Hi Hasbeen,

Just a whisper in your ear. I would not pay too much attention to Lucifers link. If there one thing the warmists have impressed on us (re Pilmer) it's that geologists know stuff-all about climate. Yet you'd be surprised --stunned --flabbergasted by the number of geologists on Skeptical Science "team"!

And then --Skeptical Science --has other luminaries like these :

Rob Honeycutt "Rob's claim to fame is being the founder of the popular pack and bag company Timbuk2."

Bärbel Winkler "lives and works in Germany. She has always had a lot of interest in environmental issues and has been active as a volunteer at the local zoo"

Doug_bostrom "1958 model, background in broadcast engineering and management, wireless telemetry, software architecture and authorship with a focus on embedded systems, TCP/IP network engineering, systems integration.

Cheers!

Oh but please, SPQR, why not go to a primary source if you don't like slumming with those who are trying to help the scientifically challenged on the secondary sites.

Go directly to http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/uploads/WGIAR5_WGI-12Doc2b_FinalDraft_TechnicalSummary.pdf and take a long hard look. Please do try hard to come up with a more worthy critique than the denialist movement has to date. All we've seen in response so far is shock, horror, the earth is warming but IPCC models have failed to forecast average surface air temperature, or sufficiently linked ocean and land temperature to this with completely elucidated mechanisms.

All the evidence points to GW, and A before that and a possible C before the A if we don't do anything. All the denialists really hang on is a hiatus in surface air temperature as if that completely guts an avalanche of empirical evidence involving a massive array of proxy measures.

That you, SPQR, Hasbeen and so many people choosing to bury your heads in ignorance is either maliciousness towards our descendants or stupidity. Just to preserve my faith in humanity I have to believe it to be a mass case of Hanlon's Razor, so I plug away at the task of converting denialists to enlightenment.

cont'd

Do I ever think I may be wrong? Absolutely. Am I 100% confident that I am right in my choice of what what I believe? No, as ALL scientific hypotheses can ever gain is support, never, ever, ever 100% mathematical proof. We are not trying to prove or disprove that the sum of the angles of a triangle sum to 180 degrees.

Right now, empirical evidence for AGW completely overwhelms denialists' carping, peripheral falsification attempts that do not even reach 50% of their goal, nor rely on any data they have chosen to gather themselves. They do not set out, as scientist do, to support or falsify anything, but they do spend a lot of time looking for holes to exploit in the research and conclusions of others, such as is contained within http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=8nrvrkVBt24 , which doesn't even point out that the periods in which rising temperature appears to precede rising CO2 concentration is but a tiny fraction of the total enormous time period of recordings.

The relationship between GHG concentrations and average surface air temperature, with the former preceding the latter massively over the 150,000 years it has been measured, is undeniable at the macro level. We ignore this fact at our great peril by focusing on a few short years of slowed warming of the air alone.

Come now Lucifer, all I am doing is applying the standards the warmists set--your side has been such sticklers for standards, remember?

And as for this:<<Go directly to [The IPCC] ... All we've seen in response so far is shock, horror, the earth is warming>>

In truth that was my response too.But for a different reason. I thought I was living out Ground Hog Day, 'cause when the ABC reported words to the effect: "This is it (this brings home the bacon)The IPCC is now 95% sure about its AGW hypothesis.I thought, hang on a cotton-picking minute, the ABC has been reporting that very headline for the last ten years! Why is it framed as it if it is new news?

Following on from you heart felt confessions-here's my apostle's creed:
I believe the climate is changing,it's always trending one way of another.I believe that humanity plays a part in climate change & environmental degradation,but less so in the former than the IPCC wants us to believe. I believe that most true believers in AGW, in most fora, believe for political reasons--their party told them so. And if their party said different they would stop believing tomorrow. However, whether AGW is valid of not it makes sense to clean-up our act. And it's always wise to try out/expand new technologies (solar,wind, nuclear) who knows what it will turn-up.But I believe many of the ways your side is proposing to mitigate the effects of climate change are downright foolhardy, you have not considered their wider implications --one example:climate change reparations!

But overall you come across as a reasonable poster. A lot more so that most of the other AGW spruikers on OLO. And I often find myself musing, your posts are not too bad -- had it not been for a few mutant genes you might have grown into a good conservative.

"I believe the climate is changing,it's always trending one way of another."

Agreed.

"I believe that humanity plays a part in climate change & environmental degradation,but less so in the former than the IPCC wants us to believe."

What the IPCC "wants" is for humanity to look hard at the evidence. The evidence on air temperature is that GHG concentration is rising and surface temperature ultimately responds to that, notwithstanding hiatuses due to temporary ocean/land mitigation. It would be nice if the current hiatus extends the time in which we have to act but a look at the temperature record tells us things can turn quickly in the correction that will inevitably follow. We must follow a path as if the correction IS coming rather than waiting to see and leaving too much too late.

"I believe that most true believers in AGW, in most fora, believe for political reasons--their party told them so. And if their party said different they would stop believing tomorrow."

AGW is more than a tool by which political parties differentiate themselves. It's interesting that our major parties have been on the same page over AGW at times. However, vested interests abuse our political parties and our democracy and its freedoms to push their agendum, along with every other means at their disposal. Big Coal/Oil/Gas have a big agenda that does not coincide with what must be done to avert CAGW, that is, leaving fossil fuels buried. By comparison, belief in a massive conspiracy to enslave us beneath some global elite is fanciful nonsense fostered by Big Coal/Oil/Gas in its cause to continue making hay until one day, hopefully, the sun shines enough to enlighten all of us before it's too late.

SPQR,
You say you believe, “….. humanity plays a part in climate change & environmental degradation,but less so in the former than the IPCC wants us to believe”.

Do you take devastation of world fish populations and ocean ecosystems into account in your belief that environment degradation is less than IPCC wants us to believe?

I believe in climate changing as you do, but I think environment degradation is much worse than the IPCC is telling us.

During the past 10 years and until a few days ago I had never seen or heard the ABC mention 95%.
To my knowledge ABC news has been reporting AGW as fact, usually with image of steam rising slowly from steam cooling towers than are not chimneys gushing CO2.

Have you or has the ABC had knowledge of the following?
http://www.trust.org/item/20131003084405-xiv93
N.B.
"Risks to the ocean and the ecosystems it supports have been significantly underestimated," according to the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO), a non-governmental group of leading scientists”.

I question the word “threat”, threat from what, why, how? Threat due to CO2?

I think it inevitable you and others will come to understand that oceans and ocean ecosystems are already devastated due to unprecedented sewage nutrient pollution proliferating unprecedented ocean and fresh water algae plant matter and consequences.

Has algae warmth in the Bering Sea got anything to do with sea ice melting faster in the region? Silence on the subject on OLO is deafening:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/16/Bering_Strait.jpeg

Yes, many people believe AGW is occurring but they do not believe the cause is CO2.

I think AGW and IPCC should duly measure and assess warmth in ocean algae plant matter. Complete science might change the whole 95% plus 5% thinking, change belief too.

Your comments with Lucifer Luci are good, thought inspiring