stations, poor siting, changes in measurement techniques (especially sea surface temparatures). NOAA & GISS have on several occasions adjusted the UHIE correction downwards, with what justification we don’t know (I doubt it’s secret, but the rationale’s not been widely discussed). So it’s important to know which datasets modellers used, and when. We don’t. It doesn’t help when reported results lack statistical significance; as you point out, 3SD is the scientific criterion for significance; it’s both alarmist and bad science to assert that 2010 was ‘the hottest on record’.

Disagree about ‘tipping points’ as well. Available data suggests that, historically, CO2 levels have varied from half to five times current levels. You need positive feedback for runaway warming, and no credible mechanism for that been proposed, even discussed.

Which doesn’t mean we do nothing. It does mean we ask questions. Sceptical? That’s science!

donkeygod

I'll repeat for the benefit of others: "Rather than focusing on alarmist tipping points, I suggest you look up “squealing”.

You didn't, others may.

Warmists misuse the term 'denialist'. In fact, the real denialists are those who refuse to acknowledge the scientific evidence.

There is no scientific evidence that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are a significant cause of global warming. To put this into context, if the highest anthropogenic CO2 per capita emitters in the world, namely we Aussies, were to cut those emissions by 20% by 2020, the number of degrees of warming averted would amount to -- wait for it -- the grand total of less than one one-thousandth of a degree Celsius by 2020. Is this worth incurring the not insignificant extra costs of over $2,000 per family of four per year, counting all the flow-through costs of the Govt imposing its taxation strategy? One would have to be a denialist to answer yes.