It doesn't have to be all doom and gloom necessarily. Opening up the Arctic could be interesting... However, your linked scorecard does say:

"After year 2070, global warming will become a net cost to the world, justifying cost-effective climate action."

But.. but... if I build a model based on my assumptions and them use that model to prove my assumptions and my 300 closest friends at the International Body of We Want to Control Everything and Eradicate National Sovereignty agree that my model proved my assumptions, then my assumptions were correct.  

That's science you denier!

This is a good point to say that the reason us filthy deniers don't model climate change to show how we're right and you're wrong is because most of us realize that the climate is way to complicated to model accurately.  I have no problem admitting that I can't model global climate with the level of certainty needed to make major worldwide economic decisions.  That's just plain honesty.  It just happens that I know just enough about modeling complex problems to know that no one can model global climate with that level of accuracy.  

For example:  How many of these models account for all the major factors in global temperature?  Here's a clue:  None. Because we don't have the computational power to accurately model every input into a climate system.  Instead they use a bunch of assumptions about the weights different factors have and they leave things out completely to simplify the problem.  Which is fine, in fact common, in complex modeling.  Except that normally you're not basing world economic altering decisions on those half-formed models and you're not running around screaming SCIENCE! like some faith healer charlatan trying to find someone to fall for his lay on hands. This is one of the keys to my suspicion of anything related to the IPCC and it's prophets.  They're not even willing to admit the limits of their approach.  They're so not willing to admit the limits of their approach that they do a lot of their work behind closed doors.  Any decision making process based on modeling is first and foremost informed of the limits of the approach taken so that any assumptions can be challenged and discussed. Openly and open-mindedly.  By everyone involved, not just those with the magic keys to get behind the closed door. 

And, for myself at least, I'm not out to contradict everything AGW proponents say.  I'm actually hoping to see new ideas that make me stop and reconsider my position.  That's precisely why I enjoy this sort of discussion and one of the two main reasons I hang around these forums and no other.  (Side note:  The other is that I really enjoy the game mechanic discussions around TBS games).  The climate here just happens to foster the two types of discussions I enjoy and this has attracted an interesting group of regular and semi-regular posters of diverse opinions that make for enjoyable discussion.  

But I'm also not looking to be spoon fed crap that I've already seen and then be insulted when I say I disagree with it.  

At the end of the day I'm hoping to have a god damn discussion about the subject. But aside from Jafo and one or two others, all of the AGW proponents seem bent on wrapping their posts in snide comments implying the stupidity of, coincidentally, everyone who disagrees with them.  

Here's a clue: That's about as much "discussion" as the IPCC report is "science". 

Thankyou for that...;)

Essentially the ONLY reason I am in this thread is to monitor 'snide remarks' and prolong this discussion's 'life' before it degenerates into name-calling.

A 'little' leaway is afforded, but in reality approximately 32 pages of this thread are redundant.

One side quotes the 'IPCC' as gospel....whilst the other cites it as 'fundamentally flawed'.

Opposing 'factions' suggest ulterior motives of each and every cited 'expert' report.

It's a little bit akin to...

I walked as far as I could and didn't fall off...ergo the earth is flat.

vs.

I walked to the end of the earth and there wasn't one...so it's round.

Perhaps it takes an astronaut up there to say...."yep, it's round alright....at least it appears to be from up here".  There are people who exist still that accept Australians must have magnetic boots because they are on the 'bottom' of the earth and yet don't fall off it.

With mental giants such as these the concept of 'reasonable debate' is, for want of another word.....futile....;)

Tactic-Claim the system one is trying to model is too complex, therefore any model, no matter how nascent, must be inaccurate because the task is impossible.That is your claim. The system is too complex to model, so whatever is said must be wrong, right? And you can judge this how, by the way?

It's been said MULTIPLE TIMES that you cannot pull a ten year data set and use it to judge the whole model. It has been said MULTIPLE TIMES that all models must be refined. You choose to ignore those posts, because if you set up the premise that AGW proponents believe the current theories and models are fiat and then find a flaw, the whole thing goes down in rubble. Once again, thankfully, science does NOT depend on you. A REAL skeptic would propose a counter model, or, if it is felt that the system was too complex, show why modelling it is folly. I see NEITHER of those things from a credible scientist. Do you?

Added in edit-You state that the "IPCC prophets" are not willing to acknowledge the limits of their approach. Once again, this is such utter crap. The scientific process takes care of the limits of the model. How? By showing the model does not match the data seen. This is PRECISELY where the power of the skeptics comes in. And I ask once again-where is the model or the data from the skeptics that supports your POV that the model is wrong? This is what science is. I can't see why you can't grasp that.

Sooo...there is no model for the interior of a star because that is too complex. Oh wait...here is one http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=9&ved=0CFUQFjAI&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.physics.utah.edu%2F~springer%2Fphys3060%2FLectures_files%2Flec17-2013.ppt&ei=m0hfUta_BpPc8ATF94H4DA&usg=AFQjCNETZLU3J4CVRKJu4wi7dayAOXvg5A&sig2=NLPXNJv66QKFIElht--MHQ&bvm=bv.54176721,d.eWU

There is no model for ocean currents because there is too much going on. Oh wait...here is one as well http://www.opc.ncep.noaa.gov/Current_fcasts.shtml

There is no model for Van der Waals forces because the interactions between electrons and molecules is too difficult to understand. Hold on...http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0020768305001587.

Soooo...yeah.

Sorry...I forgot You were giving me a clue about how the IPCC isn't science. You determined that how? Besides your gut feelings, how have you come to that conclusion? I'd love all the clues I can get.

Flagyl I appreciate your efforts but you're honestly wasting your time at this point. Dunning-Kruger rules the day here...

These have nothing to do with my point.  At all.  It's strawman nonsense.  For one, none of these are our globe's climate.  Secondly, I freely admit modeling complex problems happens all the time.  I have done it at several points in my career in support of business decisions my bosses had to make.  Those were obviously simpler problems than modeling global climate and it was still hard and we still had to make assumptions in order to get the model to an executable complexity.  And I say again:  I understand that assumptions are made and certain factors are removed to make the models workable.  I admit all of that and did so in my previous post too. 

My point was this:  Basing major worldwide economic policy that will significantly impact the quality of life of hundreds of millions of people on incomplete models and unfinished science is foolish.  Doubly so given that we seem to be incapable of having an honest discussion about the limits of modeling (more on this in a  moment).  Triply so given that, from what I've seen in this thread, no one has a solution that would actually fix the supposed problem right now anyway (except for Jafo looking to sterilize a bunch of folks...). 

I'm not ignoring anything you have said in your posts.  I'm not saying anything at all about the size or the quality of the dataset being fed to the model.  I'm saying that incomplete models are a tool for understanding the problem.  They're not definitive science and they are not the magic bullet to fully understanding a problem.  In this case we have incomplete models that, at best, need further refining (if they're not just flat out wrong).  And yet we are supposed to just accept the conclusions based off of those incomplete and in-need-of-refinement models, shut up and go along without any discussions or dissension.    

Finally, thank you for proving my larger point that we can't have an actual discussion about the limitations of modeling without snide bullshit like:

and 

Translation for the first:  This is a tactic.  A claim to undercut something I've already decided I don't like (for reasons you've implied previously are not honest).

Translation for the second:  I'm not a real skeptic.  Meaning I have ulterior motives for my skepticism that are somehow bad or wrong or evil or whatever.  Never mind that I've now explained twice why I think the system is too complex for complete modeling.  

This isn't a discussion for you.  It's internet chest thumping.  You're brow beating everyone who dares disagree with you.  Brad was right many pages ago (I think it was him anyway) when he said that for some people this issue isn't science at all, but a religion.  That makes me your heathen, I guess.  I've been a heathen in places before, so no big deal.  At least here I can just ignore you and continue the discussion with those who want to actually discuss things.  Which is an easier alternative than the other times in my life. 

Someone thinks they're clever in their insults.  In reality it's all just more snide bullshit intended to make you feel good in your supposed superiority while avoiding actually discussing anything.  

I'm taking a break from this thread for a while. If it's still around when I look back in on it and the posters are interested in discussion instead of 14 year old "look at me I'm clever" crap I'll jump right back in.  Until then, peace out.   

So you forgot you said this, right? "For example:  How many of these models account for all the major factors in global temperature?  Here's a clue:  None. Because we don't have the computational power to accurately model every input into a climate system." It's "the Strawman" to your red herring (there was no strawman. It was a post directly to your misguided assertion, by the way).

I NEVER chimed in on the economics of AGW. Why? Because I don't know enough about it. Is it important. Oh yes. But I do not know enough about it to make any contribution to any discussion at this point. If you want to decry the economics of AGW, fine. I have nothing to say. But if you want to discuss the science of it, I am more than familiar enough with the scientific process (Physics major in college and the bio sciences for graduate school).

No one said you have to shut up based on the facts of an incomplete model (at least I haven't, so don't project anything onto me). What I have maintained is that deniers, NOT SKEPTICS, basically say "The model is flawed in this aspect (hockey sticks, 2003, ten year gap in events that occur over centuries) therefore THE WHOLE THING is junk". They go  further, by NOT supplying an alternative, which is anti-science. A true skeptic would supply an alternative view that explains the data (Hoyle versus Gamow). The deniers just say "You're model is wrong, and we don't have to show that we have a better explanation".

You call me an "IPCC Prophet" and do not expect a sneering rejoinder? Laughable.

In edit-Did you call someone a 14 year old and then claim that everyone else is being snide? Did you say this in post #731 "More nonsensical rubbish to delegitamize your opponents opinion simply because they disagree with you."? LOL.

I will say again. A denier will say "the current model is wrong and no one can know why this phenomenon happens". A real scientist/skeptic will say "As long as data can be collected and a testable hypothesis can be found, we can try to understand this". Your saying "Never mind that I've now explained twice why I think the system is too complex for complete modeling. " shows me you have no interest in science. Oh wait, did you mention me bringing up a strawman about complex modelling? Now why would I do that? Oh yea.

Tactic-Suggest that I called/implied you are a heathen because when I tell you that if you are a real skeptic, you would offer a competing model to explain the data, I am telling you to do something that is impossible, even though I have done no such thing. Then I can be dismissed as a prophet and hence a fanatic to be dismissed (you already called me that, right? Lemme check your previous post..."This is one of the keys to my suspicion of anything related to the IPCC and it's prophets.". Yea, you did.). Now, THAT'S a strawman.

You can ignore me and the flaw in your argument (you offer NO VIABLE alternative. You just say "It's too hard to understand and so I won't" while you claim to be interested in the science). I'm sure you can do both quite well.

I'm talking to a wall...

No, he was being nice and giving you more rope, but you went and wrapped that around your neck too.  If you're going to shoot down all the excuses people provide them, you'll be left with purposeful duplicity in the end.

No shit, Sherlock.  Now what can't you grasp about batting zero?  Hundreds of temperature models have been made over the last couple decades, every last one of them has been wrong.  Not just half of them, or even most of them.  They're all wrong, most of them in BOTH DIRECTIONS.

There can't be a temporary downward trend.  Why?  Because it's impossible, the natural climate drivers can't achieve the rate of warming.  The natural forcings are insignificant compared to the greenhouse effect from CO2.  Their own argument predicates the last decade being impossible.  If CO2 is the driving force behind the temperature changes, and they can't be achieved by natural factors, then it is also completely impossible to fully reverse the advance and put it in reverse.

Did you turn on your planetary air conditioner and not tell anyone?  I sure as hell didn't.  Unless man caused global cooling countered CO2, the theory is bunk.  It's right there in your slide 32, you just haven't applied your brain to actually thinking about what you read.

You can't cherry pick the model that failed to predict a 15 year downturn in temperatures.  There isn't anything else to pick from.  100% failure rate to predict future temperature trends.  They couldn't even get specific factors right.  Sea ice extent is nowhere near where the predictions put it, land ice is nowhere near the mass they predicted.  The IPCC even overshot the current temperatures with their maintaining 2000 CO2 levels models.

The one thing those fucking retards at the IPCC were able to model is sea level rise.  It kept going in the same direction that it's been moving in for all of recorded history.  Funny how it's proof CO2 is going to destroy the planet when it was doing the same damned thing a thousand years ago.  Grats guys, job well done!

Well Wall, I eagerly await your stupendously enlightening reply to this.  It will say Cherry pick and completely ignore anything related to how every model failed to actually predict and the whole damned theory ate itself for lunch since 2003 turned out to be an outlier and not the trend.

Nahh, man. I'm not going to say anything like that.

When you are shown the info and you still claim nothing is happening aside from a sea level rise, I have nothing more to say.

There is a difference between saying that the reason for "event X" is this and not that, versus "event X" hasn't happened. One can discuss the merits of this and that in the first case. There is nothing to say in the second case, because according to you, "event X" didn't even happen despite the overwhelming evidence that it has.

Somehow, you seem to know more than anyone on a number of subjects, as I have noticed in this thread and others. I am not just talking about other posters here, I am talking about professionals, who have been educated, trained and worked for years in their areas of expertise (in many areas, not just climate science). The scientists are wrong, the economists are wrong, the lawyers are wrong, etc.

This is one instance where I am ok with being wrong as well.

Nobody could predict that the sun remained so calm for the last few years... hardly any sunspots, the sun is cooler than normal.

Or the occasional volcano, like in Island a few years back that blasts a blanket of particles into the air.

From what I've read, once these things were incorporated into the models, they WERE able to model the temperatures reasobably well.

This is the reason why no-one should base long-term conclusions based on just an incidental misfit to 10 years of data.

Then you will have no problem the proof of it being disproven.

rejection is not an option.  You either disprove it, or it remains in effect.  If it is disproven, please provide the proof.  Even Trenberth would love to see that trick.

Start here.  If you cannot google further, I can provide more: http://notrickszone.com/2013/10/11/gross-scientific-negligence-ipcc-ignored-huge-body-of-peer-reviewed-literature-showing-suns-clear-impact/

Au contraire.  Your problem is that when someone disagrees with you and you have no rebuttal, you resort to mindless ad hominems and petty insults.  I am not a republican (never have been), not a denialist (please provide even a scintilla of evidence I have denied anything), nor am I a tool for any fool.  But I am a scientist.  And I know that opinions are like nether regions, only data counts.

But I do chose not to PM you. I know better than to argue with irrational children.

How about Dr. Spencer?  Dr. Curry? Dr. Pielke Sr.? Dr. Pielke jr.? Richard Feynman?

Do you need more?  Might want to start by defining what a Climate Scientist is.

Have any/all of these contrarian papers been used to synthesize a competing model?

You can find papers that run counter to anything you like: Intelligent Design http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3246854/, Steady state universe http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0807/0807.1064.pdf , even that the Universe is filled with ether http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CDQQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Farxiv.org%2Fpdf%2Fphysics%2F0502007&ei=kQtgUrOHDI3-8QSmmoGgAw&usg=AFQjCNFa4q7GZTASTIZsKHfE4lTpxhV1ig&sig2=lHgUmDHLVHo1UJm0Fywgxg&cad=rja .

It all means nothing. That link you posted has 126 articles that were excluded. There could be 12,600 articles that were excluded. All papers are not created equally. Any of those papers could have been rejected for any number of reason, aside from a conspiracy (data set too small, flawed hypothesis, flawed analysis, etc). The issue of the quality of science was already addressed in this thread.

If there is anything legitimate in those 126 articles, they will pool their data and come up with an alternative model that explains what is observed.

Ok...please show me a DIRECT QUOTE from Feynman that shows he states the AGW is false. I have been searching for twenty minutes and I have found nothing.

I LOVE RP ("Surely you're joking, Mr Feynman") and I still have the Feynman lectures on Physics series. I never learned how to use his diagrams (too advanced for my undergraduate physics classes). I am very curious to see if he said this and why.

Climate models and IPCC predictions are actually quite accurate.

http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/spmsspm-projections-of.html

http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/uploads/WGIAR5_WGI-12Doc2b_FinalDraft_Chapter09.pdf

http://www.skepticalscience.com/contary-to-contrarians-ipcc-temp-projections-accurate.html

I don't expect any contrarians will read any of it. How do you speak to people who prefer ideology and emotion ("the fucking retards at the IPCC") over facts and science? Who start with a conclusion and then cherry pick anything to desperately support it? Who consider things like the Oregon Report and the ramblings of a retired Canadian geography professor as quality rebuttals to the IPCC reports?

His book Cargo Cult Science exactly captures the AGW religion. So whilst he didn't directly address the issue, he did describe exactly the pattern which AGW follows.

But it doesn't describe the deniers positions, right? Surely Mr Petrossa, you're joking.

So RP is does NOT state that AGW is false even though someone is implying he does...some would call that a lie, I think.

In edit-Did you say religion? Let's see-AGW HAS a model, which, while flawed, attempts to show why the global temperature is increasing. The deniers have a piecemeal patchwork of papers, but no competing model, so in essence, they are saying "AGW is false. Just have faith in what we say". Yes..I do see the marks of religious thinking here, but I think you are ascribing it to the wrong group.

Considering RF was a theoretical physicist who died the year the IPCC was created, it's unlikely he had much to say on AGW.

Well both can be contested. But lets not go there. Nobody is 100% anything. We can agree on that at least. It was a low shot from me, I apologize. This is why we should PM if you disagree, it would get off topic in here.

We are all tools for fools. You denying it is denying your political system. Democracy is our best option in the west, but it still gets abused by fools even then. How are you not a fool when you keep this system alive? I am sure you personally have a better idea of how to improve it, no matter what democratic country you live in. The fools are keeping the system alive as it is.

Even when you are right you might be a tool for a fool. As long as you are connected to other people in any way, you are vulnerable to fools. Hell, I am probably a tool for a fool in this very forum

Well, now we get to the point. Opinions based on facts is what counts. Data in itself is just facts. How you interpret them is the important thing. After all you all know the saying about statistics right? That's just data presented by itself. You need to look behind the presentation, and dig into the boring stuff. Science is about interpreting the data.

Final word, I would love to bet against you if you would fold on 95% odds every time (I think the UN Global warming panel gave those odds). After all science needs to be 100% true right? You are the scientist so you tell me. 

Lawyers are employed only so long as the law is too complex for the layman to understand.  As a result it is in their best interests to muddle things up.  Lawyers can argue "the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" into "can make it illegal to have one on you, buy one, have too much ammo for one, have one loaded in your own home, and outright ban them completely" and you expect honesty from them?  The legal profession is a nightmare of self advancement, it's why so many people seriously advocate killing all the lawyers to fix society.  When lawyers argue that plain English is a horrendously complex series of legal rulings twisting it around into the exact opposite, you're an idiot to go along with them.  Black is not white simply because someone rules it so, it just means the legal framework is corrupt.

Keynesian economists are wrong because it's economics for retards fixated with a need to control things.  Throwing up your hands and let the market take care of it's own problems is a scary idea.  The ruling class needs to feel that they can solve all problems, so the theory is pushed in universities despite having been bunk all along.  Wiemar republic anyone?  Money is just paper, an economy is driven by production.

Scientists aren't scientists, they're people with degrees in a variety of fields.  Most of them being referenced are professors.  Norman Borlaug was a scientist, he was studying specific problems and researching ways around them.  If you'd asked him about something outside his work without having him read up on the data used to make the presentation, Joe Blow would have been just as likely to be right.  Some guy teaching chem 101 that reads an article without ever looking at the data they used to achieve their assumptions is not a scientist.  They're a teacher.  You have bought into an appeal to authority, without even checking their source, just as all those employed people with busy lives have in spite of their degrees.  I checked.  As such, I can indeed claim to be far more knowledgeable in this area than the vast majority of the peer reviewers and survey respondents that just happen to have degrees in vaguely related fields.  Actual educated climatologists are all but non-existent.  The people working on this "problem" aren't climatologists either, they're physicists, geologists, astronomers, meteorologists, paleo-climatologists.

The people you keep deriding for not being peer reviewed climatologists are people that actually do know what they're talking about.  A retired meteorologist that was studying weather 60 years ago knows damn well that it's a crock of shit when they claim hurricane activity is abnormally high, it's not even high, let alone abnormal.  There's a reason so many of these skeptics are current and former weathermen.  It's their job to know that shit.

These people at the CRU are hardly the first scientists to fake results for funding.  They're not even unusual.  The length of time their con job has gone on isn't unusual either.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_variation

It's fucking normal dude.  The change from this cycle to the last is a small fraction of the change over the course of a cycle, and the cycles themselves didn't blunt the warming during the 80's and 90's.  This is the exact same trend in solar activity that we had then.  They did predict it, it's why the purple has that ever so slight decline in your slide starting in the 80's.  You're arguing that something they wrote off as a rounding error has now magically screwed their whole trend up.

What volcanoes?  The only halfway relevant volcanic eruption we've had in this time frame was the one in Iceland, and it was a 4, Mt. Pinatubo and Mt. St. Helens were both significantly larger eruptions with major impacts, and global warming continued unabated through the 80's and 90's.  Volcanic activity is low, not high.

Either the change in solar variance and the minor volcanic activity is more powerful than the increasing CO2, or it's not.  We have accelerated global warming factors, but global warming is going in reverse.  From what you've read, you should be able to grasp the fallacy in explaining a total change in direction with something that had little to no impact on the rate of climb previously.

See?

Yes, that is the question one has to ask.  Can they see.