[jeffreyH]

Craig doesn't want a discussion because he already 'knows' he is right. How can you have a reasoned debate with a guy who so easily resorts to insults? Just make sure that you don't point out when you think he is wrong.

[Bored chemist]

Here's one of the more polite ones.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

Pleased to encounter another fan of Kruger and Dunning. Should be required reading for Her Majesty's Inspectorates. Perhaps Craig is a warranted inspector?

It is a bit odd that you would pick Dunning Kruger bias to attack Craig with. It's not generally used to explain why people agree with the consensus, or why a consensus of experts, or if you will, the most knowledgeable people about a subject at the time, might be wrong. (We can quibble about whether it's the oft quoted 97% or somewhat less, but I think its fair to say a consensus of climate scientists agree that human activity has been a primary influence over global temperatures in the last 250 years. )

The  Dunning Kruger bias is more often an explanation for why outliers (which might describe your own position more than Craig's - just sayin')  believe something they do. It came up a lot during the GOP debates to explain how Ben Carson, graduate of Yale and chief of neurosurgery at John Hopkins and practicing surgeon for 3 decades, could reject evolution or modern cosmology.

The Dunning Kruger effect also comes up in explaining why a certain number of scientists or medical doctors become anti-vaccination or anti-gmo activists. The bias doesn't simply say "dumb people are too dumb to realize they are dumb."  People lacking expertise in an area underestimate their lack of knowledge, and those who are very competent in another area may be even more prone to do this. What's more, the skill set of intelligent or well educated people makes them particularly adept at rationalizing or defending beliefs they may hold for irrational reasons.

At anyrate I would pick another cognitive bias to attack Craig with or the majority of climate scientists he agrees with (perhaps Bandwagon effect?) If you are going to use the argument that alarming studies get more attention, most climatologists are corrupted by money and political pressure, or peer review journals are a joke, it does sound a little tin-foil-hatty, the equivalent in most science forum discussions of over-turning the chess board. 

I wish this discussion hadn't dissolved into insults. I was getting interested.

If I was arguing with Craig  about global warming, you would have a point. He and I actually essentially agree on that .
However he is unable to accept that he's wrong about other things.
He is, for example, still shrieking that he understands entropy.
Well, for a start it's not really relevant- not least because the sun/ Earth system isn't closed.
For an encore he has totally failed to grasp how stupid his choice of example was. (Nobody who understands it would choose to illustrate entropy with a reaction where the entropy change is exactly zero)

Even people with K-D syndrome will get something right by accident and in this case, he's one the right (or at least conventional) side of global warming.
But he's hopeless about anything else.

[Tim the Plumber]

Here's one of the more polite ones.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

Pleased to encounter another fan of Kruger and Dunning. Should be required reading for Her Majesty's Inspectorates. Perhaps Craig is a warranted inspector?

It is a bit odd that you would pick Dunning Kruger bias to attack Craig with. It's not generally used to explain why people agree with the consensus, or why a consensus of experts, or if you will, the most knowledgeable people about a subject at the time, might be wrong. (We can quibble about whether it's the oft quoted 97% or somewhat less, but I think its fair to say a consensus of climate scientists agree that human activity has been a primary influence over global temperatures in the last 250 years. )

The  Dunning Kruger bias is more often an explanation for why outliers (which might describe your own position more than Craig's - just sayin')  believe something they do. It came up a lot during the GOP debates to explain how Ben Carson, graduate of Yale and chief of neurosurgery at John Hopkins and practicing surgeon for 3 decades, could reject evolution or modern cosmology.

The Dunning Kruger effect also comes up in explaining why a certain number of scientists or medical doctors become anti-vaccination or anti-gmo activists. The bias doesn't simply say "dumb people are too dumb to realize they are dumb."  People lacking expertise in an area underestimate their lack of knowledge, and those who are very competent in another area may be even more prone to do this. What's more, the skill set of intelligent or well educated people makes them particularly adept at rationalizing or defending beliefs they may hold for irrational reasons.

At anyrate I would pick another cognitive bias to attack Craig with or the majority of climate scientists he agrees with (perhaps Bandwagon effect?) If you are going to use the argument that alarming studies get more attention, most climatologists are corrupted by money and political pressure, or peer review journals are a joke, it does sound a little tin-foil-hatty, the equivalent in most science forum discussions of over-turning the chess board. 

I wish this discussion hadn't dissolved into insults. I was getting interested.

Please tell us which climate scientist thinks that the direct heat released by combustion is significant in global warming.

If fools are allowed to peddle complete drivel without challenge then we will be back to the age of ignorance. It is necessary to show that there are right answers and all others are wrong.

[Bored chemist]

I would bet money Bored Chemist has even less qualifications than you do. I can poke holes in his flimsy arguments, and I only have a passing knowledge of chemistry from studying biology and physics.

OK, lets have a look at that.
For a start, learn English before you criticise other's abilities.
You should have written "fewer qualifications" rather than "less qualifications ".

Then there's another question to address- why are you obsessed with qualifications? You have already said that you know people with formal qualifications who don't know what they are talking about. I told you to get a mirror.
Qualifications don't make people right or wrong, competently displayed evidence gets a lot closer and I have yet to see you do that.

And the final point is that, if you can pick holes in my arguments, please do so.
Thus far you have utterly failed. Indeed, as far as I can tell, you have not even understood them.

And just to reiterate; why did you choose a reaction with no entropy change to illustrate your "point" about entropy?

[Bored chemist]

Here's one of the more polite ones.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

Pleased to encounter another fan of Kruger and Dunning. Should be required reading for Her Majesty's Inspectorates. Perhaps Craig is a warranted inspector?

It is a bit odd that you would pick Dunning Kruger bias to attack Craig with. It's not generally used to explain why people agree with the consensus, or why a consensus of experts, or if you will, the most knowledgeable people about a subject at the time, might be wrong. (We can quibble about whether it's the oft quoted 97% or somewhat less, but I think its fair to say a consensus of climate scientists agree that human activity has been a primary influence over global temperatures in the last 250 years. )

The  Dunning Kruger bias is more often an explanation for why outliers (which might describe your own position more than Craig's - just sayin')  believe something they do. It came up a lot during the GOP debates to explain how Ben Carson, graduate of Yale and chief of neurosurgery at John Hopkins and practicing surgeon for 3 decades, could reject evolution or modern cosmology.

The Dunning Kruger effect also comes up in explaining why a certain number of scientists or medical doctors become anti-vaccination or anti-gmo activists. The bias doesn't simply say "dumb people are too dumb to realize they are dumb."  People lacking expertise in an area underestimate their lack of knowledge, and those who are very competent in another area may be even more prone to do this. What's more, the skill set of intelligent or well educated people makes them particularly adept at rationalizing or defending beliefs they may hold for irrational reasons.

At anyrate I would pick another cognitive bias to attack Craig with or the majority of climate scientists he agrees with (perhaps Bandwagon effect?) If you are going to use the argument that alarming studies get more attention, most climatologists are corrupted by money and political pressure, or peer review journals are a joke, it does sound a little tin-foil-hatty, the equivalent in most science forum discussions of over-turning the chess board. 

I wish this discussion hadn't dissolved into insults. I was getting interested.

Please tell us which climate scientist thinks that the direct heat released by combustion is significant in global warming.

If fools are allowed to peddle complete drivel without challenge then we will be back to the age of ignorance. It is necessary to show that there are right answers and all others are wrong.

Lets be clear about this.
As far as I can tell, Tim and I fundamentally disagree about anthropogenic global warming.

I think Tim is wrong.


(Is that clear enough?)
I am pretty much convinced that the temperature is rising; that this rise is largely due to the effect of  CO2 in the atmosphere; and that we are responsible for that CO2.

Tim's view (unless I have misunderstood it) differs, at least in part, from that. (and, just for the moment Tim, if I'm not utterly wrong about that, just leave it- we can get back to details later).

Where I agree with Tim is that the direct contribution from heat released by burning fossil fuel is tiny.
I pointed out ( a long while back) that it only corresponds to about 1/15000 of the heat we get from the sun.

In post 334 someone (Thanks Agyejy) actually calculated the effective change in temperature that it would give rise to- and it's small (about 0.05 degrees) so it can not possibly be the cause of global warming which is much bigger than that.

So, when Craig continues to protest that the direct effect of heating is what's important (and that Tim was wrong to say otherwise) I will cheerfully stick my oar in in favour of Tim.
Because the one thing that really doesn't help any discussion is someone talking nonsense- whichever side they are on.
Since then Craig has shown a remarkable capacity to get thing utterly wrong.
using a reaction with no entropy change to illustrate entropy is the clearest example perhaps, but there are plenty of others to chose from

[alancalverd]

It is a bit odd that you would pick Dunning Kruger bias to attack Craig with. It's not generally used to explain why people agree with the consensus

D & K demonstrated and explained a strong correlation between ignorance and arrogance, both of which appear to typify Craig's contributions here. Nothing to do with herd instinct or whatever else makes people prefer a consensus in the absence of conflicting data.

What interests me about this whole subject is why anyone supports a consensus in the face of facts.  It's the basis of religion, politics, antiscience, and practically every anthropogenic evil I can think of. I am not in the least concerned about Craig's affectation of DK syndrome, which has shed no light on the question at all, but he does seem to have a florid case of it.

[cheryl j]

So what is wrong or right about these analyses? I am genuinely trying to get a better grasp of the evidence you feel the consensus is ignoring or misinterpreting. Politics aside, there must be some technical aspect that is the crux of the disagreement. I realize this sounds like a blatant appeal to authority, but the worlds climatologists can't just be entirely pulling this out of their ass.

https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch2s2-9-2.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiative_forcing

[alancalverd]

Just two points of evidence.

So what is wrong or right about these analyses?

Initially, two points of evidence, good scientific practice in questioning the validity of the data, and some simple undergraduate physics.

1. I was first shown the Vostok ice core data about 10 years ago (at an alumni conference of the Cambridge Earth Sciences department, just in case Craig wants to play the academic qualifications game) and immediately noticed that the temperature graph was always ahead of the CO2 curve. Now in my universe, the cause always precedes the effect, so CO2 cannot have been the cause of temperature fluctuations. Subsequent published analyses have confirmed what was visually obvious.

2. Notwithstanding point 3 below, we do have some very reliable recent data from a single sampling point - Mauna Loa. The temperature curve shows a smooth continuous upward trend in recent years, but the CO2 curve, whilst its mean follows the temperature curve, shows an annual cyclic pattern that is a very regular sinusoid. Now if this reflected anthropogenic carbon dioxide, as you might expect, you would expect to find the maxima in winter when we burn more carbon fuels to keep warm. But it isn't. The maximum occurs in early summer, every year. This clearly implies that temperature drives carbon dioxide. 

3. I have always been skeptical of so-called recent historic data on global mean temperature, for reasons rehearsed elsewhere - the fact that nobody had visited the poles,let alone made any serious measurements of arctic and antarctic temperatures before 1900; the fact that nobody has ever defined "mean global surface temperature" when asked; the fact that frankly nobody even cared about accurate land surface temperature measurements before 1920; the increasing paucity of such data between 1945 and 1970; the almost complete absence of temperature measurements of the sea surface (75% of the globe), mountains, or deserts (another 20%), prior to 1970; the increasing heat island effect on what land surface measurements we do have; lack of international standardisation of meteorological thermometers before 1926; the extraordinary correlation of the  NOAA "adjustment" of recent data to the known CO2 concentration.... enough for the moment....In short, most of the "data" looks like guesswork massaged with presumptions.

4. In my undergraduate days we studied infrared absorption as part of physical stereochemistry and the quantum mechanics of chemical bonds. We learned (and calculated, and measured) that the O=C=O structure is a rigid cylinder with very few infrared excitation modes. At pretty much the same time (the 1960's) we began exploiting the IR transitions of CO2 to make very powerful lasers - simple and powerful precisely because CO2 has such a narrow IR spectrum. Water, by comparison, has an enormously broad IR absorption spectrum even as a monomer, and exists in the atmosphere as monomer, dimer, trimer and possibly hexamer gases, liquid, and several ice phases with different structures and spectra. Given that the hugely powerful greenhouse gas, H2O, comprises around 4% of the atmosphere, and the weakly absorbing CO2 less than 0.04%, and that the latent heat of evaporation and melting of water (both of which take place in the atmosphere) is responsible for almost all of the energy transport that we call weather(still with us, Craig? that's part of the international syllabus for pilots, and I scored 100% in the meteorology exam)  it does not seem at all reasonable to ascribe any significant change in global surface temperature to the IR spectum of CO2.

5. We also learned that the CO2 absorption spectrum is close to saturation at ground level: adding more CO2 will not affect the overall IR absorption or emission of the atmosphere: the "extinction" phenomenon is of course true for all absorbers of radiation and formed one of the bases of my subsequent studies (PhD (Warwick) in case Craig is still with us)  and career (Chartered Physicist, National Physical Laboratory, US Bureau of Standards, and now a few private companies - none involved in oil or coal) in radiation measurement of all sorts. Even in our schooldays we learned that warm air can contain more water than cold air, so if water vapor promotes heating or cooling, the effect has an inherent positive feedback until the air is either  desiccated (as over Antarctica) or forms clouds that cut off the solar input - a bounded chaotic oscillator, just like the Vostok record. 

So I'm just a teeny bit skeptical about any model that begins with the presumption that CO2 is the primary climate agent (particularly when the IPCC said, in its first report, that it isn't) and then tries to fit "adjusted" "data" to the known or presumed CO2 curve. My skepticism is enhanced each year when the dire predictions of those models turn out to be wrong.

The "technical aspects" outlined above can be summarised us: when studied carefully, the data does not support the hypothesis that CO2 is the driver of climate. And that's the historical problem with scapegoats: the goat hadn't sinned, so sacrificing it did not placate the gods.

Meanwhile the world is going to hell in a handbasket, and climate change is going to exacerbate humanity's selfimposed mess, so the sooner we stop bleating about a non-cause and start dealing  with the inescapable effect, the better. But the solution is politically unpalatable, so intergovernmental panels and treaties will continue to ignore the facts and blame the electorate for burning coal.

[jeffreyH]

Anybody with an inkling of common sense should read what Alan wrote above.

[agyejy]

For the sake of an actual balanced accounting of the facts:

1. I was first shown the Vostok ice core data about 10 years ago (at an alumni conference of the Cambridge Earth Sciences department, just in case Craig wants to play the academic qualifications game) and immediately noticed that the temperature graph was always ahead of the CO2 curve. Now in my universe, the cause always precedes the effect, so CO2 cannot have been the cause of temperature fluctuations. Subsequent published analyses have confirmed what was visually obvious.

Just to make sure everyone is aware of all the evidence:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-lags-temperature.htm

In particular this video specifically sites a paper that explains the current ice core record:

The simple and brief answer is that historically orbital factors have initiated changes in global temperatures. When an increase in temperature was initiated the decreased solubility of CO2 in the warmer oceans caused a release of CO2 that enhanced the relatively weak orbital forcing. This is why in the ice record the CO2 lags the temperature changes. However, it is well known that the orbital factors are not strong enough to account for the observed temperature changes. In fact because it was known that orbital forcing wasn't enough it was actually predicted that the ice record should show a lag between CO2 and temperature for the reasons above before it was actually observed experimentally. We also happen to know that no such orbital forcing is occurring today thus the current rise in CO2 is not only because of us but is also doing exactly what it was always known to do. It just so happens that this time the instigating cause is different.

2. Notwithstanding point 3 below, we do have some very reliable recent data from a single sampling point - Mauna Loa. The temperature curve shows a smooth continuous upward trend in recent years, but the CO2 curve, whilst its mean follows the temperature curve, shows an annual cyclic pattern that is a very regular sinusoid. Now if this reflected anthropogenic carbon dioxide, as you might expect, you would expect to find the maxima in winter when we burn more carbon fuels to keep warm. But it isn't. The maximum occurs in early summer, every year. This clearly implies that temperature drives carbon dioxide.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/warming-co2-rise.htm

So basically as above it is well known that temperature swings can impact the rate at which CO2 enters and leaves the atmosphere via the oceans. This completely explains the seasonal fluctuations about the mean of the CO2 curve. If anything it supports the fact that climate scientists clearly understand the carbon cycle and how it is related to various climatic parameters.

3. I have always been skeptical of so-called recent historic data on global mean temperature, for reasons rehearsed elsewhere - the fact that nobody had visited the poles,let alone made any serious measurements of arctic and antarctic temperatures before 1900; the fact that nobody has ever defined "mean global surface temperature" when asked; the fact that frankly nobody even cared about accurate land surface temperature measurements before 1920; the increasing paucity of such data between 1945 and 1970; the almost complete absence of temperature measurements of the sea surface (75% of the globe), mountains, or deserts (another 20%), prior to 1970; the increasing heat island effect on what land surface measurements we do have; lack of international standardisation of meteorological thermometers before 1926; the extraordinary correlation of the  NOAA "adjustment" of recent data to the known CO2 concentration.... enough for the moment....In short, most of the "data" looks like guesswork massaged with presumptions.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/surface-temperature-measurements.htm

In short the analysis of global mean temperature has been done by several independent groups using the same data sets as the three main temperature reconstructions, completely independent temperature records, and known temperature proxies that have a well characterized link to global temperature. The results are mathematically identical. Given that independent groups analyzing the same data and completely independent measures of the same quantity came to the same conclusions it is highly unlikely that the warming trend can be ascribed to any non-climatic factors.

4. In my undergraduate days we studied infrared absorption as part of physical stereochemistry and the quantum mechanics of chemical bonds. We learned (and calculated, and measured) that the O=C=O structure is a rigid cylinder with very few infrared excitation modes. At pretty much the same time (the 1960's) we began exploiting the IR transitions of CO2 to make very powerful lasers - simple and powerful precisely because CO2 has such a narrow IR spectrum. Water, by comparison, has an enormously broad IR absorption spectrum even as a monomer, and exists in the atmosphere as monomer, dimer, trimer and possibly hexamer gases, liquid, and several ice phases with different structures and spectra. Given that the hugely powerful greenhouse gas, H2O, comprises around 4% of the atmosphere, and the weakly absorbing CO2 less than 0.04%, and that the latent heat of evaporation and melting of water (both of which take place in the atmosphere) is responsible for almost all of the energy transport that we call weather(still with us, Craig? that's part of the international syllabus for pilots, and I scored 100% in the meteorology exam)  it does not seem at all reasonable to ascribe any significant change in global surface temperature to the IR spectum of CO2.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/water-vapor-greenhouse-gas.htm
http://www.skepticalscience.com/CO2-trace-gas.htm
http://www.skepticalscience.com/empirical-evidence-for-co2-enhanced-greenhouse-effect.htm

Water is a better greenhouse gas than CO2 but crucially it is often at or near its saturation point. The reason we have clouds and rain being specifically that water vapor has reached the saturation point (actually the air is usually supersaturated before clouds form) and precipitated out of the air. More specifically the fact that water is stable as a liquid (or solid) at most temperatures and pressure found to naturally occur on the surface of the Earth the atmospheric concentration is limited via the vapour pressure to somewhere in the 4% range. What this means is that if the atmosphere starts warming for some other reason that increase in temperature is going to increase the saturation point of water which is going to increase the warming effect that water has on the atmosphere. This is called a positive feedback and is well known by climatologists. The flip side of this is that since CO2 is largely not stable as either a liquid or a gas at basically any naturally occurring surface temperatures and pressures on the Earth it is theoretically possible to have an arbitrarily large CO2 concentration. So unlike water vapour concentration which is largely controlled by temperature and pressure CO2 concentration is only limited by the net rate at which CO2 enters the atmosphere.

5. We also learned that the CO2 absorption spectrum is close to saturation at ground level: adding more CO2 will not affect the overall IR absorption or emission of the atmosphere: the "extinction" phenomenon is of course true for all absorbers of radiation and formed one of the bases of my subsequent studies (PhD (Warwick) in case Craig is still with us)  and career (Chartered Physicist, National Physical Laboratory, US Bureau of Standards, and now a few private companies) in radiation measurement of all sorts. Even in our schooldays we learned that warm air can contain more water than cold air, so if water vapor promotes heating or cooling, the effect has an inherent positive feedback until the air is either  desiccated (as over Antarctica) or forms clouds that cut off the solar input - a bounded chaotic oscillator, just like the Vostok record. 

http://www.skepticalscience.com/saturated-co2-effect.htm

So it turns out surface CO2 concentration only actually matters in that it is a sign that CO2 concentration is increasing higher in the atmosphere. Also, while the strong absorption band of CO2 is nearly saturated there are many weaker sidebands which are not and while individually the may be weak together their impact is important. It should also be noted that even in the strong absorption band increasing concentration does still have an impact because the band cutoff is more gaussian than rigid. This means that as you increase the concentration the width of the absorption band over which meaningful absorption takes places increases even if the amount of absorption at the center of the band has saturated.

So I'm just a teeny bit skeptical about any model that begins with the presumption that CO2 is the primary climate agent (particularly when the IPCC said, in its first report, that it isn't) and then tries to fit "adjusted" "data" to the known or presumed CO2 curve. My skepticism is enhanced each year when the dire predictions of those models turn out to be wrong.

The "technical aspects" outlined above can be summarised us: when studied carefully, the data does not support the hypothesis that CO2 is the driver of climate. And that's the historical problem with scapegoats: the goat hadn't sinned, so sacrificing it did not placate the gods.

Meanwhile the world is going to hell in a handbasket, and climate change is going to exacerbate humanity's selfimposed mess, so the sooner we stop bleating about a non-cause and start dealing  with the inescapable effect, the better. But the solution is politically unpalatable, so intergovernmental panels and treaties will continue to ignore the facts and blame the electorate for burning coal.

I am sure answers to any lingering questions anyone might have can be found at the following link:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php?f=taxonomy

Oh and as an interesting aside there is also this:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/waste-heat-global-warming.htm

Which shows my earlier very crude estimate of human waste heat on global temperatures was at least a factor of 10 too high.

[alancalverd]

completely independent temperature records, and known temperature proxies that have a well characterized link to global temperature. The results are mathematically identical.

I'm impressed by your research.

Please give us a reference to the three independent pre-1900 trans-Antarctic survey records, the corresponding pre-1900 trans-Arctic records, the matching data from the Sahara, Amazon Basin, Manitoba and Gobi, and any three independent data sets from the entire Pacific ocean surface that predate the industrial revolution.

Please cite a temperature proxy that is not also a CO2 proxy.

Please define "global temperature".

I do not find it in the least surprising that independent groups, starting  with the same data and the same assumptions, end up with the same model, however dubious the data and assumptions. However when the model fails by more than its error bars to predict the next finding, or explain the observed historic phase shifts, it does rather cast doubt on the validity of the entire process.

[puppypower]

An interesting mental exercise is to ask the question, what would happen if we took away all the water from the earth. Say we have a waterless earth, but leave the atmosphere with the current CO2. This will allows us to isolate the impact of the water on global climate and weather.

If we took away the water, you would no longer have to worry about hurricanes, cyclones, thunderstorms, floods and any type of storm  event; tornado, that comes from water based clouds. We won't have to worry about El Nino and La Nina affects, which originate in the oceans.

The loss of the water, will alter the thermal capacity of the earth's surface; goes down. This loss will cause higher thermal swings between day and night, as well as summer to winter. Without water in the atmosphere, there are no clouds to reflect the sun or help the earth retain surface heat.

If the surface water was not there to absorb and release heat, less heat would be transferred via oceans based currents. The need for heat transfer will be done mostly by the atmospheres. But the atmosphere can't move as much heat, due to their lower thermal capacity, unless air speed gets super high.

The lack of water, will impact all of life. There will be no photosynthesis, since the two reactants are water and CO2. This means the production of oxygen will stop. The result will be the partial pressure of the oxygen decreasing over time, as oxygen reacts with the surface to form oxides, but is not replaced. With less and less O2 in the atmosphere, we cant form new CO2. We will also lose the ozone layer, allowing more and more UV to enter the earth. CO2 can be broken down wth short wave UV back to CO, O, O2, C. Loss of O2 may shift the CO2 equilibrium back to O2.

I am not sure how one can ignore water, since it is the straw that stirs the global weather drink. The lack of water based disccuson and the fixation on CO2, shows there is a gap in knowledge.

[agyejy]

This completely explains the seasonal fluctuations about the mean of the CO2 curve.

Well it would if the CO2 curve peaked in July-August, when sea temperature is maximal, but it actually peaks in May-June. But don't let the facts spoil a good argument!

I apologize for the mistake. Sea temperature changes don't completely explain the seasonal CO2 fluctuations. I neglected the fact that the growth of vegetation in the northern hemisphere (and thereby the world due to a disproportionate area of land being in the northern hemisphere) increases through July and August causing a massive uptick in carbon absorption which is less correlated with temperature changes. Thus shifting the peak CO2 concentrations back a few months remembering the competition between the ocean sink and the plant sink along with general response lag keeps the CO2 concentration from exactly matching to the date any seasonal cycle that drives changes in CO2 concentration.

Please give us a reference to the three independent pre-1900 trans-Antarctic survey records, the corresponding pre-1900 trans-Arctic records, the matching data from the Sahara, Amazon Basin, Manitoba and Gobi, and any three independent data sets from the entire Pacific ocean surface that predate the industrial revolution.

Please cite a temperature proxy that is not also a CO2 proxy.

The links I gave are generally fairly well referenced (especially any that have an intermediate or advanced tab).

For reference there are three major reconstructions of monthly global mean surface temperature and they use data from the Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN).
https://data.noaa.gov/dataset/global-historical-climatology-network-daily-ghcn-daily-version-3

There are other reconstructions using other data. For example:

https://data.noaa.gov/dataset/global-surface-summary-of-the-day-gsod <-- Maintained by the USAF looking at the station map of the GSOD vs the GHCN (found at the links provided) clearly indicate that the two data sets are independent of each other. As per this link:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/surface-temperature-measurements-advanced.htm

Reconstructions done with the GSOD are mathematically identical (i.e. agree within a relatively small uncertainty) to the reconstructions done with the GHCN. These reconstructions were done by Ron Broberg and Nick Stokes (a software engineer and all I could find about Stokes was that he has a blog). So not in anyway part of organizations that did the major reconstructions nor actually paid for the climate research and therefore have no sane motives fudging the data.

Here is another:

What about satellite measurements of temperatures in the lower troposphere? There are two widely cited analyses of temperature trends from the MSU sensor on NOAA's polar orbiting earth observation satellites, one from Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) and one from the University of Alabama-Huntsville (UAH). These data only go back to 1979, but they do provide a good comparison to the surface temperature data over the past three decades.

and another:

Reanalysis data sets also show the same warming trend.  A ‘reanalysis’ is a climate or weather model simulation of the past that incorporates data from historical observations.  Reanalysis comparisons by Vose et al. (2012) and Compo et al. (2013) find nearly identical global surface warming trends as in the instrumental record (Figure .

Links to the cited papers can be found on the cited page.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2012GL054271/epdf <-- Here is the paper that used proxies. Based on the descriptions of the proxies I'd say a good number of them are either independent of CO2 or dependent on CO2 in a different ways which would average out over the large set of proxies used (173).

Please define "global temperature".

I suppose to be exact I should have said global mean temperature or monthly global mean temperature to be even more precise. It should be fairly obvious how one goes about calculating the mean of all temperatures on the Earth over the period of a month. It takes a lot of addition and some division but computers are good at that.

I do not find it in the least surprising that independent groups, starting  with the same data and the same assumptions, end up with the same model, however dubious the data and assumptions.

As above there are several independent data sets showing the same trend. Additionally different groups approached the GHCN data using different data analysis techniques, assumptions and models. There are even comparisons between adjusted and unadjusted data that show the same trend in both. All of this can be found in the following link:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/surface-temperature-measurements-advanced.htm

However when the model fails by more than its error bars to predict the next finding, or explain the observed historic phase shifts, it does rather cast doubt on the validity of the entire process.

I believe the latter point is now firmly addressed with the correction of my earlier misstatement. As for the former I'm not sure what precisely you are referencing but this may help:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-models.htm

Also I have to point out that the research largely isn't mine as I am using one website.

An interesting mental exercise is to ask the question, what would happen if we took away all the water from the earth. Say we have a waterless earth, but leave the atmosphere with the current CO2. This will allows us to isolate the impact of the water on global climate and weather.

If we took away the water, you would no longer have to worry about hurricanes, cyclones, thunderstorms, floods and any type of storm  event; tornado, that comes from water based clouds. We won't have to worry about El Nino and La Nina affects, which originate in the oceans.

The loss of the water, will alter the thermal capacity of the earth's surface; goes down. This loss will cause higher thermal swings between day and night, as well as summer to winter. Without water in the atmosphere, there are no clouds to reflect the sun or help the earth retain surface heat.

If the surface water was not there to absorb and release heat, less heat would be transferred via oceans based currents. The need for heat transfer will be done mostly by the atmospheres. But the atmosphere can't move as much heat, due to their lower thermal capacity, unless air speed gets super high.

The lack of water, will impact all of life. There will be no photosynthesis, since the two reactants are water and CO2. This means the production of oxygen will stop. The result will be the partial pressure of the oxygen decreasing over time, as oxygen reacts with the surface to form oxides, but is not replaced. With less and less O2 in the atmosphere, we cant form new CO2. We will also lose the ozone layer, allowing more and more UV to enter the earth. CO2 can be broken down wth short wave UV back to CO, O, O2, C. Loss of O2 may shift the CO2 equilibrium back to O2.

I am not sure how one can ignore water, since it is the straw that stirs the global weather drink. The lack of water based disccuson and the fixation on CO2, shows there is a gap in knowledge.

You seem to be laboring under a misconception about what climatologist actually include in their models. As per my citation in the previous post:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/water-vapor-greenhouse-gas.htm

Here are some quotes from the intermediate version of the explanation:

Water vapour is the most dominant greenhouse gas. The greenhouse effect or radiative flux for water is around 75 W/m2 while carbon dioxide contributes 32 W/m2 (Kiehl 1997). These proportions are confirmed by measurements of infrared radiation returning to the Earth's surface (Evans 2006). Water vapour is also the dominant positive feedback in our climate system and a major reason why temperature is so sensitive to changes in CO2.

Unlike external forcings such as CO2 which can be added to the atmosphere, the level of water vapour in the atmosphere is a function of temperature. Water vapour is brought into the atmosphere via evaporation - the rate depends on the temperature of the ocean and air, being governed by the Clausius-Clapeyron relation. If extra water is added to the atmosphere, it condenses and falls as rain or snow within a week or two. Similarly, if somehow moisture was sucked out of the atmosphere, evaporation would restore water vapour levels to 'normal levels' in short time.

Satellites have observed an increase in atmospheric water vapour by about 0.41 kg/m² per decade since 1988. A detection and attribution study, otherwise known as "fingerprinting", was employed to identify the cause of the rising water vapour levels (Santer 2007). Fingerprinting involves rigorous statistical tests of the different possible explanations for a change in some property of the climate system. Results from 22 different climate models (virtually all of the world's major climate models) were pooled and found the recent increase in moisture content over the bulk of the world's oceans is not due to solar forcing or gradual recovery from the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo. The primary driver of 'atmospheric moistening' was found to be the increase in CO2 caused by the burning of fossil fuels.

It should be very clear that water is not being ignored by climatologists and in fact is a large part of their models.

[Craig W. Thomson]

D & K demonstrated and explained a strong correlation between ignorance and arrogance, both of which appear to typify Craig's contributions here. Nothing to do with herd instinct or whatever else makes people prefer a consensus in the absence of conflicting data.

What interests me about this whole subject is why anyone supports a consensus in the face of facts.  It's the basis of religion, politics, antiscience, and practically every anthropogenic evil I can think of. I am not in the least concerned about Craig's affectation of DK syndrome, which has shed no light on the question at all, but he does seem to have a florid case of it.

Nonsense, because when I was younger and lived in Texas, I DID follow the herd instinct, and was a climate change skeptic. Now I have enough of a science background to know better. Apparently, you can't recognize the herd instinct being displayed by you, Tim the Plumber, Bored Chemist and Puppy Power. Your little group of mavericks stand in opposition to consensus based on data.

The purpose of the IPCC is to evaluate the state of climate science on the basis of peer-reviewed and published scientific literature.

Got anything peer reviewed or published? No, you've just got a bunch of argumenta ab auctoritate in a public forum full of laymen.

[Craig W. Thomson]

Craig doesn't want a discussion because he already 'knows' he is right. How can you have a reasoned debate with a guy who so easily resorts to insults? Just make sure that you don't point out when you think he is wrong.

Wrong. I do know that the 97% of climate scientists who agree with one another know more about this than you, dill hole.

How can I have a reasoned debate with a guy who doesn't know what he is talking about?

[Craig W. Thomson]

We also happen to know that no such orbital forcing is occurring today thus the current rise in CO2 is not only because of us but is also doing exactly what it was always known to do. It just so happens that this time the instigating cause is different.

Yes, thank you.

[Craig W. Thomson]

It should be very clear that water is not being ignored by climatologists and in fact is a large part of their models.

Yes, thank you.

[Craig W. Thomson]

If I was arguing with Craig  about global warming, you would have a point. He and I actually essentially agree on that .
However he is unable to accept that he's wrong about other things.
He is, for example, still shrieking that he understands entropy.
Well, for a start it's not really relevant- not least because the sun/ Earth system isn't closed.
For an encore he has totally failed to grasp how stupid his choice of example was. (Nobody who understands it would choose to illustrate entropy with a reaction where the entropy change is exactly zero)

Global warming IS entropy, flat earther. Heat and carbon dioxide used to be in concentrated forms like coal deposits and oil reserves. We have now dissipated that heat and carbon dioxide into the environment. That's entropy. If you don't understand that, you need to go back to school, and try to learn this information correctly next time.

I never said the earth is a 100% closed system. I said it is an ESSENTIALLY closed system, and compared it to you and your friends burning logs in a tightly closed room with a single window that stays open 1/16 of an inch. There's a limit to how much of the extra heat we produce actually escapes into space, especially since we're adding CO2 at the same time, increasing the atmosphere's insulative properties.

Your last statement is the least scientific of all. There is no reaction where entropy is exactly zero, or we would have to throw the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics in the garbage.

[agyejy]

Again in the interest of balanced debate I relink this:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/waste-heat-global-warming.htm

To quote a relevant section:

When humans use energy, it gives off heat. Whenever we burn fossil fuels, heat is emitted. This heat doesn't just disappear - it dissipates into our environment. How much does waste heat contribute to global warming? This has been calculated in Flanner 2009 (if you want to read the full paper, access details are posted here). Flanner contributes that the contribution of waste heat to the global climate is 0.028 W/m2. In contrast, the contribution from human greenhouse gases is 2.9 W/m2 (IPCC AR4 Section 2.1). Waste heat is about 1% of greenhouse warming.

So going by those numbers if the measured warming is 0.8 °C only 0.008 °C came from waste heat which is well below the level that it can be measured. The generation of waste heat is simply not currently relevant to climate change.

[Craig W. Thomson]

So going by those numbers if the measured warming is 0.8 °C only 0.008 °C came from waste heat which is well below the level that it can be measured. The generation of waste heat is simply not currently relevant to climate change.

I am trying to keep this simple.

Applying combustion to 100 million years worth of fossil fuels produces both heat and carbon dioxide.

SOMETHING about that is causing anthropogenic climate change.

Can we at least agree on that?? Unlike some other discussions I had with you at physforum.com, I appreciate your comments this time. However, I don't care so much about nitpicking the details. I'm concerned about the overall trend.