Hmm, thanks a lot for your comment and understanding (don't know your first name). But if it's the air that is getting hotter, first, aren't our oceans a tremendously huge heat sink? Think of all that water (with high thermal capacity) that would take A VERY LONG TIME to heat up only from the warmer air at the surface boundary. What am I missing, do you think?

"The underlying claim to CAGW, or even AGW, is that the natural cycles are gone, replaced with consistent increases in global average temperature...They are specifically claiming we broke the cycle. "
We need a climate expert in here. I do not believe this is what the scientific data shows, but I'm outside my area.

" certainty of risk. The answer is no we don't."
I think you're saying the same thing I'm saying. Remember, I'm just recounting the scientific understand of the world in an area outside my field. I think they only recent determined that human activities are responsible for a big part of climate change. We don't know exactly how much.

"Therefor,pe, any change in the "global average" won't make you move crops or people."
It will happen, even if human activities did not influence the climate. The climate fluctuates, and life on earth responds.

"You have a 5,000 sq foot home. You get to place 10 thermometers,"
Your claim is that you've figured out something basic that high school student could work out, but according to your claim, climatologist have not. This is crazy, esp considering how the world's economy runs on energy and there's enormous incentive for us not to see the peril. It's kind of funny to imagine the abstract of such a paper of the first scientist who worked out measurement location matters, esp if that led to a result that we would all love to hear. When I say all of us, I don't mean citizens of the world who don't want to push the costs of our activities onto future generations. I mean large companies, most economic activities. We would love to see a scientific model that says the costs won't be as great as we thought. I actually predict maybe a 20% chance that will happen. That's the nature of science. We want to see new evidence that tears down existing theories; this is apart from the fact that nobody likes the consequences of our current theories. If that 20% scenario comes true, though, it won't be from someone outside the field reading a few politically-motivated articles. It would be from research, anomalies that can't be explained, and eventually a new model that scientists use to explain the data. I give a greater than 50% chance the costs will be higher than when think. Science tries to be value-neutral, but it's hard when the data show the thing the world economy runs on will incur huge costs in the future. I don't make decisions based on that. I can only follow the science, not my speculation of bias.

I’m optimistic in a few generations we’ll find a solution, and the armchair scientists will disappear and feel no more need to dabble in climatology than on other issues like how cellular respiration works. A few of them will still be telling gravely ill people they can be cured through prayer or homeopathy. I can't stand anti-science.

Thanks Ed! Let's check your numbers however. The best sources I found claim that human-created CO2 in the atmosphere is 4% of the total. That means 96% would still be there. Let me know if you agree or if my numbers are wrong. Thanks.

Hi James. I did want it shorter, actually. But I thought it would be more engaging and effective if I wrote it like I was sitting at a table or bar stool with you. Based on the numbers of people who made it all the way through, I'm very happy. :-)

Hi again Professor. Social media share buttons are now there for Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ ! Share at will. If you want another platform please let me know.

Thanks very much for your strong gratitude Herb--you are also very welcome!
You are certainly right about many true believers. But there is power in the truth, so we need more people knowing that and speaking it openly and confidently. They deserve to know that others not only believe, but KNOW they are full of s***.

Thanks Dr. You might be relying on too much powers of "cause and effect"...why can't we have a free lunch?! But pointing out these large proportions is effective, I agree.

You kinda went to left field in your first paragraph. There were no models to be falsified in the case of butter, and the data wasn't there either. The original work it the policies were based on was unscientific in that it explicitly excluded the data which showed there was no correlation, let alone no causation. For cpglobak warming the fact that data was falsified to support the claim is clear evidence it didn't exist. If you have to falsify the data it means you do t have data supporting your assertion. In the future do try to avoid a paragraph of strawmen, please.

You mismiteroeted the question. A cyclic change is not the same as a consistent change. A consistent change would be which breaks the cycle, establishing a new pattern. A cycle repeating itself is not change, merely a continuation if the cycle. The underlying claim to CAGW, or even AGW, is that the natural cycles are gone, replaced with consistent increases in global average temperature. The claim that we have broken the natural cycle is not supported by the a available data.

Your next paragraph, in the certainty of risk. The answer is no we don't. When pressed, even CAGW proponents admit they don't know this. You won't get this by reading summaries, especially of the IPCC variety. Yet even there, when you dig into the actual meat of the work they say they do NOT have the level of certainty to make the assertions the summary for policy makers claims. As to your assertions, no we do not have a quantification in how much humans may be accelerating natural cycles, and the proponents of CAGW are in fact claiming the opposite. They are specifically claiming we broke the cycle.

As to your final one, the answer is that an average of the average temperatures of sensors haphazardly distributed over a tiny fraction of the planet's surface is nit valid. It would be simple to demonstrate it being so, yet even attempts to correlate changes in the "average global temperature" to any change in any local climate have shown them to exist. It goes back to predictive vs non, if you can make reliable,mcinsistent oredictiins based from the model that for every N units of change, in either direction, in the average of averages we call the global temperature, a specific and quantifiable event occurs you have a valuable model. You'd also have what decades and billions of dollars of research by people who depend on it being true have failed to produce.

Therefor,pe, any change in the "global average" won't make you move crops or people. You can change that number by selecting the stations you want to get the direction change you want, and only doing that for the years you want to change. Consider this thought experiment:

You have a 5,000 sq foot home. You get to place 10 thermometers, but two must go in the freezer(s) and one in refrigerator. This leaves you seven to put anywhere. At least two of them go in direct sunlight and one near an HVAC duct. You record your daily temps for each of them for three years. You then average that daily average into an annual average. Note: you take the average of averages, not eh average of all temperatures.

First, would you say that average adequately represents the climate of your house?

Next, you remove the two from the freezer. Also, in two or three of the rooms you added some electronics right next to your sensors. But you never moved the sensors.

Will there be a change in your house average temperature? Will it go up? Now a couple years later will the average temperature as defined above change? Will it go up? Is that now valid scientific data you have houseal warming? Does it mean your spouse or kids have been cranking up the thermostat behind your back?

If that sounds like a poor way to manage data, you would be right. Yet that sequence of events is a microcosm of what has happened to our sensor system. With the fall of the USSR, a significant chunk of stations went offline. They were all in places that are cold pretty much all of the time,mlikemSiberiamformexampl m

Meanwhile sensor sites measured increases in temperature as a direct result of local land use changes but we're still treated as if they had no changes. If you don't think placing a thermo Ina pasture willmgivemdifferent temps when that pasture is turned into Tarmac or parking lot,Mir a budding with HVAC is set a mere 40' away, then go try them yourself. The difference is clear.

And finally, by definition, an average of averages isn't a measurement at all, therefore it can not be a valid measurement.

Man this text box is tiny, I hope there aren't too many typos above.

"There was no actual data showing fat such as butter was bad for you; same for cholesterol btw. The data which is claimed to support CAGW is likewise non-existent. At least not in a scientific sense"
These are both patently false. You can say you have some prodigious insight that allowed you to read the journals in multiple fields and predict which models would be overturned... well you could say that and it sounds unbelievable, but at least makes logical sense. If you're saying scientific opinion is different from what it actually is, i.e. you reject reality, there's nothing to discuss about it.

Let's go to the questions. My lay understanding of science actually gives me the answers.
" is there a consistent change in global climate?"
Yes. It's been changing all the time. We're currently in an interglacial period within an ice age, i.e. the warm part of an ice age. The glacial cycle in this ice age has a period ind the 10s of thousands of years. Millions of years ago, outside an ice age, subtropical conditions existed near the poles. In a different epoch, glaciers covered most or maybe even all the land masses.

" is there a high degree of mathematically and statistically validated certainty of a global catastrophe as a result of this change"
I only know part of this answer. We know that we're in a period of natural deglaciation. We know this will be costly. We know human activities are accelerating it, by a significant amt, but we don't know by how much.
The "catastrophe" claim is a subjective description. What you're asking is if we can quantify the costs. Maybe some climatological experts have done calculations, but I suspect it would be difficult because you not only have uncertainty in the models but uncertainty in how human civilization will adapt to a changing world. It critical that we try so we don't stifle activities that are worth the future costs and so we don't get a short term gain at the expense of cost that when amortized into a present value figure is greater than the benefit.

"First of which is the assumption that an average of average temperature over the entire globe is a valid measurement of something"
I don't know what valid means here, but if humans do things that cause us to have to move our cities or protect form flooding sooner than we would have or cause us to have to move where grow certain crops, and so on, I call that "valid". It does mean it wasn't worthwhile to burn the fuels that got us that. It is a real, valid measurement though.

heh I hear yah, sometimes difficult to keep track of them all, isn't it?

On your first one you are more correct than you realize. There was no actual data showing fat such as butter was bad for you; same for cholesterol btw. The data which is claimed to support CAGW is likewise non-existent. At least not in a scientific sense.

Continually "adjusting" past temperatures to be colder and colder while "adjusting" modern temps to be warmer is not data supporting GW, let alone AGW or CAGW. Using data from instruments that have gone from being in a field surrounded by green to parking lots and near heat pumps is not data supporting global warming.

The reality of thermal data is that we have very little of it, and what we do have does not support global warming. If there is any cause for concern to arise from the data it is that we are facing the opposite problem. From urban heat island effect to lack of proper sensor siting, to removal of sensor data showing local cooling combining to produce a heavy bias toward an increase in temperatures the fact that un-tortured data shows any cooling at all is significant. If I were to be worried about anything, the data says be prepared for it to get colder.

There are two foundational questions to be tested:
1) is there a consistent change in global climate ?
2) is there a high degree of mathematically and statistically validated certainty of a global catastrophe as a result of this change, and are they backed up by history and solid and demonstrable theory?

Now of course, there are assumptions underlying these questions which can be, and some argue are, faulty. First of which is the assumption that an average of average temperature over the entire globe is a valid measurement of something, and that it represents anything consistent and significant.

The usefulness, or if you like the trustworthiness, of any model of reality is dependent on it's predictive power. To date the CAGW crew have not made models with predictive power. Given the fact that they refuse to use the actual data, that shouldn't be surprising.

Is that inclusive of the non-tampered data which shows we've been cooling for decades? I don't mean "the pause" here, but refer to a recent report of a German scientist showing the pre-torture numbers indicate a decline in "global temperature".

If anything the data over the last several decades shows we are getting colder rather than warmer. And boy is it easier and less deadly for it to get warmer than it is for it to get cooler.

I've been working out the idea for a small fiction book called "The Age of Arrogance" wherein the world drops to an ice age and people lose confidence in scientists for how wrong the were about warming. It is mainly a matter of figuring out where I want the story to go and, of course, time to actually write it.

The argument I use that stumps any AGW advocate is the following: world energy production is currently 70% carbon fuels (oil, gas, coal, wood, animal waste), 20% nuclear, 7% hydroelectric, and 3% "renewable" (wind, solar, tidal, geothermal). If we were to declare an all out Manhattan-style project to turn these numbers upside down and make renewables the dominant energy source, the effort would require an enormous expenditure of existing energy supply in the near term. That would mean we would need to greatly INCREASE the use of carbon fuels in the near term to harvest the materials, produce the equipment, transport the equipment, erect the equipment, etc. so that renewable sources could be put in place earlier. Given the goal of ASAP renewable energy, the cry to drastically reduce the use of carbon fuels is actually counterproductive to that goal.

The responses range from (crickets chirping) to slobbering rages that end in "Well, you're just . . . WRONG!!!"

This is fantastic!

If your interested, I watched a great documantary by Phil Valentine on the subject called An Inconsistent Truth. It is a fun & witty debunking of An Inconvenient Truth. Well worth the time to watch. Search it on Amazon.

One other fact that I have found in my research that some people can wrap their minds around is that 90% of the CO2 emitted into the atmosphere would occur even if all human activity cessed tomorrow. So if we all died today and quit buring fossil fuels we would impact the CO2 in the atmosphere buy a whopping .004%.

Something about heat and kitchens, prof...

True, but until he implements that button, a reminder of a workaround or "Plan B" can be a bit of a contribution...
:)
Sarcastic or not... I apologize for Microaggressing you... or if it wasn't that severe, Nanoaggression.
:)

Is sarcasm your natural way of speaking? Again you're missing the point. Brett asked for criticism, and I pointed out what I considered to be a possible problem. Please, if you can't be constructive, just keep it to yourself.

No need for sarcasm. I know how to copy&paste. A share gutton not only makes it easier, it reminds readers of the possibility of sharing the article.