JamesH (and one-under-god)

The enhanced green-house effect is difficult for some people to understand.

At the risk of over simplifying; if you put energy into a system, it heats up. If there is water around, it evaporates, ultimately condenses (within 10 days in our atmosphere) and as you say, precipitates out as rain or snow. In this sense, the temperature determines the amount of moisture in the air.

What Dessler and his team of researchers have shown, is that there are other ‘drivers’ (like atmospheric CO2 concentration, resident time >>> 10 days) that impact on the temperature, is independent of relative humidity, and that clouds (for example) act as a positive (usually) feedback.

AGW masks the natural variability that you allude to (it is also important to understand that weather is not climate).

My research interests lie in ocean/atmosphere/land coupled systems, particularly in relation to things ‘water’. In forty years, I have never seen so much misinformation and distortion of the science as I have seen in the last few years. It never ceases to amaze me why ‘arm-chair’ scientists (from accountants to ‘hockey-moms’) keep telling experts in their field that they have it all wrong, that they don’t understand the science, or they are involved in some worldwide socialist conspiracy – astonishing.

Bob Carter is an expert in “rock layering”; he gets celebrity on the public speaking circuit and often represents right-wing think tanks (Lavoisier Group, IPA, Heartland Institute, etc) giving presentations in the populist media (like here on OLO) and the blogosphere. He does not publish articles on ‘climate change’ in reputable science journals for one very simple reason – he cannot back up his rhetoric with validated research. He blows ‘smoke screens’ – why?

In the scientific sense, he is not a climate change ‘sceptic’. He is a climate change ‘denier’.

A true climate change ‘sceptic’ (in the scientific sense) is someone like Roy Spencer – I truly hope he can put a dint in the theory of AGW. But he hasn’t ... yet. He (like Dessler) is also looking at clouds, water and (negative) feedbacks.

xoddam, you suppose that Hamilton "felt his name conferred undeserved legitimacy on the articles appearing alongside his own." If so, he must be delusional, having known Hamilton professionally I believe the reverse is true - association with him calls one's credibility into question. Almost anyone who knew hin in his economist years would agree.

You might say I'm a "Hamilton sceptic."

In 2006 the UK-based journal World Economics published a ‘dual critique’ of the Stern Review, with twin papers authored respectively by scientists and economists. Bob Carter and I were the only Australians among the five authors of ‘the science’ and ‘economic aspects’ part respectively. I have never claimed to be a climate scientist but I have of course read the Carter et al contribution to the dual paper. I noted that it had at least the trappings of scholarship (there are 120 footnotes) and that the authors replied politely but convincingly to two critical reviews of their paper (there were 60 more footnotes in these responses).

I don’t know whether Q&A puts the authors of the science leg of the dual critique into the category of ‘arm-chair’ scientist, but none of them is an accountant or a ‘hockey-mom’ and one - Richard Lindzen of MIT – has been a professor of meteorology for more than 30 years. I was therefore surprised to find two Australian professors - Ian Simmonds of the University of Melbourne and Will Steffen of the ANU – alleging that ‘the grasp of basic physics and chemistry displayed in the critique of “The Science” seems to be rather poor.’

I’m reminded of the performance of former IPCC Co-Chair Sir John Houghton in evidence before the Economic Affairs Committee of the House of Lords in 2005. After giving his (Houghton’s) interpretation of Lindzen’s views, Houghton said:

‘Now, the authors of the relevant chapter in the IPCC Report argued loud and for very long and in the end they summarised in the chapter that the balance of evidence shows that the water feedback is positive; they put that unequivocally in their summary despite having Lindzen as the chapter author, and HE HAD TO GO ALONG WITH IT’ (EMPHASIS added).

I’m not interested in (or equipped to judge) the scientific merits of the conflicting views that Sir John sought to summarise, but I thought that his evidence revealed a lot about the IPCC’s processes

dear q+a
the polar current[which carries co2 into century long cold storage]has huge rivers of methane frozen in it[the quran predicts the oceans to catch fire at the end times ie[this frozen methane melts when the current stops then catches fire]

it has stopped in previous times[but no fires]

it is because the water temp increased and the inflows of desalinated water stopped the current causing the europe deep freeze period,the greenland freeze etc

thing is i used to support the theory,and done my research not for cash nor income but to know,
i have watched the good/guy bad/guy play-out[howhard hated it[as he was the villan and good old kevi was the good guy going to do that howhard couldnt.

we have seen a fall in cloudcover[thus heat that used to be reflected now warms us up]clouds need cold air to condense the moisture trapped in the hot air,add to that we arnt pumping steam into the air anymore[for the moisture]nor are the for-rest's allowed to add their evaporate and condensate.

there are suggested cures like growing algie in our oceans to capture the co2[this apparently could be done as easilly as spraying iron-oxide upon the waters,but i dont want to be teaching a know it all who dosnt give answers

we know there is SOME problem

either science scamming us to get faVOUR FROM THE BANKERS AND A SHARE OF THE MASSIVE CARBON CREDIT]

but unless your talking about cures
i refuse to accept you are serious,THE FACTS YOU PUT UP ARE SINGULARILLY INCOMPLETE AND LOADED WITH SPIN,PUBLISING LINKS and convincing us isnt good effort[we cant do anything like the science clowns could be doing]

all we can say is tell us the science[dont assume you need to dumb it down,because it just insults the training you infure to have,fluff i have come across before by self taught mass debaters,trying to out bid those daring to disagree with your brain

[if they wernt so busy thinking about getting funding and supporting their means of income]they[you] maybe could give facts,that rebut all the points,not try to smear their source

Q&A, you accuse armchair critics of telling experts in their field that they have it all wrong, yet you are quick to dismiss economists (not to mention bus drivers - what have you got against bus drivers?) as muddying the waters. Is this because you are NOT an expert in this field? Are you insecure in your ignorance of this discipline? There does happen to be a Nobel for economics as well, though Dr Pauchari got his in Peace (the American humorist Tom Lehrer says he retired when Kissinger won the Peace prize because it had made satire redundant. I feel a bit the same way about Al Goring.) You talk of "the science" as if it is everything and generates its own absolutely correct solutions, and therefore no one else but you and a select few should have P-p-power, but you have no expertise in "the economics", which is an unavoidable part of these issues - and a beneficial one at that for Big Gore Al. It was an element in the IPCC's projections. And you seem to be talking more about sustainability now than global warming, I mean climate change (I can't keep up with these loosely defined buzz words) - which undoubtedly demands the expertise of economists and other experts.

If the consequences of climate change are alarming people should be sounding alarms. You can only believe there's no cause for alarm if you reject the mainstream scientific understanding of climate. Belief that nothing people can do can change the climate has no scientific basis. To base future energy policy on that unscientific orthodoxy in direct contradiction of best scientific knowledge is far more alarming to me than using the small window of opportunity to act that climate science has given us.
Meanwhile if you expect alternative scientific understanding of climate, that supports the orthodoxy, to prevail, publish it in Nature, not OLO, but policy formulated now must be based on current science not on what science outsiders would like mainstream science to be saying.