oh, and the "dated" stats,
I did not bother posting the myriad of statistics that "proved" global warming was causing more hurricanes, back in what 2005 and 6? we had two brutal seasons but they were followed by quite normal seasons, the "proof" was very short term and the predictions it would only get worse and worse went by the wayside, yes, it may pick up again, for every blip in activity (very natural and normal) we have supporters and deniers jumping up and down using that blip as proof of something. Problem is it has been fairly "normal" with a few up blips and a few down blips.

and as I said, you will find statistics supporting anything you like. I did say you could find plenty to support your claims but you can take statistics and find them supporting any claim you wish. It's really all over the place. And we face the same problem with your hysterical claims, the oceans will rise and engulf entire cities!

Tom, its not all over the place....Everything is moving in one direction. And there is little discussion about the fundamentals. we know how weather events occur. The only question is at what point will AGW warming really begin to exacerbate the events?
I doubt you ever actually bother to read anything posted in answer to you, at least not the links..
The point I'm making is that the base reason for warming is increase Co2 retaining heat (energy) and that that trend is in one direction, and that increased energy means more violent storms.
I actually noted (through quoting the scientist ) that recent hurricanes are unlikely to be warming caused, although that won't really be known till we've observed a period long enough to evaluate as climate versus weather...
And thats the problem with people like you who refuse to understand the difference between weather and climate.
By the way, I didn't say that cities would be engulfed...I said that they would be difficult to sustain where they were. Now, that might be because they end up being flooded (say Bangaledesh) , or it might mean they get repeated hits from Cat 5 hurricanes, or it might mean that storm surges and shore erosion create seasonal flooding.
We do know that at one time, much of the space we've built cities on now was under water. We also know that 11 to 13 thousand years ago the oceans were lower.... It has to do with the build up of ice sheets on land.... None of these things are new knowledge Tom.

None is new knowledge, the "knowledge" seems to be lacking or at least varied. Your statement it is all in one direction is not borne out by what I was reading, they went in ALL directions.

Minister X wrote:You are immediately invited over to my place for poker. I'll even supply the beer.

Heh. I'm down. I seem to remember owing you a steak anyhow for some other gent's agreement in the dim past on the old RS. But more on my gambling problem later...for the nonce your Sam Adams is safe.

Minister X wrote:
If I had the time and expertise, I'd really like to dig into those climate models.

You and me both. When I was an MBA in training my favorite class was a risk modeling course where we built programs on (now archaic) LINDO and @RISK software packages. A South American airline got free analysis from us when they wanted to open a few new routes. Where should they go? How often? Using what models of planes? I loved it...and some of my routes are still in service! We were lucky in that every facet of the airline industry is meticulously studied. We had great data on fuel use, maintenance costs,aircraft leases, personnel overhead costs, all that. We built in variables based on the cost of oil, ticket prices, competitors' access...good times.

Minister X wrote: That said, we do know that man is causing CO2 to rise and that CO2 causes warming. And we're seeing warming. The real issues aren't about whether we're causing some warming. They are:

1) not so much how much of the current warming we've caused, but how much more warming will come from what we've already done.
2) and since we're sure to release more greenhouse gases, how much warming will that cause and what are the delays between production of the gases, warming, and then counteracting forces of gas absorption/sequestration or degradation?
3) we know that all sorts of systems will respond to warming, and some will in turn influence further warming or cooling; can we expect a net positive or net negative feedback and by how much? and with what delays? Is runaway warming a real possibility or just an extremely remote one or not one at all?
.

I'd add here that we ought to be seeing some predictive capacity emerging. Your above 3 points all point to the process of warming: 1- how much more will what we've done boost warming? 2- how much more warming will what we're about to do cause? 3- Does warming beget other warming across the board or some cooling and stability along with warming?

I think the next logical questions are: 4- What does warming actually do? 5- Can we tie effects to temperatures?

Getting people to change behaviors is hard if you can't put a time frame on consequences. It's even harder if you can't add the 'or else'. Noah didn't give a date:time but he let the people know what was coming...

I know the usual ones. Indonesian islands smothered. Polar bears extinct. More frequent and more vicious hurricanes. Is there a place that says "Once temps reach this range...Vanuatu is history."?

I see the risk in putting out things like that.
1- the time frame might be centuries. It'll be hard to push policy changes without some sense of urgency
2- The models may be wrong. A few big misses could make the AGW crowd look like the crazy guy down on Times Square with the cardboard sign.
3- We've hammered out pretty well in this thread that the globe is going to get hotter if we all vanish tomorrow. Heck, it would get hotter even if humans had never existed. How much hotter would it get without humans? Can I get a temp? Would that temp cause the negative consequences we're supposed to be staving off anyway?

After reading the IPCC report I see that the narrative is switching away from prevention to lessening the impact. If we reduce emissions then the droughts will be less dry, the hurricanes pack less of a punch, and the polar bears die less quickly. This puts the skeptics in the unenviable position of having to prove a negative. "you can't say that reducing emissions doesn't take the power out of tornadoes".

Well...I'm a glass half full sort of guy. Shouldn't we be patting ourselves on the back for how much more gas efficient our cars are now compared to the Buicks and Oldsmobiles of yesteryear? Did buying my first Toyota help put off the oncoming water war in Central Asia? Did my recycling over the past few years save some lives last year in Oklahoma when the storms came through? You can't say it didn't! I want recognition blast it! I've been hit with the stick...where's some praise to round out my training?

Anyhow...you guys might think I'm crazy to take the 5% position. After Katrina a buddy of mine from biz school contacted me with the following pitch. "Look, there's a website where you can bet on the number of hurricanes that will make landfall in the US next year. Everyone's in a lather over this last one and nobody's taking the short position. If we take the "zero" position we can get $85/on the dollar if I buy enough options right now. If the old gang can pool enough money we can make a real killing." I shrugged and kicked in a bit less than I should have....my wife still got a brand new laptop for her birthday and I paid off the Hiwaymobile. We haven't tried to repeat our coup...there haven't been enough suckers to so grotesquely imbalance the odds since then.

PC The conversation you and X are having...and the conclusions you seem to be drawing, went on a decade ago in most other parts of the world outside the US. (By people engaged on the topic).
Most people seem to have arrived at similar conclusions. Yours are sensible.
With the exception of the 5% theory.
Doing nothing to attempt to mitigate AGW has fewer positive effects than attempting to do the things which also make economic sense.
For instance. Lowering the use of foreign fossil fuels would greatly benefit the US economy and balance of trade. developing a domestic US green energy industry would replace all those jobs Ron Reagan let go to the far east. (IN December a factory in China hired 210,000 people to assist in production of displays for McIntosh equipment.. An industry abandoned by the US 30 years ago and out sourced. And now provides middle class jobs to the Chinese.)

The problem we have with tolerating the mouth breathing skeptics who can't understand or appreciate the science, is that we engage in a debate that takes away from the really important debate. What do we do about the problem?
Imagine if the skeptics who fought the science behind tobacco causing cancer had, besides dooming idiots who refused to quit smoking because they believed the skeptics, had also delayed the development of cancer fighting medicines and therapies? That's the situation I get fired about...
Sensible people can come up with sensible solutions that appreciate the time frames, ignore the fear and encourage the inherent optimism in doing something...anything.
But sensible people are often ignored when people start to acept a premise that science is a political debate. I appreciate that you haven't done that.

rickyp wrote: developing a domestic US green energy industry would replace all those jobs Ron Reagan let go to the far east. (IN December a factory in China hired 210,000 people to assist in production of displays for McIntosh equipment.. An industry abandoned by the US 30 years ago and out sourced. And now provides middle class jobs to the Chinese.)

It took me a minute...at first I thought you were saying that if we would only get greener then we'd get some of those polluting jobs back. But then I realized that you're saying that we'd get thousands of green related jobs in place of the manufactring ones we've lost overseas. (BTW Apple is in some hot water for its overseas polluting last time I looked)

Good theory I guess...though I think those jobs left the U.S. for different reasons (cheap labor, relaxed environmental laws, etc.) and that going green does nothing to address those reasons. Will battery operated cars ever be cheaper to manufacture here than in Asia or Mexico? Will fusion engines work better if they are assembled in Cleveland instead of Guanzhou? Why will what makes companies take their business to Asia change if we got green?

If we're not talking about manufacturing jobs...what jobs are we talking about here? Oiling the blades of the wind turbines? Eco-inspectors?

Anyhow, I'm glad X and I have come to the point you enlightened ones reached ages ago. So...let me have it. What are the solutions? What are the deadlines? What are the consequences? Links happily absorbed.

It's the buzz phrase is all, the costs of being forced to meet with new restrictions would cost far more than any jobs created and of those created, what's to stop them from going to China for cheaper labor? It's a theory and only part of the equation, but "Jobs" sounds good so they push it like it's going to offset the costs....not so.

Tom, there are also savings that can be made by reducing emissions (especially if fuel prices continue to rise). Energy efficiency is a very good thing for huge swathes of the economy.

PC

Good theory I guess...though I think those jobs left the U.S. for different reasons (cheap labor, relaxed environmental laws, etc.) and that going green does nothing to address those reasons. Will battery operated cars ever be cheaper to manufacture here than in Asia or Mexico? Will fusion engines work better if they are assembled in Cleveland instead of Guanzhou? Why will what makes companies take their business to Asia change if we got green?

The computer display systems, and other high tech manufacturing left because American trade policies and tax policies allowed them to do so. Once gone, what happens is that the knowledge base of that industry is lost. And is difficult to recover. Anyone wanting to enter the display manufacturing business in the US today won't find an experienced labour force, won't have the knowledgeable engineers to hire, won't have a coterie of supporting industries and suppliers. All that was lost because the Taiwanese and Koreans and later Chinese invested in building that infrastructure in the 80's and attracted that industry from the US.
A supine government made it easier to leave, allowing US based corporations the freedom to do what was best for their bottom line, rather than what was best for the country - in the long run seriously damaging the US domestic and exporting economy.
Today with the advent of a nascent green energy industry the US may now build an industrial infrastructure in this area that will generate growth. One day, perhaps an American factory could be hiring 210,000 employees in one month because of some sky rocketing acceptance of a product that an American factory was making...But only if policies in trade, regulations and tax help nurture that industry.Laissez Faire management of the economy and trade has allowed America's competitors to eat their lunch and pay for it too.
There is an opportunity in this new sector to change that failure.
An opportunity brought to you by a warming earth and a lousy balance of trade in fossil fuels.
One example of a policy that might help this happen would be the requirement for ISO standards of certification for ecologically sound practices on any factory exporting to a US port....Kind of levels the playing field when a Chinese factory would have to prove environmental responsibility.

So now you are proposing reducing free trade? I don't know of anyone who is against reducing our dependence on oil, green energy is awesome stuff ...when it makes sense. Working towards these ends makes sense for us, no doubt. But forcing it upon us by crippling the economy and pointing to a few jobs that might be created while ignoring the thousands that will be lost (not counting those older now lost oil jobs, I have no problem losing them for newer energy jobs) due to a shattered economy is just foolish. You are pretty much pointing out the 100,000 jobs created while ignoring the 1,000,000 jobs lost, it's no bargain.

GMTom wrote:So now you are proposing reducing free trade?

You think China's success is built on free trade, or that they are minded to move that way? We in the West may not have much choice if we want to be competitive.

No doubt about it, they offered cheap labor and few pollution restrictions. Ease of doing business unimpeded by "laws", no kidding business flocked there.

PCHiway wrote:Good theory I guess...though I think those jobs left the U.S. for different reasons (cheap labor, relaxed environmental laws, etc.) and that going green does nothing to address those reasons ...

I'm not sure you are right. I'm pretty confident that Germany or Austria for that matter are at least as regulated as the US and they retained much of their industrial base + create lots of green jobs.

I work with some companies in that area and they too lost many jobs to China, they moved their lesser expensive parts to China while concentrating on the higher end parts in Austria.

PCHiway wrote:...we ought to be seeing some predictive capacity emerging.

IPCC in 2007 wrote:Since the IPCC’s first report in 1990, assessed projections have suggested global averaged temperature increases between about 0.15 and 0.3°C per decade from 1990 to 2005. This can now be compared with observed values of about 0.2°C per decade, strengthening confidence in near-term projections.

Also...



To look into modeling in more depth THIS might be a good place to start. It's part of NOAA.

The Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) develops and uses mathematical models and computer simulations to improve our understanding and prediction of the behavior of the atmosphere, the oceans, and climate.

Since 1955 GFDL has set the agenda for much of the world's research on the modeling of global climate change and has played a significant role in the World Meteorological Organization, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessments, and the U.S. Climate Change Science Program. GFDL scientists focus on model-building relevant for society, such as hurricane research, prediction, and seasonal forecasting, and understanding global and regional climate change.

HERE is their very general page on climate modeling. At the other extreme, here's the abstract of a recent paper coming out of the GDFL. I picked this from among the three most recent papers because it's the easiest to understand and because it's quite relevant to the controversy we're discussing. The paper is entitled "Tropospheric temperature trends: history of an ongoing controversy"

Changes in atmospheric temperature have a particular importance in climate research because climate models consistently predict a distinctive vertical profile of trends. With increasing greenhouse gas concentrations, the surface and troposphere are consistently projected to warm, with an enhancement of that warming in the tropical upper troposphere. Hence, attempts to detect this distinct ‘fingerprint’ have been a focus for observational studies. The topic acquired heightened importance following the 1990 publication of an analysis of satellite data which challenged the reality of the projected tropospheric warming. This review documents the evolution over the last four decades of understanding of tropospheric temperature trends and their likely causes. Particular focus is given to the difficulty of producing homogenized datasets, with which to derive trends, from both radiosonde and satellite observing systems, because of the many systematic changes over time. The value of multiple independent analyses is demonstrated. Paralleling developments in observational datasets, increased computer power and improved understanding of climate forcing mechanisms have led to refined estimates of temperature trends from a wide range of climate models and a better understanding of internal variability. It is concluded that there is no reasonable evidence of a fundamental disagreement between tropospheric temperature trends from models and observations when uncertainties in both are treated comprehensively.