Computer models are notoriously unreliable, whether predicting climate or economic change.
Hence we had the GFC, and now have to factor in a thawing permafrost/tundra!
The best science tells us the same set of conditions, will always beget the same results or changes!
That is why we need to look at history, and what happened when and how, and the set of conditions at that time.
That historical record tells us that a 2C increase in ambient temperatures, was enough, around 90 million years ago, to cause the previously frozen tundra to melt, and ooze formerly trapped methane into the atmosphere, causing a further warming in ambient temperature averages by around 3C; or if you will; a sum total of 5C as the mean average in increased temperatures.
And a 5C increase, enough according to the paleontological record, to destroy virtually all life on earth.
Nowhere is it written that doing what you've always done, begets a different result.
Exactly so in science!
Create exactly the same conditions and hay presto, exactly the same result.
No ifs buts or maybes!
Those who are betraying the poor, are in fact those clinging like parasitic leeches, to fossil fuel energy supply.
Particularly, when there are vastly cheaper, non carbon alternatives!
Alternatives, if in common use, would wind overall costs way back, and in one fowl swoop, at least double the average EFFECTIVE incomes of today's poor!
And indeed, set the next generation up to be better off than the one proceeding them, and all while effectively working to reduce population pressure, the real harbinger of so called climate change!
Rhrosty

people are being beheaded, genoicide is taking place and still the self interest of the gw religion feels it needs to take precedence. Surely now Kevvie knows its not the moral dilemma of the century. Very similar to the feminist who are silent about mass rapes and thousands of girls sold into slavery. But of course if someone holds a protest banner outside an abortion clinic they are the devil. Warped world.

Since when have the interests of the poor, who have always been the majority of the human population in all times and places, including the future, ever been taken into account by the movers and shakers that make the decisions as to who is going to live or die, or what part of the world, or which ethnic group will be the next sacrifice zone or peoples.

Runner: I disagree mate, and as important as the issues you've raised are, and indeed, what we can actually do to change any of that?
Ours and their children will inherit the world we leave them, when peace finally prevails!?
What good is served if we win the war against the greatest evil ever seen, but lose our habitable planet.
Nowhere is it written we can't walk and chew gum.
But particularly when evil personified Isil, intends to make allegedly increasingly scarce hydrocarbon resources, a preferred weapon of war.
We have a wealth of hydrocarbon resources right here under our very feet, and just changing over to them, would more than halve our carbon foot print, as well as extend our fuel reserve, to several decades at the very least.
And possibly needed, to eventually prevail over this intense evil!?
So, whether you do or don't believe in climate change mate, matters not!
When just on economic and enduring self defense grounds, we need to cut the M.E oil umbilical cord, if only to serve the ultimate justice based interests, you have cited.
Absolutely no harm will be done by changing over to less expensive, vastly more sustainable alternatives, which would have the added advantage, of finally putting our essential fuels, out of the hands/reach of evildoers and dictators!
Essential, in order for us to be able to effectively deal with the unthinkable obscenities, you've already identified!
It not either either, but both.
At the end of the day, simply winning the war against poverty, will also win the completely essential war of hearts and minds for us.
And that cause is completely underpinned, by a change over to much cheaper alternatives!
Which simply has to include, cheaper than coal thorium, biogas and Algae based endlessly sustainable liquid fuel alternatives; which according to industry experts, could by retailed for just 44 cents a litre.
And just what we might just need, to permanently prevail against Isil!
Cheers, Rhrosty.

Rhrosty

if the billions wasted on the gw scare had been put into cleaning up the environment, planting trees and doing some useful research instead of manipulating data to try and match pathtetic predictions I would agree with you. Look at the millions Gore has scammed from people by scaring them with a pack of lies while living like a king. True scientist must be in despair. You can't tell me the Greens really care about the environment. It is simply ideology and their hyprocrisy is plain to anyone wanting to see the truth.

Runner:
Have to agree with you the greens seem to be little more than ideologues, full of mixed (manifestly mad) messages and a hidden anti development agenda?
If they were truly serious about Global warming, they would have been first to embrace the nuclear power option?
Instead of just limiting us to just the two most expensive least reliable options!
Wind and solar!
Neither of which actually addresses the interests of the poor, but rather exacerbates poverty in all its forms and guises.
And while its possible to agree with much of your post, no real good can ever be served by regretting the past.
What's done is done.
And yes, absolutely, we need to rely exclusively on good science, which as always tells us, doing what you've always done, will get you what you've always got!
No ifs, buts or maybes; or possible exclusions/different set of results!
Cheers, Rhrosty.

There's so many lefty loony loot-froops involved in GW now that any intelligent discourse on the subject is almost impossible. Then you add the demented denialists with their lies and distortions and what you have is effectively the Tower of Babel.
It overshadows us all, has structure of a sort, the truth is in there somewhere, but.....it's doomed to fall, shattering humanity in the process.
And while we're down good Ol' Mother Nature is going to give us a good size 12 right in the family jewels.
And we've got the Mad Mullahs coming over the hills just for good measure, kinda makes me glad I'm not young any more.

In my opinion, this article deliberately sets out to deceive. In paragraph 7, the authors opine that less temperature difference between tropics and arctics will mean weaker mid-latitude cyclones and therefore less extreme weather. Mid-latitude cyclones are the ordinary low pressure systems that occur between 30 and 60 degrees. A smaller temperature difference between tropics and arctics would rather result in low-pressure systems being closer to the poles. You can see this every summer, when the lows in the southern hemisphere are closer to the Antarctic.

However, this all assumes that the only extremes in weather come from low pressure systems in the mid-latitudes. This is patently wrong, as anyone who follows weather in NSW would know. In the summer time, there is leakage of tropical low pressure systems into the mid-latitudes. These so-called ‘dips’ are characteristic of the worst summer storms.

And then there are tropical storms, that are formed as a result of warm surface waters. In a situation where the earth is warming there would be an expectation of more tropical storms, rather than fewer and these storms would be less restricted to the tropics.

Then in paragraph 9, the authors quote the IPCC SREX report on climate extremes. They pick a single item from the report stating that past trends in economic losses have not been correlated with climate change.

The reason of course is obvious. When Australia’s most costly natural disaster in total terms is the 1999 Sydney hailstorm. Even in normalized terms, 5 of the top 10 most costly disasters are hailstorms in major cities. https://www.em.gov.au/Documents/AJEM_Nov08_Crompton_McAneney.PDF It is clear that where an event occurs is far more important in terms of cost than how large an event is or how many people are killed by it. Simply looking at economic losses does not provide the full story.

In paragraph 12, there is cherry picking of a couple of years of hurricane numbers to give the impression that extreme events are not increasing. However, a wider view of hurricane activity in the Atlantic http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/timeline/12729a5798fd89b70b6a232e559d4973.png shows a distinct trend for increasing numbers

More unqualified denier lies and obsfucation.
Forget about the unborn for a moment. What about children of today who are born and will live to the year 2100 or later? Do they not matter either? I hope youre not expecting them to look after you in your old age.

I love the way it is all about "the poor". So caring, so generous. But we all know that deniers have more than a bit of the rightard about them and are hardly known for their support and compassion to those they see as beneath them. As usual it is all about keeping the fossil fuel leeches rich and comfortable and to hell with the rest of us.

The day will come when the evidence is irrefutable and since by then it will be too late I would not like to be a published denier when the food and water runs out and the mobs rise up.

P.S. Well said Agronomist.

Runner,
I don't understand the denialist obsession with Al Gore.

You make it seem that he discovered AGW when he was just a high profile mouthpiece who was used to narrate a documentary.

I suppose David Attenborough discovers everything about those animals he presents on his nature specials too?

Talk about a strange view of reality.

Can't switching to cleaner energy options be seen as cleaning up the environment?

Are the only "true" scientists that 3% (including those on the energy corporation payroll) and the remaining 97% all frauds?

The poor have certainly been betrayed.
In a remote developing nation village where I am often based the poor government and people were tricked into solar lighting about 4 years ago but now the batteries are failing.
So what now is to be done with worn out batteries?
And cost of replacement batteries is beyond capability of government aid and people without paid employment and enough money or any cash money at all.
I think solar car battery replacement costs about AU$10,000.00 every 5 to 10 years.
All truth about all renewable energy should be debated in full

'Runner,
I don't understand the denialist obsession with Al Gore. '

Wobbles

I don't understand why schools would scare kids and brainwash them with such nonsense as Gore's movie. Also what exactly are you trying to achieve by people who demand evidence being called denialist. It is an atrocious attempt to demonise those who demand evidence before lining the pockets of the gw religion brigade. The 97% of 'scientific' believers you quote is laughable and does your crediblity harm. Next you will be saying that the 97% are relying on evidence.

The problem Runner is there is a mountain of evidence supporting AGW the three most obvious are:-

1 In the past when CO2 happened to soar due to natural causes temperature also jumped suddenly, for example during Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_Thermal_Maximum

2 The CO2 and other GHGs slow down the rate of heat is lost from the surface and this is easy to prove.

3 The warming that has occurred over the last 100 years has no other reasonable explanation.

It is amazes me that there are people who have been persuaded that this is not a problem. Sadly the fossil fuel interests deliberately go around misleading people simply because it is bad for their bottom line.

As for the article itself it really is not of a high enough standard to warrant any comment.

Warmair tells us: "The warming that has occurred over the last 100 years has no other reasonable explanation."

Well except for the fact a mini-ice age occurred in the mid 1700's and the warming has been steadily increasing at the exact same miniscule amount per annum ever since.

And the fact all of the planets have increased temperatures slightly over the same period. But surely that can only be an odd coincidence.

And Greenland's glacier's were melting at a faster rate in the 1930's than they are now (after recovering completely).

And then we have the latest IPCC report's so called anomaly that notes the global temperature hasn't actually increased as projected since 1998... but the IPCC still expects the increase to re-start.

And as with any Religion, question the stuff that doesn't make sense and you will be deemed an evil blasphemer.

Is the talk about the same planet?

http://news.nationalgeographic.com.au/news/2012/10/121013-antarctica-sea-ice-record-high-science-global-warming/

Here we go again.

Take a single measurement and pretend it is representative of the world. The reality is that the increase in extent of Antarctic sea ice is linked to strong circumpolar winds resulting from climate change. http://acecrc.org.au/access/repository/resource/029c6e3e-fa29-1031-820a-40404adc5e91/2014%20ACE%20Position%20Analysis%20Antarctic%20Sea%20Ice%20and%20Climate%20Change%20FINAL%20LOW%20RES.pdf

There is also some evidence, although getting the data has difficulties, that total ice volume in the Antarctic has decreased.

But what you should really consider is average surface temperatures, which have clearly increased over the past 30 years http://woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1984/to:2014/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1984/to:201

Agro, how do increased global surface temperatures and warmer winds create more ice?

If it's cold winds, where is the increased cold coming from to form the increased sea ice?

I note from the introduction at your link:
"One important aspect of Antarctic sea ice that we know very little about is change to its volume".

And:
"What is happening in the physical, chemical and biological systems beneath Antarctic sea ice is poorly understood".

I can agree world climate is changing. But are CO2 emissions the actual and only cause?

I wonder if science will one day measure and assess solar warmth taken up in CO2 and CO2 taken up in ocean algae plant matter now known to sometimes exist in blooms beneath ice and surrounding waters.

Surely Stanford has some answers by now.

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2012/june/arctic-algal-blooms-060712.html

This has to be the height of absurdity - having contrived TV weather casts from the future. That is in breach of all 'news' principles - how have broadcasters been co-opted into this? Terrible! And actually, if you READ the science reports of the IPCC - like the Technical Summary - just read the last couple of pages 114 and 115 - you find that the real SCIENTISTS of the IPCC do NOT predict any crisis. It's the green agenda writers of the Summary reports (which, as Donna Laframboise revealed are all Ex WWF or Greenpeace communications people!) THOSE are the people creating climate hysteria. The IPCC scientists can't explain why theres been more than 16 years of cooling when the climate models (which used to be close to reality) are so far off track some people say the Canadian model (that taxpayers are paying for!) is 690% off the mark! What?!! In what bueinss would that kind of error margin ever be acceptable or continue to receive funding?

It certainly is absurd not to include ocean (and other water ecosystem) algae plant matter in AGW and IPCC climate science.
It is also absurd that Legislation has been introduced to charge business and consumers, including to the extent of causing worldwide inflation and some business collapse.
According to the article author here, spending on climate finance now totals nearly one billion dollars per day.
Immoral is not a strong enough description of the confusion and waste of money and time that is incomplete unsubstantiated claims are causing.

I think it extraordinary meteorological weather science does not include marine biological science, especially as over 50 percent of world oxygen involved in atmosphere and precipitation, is produced by the ocean.
Precipitation parallel to and above coccolithaphore algae plant matter in Bering Sea waters can be seen in close up of pinpoints of cloud actually forming. Although posted previously on OLO I post the evidence again, here:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?id=4071

Further, off the coast of Argentina pinpoints of cloud can be seen forming in apparent association with ocean algae plant matter, here:
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_1838.html

ConservativeHippie says
“Well except for the fact a mini-ice age occurred in the mid 1700's and the warming has been steadily increasing at the exact same miniscule amount per annum ever since.”

Direct measurements of Global temperatures at best go back to 1850 and do not become very reliable until the early 1900s

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_temperature_record

http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/temperature-monitoring/image001.jpg

Looking at the above figure it is clear that the annual rate of warming has been anything but exactly the same, with temperatures declining up 1910, and then shooting up until mid 1940, when they took a dive for about a decade before climbing steadily to the present.

As for what happened from 1700 to the 1850s we have to rely on proxies which are not nearly accurate enough to establish what the exact annual temperatures were. From Historical records we know that Europe experienced some very cold winters in the 1700s which are looking more likely to have been caused by large volcanic eruptions in Iceland, producing dust that that blocked some of the sun’s heat from reaching the surface.

Ice ages are caused by shifts in the earth’s orbit and orientation, they take some 10,000 years to develop and what ever caused the cold European winters of the 1700s it was not any change in the earth’s orbit.

As for the idea that the sun’s power has increased and that is the cause of higher temperatures particularly since the 1970s, that does not work as we have been measuring its output with satellites over that period and we know that the output has remained remarkably constant and if anything has declined on average over the 11 cycle.
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/solar.htm

Wobbles, that 97% figure went to its grave sometime ago.
It turned out to be something like 40%.

Re the TV wx presenters, I'll bet quids that the ABC will be there with bells on !

Look again, you are all worrying about the wrong problem.
Runner may have been closer to the mark;
It appears that IS might have designs on Saudi Arabia.