“Protagoras, we're not talking about pollution, we're talking about CO2 emissions.”

Graham we are talking about pollution but it’s clear you don’t understand the science despite telling other posters to push off because you insist it is they who don’t get the science.

When you mitigate pollution, you mitigate carbon dioxide emissions.

Pollution and anthropogenic CO2 are inextricably linked. Whether you continue denying this, is irrelevant to the science but your denial just makes you look silly.

Fossil fuels are basically carbon and hydrogen. When hazardous fossil fuels are burned the carbon is oxidized to produce carbon dioxide and the hydrogen is oxidized to water.

Carbon dioxide is an unavoidable product of complex atmospheric chemical reactions to air pollution.

Anthropogenic pollution is the precise reason we are having this debate on carbon dioxide.

This basic science explanation is provided for your benefit (see paragraph six and seven especially):

http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/physical_science/chemistry/carbon_monoxide.html&edu=high

Protagoras, I don't need a primer on how hydrocarbons are oxdised to form various carbon compounds and water. If you think that burning (oxidising) organic material to produce energy in a process which creates CO2 is pollution then you'd better stop breathing now because you're polluting the world. (I'm going to resist a snide remark at this point).

This would be the first case in the world where anyone has asserted that a completely harmless gas which is vital to life on earth is pollution. Pollution is something which is damaging to life on earth, by its nature, or because of its unnaturally high concentration. CO2 doesn't fulfill either of those two conditions.

In fact at these concentrations it is vital to maintaining healthy plant growth and a reasonable temperature range. We live in CO2 constrained times with levels falling perilously close to the level at which plants have trouble growing.

Maybe you are working on a different definition of pollution, if so, please tell us what it is. No links, just a short paragraph will do.

I notice you haven't come back on the Newmont issue. So I take it you concede that the propaganda you were quoting was wrong in that case?

Wow Graham where did you drag this little bit of information up?

<<We live in CO2 constrained times with levels falling perilously close to the level at which plants have trouble growing.>> I'd like to see a source for this please, a most interesting tidbit.

Not enough CO2? Haha. Ok say we have even more CO2, and this is good for plants, how are you going to increase nitrogen fixation at the same time? Because thats what they need.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v440/n7086/abs/nature04486.html

Mark, it's selective quoting because you discuss and interpret their abstracts to suit your own argument, but don't bother to read the papers and discuss the authors conclusions. If you did you would find that their viewpoints are not as different as you make out. They just approach the problem from different directions.

Curmudgeon,
you still haven't answered the 3 questions have you? And the thing is, you are smart enough to *know* you haven't answered the questions! Why the *deliberate* evasion?

1. Why does NASA show 2005 as HOTTER than 1998, and 2007 as drawn with it?

2. If MET data so conclusively proves 'cooling' since 1998, why do they still accept global warming? Oh, I know, they actually look at the TRENDS (so visually obvious if you just look at this graph).
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2008/pr20080923c.html

3. When one of the next few years breaks all previous temperature records, will you then admit you were wrong? Or will you wait until after the El Nino for the inevitable La Nina cooling, narrow your data in to the 4 or 5 years after the El Nino, and shout "LOOK at all the COOLING since 2011!" (The sceptic equivalent of "Look, big shiny thing over there!").

When are you going to look at the *15 and 20 year trends* instead of cherrypicking those *few* years that show the conclusions you want? I could make ANY story I want from the temperature record by choosing short enough trends.

As for the MWP being hotter than today, aye aye aye, why are you digging up a 1990 IPCC graph when the IPCC and literally dozens of climate institutions have since adapted the graph to new data? What was that about dogma stays the same but science evolves with new data? You're only 19 years out of date there pal.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrKfz8NjEzU&feature=player_embedded

graham,

>> Bushbasher, I guess if you don't have the information or the skills to be in an argument

don't get uppity. i have a phd in a related field, have attended many professional seminars, by karoly and others. unlike you, i'm simply not parading my amateurism as professionalism.

>> you have to be in a meta argument, but you're still disqualified.

why? you think one has to be an expert to determine an expert? nonsense.

>> And how do you define "expert"? Anyone you choose to believe?

you don't think there objective ways to determine that hansen and karoly are experts, and that you and lawson, and plimer, are not? you think there are not *many* more experts in broad agreement with hansen and karoly?

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

but there is no point to this meta-meta-argument. the fact of the matter is that, on this issue, you and lawson are pseudo-intellectual and anti-intellectual sleazebags. as i wrote above, the suggestion that you are dispassionate, objective guys, merely evaluating the evidence, is ludicrous. you are self-evidently partisan hacks pleading your case.

the giveaway is exactly your use of quotes, your reference to "experts", doubting the very existence of experts. curmudgeon does even better:

>> If you are a scientist in the field you have lost all detachment

this would be hilarious if it weren't such a disgusting slur. and it encapsulates exactly your stupidity. you dispute the very existence of expertise. you glorify ignorance. you're the kind of idiots who think electing know-nothing morons like george bush is wise.

You know Bushbasher, I'm the only person you can get away with flaming on this forum, because I'm the moderator, and your previous post is just a flame.

There is not a scintilla of substance in what you have said. I doubt that you have a PhD in a related field. If you do, it's one where they award them to people who can't write and can't argue. But I'm happy to be proved wrong. Reveal your identity and refer us to proof of your qualifications.

There are very distinguished experts who will dispute what Karoly or Hansen say in a number of areas, and if you can't understand their arguments you have no rational basis for choosing which is the real expert.

Your idea that the majority view decides the truth is ludicrous. So what happens when the majority changes its view? Does the truth change? So before Galileo the earth really was flat and objects really did fall at different speeds depending on their mass?

And if you think I'm pushing a vested interest you'd better demonstrate it.