Another AGW skeptic here, and yes, I have visited real climate.org.

Let’s say that both CO2 and solar cycle length play a role in the observed global warming. Don’t we have enough data now to be able to say what percent of the variation in surface temperatures can be attributed to CO2 and solar cycle length? As I look at the data, it seems to me that it is solar cycle length and not CO2 which contributes the lion share from a statistical standpoint. Also, doesn’t the nature of the correlation between solar cycle length even suggest causation wherease this is not so for CO2. For example, inflection points occur between surface temperatures and solar cycle lengths around 1890, 1940, & 1970 whereas this is not the case for CO2?

graph

The problem here is that even if GW is real, the true cost of taking out CO2 of the global economy is simply forbidding. 7 billion people would be put on poverty again. Riots. Anger. Wars would restart. Famine would kill millions.

But hey, we would have prevented the world to have warmed half a degree, we should cheer that while we have a good dinner of cold roots!

40 years ago we had a shot, by building nukes. But alas, the greenistas found it was easier to mob the nuke scientists and accept the “alternatives” being the big alternative chosen thereafter named with a “C” and ending with “OAL”, what a shot in the foot!

Now deal with it. Personally speaking I even think that we’re in for another little ice age, which, hahum, will be considerably worse than global warming. But hey, that’s just me. And if you check Holocene’s timeline, we’re due to the next impending true ice age. All things considered, I find it good a little warming.

As for consensus warming theory, current trends are in fact going in exactly the opposite direction as what you imply in your posting.

It is easier to be a believer in an orthodoxy such as consensus warming orthodoxy, than a heretic. A heretic risks much by distancing himself from the mass of believers. In numbers there is protection and strength. On your own, you risk loss of funding, denial of tenure, being demonised by your intellectual inferiors who are raking in the grants, etc. etc.

As a believer, one must nor actually know anything about the topic other than the authority upon which one places his trust. For almost all believers, belief is a subconscious appeal to authority. It is the lazy man’s approach to knowledge. Let someone else do your thinking for you.

I am not saying this is your approach, by any means. Perhaps you know more than what your are saying, about the scientific basis of climate? Appeal to authority is working less and less well these days.

Actually, the idea of global cooling goes much farther back than the 1970s. A review of national and international newspapers from 1901 - the New York Times for example - shows that the idea of global cooling was an idea being seriously discussed by the eminent scientists of that time.

I am also curious as to how you define “overblown.” Does that include the cover stories of global cooling in national magazines like NewsWeek and Time during the 1970s where prominent scientists are quoted about global cooling?

Using the term “Denialists” to promote a scientific cause is interesting because you’re using a term usually reserved for people who deny the Holocaust. What happens if you’re wrong?

There is much more to say about this topic, but suffice to say that we must compare our current situation with the prevalent conditions over the last million years or so to remove other complicating geologic factors. If one does that, we see that we are in a period of unprecedented greenhouse gas levels and nearly unprecedented global temperatures.

2)Solar forcing has a huge impact on our climate. It is what keeps our planet warm, and drives nearly all known biological energy cycles and global dynamism. Solar forcing as an agent of short-term climate change is likely a bit-player, however. For much more on this topic, visit realclimate.org.

As for whether Mars, Venus, or whatever else is in a warm period, that is completely coincidental. The Sun’s output is higher than it’s ever been, in a long-term average sense. But, what drives the climate cycles on other terrestrial planets is their distance from the Sun in their orbits, relative to the mean orbital distance. To some extent, for planets like Mars, the changes in the obliquity, or axial tilt, are also a significant factor. We cannot simply look to our planetary neighbors and naively ascribe changes seen there to changes seen here. There are simply far too many factors to do that over very short (100s of years) time periods.

3) Scientific consensus has an excellent track record. The consensus view of the Solar mechanics never truly existed, in the example you mention. Very few solid consensus examples that subsequently were disproved actually occurred. The “ether” theory was always just a theory, and could not explain much at all about orbital motions. The “earth was flat” consensus never really existed, and if it was common knowledge at some time, there was no dedicated science profession then. There are many other examples as well that suggest that viewing scientific consensus as innately fallible is overly pessimistic.

That said, consensus itself is nothing to believe if not for a consensus of evidence. That is where the global warming consensus is nigh unassailable. There are few other focus areas of scientific research, save perhaps Darwinian evolution, that have a larger body of supporting evidence. Thousands upon thousands of scientists have collected hard data for decades, and the results of examining that enormous pile of evidence nearly always fall in favor of the anthropogenic global warming mechanism.

4) A few years’ worth more data will answer a lot of “questions” put forward by global warming critics because we are in the midst of that very change. Just as the portrait a sketch artist draws at first looks like nothing more than a few abstract geometrical constructions, the first years’ and decades’ data about global warming was suggestive at best. But, as time goes by, the gaps in data are gradually filled, and the picture takes its final form. We are learning a lot very quickly, particularly about the so-called “tipping point” mechanisms that may lead to feedback-induced rapid climate change. Another reason that a few years will answer many questions is that there are hundreds of data-collection efforts that will offer new insights into global warming science.

5) The whole global cooling myth is way overblown. There were very few academic papers published about the idea. It was a theory proposed by a few groups supported by very little data. It is much more prominent now than it ever was supposed to have been in the 1970s. The myth of the global cooling consensus has been publicized by global warming denialists to try and add meat to their meager arguments.

Mr. Allen, there are many ways to attack any theory. But, in the face of overwhelming evidence in favor of the anthropogenic global warming theory, denialists must offer similarly convincing evidence in their favor. They have not done so. They focus on trying to poke holes in individual studies, which is always possible because studies are by their very nature limited datasets. Denialists argue out of ignorance, that is, we do not understand fully what is happening, therefore we cannot say what is causing it definitively. There is no absolute knowledge that man may possess, he must be guided instead by the most convincing argument–by the argument that is most convincingly supported by data.

As a critical thinker, I have just a few questions:

Isn’t it true that there has been extreme examples of global climate changes - from extreme hot to extreme cold - in various periods of Earth history when humans were absent?

If the solar forcing issue has no real planetary impact, why are Mars, Pluto, and the rest of the planets and moons in the solar system experincing their own global climate changes towards the warm end?

Isn’t it true that scientific concensus has a poor track record? For example, it was standard scientific belief only a century ago that we wouldn’t be able to determine the chemical makeup of stars.

Why do you say that a few more years worth of data will provide the answers? If global warming is happening, then you would have the data to change it.

In the 1970s, the fear was global cooling. Now it’s global warming. Isn’t it true that throughout Earth’s history, shorelines and weather have changed?

Respectfully Submitted,

Joseph Baneth Allen

A few more years’ worth of data will always provide more answers. And, year-to-year or month-to-month anomalies will be observed. The inescapable fact here is that the last decade has been the warmest we’ve seen since records have been kept. Last winter was one of the Northern hemisphere’s warmest on record. Last year was one of the warmest globally ever recorded.

You’re a critical thinker, and that’s why I appreciate your comments so much. But here, it’s time to start debating not whether AGW is real, because it is. Instead, we need to talk about mitigation and adaptation. How do we minimize damage–that’s the debate to have. Whether that damage is ecological, economical, or cultural, and how much damage is acceptable; there’s plenty of room for ideological disagreement.