You know, cohenite...I'm staring to think you might be on to something. Anyone who uses the term "tough titties" in serious debate is someone to sit up and take notice of.

Am I right in surmising that it's your opinion that the vast majority of climate scientist are a rather shabby lot - all suffering from "mass hysteria based on virulent personal pathology"

...sounds reasonable.

My understanding then is that I should look to amateurs (i.e. non-scientists) to glean accuracy on climate issues. It's a novel approach, but I'll take your word on it.

A 1 degree variability in ocean temperature range has happened many times before, Norwegian and Danish seafarers have navigated an ice free NW passage hundreds of years ago. Nothing new here.

Paleoclimatologist studies indicate that co2 levels at up to 10 times current values have occurred numerous times in the past record. Nothing new here.

Weather patterns are in continuous cycles driven by a variety of effects including sun, solar rays, PDO and ENSO cycles, Indian ocean dipole, volcanic activity, planetary wobbles and shifts etc etc. Nothing new here.

NASA observes long term climate change is I progress, yes, it certainly is. Maunder minimum, little ice age, Roman warm period, middle ages warming.....etc etc. Nothing new here.

Poirot, you don’t have to look to amateurs, look to the best; Richard Lindzen:

"Stated briefly, I will simply try to clarify what the debate over climate change is really about. It most certainly is not about whether climate is changing: it always is. It is not about whether CO2 is increasing: it clearly is. It is not about whether the increase in CO2, by itself, will lead to some warming: it should. The debate is simply over the matter of how much warming the increase in CO2 can lead to, and the connection of such warming to the innumerable claimed catastrophes. The evidence is that the increase in CO2 will lead to very little warming, and that the connection of this minimal warming (or even significant warming) to the purported catastrophes is also minimal. The arguments on which the catastrophic claims are made are extremely weak – and commonly acknowledged as such. They are sometimes overtly dishonest."

And:

“Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age.”

A whole lot of climate jargon reiterated parrot fashion about slighly massaged “facts”.
Nothing new here.
Head firmly in the sand, hoping all the nasties will go away.
Nothing new here.

Poirot

I’m reminded of http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=4567&page=0#118331

And sadly … of CJ : (

Of course cohenite doesn’t have a clue – he seems to think I believe in catastrophic global warming caused by human activity.

What I do think is that cohenite is paranoid over my comments – depicted in his churlish and childish retorts.

Anthony Cox/cohenite criticises Professor Bickmore’s response to an op=ed in the WSJ - republished here:

http://bbickmore.wordpress.com/2012/02/22/response-to-wall-street-journal-16/

I’m sure you understand the content well enough so no need for me to elaborate. Nevertheless, in answer to cohenite’s “best” in Richard Lindzen (whom you can do your own research on), let me put it this way:

In the short term, of course models are less certain in their projections (climate is not weather). Therefore, it is not surprising that they are sometimes significantly skewed – the ‘selection’ of the start (and/or end points) can significantly distort the long-term trend. So too can incorrectly attributing short term affects (ENSO, aerosols, etc.).

However, the models are getting better all the time with the advent of more data and improved analytical power.

What pretenders like cohenite don’t seem to grasp is that the long-term climate trend is up, even given the uncertainties (that are becoming less uncertain with each passing year).

It is worth noting that the “16 scientists and engineers” in the WSJ didn’t include their uncertainties in their ‘diagnosis’ – something that all genuine sceptics do. They have something to hide, like the Heartland Institute, imho.

People like Lindzen and 'the WSJ 16' accuse others of the very thing they engage in themselves - distortion and deliberate misrepresentation.

bonny, I've told you what I think you are and got banned for it; you're not worth a time out again.

Your precious models are cactus because their inherent assumptions about feedbacks are gibberish; that's not me saying that; Professor Demetrius Koutsoyiannis and his team show those models can’t even model the past. Koutsoyiannis is worth a lengthy description so I'll make this a 2-parter.

Koutsoyiannis is one of the world’s leading hydrologists and an expert on Hurst and stochastic effects. Hurst or Long Term Persistence refers to the uncertainty and random qualities present in all complex natural systems. Koutsoyiannis argues that global warming modeling does not take into account this uncertainty.

In his 2008 paper Koutsoyiannis33 compared the model predictions from 1990 to 2008 and whether those models could retrospectively match the actual temperature over the past 100 years. This test of retrospectivity is called hindcasting. If a model has valid assumptions about the climatic effect of variables such as greenhouse gases, particularly CO2, then the model should be able to match past known data.

Koutsoyiannis’s 2008 paper has not had a peer reviewed rebuttal but was subject to a critique at Real Climate by Gavin Schmidt.34 Schmidt’s criticism was 4-fold; that Koutsoyiannis uses a regional comparison, few models, real temperatures not anomalies and too short a time period.