re Keiran's:
"I am very much an environmentalist believing CO2 is beneficial."

But there is such a thing as too much of a good thing.

While carbon dioxide is good for plants, algae and bacteria which gain their energy by photosynthesis, these organisms are limited in their ability to keep pace with the current levels of CO2 production attributable to human activities. Likewise, the ocean is limited in its ability to absorb CO2 at a rate commensurate with current and projected "business as usual" anthropogenic CO2 production.

In the case of the oceans, increased absorption of CO2 may affect maritime acidity levels as it dissolves and changes into carbonic acid ( H2CO3 - which gives soft drinks some of their sourness and, under pressure, all of their fizz - the fizz is mainly CO2). This may in turn affect uptake of silicon and calcium into the shells of diatoms (a significant group of marine algae) and plankton, respectively. When the BAS doomsday report mentions "cascading effects", it is this sort of possibility which informs their concern. Reduced photosynthisis then results in reduced CO2 recycling into oxygen and carbohydrates for other parts of the food chain (like us). This is an example of a positive feedback cycle, a runaway process which makes bad even worse.

Keiran, I'm all for independent thought, but it is best informed by accepted and informed opinion. - I mentioned two excellent texts, in a prior post, which deal with the fundamentals of ecology. If you think ecology is more germane to our current situation than astrophysics, then I strongly advise you to inform yourself more thoroughly about accepted fact, opinion and the experimental support for the concerns of ecologists about anthropogenic influences on the carbon cycle.

Alzo is sadly employing the Machiavellian tool of the Conspiracy Theorists: if you’re going to tell a lie, make it a WHOPPER! He selectively quotes smaller chunks from the larger text to make them sound against AGW. Even their Abstract shows how Alzo’s exaggerating his case, but they explicitly spell it out on Page 3.

“This solar radiative forcing is about 1/20 that for doubling CO2 (_Q~3.7 Wm-2). Thus the annual rate of increase in radiative forcing of the lower atmosphere from solar min to solar max happens to be equivalent to that from a 1% per year increase in greenhouse gases, a rate commonly used in greenhouse-gas emission scenarios [Houghton and et al., 2001].”

Alzo’s been telling porkies. If we double greenhouse gases, the solar radiative forcing is only 1/20th the factor of the expected temperature increase. What the paper is arguing is that they have more accurately than ever before measured the minor solar fluctuation inside the background noise of EVER RISING TEMPERATURES! (Line 281).

This is to be expected from Alzo whose powers of comprehension failed to pick up that the “soot on snow” paper merely argued that soot has contributed a bit more to the SNOW MELTING (which was the topic of the paper) than CO2 — yet Alzo extrapolates out that the CO2 had NOTHING to do with it and by the way, that somehow means that CO2 does NOTHING to the climate, and the whole theory is wrong. What a load of codswallop.

Alzo, these are discussions of “how big are the minor forcings” by people that accept the overall theory. In the meantime, Alzo has still failed to explain why the OVERALL temperature of the earth (not just the 0.2) went UP after 2000 when the solar cycle went down. (Remembering that “the observed time lag in the solar-cycle response is small” Line 365).

Now, while Alzo tries to explain this, we can all be amused by the following paper which CONCLUSIVELY PROVES that the Solar cycle actually influences how many Republicans are in government.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/05/fun-with-correlations/#more-433

Eclipse Now, you're actually quoting from another paper but never mind.
"Solar-Cycle Warming at the Earth’s Surface and an Observational Determination of Climate Sensitivity."
versus
"Surface warming by the solar cycle as revealed by the composite mean
difference projection"
So solar induced warming exhibits the same spatial warming patterns as CO2 induced warming including polar amplification. The 11 year cycle produces a 0.2C global temperature response from 0.19Wm2 over 5-6 years. What does this mean? It means a climate system that is very sensitive to changes in solar irradiance (and so far, fairly insensitive to CO2). Would not take much of a change in the long term solar irradiance trend to produce almost all of the "global" warming seen thus far. Take a look at the Lockwood and Frolich, Proc. R. Soc. A, 25 May, 2007 paper and you will see a long term trend in their solar reconstructions.

"argued that soot has contributed a bit more to the SNOW MELTING"
A lot more...up to 94% of it.

"Alzo extrapolates out that the CO2 had NOTHING to do with it"
Actually only extrapolated it has much less to do with it. Maybe as little as 6%.

"that somehow means that CO2 does NOTHING to the climate"
Just much less than touted by the Hansonites and the IPCC.

"explain why the OVERALL temperature of the earth (not just the 0.2) went UP after 2000 when the solar cycle went down."
They didn't go up...they stayed flat or declined slowly. See a nice graph here:
http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/UAHMSUglobe.html

Oops. It turns out that 1998 wasn’t the hottest year on record for the US, after all. I wonder where the press releases for this correction are? Why were the 1930's so warm?
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1880#more-1880

“Science is apolitical, and when it has submitted to political pressure in the past, it has been at great human cost.”

This is the very reason the IPCC does not change the science to suit the policy makers. Unfortunately, politicians exert a great deal of pressure on scientists even to the extent of “gagging” them from commenting on climate change or delaying/refusing their research funding – we have seen it here in Australia (Pearman) and also in the Bush Administration (Hansen).

If scientists submit to the politics of the Bush and Howard administrations, it will be at great human cost – I agree with Ian Plimer in this respect.

As far as zealots, alzo seems to be one that distorts the science to suit his own opinions.

Talk about global warming zealots stifling debate, check out this week’s Newsweek article,

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20122975/site/newsweek/

Here is an extract,
Every effort to pass climate legislation during the George W. Bush years was stopped in its tracks … Tim Profeta, now director of an environmental-policy institute at Duke University "I was hearing the basic argument of the skeptics—a brilliant strategy to go after the science. And it was working" …
Killing bills in Congress was only one prong of the denial machine's campaign. It also had to keep public opinion from demanding action on greenhouse emissions, and that meant careful management of what federal scientists and officials wrote and said. "If they presented the science honestly, it would have brought public pressure for action," says Rick Piltz, who joined the federal Climate Science Program in 1995 ...
By appointing former coal and oil lobbyists to key jobs overseeing climate policy, he found, the administration made sure that didn't happen. Following the playbook laid out at the 1998 meeting at the American Petroleum Institute, officials made sure that every report and speech cast climate science as dodgy, uncertain, controversial—and therefore no basis for making policy ...
Ex-oil lobbyist Philip Cooney, working for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, edited a 2002 report on climate science by sprinkling it with phrases such as "lack of understanding" and "considerable uncertainty." A short section on climate in another report was cut entirely. The White House "directed us to remove all mentions of it," says Piltz, who resigned in protest. An oil lobbyist faxed Cooney, "You are doing a great job."

Bush and his cronies have big ties to the fossil fuel industry, so does Howard and his mates - they are the real zealots.

That’s a great link Q&A and parts of it document my FAVOURITE scientist of the “Swindle” flavour, Fred Singer. He’s the former “tobacco is good for you” scientist that saw a dollar in defending big corporations with bad science. He just can’t kick the habit.

For more on Singer see...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Singer
http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/denialmachine/
http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/personfactsheet.php?id=1

Alzo, I’m glad I accidentally read the “sister study” by the same authors. They clearly state that solar fluctuations amount to only…
“1/20 that for doubling CO2 (_Q~3.7 Wm-2).”

What? If CO2 doubles, it will be 20 times more significant than solar cycles? Does that mean it's 10 times more significant now?
“Gee, I — wonder — where — Alzo’s — argument — has — gone?”

Now it seems you are resorting to that other well known Machiavellian tactic for telling lies. Don’t just tell them big, repeat them OFTEN because then it might stick. Just keep repeating that the temperature is going down, really indignantly if you can, and someone might believe you.

“The website[1] of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration contains detailed data of the annual land and ocean temperature since 1880.[2]

Currently every one of the last 13 years (1994-2006) is one of the warmest 17 on record. These 17 warmest years could be the warmest years for the last several thousand years according to the temperature record, not just since 1880, but the most recent data is the most accurate.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature_record_since_1880

So Alzo, your move. Quote some crank that doesn’t like these records. I bet most Climatologists use them, but we can’t speak of the experts, can we? We’ve got to engage YOUR reading of the data, because YOU insist that there is a debate here. ;-)

Meanwhile, your problem with solar activity diverging from climate temperatures has returned big time. If the solar 11 year cycle ONLY builds up 0.2 degrees and then sinks back down again, why are 13 of the last 17 the hottest on record? Why is there this multi-decade swing upwards when the solar cycle should return everything to “normal” about half the time?