Moderated Global Warming Discussion

[bit_pattern]

I consider Revkins advice to be good.

He mentions that one should not mistake science for what one gets from popsci articles, of course he makes this claim in a popsci article.

I tend to dismiss or leave unread such popsci fluff, including Revkin's.

I pretty much rely on the fluff myself because I'm not technically minded enough to draw conclusions from technical papers.

 

[Trakar]

I pretty much rely on the fluff myself because I'm not technically minded enough to draw conclusions from technical papers.

I think you probably underestimate your abilities or over-estimate the difficulties of reading and understanding most scientific papers. Regardless, there is nothing wrong with using popsci articles to track general news and findings, but when ever you are reading second and third hand accountings of the science you are adding several layers of opinion and misunderstanding to the information you are trying to absorb and integrate.

 

[Trakar]

...That simply leaves denier sites to occupy the first few pages of a Google search. I like to think we're not only here to joust with deniers, fun though that is (we have longer lances and heavier maces, and yes, Trakar, I do mean you ).

LOL, lets not turn this into a contest of lance length and dangling mace heft.

I still have hopes that I am wrong in my understandings and dire perceptions of the issue.

The zeal with which I attack ignorances and lies in forae like this isn't borne out of any sense of pleasure of accomplishment, but rather out of the frustrations of personal ineptitude at being able to effect greater understanding and corrective actions in the real world.

 

[aleCcowaN]

If a point really does challenge a global warming trend we should (as sceptics) pay attention to it.

Oh, paying attention to that on a daily basis doesn't mean we should help them to editorialize lies extracted from incomplete information.

That simply leaves denier sites to occupy the first few pages of a Google search. I like to think we're not only here to joust with deniers, fun though that is.

But these are forums not doing good at search engines. Considering what is to be shown, I'm not sure that is a bad thing. One of the reason for that low performance is a forum configuration with 40 posts by page, which is the most absolute no-no in design while trying to get a web audience. Secondly, the endless turns around the same thing. As a result this now 103-page thread has had and has very few visits -the vBulletin number for 79,560 now is made mostly of search engines verifying changes or lack thereof and, in a lesser extent, of participants reading, searching and preparing their replies-.

I agree we are not here to joust with deniers, that's why I wrote that. I gladly involve myself in threads dealing with how misinformation is fed and what human features -some of them preventing the processing of complex systemic information- make up deniers and help them in propagating their words. That would be very JREF- like, but surprisingly I don't think it's promoted or even allowed.

 

[BravesFan]

I don't know if you would call me a denier.... However, I find that climate being a chaotic system would not lend itself to any level of longterm predictability. (I also think that both sides of this debate tend to be bridled with politically driven agendas , and I don't mean everybody obviously, just that I find some of the information to be questionable ,on both sides, due to it coming from such biased sources)

Now, I tend to be of the opinion that since from what I have read global mean seal level is higher than the present (and I mean the historical mean) and global avg mean temperature is higher than the present. Would not this warming be just a return to the norm rather than a deviance from what we have perceived as the norm due to our limited time on the planet studying our climate?

I have no idea if the ideas of human caused climate change are true (and I suspect that we are probably involved to some degree as all things influence something as complex as climate) but I am not convinced by what degree. I suspect that nobody does either . (as I said the complexity of climate is immense ).

Not that i'm opposed to improving our energy sources and lowering emissions. In the long run these are good ideas regardless. (and a funny side not. This guy was talking to me about global warming and was very very over the top dramatic about it a very "the world is gonna end" kinda guy. When i proposed the question "well what if this all turns out to be wrong and people screwed the pooch on the science?" He said "well, if it makes us do all these improvements won't that be worth it?" I replied" I don't think that this is the way you want to motivate people to make improvements..")


So, anyway, I find the entire "Us vs Them" mentality of climate change to be a little silly and a little colored by agendas and probably not the most understood debate due to my above statement about chaotic systems. The greater the variables the less likely to predict them they become and climate has an awful lot of variables!

 

[aleCcowaN]

I don't know if you would call me a denier.... However, I find that climate being a chaotic system would not lend itself to any level of longterm predictability. (I also think that both sides of this debate tend to be bridled with politically driven agendas , and I don't mean everybody obviously, just that I find some of the information to be questionable ,on both sides, due to it coming from such biased sources)

Now, I tend to be of the opinion that since from what I have read global mean seal level is higher than the present (and I mean the historical mean) and global avg mean temperature is higher than the present. Would not this warming be just a return to the norm rather than a deviance from what we have perceived as the norm due to our limited time on the planet studying our climate?

I have no idea if the ideas of human caused climate change are true (and I suspect that we are probably involved to some degree as all things influence something as complex as climate) but I am not convinced by what degree. I suspect that nobody does either . (as I said the complexity of climate is immense ).

Not that i'm opposed to improving our energy sources and lowering emissions. In the long run these are good ideas regardless. (and a funny side not. This guy was talking to me about global warming and was very very over the top dramatic about it a very "the world is gonna end" kinda guy. When i proposed the question "well what if this all turns out to be wrong and people screwed the pooch on the science?" He said "well, if it makes us do all these improvements won't that be worth it?" I replied" I don't think that this is the way you want to motivate people to make improvements..")


So, anyway, I find the entire "Us vs Them" mentality of climate change to be a little silly and a little colored by agendas and probably not the most understood debate due to my above statement about chaotic systems. The greater the variables the less likely to predict them they become and climate has an awful lot of variables!

You may inform yourself better. I find that "find of climate being a chaotic system" together with "agenda-driven debate" to be the way you use to sort out a complex subject "(having) an awful lot of variables!". As your assertion about "chaotic" systems seems to come just from the idea "chaotic" suggests to you, it look like you must still learn a lot before filling the gap between "chaotic" systems and long term predictability. But you are pretty certain about the agendas.

Well, not mixing up chaotic with complex, all the science necessary, endless information sets, all of it is "out there" so you may find it by yourself. About the agendas, I ask you to provide elements so we can discuss such agendas, because a general "people have hidden interest" looks like the horoscope and its "you'll find interesting the advice given by some strange" and it doesn't add a iota. Also I ask you to expand why a chaotic system -including what a chaotic system is- means "unpredictable in the long term" or explain how do you get that "conclusion". The worst thing that can happen is everybody to learn something.

 

[Trakar]

I don't know if you would call me a denier.... However, I find that climate being a chaotic system would not lend itself to any level of longterm predictability. (I also think that both sides of this debate tend to be bridled with politically driven agendas , and I don't mean everybody obviously, just that I find some of the information to be questionable ,on both sides, due to it coming from such biased sources)

Now, I tend to be of the opinion that since from what I have read global mean seal level is higher than the present (and I mean the historical mean) and global avg mean temperature is higher than the present. Would not this warming be just a return to the norm rather than a deviance from what we have perceived as the norm due to our limited time on the planet studying our climate?

I have no idea if the ideas of human caused climate change are true (and I suspect that we are probably involved to some degree as all things influence something as complex as climate) but I am not convinced by what degree. I suspect that nobody does either . (as I said the complexity of climate is immense ).

Not that i'm opposed to improving our energy sources and lowering emissions. In the long run these are good ideas regardless. (and a funny side not. This guy was talking to me about global warming and was very very over the top dramatic about it a very "the world is gonna end" kinda guy. When i proposed the question "well what if this all turns out to be wrong and people screwed the pooch on the science?" He said "well, if it makes us do all these improvements won't that be worth it?" I replied" I don't think that this is the way you want to motivate people to make improvements..")


So, anyway, I find the entire "Us vs Them" mentality of climate change to be a little silly and a little colored by agendas and probably not the most understood debate due to my above statement about chaotic systems. The greater the variables the less likely to predict them they become and climate has an awful lot of variables!

You can ignore and dismiss the mainstream scientific understandings and findings from the same sources that are the basis of all the rest of our mainstream scientific understandings and go with your intuitions, or you can invest yourself in studying and understanding the mainstream science findings and see what they reveal whether or not it agrees with your intuitive perceptions, the choice is yours to make.

(hint - weather is chaotic, climate is not - climate is the result of long-term trends predicated by changes in energy flow into, and out of, the Earth's environment. Energy input, distribution throughout the Earth's environment, and its eventual exit from the Earth's environment are the direct climate variables. How that energy disperses throughout the complex regions and elements of the Earth's environment is expressed as weather.)

 

[lomiller]

I don't know if you would call me a denier.... However, I find that climate being a chaotic system would not lend itself to any level of longterm predictability. (I also think that both sides of this debate tend to be bridled with politically driven agendas , and I don't mean everybody obviously, just that I find some of the information to be questionable ,on both sides, due to it coming from such biased sources)

Specific realizations within a chaotic system are not predictable, but patterns and trends ARE. It's the same idea that allow us to say Jan 30th is going to be cooler than June 30 even if we have no way to reliably predict the temperature on either day.

Now, I tend to be of the opinion that since from what I have read global mean seal level is higher than the present (and I mean the historical mean) and global avg mean temperature is higher than the present. Would not this warming be just a return to the norm rather than a deviance from what we have perceived as the norm due to our limited time on the planet studying our climate?

We are in an interglacial, which mean our current temperature is at the high end of the range orbital factors cause it to swing between. The earth typically reaches it's current temperature for 5-15 thousand years every hundred thousand years or so, but doesn't go much higher.

3 degrees worth of warming would make it warmer than it's been in the last 5-10 million years meaning that it's outside the range current species have evolved to handle. If that amount of change were to happen slowing it would give things a chance to migrate or adapt but as it is we will probably warm that much in the next 100 years.

I have no idea if the ideas of human caused climate change are true (and I suspect that we are probably involved to some degree as all things influence something as complex as climate) but I am not convinced by what degree. I suspect that nobody does either . (as I said the complexity of climate is immense ).

That's a little like saying you have no idea how a plane flies so no one else does either. There is a huge body of work on this in the scientific literature and almost all of it says the world is warming due to human activity with debate centering around things like is it going to warm 2 degrees or 4 degrees.

So, anyway, I find the entire "Us vs Them" mentality of climate change to be a little silly and a little colored by agendas and probably not the most understood debate due to my above statement about chaotic systems. The greater the variables the less likely to predict them they become and climate has an awful lot of variables!

As I said above you misunderstand how chaotic system behave. The chaotic nature of climate means you can't predict any given year closer than about +/- 0.3 degrees, but this isn't significant when you are talking about warming of 3 degrees.

The us vs them here is people who trust what the published science has to say vs those who don't. I don't mind taking sides in an "us vs them" debate of that nature because if we don't ground our understanding of the world in science, what exactly are we to ground it on?

 

[BravesFan]

I understand chaotic systems. I feel that you are picking and choosing the parts you like and ignoring the parts you don't like. I also feel that unless we "know" the exact numbers for our global temperature over the last billion years or so, it's impossible to give an accurate prediction. How do we know the data is correct from CO2 measurements gained from ice core samples? How do we know that the relation we have assumed between global co2 levels has a direct relation to global temperature?

Not to mention this question that no one has been able to answer for me. Why is global warming a bad thing ? It would be an inconvenience to us true, but I would think that a warmer planet would lend itself to a greater bio-diversity by creating a wider temperate and tropical zone, which would create more rainforest and therefor a greater habitat for a greater number of species.

I dunno, I'm not someone who is hyper interested in this subject as I tend to think that humans think that they have more control over things in the environment than they do...however, I don't dismiss the climate change issue. I just question the ideology behind much of it. I have also grown to not trust many of the people in the natural sciences anymore as colleges have become so overrun by idealogues. (I know this won't go over well as many of you share this same ideology and tend to believe whatever they tell you...)

I'm honestly surprised that on a skeptical web forum , more people aren't skeptical of global warming and all of the "sky is falling" stuff surrounding it.

 

[Furcifer]

Specific realizations within a chaotic system are not predictable, but patterns and trends ARE. It's the same idea that allow us to say Jan 30th is going to be cooler than June 30 even if we have no way to reliably predict the temperature on either day.

Which is what he's saying. He's just pointing out that although you can predict it's going to be warmer in June the natural range in temperature is much greater than anything climate change could be responsible for.

We are in an interglacial, which mean our current temperature is at the high end of the range orbital factors cause it to swing between. The earth typically reaches it's current temperature for 5-15 thousand years every hundred thousand years or so, but doesn't go much higher.

This is incorrect. The temperature has fluctuated numerous times over the last 5000 years, several times it's been higher than it is now.

3 degrees worth of warming would make it warmer than it's been in the last 5-10 million years meaning that it's outside the range current species have evolved to handle.

Purely rhetorical nonsense. If 2012 was 3 degrees warmer than 2011 there are very few species that couldn't handle the change.

If that amount of change were to happen slowing it would give things a chance to migrate or adapt but as it is we will probably warm that much in the next 100 years.

It's quite possible it could warm 3 degrees over the next 100 years. Numerous species will die, but not most, and probably a lot less than will die due to human expansion into areas like the rain forest.
I could go on, but I doubt if anyone is really challenging the contention that humans are an invasive species

That's a little like saying you have no idea how a plane flies so no one else does either. There is a huge body of work on this in the scientific literature and almost all of it says the world is warming due to human activity with debate centering around things like is it going to warm 2 degrees or 4 degrees.

The poster didn't say otherwise. His views are pretty much inline with what could be termed "scientific consensus"; the planet has warmed a little over a degree in the last 100 years and most of that warming is due to humans burning fossil fuels.
Beyond that the science and what scientists think is very much open for debate.

The us vs them here is people who trust what the published science has to say vs those who don't. I don't mind taking sides in an "us vs them" debate of that nature because if we don't ground our understanding of the world in science, what exactly are we to ground it on?

There's no "us versus them" debate within the science, only the facts as they are compiled and presented. That's the published science, once you get into the pseudoscience sites like RealCrapClimate.com and WattsUpWithCrap that's where it becomes "us versus them". It becomes all about filtering information to suit personal and political biases.

 

[aleCcowaN]

I'm honestly surprised that on a skeptical web forum , more people aren't skeptical of global warming and all of the "sky is falling" stuff surrounding it.

I can't discuss your word about knowing some things nor your thoughts that I'm sure you are not presenting here as if they were facts. Maybe we can discuss 'chaos theory' in general and relating to climate and see how much do we really know.

I only can tell you that you can get some hints from the quote above.

There's still pending the subject of the agendas that you mentioned in your previous post and that I ask you to bring here for us to discuss (read my previous reply, if you forgot).

You have introduced yourself and you have been welcome. Maybe it's time that you start to assert things and substantiate them.

 

[lomiller]

Which is what he's saying. He's just pointing out that although you can predict it's going to be warmer in June the natural range in temperature is much greater than anything climate change could be responsible for.

The natural variation in yearly temperature is much much smaller than the daily temperature. (~2 orders of magnitude smaller)

Climate scientists publish hundreds of peer reviewed papers that touch on it every single year that touch on this. You are suggesting the entire body of peer reviewed literature is getting this wrong, which certainly qualifies as an extraordinary claim on your part, do you have anything at all it back it up?

This is incorrect. The temperature has fluctuated numerous times over the last 5000 years, several times it's been higher than it is now.

False. There is no time in the last 5000 years that can be confirmed as warmer that today. It’s *possible* the Holocene optimum was slightly warmer, but another 2 deg of warming by 2100 blows that out of the water.

Purely rhetorical nonsense. If 2012 was 3 degrees warmer than 2011 there are very few species that couldn't handle the change.

If we had a single year that was suddenly 3 degrees warmer globally you would see massive ecological disruption. A very warm year is on the order of 0.3 Deg warmer than trend, and that brings things like 1000 year heat waves or 1000 year floods.

The last glaciation took 5000 years to end, and from 17000 years ago to 12000 years ago the earth warmed ~6 deg C. 3 deg C over the next 100 years would put us at 4 Deg warming over a mere 200 years. Not only is this a large change in historical terms it’s also extraordinarily fast, much faster than any natural warming.

The poster didn't say otherwise. His views are pretty much inline with what could be termed "scientific consensus";

There's no "us versus them" debate within the science, only the facts as they are compiled and presented. That's the published science, once you get into the pseudoscience sites like RealCrapClimate.com and WattsUpWithCrap that's where it becomes "us versus them". It becomes all about filtering information to suit personal and political biases.

No, his views are not even remotely close to the consensus. His views, (and yours) are simply not held by publishing climate scientists. They are no closer to the consensus on AGW than Intelligent design is to the consensus on evolution.

There's no "us versus them" debate within the science, only the facts as they are compiled and presented. That's the published science, once you get into the pseudoscience sites like RealCrapClimate.com and WattsUpWithCrap that's where it becomes "us versus them". It becomes all about filtering information to suit personal and political biases.

The fact that you equate a site run by a retired weatherman with one run by a dozen or so actively publishing climate scientists and proceed to call the climate scientists and their work “crap” is telling IMO.

If you consider this us vs them, than put me on the side of the scientists every single time. If you chose to think there is some sort of equivalency between what NASA climate scientists blog about and what retired weathermen blog about, well I that proves my point right there.

 

[lomiller]

I understand chaotic systems. I feel that you are picking and choosing the parts you like and ignoring the parts you don't like. I also feel that unless we "know" the exact numbers for our global temperature over the last billion years or so, it's impossible to give an accurate prediction.

Then make a case for your position, otherwise you are just making assertion.

I also feel that unless we "know" the exact numbers for our global temperature over the last billion years or so, it's impossible to give an accurate prediction.

Why do you feel this is either necessary or relevant? The attractor of the climate system is defined by current conditions not conditions millions or billions of years ago and it certainly isn’t relevant as far as the earth’s ecology goes because those are not the conditions current life forms evolved to live in.

Not to mention this question that no one has been able to answer for me. Why is global warming a bad thing ?

Because it takes the earth outside the conditions the life residing on it has evolved to live in, and is occurring to quickly for evolution or even migration to keep up. We looking at changes to the earth that are comparable to those as the end of the last glaciations, but occurring 10X faster and warming the earth to temperatures no seen since humans and chimps were one species.

I'm honestly surprised that on a skeptical web forum , more people aren't skeptical of global warming and all of the "sky is falling" stuff surrounding it.

“Sell the controversy” arguments are not something sceptics buy into. The peer reviewed science says what it says, and when a layman questions the whole of the peer reviewed science, it’s seldom a sign of a sceptic.

 

[Furcifer]

Not to mention this question that no one has been able to answer for me. Why is global warming a bad thing ?

It isn't a "bad" or "good" thing, it's change. How you interpret change is a matter of perspective.

It would be an inconvenience to us true, but I would think that a warmer planet would lend itself to a greater bio-diversity by creating a wider temperate and tropical zone, which would create more rainforest and therefor a greater habitat for a greater number of species.

Historically periods of warmth are better for life on this planet than periods of cold. To this day cold presents a much more challenging obstacle for life on this planet than warmth or heat.

 

[Westwall]

You can ignore and dismiss the mainstream scientific understandings and findings from the same sources that are the basis of all the rest of our mainstream scientific understandings and go with your intuitions, or you can invest yourself in studying and understanding the mainstream science findings and see what they reveal whether or not it agrees with your intuitive perceptions, the choice is yours to make.

(hint - weather is chaotic, climate is not - climate is the result of long-term trends predicated by changes in energy flow into, and out of, the Earth's environment. Energy input, distribution throughout the Earth's environment, and its eventual exit from the Earth's environment are the direct climate variables. How that energy disperses throughout the complex regions and elements of the Earth's environment is expressed as weather.)

This is of course true and most recently demonstrated by the methane plumes that have captivated the public. Semiletov and Shakhova were very clear that the methane being released now is due to sea water inundation that occured thousands of years ago.

Other then Revkin though, you will be hard pressed to find that information anywhere else.

 

[CapelDodger]

I understand chaotic systems. I feel that you are picking and choosing the parts you like and ignoring the parts you don't like. I also feel that unless we "know" the exact numbers for our global temperature over the last billion years or so, it's impossible to give an accurate prediction.

We never will know the conditions of the planet (atmosphere, oceans, geography, biosphere, insolation) to an arbitrary degree of exactness, so this amounts to "we can't know anything until it happens". I find this position to be utterly barren when it comes to formulating policy - and doing nothing is as much a policy as doing something. I appreciate that some people will find it comforting if unwelcome events which have been predicted actually occur - "no blame".

How do we know the data is correct from CO2 measurements gained from ice core samples? How do we know that the relation we have assumed between global co2 levels has a direct relation to global temperature?

Since the data comes from numerous samples from different locations, taken and analysed by a variety of research teams, this amounts to "science doesn't know anything", since science is based on independent verification of observations and data. Again, a comforting position if stuff does hit the fan, but not one that's useful.

Not to mention this question that no one has been able to answer for me. Why is global warming a bad thing ? It would be an inconvenience to us true ...

That's why many people regard it as a bad thing, especially those who expect to be personally inconvenienced. Those who are terminally inconvenienced can be safely ignored, of course.

... but I would think that a warmer planet would lend itself to a greater bio-diversity by creating a wider temperate and tropical zone, which would create more rainforest and therefor a greater habitat for a greater number of species.

This may well be true in the long-term, and if biodiversity is your benchmark then this would indeed be an improvement. Most people don't take that view, which is why AGW is widely regarded as a bad thing - for individuals and their descendants. I'm neutral on the matter personally.

I dunno, I'm not someone who is hyper interested in this subject as I tend to think that humans think that they have more control over things in the environment than they do...

Given the extent to which we've changed the world in the last few thousand years, and the fact that we've increased atmospheric CO₂ by over a third in two centuries and punched holes in the ozone layer, we certainly have a large influence on the environment. Whether that counts as "control" is debatable.

...however, I don't dismiss the climate change issue. I just question the ideology behind much of it.

Science has no ideology.

I have also grown to not trust many of the people in the natural sciences anymore as colleges have become so overrun by idealogues. (I know this won't go over well as many of you share this same ideology and tend to believe whatever they tell you...)

You must find the world a frightening place with all those ideologues running the show. It doesn't seem to have put much of a brake on science and technology in recent times though. Don't you find that odd?

My own experience of climate scientists in the 70's and 80's was that they were distinctly apolitical, and default conservatives. Glaciologists were apolitical and party-animals (to be expected when you spend half the year living in an ice-bound Norwegian shed). Your experience may be different, but I found it was the Humanities which were the hotbeds of politics.

I'm honestly surprised that on a skeptical web forum , more people aren't skeptical of global warming and all of the "sky is falling" stuff surrounding it.

We are sceptical. That's why we examine the science and what's actually happening, rather than assign unwelcome science-based predictions to the influence of ideologues and dismiss them as "sky is falling" scare-stories. Again, I can see how people can take comfort from the fact that whatever happens, however dire, won't be the end of the world. I prefer a more pragmatic approach myself.

An analogy would be predictions (there were many) that the most recent financial bubble would end in tears and quite possibly a recession on the order of the 1930's. This was generally dismissed as predicting the end of the world, which of course it hasn't been. It's just been very inconvenient for a lot of people, and will continue to be for some time yet. That really doesn't justify dismissing the predictions (which were hardly rocket science, after all) because they were unwelcome.

 

[BravesFan]

Then make a case for your position, otherwise you are just making assertion.

Why do you feel this is either necessary or relevant? The attractor of the climate system is defined by current conditions not conditions millions or billions of years ago and it certainly isn’t relevant as far as the earth’s ecology goes because those are not the conditions current life forms evolved to live in.


Because it takes the earth outside the conditions the life residing on it has evolved to live in, and is occurring to quickly for evolution or even migration to keep up. We looking at changes to the earth that are comparable to those as the end of the last glaciations, but occurring 10X faster and warming the earth to temperatures no seen since humans and chimps were one species.


“Sell the controversy” arguments are not something sceptics buy into. The peer reviewed science says what it says, and when a layman questions the whole of the peer reviewed science, it’s seldom a sign of a sceptic.

i don't buy into the "peer reviewed science" becauser i am of the opinion that most of it is consensus science nonsense. I think the "approval" is based on an agenda of liberal minded proffs. pushing environmental crap science . There has been much dissension in regards to this. (and if you want me to cite it, I'm not i dont have time and Im not getting a grade on this so find it yourself)

I have seen agenda driven science with my own eyes down here after the BP oil disaster. I have seen "proof" by real scientists about how the entire coast was going to be ravaged by oil and all of our wildlife destroyed and the beaches unusable fo 25 years.. blah blah blah. It all turned out to be rubbish , and much of it was paid for by environmental groups pushing their state of fear at the public. So pardon me if i think it's horse crap.

 

[Furcifer]

The natural variation in yearly temperature is much much smaller than the daily temperature. (~2 orders of magnitude smaller)

Climate scientists publish hundreds of peer reviewed papers that touch on it every single year that touch on this. You are suggesting the entire body of peer reviewed literature is getting this wrong, which certainly qualifies as an extraordinary claim on your part, do you have anything at all it back it up?

Nonsense. I'm not suggesting anything is wrong

False. There is no time in the last 5000 years that can be confirmed as warmer that today. It’s *possible* the Holocene optimum was slightly warmer, but another 2 deg of warming by 2100 blows that out of the water.

I don't know what you mean by "confirmed"? Nothing is "confirmed", it's all an educated guess, even in the modern era of temperature recording.

If we had a single year that was suddenly 3 degrees warmer globally you would see massive ecological disruption. A very warm year is on the order of 0.3 Deg warmer than trend, and that brings things like 1000 year heat waves or 1000 year floods.

So? You're claiming a 3 degree increase in temp is an extinction level event, it's absurd.

No, his views are not even remotely close to the consensus. His views, (and yours) are simply not held by publishing climate scientists. They are no closer to the consensus on AGW than Intelligent design is to the consensus on evolution.

Nonsense. He's reiterated scientific opinion on global warming, just without the hand waving and drama.

The fact that you equate a site run by a retired weatherman with one run by a dozen or so actively publishing climate scientists and proceed to call the climate scientists and their work “crap” is telling IMO.

pseudoscience is pseudoscience. It's probably worse coming from "scientists".

If you consider this us vs them, than put me on the side of the scientists every single time. If you chose to think there is some sort of equivalency between what NASA climate scientists blog about and what retired weathermen blog about, well I that proves my point right there.

Science is the great equivocator. It doesn't matter who you are or who you know, so long as the science is sound.

Try reading the science on your own instead of filtering it through bias laden sources on the internet.

 

[Mikemcc]

...
The last glaciation took 5000 years to end, and from 17000 years ago to 12000 years ago the earth warmed ~6 deg C. 3 deg C over the next 100 years would put us at 4 Deg warming over a mere 200 years. Not only is this a large change in historical terms it’s also extraordinarily fast, much faster than any natural warming.
...

Just to emphasis the rate of change to the system, here's a graph of the rate of change to atmospheric CO2, based on a number of ice cores:

source

 

[Trakar]

This is of course true and most recently demonstrated by the methane plumes that have captivated the public. Semiletov and Shakhova were very clear that the methane being released now is due to sea water inundation that occured thousands of years ago.

Other then Revkin though, you will be hard pressed to find that information anywhere else.

Science published the primary paper back in March of 2010 (and its been available for public viewing from this site since June of 2010):
Extensive Methane Venting to the Atmosphere from Sediments of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf
http://files.instrument.com.cn/FilesCenter/20100607/SH101432-133263.pdf

If you are speaking of the general consequences of arctic warming this has been talked about in science since the GHG effects were first considered and discussed back in the 19th century.

"On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air upon the Temperature of the Ground"
http://www.rsc.org/images/Arrhenius1896_tcm18-173546.pdf

NASA, NOAA, AGU and AMS (and others) have had several good information pages up for most of a decade or so linking and referencing the published science as well providing some over-view explanations:

Research Features
Methane: A Scientific Journey from Obscurity to Climate Super-Stardom
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/features/200409_methane/

NOAA Hot on Methane’s Trail
http://www.noaa.gov/features/02_monitoring/methane.html

AGU's information is not as concisely presented, but is rather scattered throughout their collection of papers studies and books -
http://www.google.com/cse?cx=014815...q=climate+change+methane&siteurl=www.agu.org/

Surface Temperature, CO2 and Methane: The Past, Present and Likely Trajectory of Three Key Indicators of Climate Change
http://www.ametsoc.org/atmospolicy/60125ESSS.html

Again AMS site is not quite as easy to use and isn't set up for a more focussed look at just methane, but both historic and latest publications and explanations are available. BTW, the AMS is scheduled to produce a new policy statement with regards to climate change in Feb. of 2012.

NAP site
CLIMATE CHANGE SCIENCE AN ANALYSIS OF SOME KEY QUESTIONS
http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10139

And more individual journal paper links over the last decade or so, than are practical to list in a messageboard post. But if you are ever interested in a reading list on any specific area, please feel free to ask. I, and others here, will be glad to help you find interesting and informative reads and links.