Hi Hasbeen,
Deliberate and intentional fraud is extremely rare in the scientific community. Here, a worker's reputation is as good as the worker's word and the results in the worker's last paper or article. [Notice, I am being determinedly non-sexist].
Frauds and impostors are weeded out very quickly: after that, nothing they publish, or attempt to publish, is taken any notice of. They die a scientific death of neglect. Think of McBride - think of the Indian palaeontologist Gupta.
What is more likely is something like the N-Rays story or the story of Alfred Wegener: a truly sad man, who died unheralded and unacknowledged but who pointed to plate tectonics. Science learnt some bitter lessons from Wegener, whose work was ignored because:
1. he was German when the 'best' geologists were Anglo-Saxon,
2. he was a meteorologist, commenting on a geological issue,
3. he published in German journals at a time when Anglo-Saxons refused to read anything published in other languages [think French today], and
4. he could propose no mechanism to explain how continents could move.
Closer to today, think of Watson & Crick who used Rosalind Franklin's work, without any acknowledgement in their race to beat Pauling to the structure of DNA.
This would not be countenanced today. No Nobel Prize but infamy would be their reward.
Science has come a long way since 1953. Today, we see earnest workers trying their hardest to honestly unravel the climate puzzle, believing they are pursuing good and valid targets, handicapped by a storm of uninformed or disinformed criticism.
In case you had not noticed, I am on the side of the honest scientists.

Brian, you seem unaware of some significant developments in nuclear technology in recent decades. The Integral Fast Reactor I mentioned has demonstrated the ability to consume existing nuclear waste (producing vastly more energy in the process, by a factor of 100 over earlier generation reactors) and reduce its radioactivity to background levels (let alone anything that could be considered dangerous) within 300 years, not thousands: (http://www.amazon.com/Plentiful-Energy-technology-scientific-non-specialists/dp/1466384603/‎). Far from requiring 'constant monitoring', geological disposal of this material is technically trivial. It's tiny in volume in comparison to more toxic substances produced in far greater quantity by our industry, which remain toxic forever.

And reactors being constructed now can be expected to last more like 80 years, not 40: http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/201312/apsreport.cfm

Contra Agronomist, non-hydro renewables have not been 'demonstrated to work', not in the sense of shouldering the bulk of a modern economy's energy requirements. Only nuclear has done that. Trying to scale renewables up to do the same will entail similar lead times and bedevilment by approvals processes given the vast areas of land required and resources that need to be marshalled.

ALL technologies will struggle to contribute a massive amount to low-carbon sources by 2050 for as long as we continue to treat the situation with less than wartime levels of expediency. As the IPCC said, we need every tool in the box.

"Forget renewables. If you want to get rid of emissions, nuclear is far more of an option."

Posted by Curmudgeon, Wednesday, 30 April 2014 1:37:21 PM

Nuclear power is the worst idea considering the volatile nature of our planet.( and keeping in mind humans have sped up the natural processes )and lets not forget Japans master stroke of genus, some how forgetting about the rim of fire that just so happens to run right off their coast line....how did they miss that one?

The only way that nuclear power can be an option for the coming future, is to build the plants under ground...( The Japanese Government must be kicking themselves )...containing it would not of been a problem.

If the climate or the planet itself chucks a turn for the worst, we have hundreds of ticking time bombs above the ground just waiting to go off, and don't say it cant happen....we've all heard that one before, hey Japan! With the increases of more violent weather patterns popping up all over the world, the chances of more disasters increasing in the future, are very likely.

Good luck.

Kat

Brian

Why cast aspersions in a polite discussion? It's passive aggressive and rude.

I understand peer review.
I have never ever suggested a global conspiracy.

Now address the issues raised instead of being provocative.

http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/bas_research/science_briefings/icecorebriefing.php

This is the relevant part

'From the air in our oldest Antarctic ice core, we can see that CO2 changed in a remarkably similar way to Antarctic climate, with low concentrations during cold times, and high concentrations during warm periods (see Fig. 3). This is entirely consistent with the idea that temperature and CO2 are intimately linked, and each acts to amplify changes in the other (what we call a positive feedback).It is believed that the warmings out of glacial periods are paced by changes in Earth’s orbit around the Sun, but the tiny changes in climate this should cause are amplified, mainly by the resulting increase in CO2, and by the retreat of sea ice and ice sheets (which leads to less sunlight being reflected away). Looking at the warming out of the last glacial period in detail, we can see how remarkably closely Antarctic temperature and CO2 tracked each other.

It is often said that the temperature ‘leads’ the CO2 during the warming out of a glacial period. On the most recent records, there is a hint that the temperature started to rise slightly (at most a few tenths of a degree) before the CO2, as expected if changes in Earth’s orbit cause an initial small warming. But for most of the 6,000-year long ‘transition’, Antarctic temperature and CO2 rose together, consistent with the role of CO2 as an important amplifier of climate change (see Fig. 4). In our modern era, of course, it is human emissions of CO2 that are expected to kick-start the sequence of events. We see no examples in the ice core record of a major increase in CO2 that was not accompanied by an increase in temperature. Methane concentration also tracks the glacial-interglacial changes, probably because there were less wetlands in the colder, drier glacial periods.'

ie actual data from the core samples shows warming preceded co2 increases.

imajulianutter, you must have mis-read that article.

It in fact states "But for most of the 6,000-year long ‘transition’, Antarctic temperature and CO2 rose together, consistent with the role of CO2 as an important amplifier of climate change (see Fig. 4)."

So warming did not precede CO2 increases as you claimed; they mostly occurred together.

Indeed if temperature and CO2 act to amplify each other, as suggested in the article, you would expect that to find increases in CO2 leading to increases in temperature as well as increases in temperature leading to increases in CO2. Therefore, if CO2 is increased by something other than temperature, for example human emissions, there must be the chance of a catastophic feed forward effect occurring where the higher CO2 increases temperature, than then increases CO2, which increases temperature some more.

Agronomist,

'...there is a hint that the temperature started to rise slightly (at most a few tenths of a degree) before the CO2,as expected if changes in Earth’s orbit cause an initial small warming. ...'

Please explain that fact in light of AGW clearly maintaining co2 caused the warming.

Unsupported claims are made that temps and co2 rose together on one hand yet on the other co2 is claimed to be an amplifier. No one shows peer reviewed data, increasing temps as an amplifier. Why is that?