I respect the debate, but I have been reluctant to join for primarily two reasons. I have no technical expertise in climate science, unlike SABRMatt and I my opinion roughly splits the difference between csiems and Dr. D. Despite my caveats, here I am weighing in nonetheless.
Csiems made a critical point I fully support; the evidence cannot always be easily summarized and the technical experts are often poorly able to provide the best summaries. They have committed their lives to becoming experts. I can assure you after twenty years in research, I have lost contact with my prior ignorance. Communication is only effective when it starts from a place of shared knowledge and moves to the audience forward. Sometimes the key issues don't have a place of common knowledge and sometimes the expert has lost track of the appropriate starting point for the conversation. Poor and difficult communication should not be confused with intentional obfuscation and unsupported agenda mongering.
None of the prior paragraph should be viewed as acquiescence to authority. Skepticism is the lifeblood of research, but often times the edge of research does not make contact with widely shared knowledge. The technical viability of quantum computers is very much a point of debate, but the layman likely cannot participate in the debate.
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On the topic of climate change, a reasonable skeptic should question our ability to model climate. That is how I see myself a reasonable skeptic. My life experience tells me, we cannot predict weather, just like we could not predict the economic collapse of 2009. The trained scientist in me does not dismiss the obvious upward trend in global temperature. I fully accept that climate is a local phenomena and consequently it is challenging to get a 'global' temperature, but I do not think climate scientists are trying to hide the truth. That plot from NASA that csiems linked is an honest attempt to get it correct. Doesn't make it correct, but my experience tells me we dismiss the date at our own peril.
So in the eyes of a trained novice, I would say the temperature is rising, human contributions likely matter, and we don't have the ability to predict the future with any likelihood of success.
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So does this mean the proponents of strong government driven reductions in carbon dioxide emissions are using spurious science to drive a political agenda? While the answer must be yes for some, I think this general position misses the mark by a lot. In the end this is a policy question, not a science question. If you believe the planet is warming (which it should be noted the majority of scientists polled in the Forbes article claimed to believe), isn't it reasonable to ask whether or not we should do anything in response? Doing nothing could be a reasonable response, but not addressing the question is not a reasonable response. If you believe the planet is warming and ignoring it could lead to significant political and economic strife, it is reasonable to consider government intervention. That is what a progressive would do. I'm not a progressive, so that is not what I would do, but that doesn't make progressives political hacks.
In the end, I think the planet is warming and I think people have made a big contribution. I'd put the odds on that side at 60/40. Frankly, I think the genie is out of the bottle, and we're never getting it back in, so focusing on reduced carbon dioxide emissions is a fools errand. Again, doesn't make me right, just an educated guess. So if I were King of the world I would be investing in agriculture in Canada and Russia and figuring out how to deal with the consequences of global warming rather than trying to deny it or prevent it. Just an educated guess.

Of how presenting evidence and facts effectively and in understandable ways can change the world, as it changed his little corner of it. Like James and baseball, there is a small but very significant and worthy opposition to climate orthodoxy. I want to hear what they have to say and I want them engaged in the debate. I don't want them dismissed and mocked, like the ID movement is unfairly tarred as a creationist movement, and worthy scientists are denied a seat at the table for wandering off the reservation.

Once we move from the question of whether the planet is warming and if yes why to the question of what to do with the information at a policy level, the discussion becomes a political one. I believe in democracy, so I don't think the educated elite should be allowed to dictate policy.
Scientist, like many that participate in politics, make claims of authority to control the debate and better enhance the chances of getting what they want. Scientists are more inclined to do this because we tend to think we know better and get frustrated and dismissive when people don't follow.

If I were to try and synthesize your argument to a sentence -- a long winded, but singular sentence -- it would be, "I don't want to trust, I want to understand and make-up my own mind, and when people effectively tell me I am too dumb to understand by making claims to authority, rather than reasoned arguments, I suspect they are hiding something." To the extent this is your point, I agree with you except for the part that hints at conspiracy. For climate policy at least, the agenda is clear on all sides and having an agenda and fighting for it is not suspect in and of itself for me. Exxon has a climate policy agenda too, they are advocates for their agenda, but it doesn't mean their agenda is suspect or wrong.
I believe Americans spying on the US are anti-American. I don't think any side of the climate policy debate is anti-American. I don't think neo-conservatives are anti-American. I don't think Barbara Lee was anti-American for opposing the war in Afghanistan. I don't think social security is anti-American. I don't think military contractors are anti-American. I think we are all Americans trying to shape America's future. When we disagree about what the future should be, we should avoid mocking and dismissing one another. And we should avoid name calling. I often see questioning people's patriotism as a form of name calling.

Everyone has an agenda. Believing that there is no agenda in any movement of people is the same as believing that humans are inherently perfectible by government fiat. If you really believe that there is no agenda at all when a scientists hammers on about the worst possible consequences of human-induced global warming, then you also believe utopia is possible. And I cannot talk to you, because our beliefs are not reconcilable.
All humans have an agenda. Most of them, the AGW-proponents in climate science included, have a simple agenda, not a conspiratorial one. They want to MAKE MONEY. They want power in their university - security - long term stability for their families. And they'll do whatever research the government is willing to pay for to get that power and security. That. Is. A. Fact. That's not my opinion. That is just straight up common sense drawn from my experience watching them in the halls of Stony Brook...watching the AGW movement draw them all up in the hot pursuit of money.
They may also earnestly believe, thanks to studying the problem, that humans have created a significant global warming (most of them probably do), but there's a reason they don't spend any real time asking skeptical questions and pursuing other lines of research that might challenge the status quo arguments. They all know...and it was dramatically revealed in the climategate email exchanges and in my personal communications with climate scientists I deeply respected, despite our disagreement on the issue of climate change, that global climate models are *******TERRIBLE******** science. I cannot emphasize that word enough. The climate models we are using to form economic policies that prevent America from becoming energy independent and more secure against terrorism and recession are absolute GARBAGE. And everyone in climate science is at least dimly aware of it. I attended a talk each week for five years...and I still remember one such talk given by a scientist from NASA Goddard's climate modeling unit. She was trying to show the possible feedback impact of black carbon dust accumulating on Arctic ice. She developed the usual tuning methods and ran a series of 100 year climate simulations that were half reconstruction of known climate from the last several decades and half a projection. She got the usual warming trend and semi-accurate trend replication from the known data. Then she added black carbon feedbacks. The forecast PLUMMETED by 15 degrees in the space of three years (!) of the simulation. As though adding black carbon to the arctic ice were the same as Yellowstone blowing up. LOL These climate models we're all relying on...they...know...NOTHING...about climate. Not one gosh darned thing that can help us make a climate projection accurately.
We can't even agree as to whether the models are right that increasing CO2 will lead to increasing water vapor in the atmosphere. The models say this feedback should already have been happening but the satellite data says it has not been...not for 40 years of global warming. And if increasing C)2 does not increase water vapor...human induced global warming cannot be worth more than a degree C per doubling of CO2 and is therefore not a problem worth worrying about! Thisw is fundamental, foundational stuff that climate scientists, despite their blustering publicly about the consensus and the certainty and the need for action, all dimly know has not been settled
I'll close this rant by stating one more time - everyone has an agenda, and it's usually money. Willie Soon gets paid millions by Exxon and friends...(he's a prominent skeptic)...but what skeptics get paid is absolutely DWARFD by what alarmists get paid by governments. I don't believe the scientists are conspiring for a political outcome...but I believe GOVERNMENTS are...by handing out money to scientists desperately seeking it (and power and influence) to research only those lines that empower government to further regulate our lives in the name of saving the planet. And if you don't see the possible danger of government funded science drifting into policy-making...you have too much faith in your government.

The Earth used to be much warmer. North America was divided into Laramidia and Appalachia with places like Texas and Nevada were entirely underwater. There used to be iguanas in Alaska. At that time, the late Cretaceous Period, there was no such thing as polar ice caps.

In 2011, we saw the main island in Japan, Honshu, move 8 feet in one day. For comparison, Honshu is about 15 percent larger than Washington State.

The point is that extreme changes to the Earth can happen quite suddenly. The theory that the Earth is warming and the ice might melt is not farfetched.

Scientists are worried CO2 concentration in the atmosphere can rise from the current 300 something ppm to 500 ppm.

The Cretaceous Period is believed to have CO2 at 1000 ppm. The Earth record for CO2 concentrations is 7000 ppm in the Precambrian era.

During the Cretaceous, era, the Earth appears to have been a very habitable place.

It would be very disruptive if all the ice melted but fears about this causing human extinction seem unwarranted.

Just noodling.

This next piece may cause offense, but I don't mean it to...but anyone who disagrees with me is clearly a liar pursuing wishful thinking.
Yep. Sums up my view of the AGW alarmist crowd rather well.
I'd exchange ideas with you as Dr. D suggests, but when your starting assumption about me is that I'm a liar or willfully ignoring facts, I don't really see the point.

Loved this response. Very well reasoned. This is a much better version of what I was trying to communicate.

Are you a creationist? If so, are you an old Earth or new Earth?

I wish I could argue that it is a different kind of patriotism, but I think you are correct that the fly over states and the South are more committed to Country. Me, I think it is odd that we sing the national anthem before sporting events. I think it trivializes commitment to country, but it also makes it approachable and habitual.
Academics make a career on doing one thing, one narrow thing, really well. The process rewards parochial and narrow minded thinking. The only saving grace is most academics choose the career because they have a genuine love of teaching and learning. I fully agree it's a mixed bag.

You assert that the primary argument against the prevailing theory of AGW is that "we can't be sure" and "there might be another mechanism - something mysterious".
You're wrong. Utterly and completely. You show absolutely zero critical understanding of the skeptical position on this issue. Here is their case, boiled down to bullet points:
- CO2 is a heat trapping gas, but the window of outgoing radiation it can actually trap is relatively small. All of the scientists, including the AGW crowd, agree that CO2, by itself, cannot warm the planet all that much more than it already has.
- The theory of AGW is that CO2 trapping of some additional heat will result in the atmosphere uptaking more water vapor - which is a MUCH...MUCH more powerful greenhouse gas. If you by the climate models lock sock and barrel, then CO2 warming is a few tenths of a degree and H2O warming is the whole rest of the picture. The claim made by warmists is that increasing CO2 has a strong positive feedback linked to water vapor which actually causes most of the warming.
- We have 35+ years of observation of the water favor content in the atmosphere by satellites. There has been no increase in water vapor since 1979.
- As well, climate models argue that the upper atmosphere should warm first, and especially in the tropics. We again have lots of observations that say this is NOT happening.
- Climate models also completely fail to accurately replicate the basic cyclical nature of the atmosphere/ocean/climate state, and how these processes work is not well understood.
- On top of that, Current estimates of the estimated impact of the doubling of CO2 are proving to be wrong by better statistical analysis of the satellite data, yielding new estimates of the "climate sensitivity" to CO2 that are a factor of two lower
- insert about fifty other fact-based arguments attacking many of the core pillars of the theory
Do you see what I'm saying here? It's really easy to dismiss your opponents as being intellectually dishonest when you don't know anything at all about what they argue to counter your theory. It turns out that skeptics, when you let them talk, will absolutely CRUSH YOU with a gigantic mountain of factual evidence supporting the claim that the climate models are wrong about the level of impact humans are having on climate.
I, personally, believe we're having some impact, but that the impact is not well measured presently and likely to be overstated based on a swarm of factual evidence and my understanding of how very deeply flawed the science is support the climate models themselves.
I believe in Occam's Razor too...the simplest explanation is usually the best...but it has to be the simplest explanation that fits the facts. It is known...it is a FACT...that CO2 cannot explain all of the warming predicted by the climate models...I await FACTUAL evidence that the second impact of water vapor is occurring before I believe the most extreme predictions of the IPCC.
But I guess my insistence that the climate models occasionally make a good forecast (so far, they are worse than worthless at making climate forecasts as per their abysmal track record of verification) makes me intellectually dishonest.
It might help your case that you were on the honest side of this debate if you...um..knew anything about the debate.

lr - the Creationist beliefs versus ID / Ancient Alien ideas versus the Darwinian Hypothesis is a whole different discussion, and there are plenty on ALL of these sides of this discussion with even more passion than AGW.... so until Jesus or an alien shows up, or a scientist can actually create life or matter from nothing... let's stick to the subject at hand.

Through all of the passion, assertions and the personal stories, there is a lot of GREAT info these past couple days. I only wish I had power / internet access to appreciate it sooner.
Further, I wish I had learned more from the PRO AGW side, but I guess I have some homework to do.
PS - I loved the Genesis 1 recap.... I had never heard it put quite that way.

If I didn't know you and sat next to you on an airplane for a few hours I have no doubt we would get on pretty well. I definitely think we'd make good conversation, whether you are a biblical literalist or not. I think I could learn a lot from you. I just think you take my criticisms too personally.
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I'm just connecting some dots, you shouldn't get so easily ruffled. For me, learning why people think the way do is more interesting than what they believe. Statistically speaking I just know that if you don't believe in AGW or you think the conversation is balanced on both sides, you MOST LIKELY (not always) come from the right, or the religious right, watch Fox as your main source of news, believe in Creationism, etc. That's no coincidence either, oh by the way. If you are offended at being asked if you are Creationist, as though I asked if you were a Jew Hater or something, then maybe you have an over sensitivity to your beliefs. Creationist isn't a hateful or pejorative term. That's what biblical literalists are called. It would be like me getting peeved if someone asked if I was a Darwinian Evolutionist. The fact that it carries some serious baggage to a pc conversation is the Creationists problem, not the one asking.
You've obviously been questioned, maybe even attacked for your beliefs. Maybe you've been mocked. I don't know, if it's me and someone is attacking my beliefs, or mocking me for having them, I can rebut with a grin on my face and not become offended in the slightest. I've done it on more than one occasion. I think it says something about the argument that you're more worried about tone and decorum than content at times. Maybe you're just a peaceful soul. I say let's get down to business! lol To which you'd agree, but with qualifications....
Anyway, I know I come on strong, and my tone is attacking at times. What can I say, the way you present your ideas gets people like me fired up. You do want dissent and passion on your site, no? You have to tire from the constant praise at some point.

I get the same argument just about everywhere I go when I declare myself skeptical of the scientific consensus tropes. No mention is made of creationism even - people just look for the first excuse to ignore any idea they don't like.

Sorry if I derailed the conversation into global warming - you gotta understand, when I see people who are not engaged with the daily telling me that I (a person very much engaged with the field daily) am not intellectually honest or stating what my side of the argument thinks and getting it completely wrong...they're in my house and I have trouble resisting slapping that weak slop out of their hands like I'm Yao Ming (becuase I ain't that tall so it's a rare chance for me. :) ).
In all seriousness...I didn't mean to misdirect your topic...global warming is a deeply hot-buttom issue for me.

It would just be so convenient for you if your belief that AGW skeptics are all far-right, wouldn't it? [Editor: let's watch this tone, please]
Take your labels and your assumptions elsewhere if you won't address the substance of someone's commentary, rather than your own assumptions about the person making that comment.

So I'm curious - why do believe it is the case that conservatives would be skeptical of AGW? If I wanted to concede that claim (which i don't, but let's do it for the sake of argument here). Why do you believe a conservative-minded person would be more prone to back the skeptical position?

Because I knew someone would come in here screeching that I'm generalizing, as if I claimed ALL AGW deniers come from the GOP. Again, as I stated, statistically speaking, if you are anti AGW, or believe their is no scientific consensus, you MOST LIKELY come from the right. This isn't debatable, or hard to find evidence for.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2013/11/01/only-tea-party...
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/may/6/fed-report-global-warming...
"All told, 163 elected representatives in the 113th Congress have taken over $58.8 million from the fossil fuel industry that’s driving the carbon emissions which cause climate change."
http://thinkprogress.org/climate-denier-caucus/
http://www.people-press.org/2013/11/01/gop-deeply-divided-over-climate-c...
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Want more links? How about something that addresses Fox news coverage of climate change, and how it can be linked to AGW denial.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/09/30/3573869/fox-news-addiction-c...
"In these pieces, I identified 6 separate studies showing Fox News viewers to be the most misinformed, and in a right wing direction–studies on global warming, health care, health care a second time, the Ground Zero mosque, the Iraq war, and the 2010 election."
http://www.desmogblog.com/fox-news-effect-few-references
"These studies tend to take the same basic form. First, they survey Americans to determine their views about some matter of controversy. Inevitably, some significant percentage of citizens are found to be misinformed about the core facts of the issue–but not just that. The surveys also find that those who watch Fox, or watch it frequently, are more likely to be misinformed."
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How about instead of me having to post 100000 links, you read what I write, how I write it, and if you have problems with it, then we can debate fairly.
I get that you fancy yourself a climate expert. You've been trained as such, and you either currently or did work in a related field. You CLEARLY know much much more about climate science than I do. I am not equipped to debate you on technical details. That's why I rely on reading tons of information about arguments from both sides, not just listening to one person.

I overreacted - for that I apologize.
I tried to redirect the conversation more constructive in my next comment - asking LR to state his assumptions (as to why he believed conservative-minded or religious people would tend to be more likely to be skeptical of AGW).
My irritation comes from his refusal to meet my arguments with counter-arguments - still not appropriate, though.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/108226/Republicans-Democrats-Differ-Creationi...
http://www.gallup.com/poll/27847/majority-republicans-doubt-theory-evolu...
Let me make a tiny change to my original claim, while maintaining the original intent. If you are an AGW denier, or believe that science doesn't have an answer, then statistically speaking, you are MORE LIKELY to come from the right. You are more likely to be a Fox news watcher. You are more likely to believe other unscientific things, like say creationism. You are more likely misinformed about other political and scientific topics. If you read the polls, and look at the research that's been done, this is not a controversial statement. at. all.
Can we move past this basic premise?
My asking him if he was a Creationist was an attempt to tie a few things together and show that these things are related. I believe I have done that on a basic level.
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When you or someone else accuse me of baiting people, it takes merit away from my points, as though my only intent is to embarrass people or start an emotional shouting contest. I have given you my opinion, backed with link after link supporting it. Can we move past the insinuations that I'm a troll?

You and Mr. Ellison, each, at different times in this and the previous thread made the claim that climate skeptics base their argument on something that is both intellectually dishonest, and not rooted in facts, but rather speculations as to alternative theories. I tried to explain to you what the skeptic position was, since you were clearly poorly informed.
I didn't come to my position in a dungeon somewhere. I came to it from both my study of the science itself and by studying both sides of the argument. I have particular concerns with the AGW theory that are not necessarily globally shared by the skeptics at large, but I kept the points I mentioned above to such points that are broadly agreed upon by skeptics. You can choose to believe me when I talk about the skeptical position, or you can (even better) go read a skeptical blog like Watts Up With That, or the papers of prominent skeptics like Bob Tisdale, Ryan Maue, Roy Spencer, or lately, Judith Curry (not a pure skeptic, but a brilliant scientist who questions the dire conclusions of the IPCC). If you had dedicated a bunch of time to reading about both sides of the argument from the source itself (the skeptic and the AGW proponent, speaking in their own words) rather than reading articles about what the skeptics say from Think Progress or some other mouthpiece for progressivism and/or AGW alarmism (Think Progress? Is your source? The Washington Post? DesmogBlog? - it explains how you could come away with such a stunted understanding of the skeptical position).
And if it's "screeching" to request that you not make broad statements that, while statistically true of the uninformed who follow the debate, do not represent the people LEADING the debate from the skeptical side...then I'm sorry you feel that way, but I suggest that you should consider differentiating between subject matter experts who are skeptics and less-informed people who are skeptics reflexively. And I also would suggest that I am not the only one who has been screeching.
I react with some annoyance when it seems that someone arguing the other position wants to put me in a box so the box can be discarded. And that, I think, is what you are doing. Even if you protest that you understand there are exceptions to your claim, the only reason to speculate as to whether Dr. D is a creationist or whether either of us is a far-right religious conservative is to cast doubt on the points being made as having an indefensible non-scientific bias.
In this entire thread (and the previous)...I am the only person thus far to attempt to use scientific facts/arguments to make my case. You admit that you are not well versed on this subject. Perhaps you shouldn't hold such lofty and aggressive opinions of your position on the issue then.

...some of the "screeching" you complain about MIGHT have something to do with condescending language like "I get that you 'fancy yourself' a climate expert". Is that possible?

Instead of addressing what he has said, you were hoping that he would admit that he was a Young Earth Creationists so that you could impugn his knowledge and judgment. First, that is fallacious argumentation. A person can be wrong on one subject and right on another. Second, he explained he is NOT a Young Earth Creationist so your tangent is especially irrelevant.
If you really want to discuss the substance of Dr. D's post then focus on what has actually been said instead of trying to suggest that by disagreeing with the theory of AGW a person must be ignorant about the subject. And don't use perjoratives like "denier".

I asked jemanji if he was a NEC because he said something about the fossil record. You inserted yourself in the conversation to say I was lumping all deniers into the same boat, blah blah blah, even though I went out of my way to point out that I was making general connections, not sweeping accusations. You got fired up and got some comments edited and starting firing off at me. I then went out of my way to defend my initial point, which was and remains factually correct, by posting links, which OF COURSE come from such LIBERAL/PROGRESSIVE sources as Pew research polling and Gallup polling, The Washington Times, etc. The links you are responding to were establishing a link between being a Republican and denying AGW, accepting creationism, being misinformed, etc. I didn't put the links up to debate technical details of the skeptic position, because that wasn't my initial intent.
You are hot headed and are just flying around looking to stick your chest out to let everyone how much of an expert you are. I've already said I know you are trained in related fields, and you know much more about the skeptic position than I do. That's why I didn't engage you on the skeptic position. I didn't enter into a conversation with you to debate water vapor not increasing for the last 35 years. In fact, I didn't even initiate conversation with you at all.
I'm not all that interested in debating you, one because it sometimes takes literally days for my posts to show up, at which time the conversation has moved on, and two, you are a hot head. You don't read what I write in its' context, and you're looking for someone to beat up on because you feel you're the resident expert on the subject. Additionally, I've seen how these debates usually go. I'll post SEVEN independent links, and you'll ignore them and/or dismiss them at first sight because they come from sites you don't respect, never mind much of the source material is coming from polling sources.
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By the way, the Republicans that deny it aren't just the misinformed public. Some are important people that make important decisions. These are the people that are deliberately misinforming the public. "I am not a scientist". Which side is parroting that utterly stupid line over and over?
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I don't have to cast doubts on you or jemanji specifically. The links I posted cast doubt on the skeptic position just by association alone. I'm not particularly interested in whether either of you, specifically, are creationists. I'm more interested in pointing out that generally speaking, the skeptic position carries with it lots of baggage.

We most certainly do NOT use Fox News as our major source for information. Everyone knows we turn to Rush Limbaugh for that. :-)

He demonstrated what I said much earlier so well: that anti AGW scientists make important points and deserve a place at the table, even if they are a mere 5% of the scientific community - which is probably a skewing of statistics, because If he were asked if he thought man made CO2 contributed to the warming of the climate, I would suspect he would answer yes (but so insignificantly as to not warrant extreme political action, which may not be asked).
I'd much prefer hearing Matt than Al Gore on the subject, that's for sure. And his scientific assertions have not been challenged or refuted in this thread.
The coupling of anti AGW to conservatism does bother me somewhat because I want the debate argued on its own merits. Coupling it with political views is interesting - to be sure, LR, I've wondered about the correlation myself. I think it has to do with the massive government insertion that makes conservatives skeptical. We don't like our ID scientists shut out of academia as well. It's the politics behind the "settled science" assertions that most bother me. I don't smoke cigarettes, believe they cause cancer, but I hate the nanny state response to it (how I enjoy the way Germany is tolerant about it - having spent the past week here. You can buy them from a vending machine anywhere, but you need a valid ID card for the machine to operate for you. And you have to be 18. You can, however, order up a beer at sixteen. Somehow, it works. But lose the solar panels and windmills, please :-) - someday.).

I don't know much about the acidity of the water. Temperatures are rising, but haven't for 19 years straight now. I worry more about a miniature ice age like we had in the 1700's - anyone know what caused that, by the way? Seems more destructive to man to have major cooling than warming. Farmers couldn't grow enough crops. But I believe economic progress in the first world will solve everything - except the sun cooling on us - not sure we can do much about that, except pump CO2 into the atmosphere. Then I will be bpvery happy to be wrong about AGW.