runner, "whether climate change will impact the election is unknown. Thankfully the election however will impact the gravy train and get rid of many dud jobs"

True and welcome to exasperated taxpayers.

Poirot your task is clear, you must train your self to laugh at your detractors, its that or cry, at the feeble nature of some.
Runner if you can cling to your God,who never existed, and ignore the thousands of others folk believe in, who too never existed, why can we not believe in truth?
Sorry but our new arrival lost me in that post.
To be honest my first thought was he is a bright and intelligent bloke.
But continuing to claim this science is unproved and what ever the other claim was questions my first thought.
Now back on thread, my question came about because of the growing concerns world wide.
And, in my view evidence world wide.
Any day we could post links,that question what truly is our fate.
Todays would link to floods in the northern part of this planet after record ice melts.
Linked to the report from our scientists?
What other science do we challenge? and why.

o Poirot, it's not "useless". But you must be prepared to counter the arguments of those who are skeptical. My guess is that you do not read nor consider the alternative arguments. Look, the truth is that many skeptical blogs have all sorts of fruitcakes posting. BUT. There are also some very smart people there as well. I have seen posts by, and comments by, scientists of all persuasions, including physicists, chemists, geologists and even climate scientists. There are also engineers, computer scientists and all sorts of professionals such as statisticians. Those blogs are not really the haven of simply the nutter fringe of sneaky subversives in the pay of big oil. That in itself is a misdirection by the consensus community and one of the reasons I prefer to read those sites.

They are NOT bereft of science, quite the contrary. I would rather that the consensus community accepted a legitimate alternative point of view and argued from the science than attempt to smear all opposition. It is that arrogance, amply on display at RealClimate and Taminos etc that make me shudder and reduces my empathy for 'real' scientists. And the Marcott paper is a great example of where suspect science has been embraced when it plays to the endorsed songsheet. Joe Average now believes that Marcott 'proves' the 20th century warming spike, when in fact it does no such nthing. And it was ip to skeptics to show that.

How can you honestly sit there and argue vehemently against the very core of scientific endeavour as you do? Peer reviewed does not mean peer proven, you know. Else we would not have made the progress in science that we have so far. By all means, be critical of skeptics and their proposition, but don't dismiss them because they don't do 'real science'.

By the way Poirot,I do NOT think that all of those skeptical points you raised have skewered AGW. But I think they DO call into question some of the more extreme projections. As I said, I cannot evaluate the various propositions with an expert's eye, but I CAN learn and use my critical faculties.

On the whole, the alarmist version of AGW shows all the hallmarks of faddish thinking. My view is that the majority of those who push dangerous AGW have a particular ideological outlook. And they are so convinced they are right that they will both bend the truth to suit their own ends and actively denounce any opposition. It's not a conspiracy, it's a worldview. And I am rather sympathetic too. But...

I can accept that CO2 slows the radiation of heat to space and that positive feedbacks could exacerbate the effect. But I am skeptical that it happens as posited. I think that CO2s effect is on the low side and that feedbacks are net negative. So while fossil fuel use needs to be curtailed and we ARE affecting the environment, I DON'T think it is anything like at the level being pushed and i would rather we took more measaured steps to both mitigate what effects there are and transition to more sustainable energy sources. But WITHOUT covering the land in bloody windmills.

Belly: “qanda please explain?”

>> ‘Climate change’ has been politicised – it’s not about the science anymore, it’s been contaminated by political ideologues. <<

Apologies for the delay Belly, been busy.
Thing is, Online Opinion is just that – a place to air one’s opinion and, as research has shown – most ‘joe blows’ who have an opinion (on ‘climate change’ for example) base it on their political persuasion.

I’m sure you are aware of one certain political ideologue here on OLO – a solicitor, secretary of a political party and a renown ‘fake sceptic’ that supports the extreme ‘right wing’ policies of a regular visiting ‘Lord’ – he talks the talk but doesn’t walk the walk. People like him have contaminated not only the science, but opinion sites such as this.

As far as the science goes, although we’ve learned a lot over the last couple of hundred years about this very complex process, it might be best to explain it in simple terms – based on scientific laws, (not just theories) – conservation of mass and energy for example.

If you add energy to a system (e.g. atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and terrestrial biosphere) it heats up.
However, the system reacts by trying to maintain its equilibrium (exemplified by a change in the frequency and extremity of weather events).
The system keeps reacting to this energy imbalance until a new equilibrium has been reached.

In the context Poirot has tried to explain, she is quite right:
>> it (GW) has plateaued just like it did during all the other plateaus in modern times - before it continued its rise <<

In other words, once the new equilibrium is reached, the long term warming trend will continue.

What we don't know is how long can we expect the current hiatus to last or how extreme these predicted weather events would get.

cont'd

cont'd Belly

Of course, simplifying the science is open to abusive criticism from scientists and non-scientists alike. Let me just say this: we understand the enhanced greenhouse effect quite well - not absolute, but extremely well. Therefore, to keep pumping billions of tons of heat trapping gases (reflecting energy back) in to the system is not conducive to logical or rational thought, imho.

Indeed, the effect of doing so somewhat lags the current political election cycle – that is why climate change won’t impact the next election – the general population is not conducive to logical or rational thought, especially for the longer term. No offense intended.