Surely skeptics and the concerned can unite to debate the question: If we are to do something about global warming, how can we do it with least economic disruption?

Surely the answer is a “no brainer”: (1) raise the cost of fossil fuels so (a) that people will use less, and (b) fossil free energy production becomes profitable, (2) return the money raised to consumers on an equal per capita basis (so that the “energy dividend” is unrelated to individual energy use), thus maintaining aggregate consumer purchasing power?

Chris Van Hollen’s “Tax and Dividend” Bill in the House (20 pages) and Cantwell-Collins “Carbon Limits and Energy for America’s Renewal (CLEAR)” (40 pages) in the Senate already incorporate these key ideas. Lets drop Waxman-Markey (1,600 pages of lobbyist created pollution) and Kerry-Boxer that threatens to be as bad.

It would be a great help if skeptics would say “Don’t waste our money; but please, please don’t waste more than you have to”!

More at www.sorryaboutthat.net where you can download a free pdf of “Global Warming: The Answer”, where I argue for a tax of $250 per ton of carbon.

21:39 says: "Like 20:13, many take a very, very few emails from 100,000s and claim they are representative. of the lot. (False Science.)"

On the contrary, if a person commits a crime and there is evidence of it, it does not matter that the rest of the person's life they are not committing crimes. They are still guilty of the crime for which there is evidence.

The ICO has determined that there is ample prima facie evidence the CRU climategate scientists broke UK's FOI law; however, the law was written in such a way that it cannot be prosecuted because the evidence came to light more than 6 months after the crime.

Breaking FOI laws is only one of the problems evident in the climategate emails; you evidently have not studied them.

21:39 says: "Then, take the most egregious statements out of context and call them representative. (False Science again.)"

On the contrary, the "most egregious" statements are even more troubling when put into context. This is more evidence you have not studied the climategate emails.

21:39 says: "In some cases, take a slang term and give it literal meaning then claim the new meaning as proof. (More False Science.)"

If you are referring to the "trick" to "hide the decline", you have to actually read Jones' email in its entirety, as well as surrounding emails and background information, to understand the meaning of this statement. It is in fact a giant problem in which Jones omitted data from an IPCC report which would have cast great doubt on their conclusions. The "decline" that was "hidden" was the divergence of tree ring proxy data from temperature data. The hidden decline would have shown that their proxies were duds. If a Wall Street type did this, you would correctly call it fraud.

Since your first three statements are 180 degrees wrong, I will not bother with the rest.

I think of the planet as an organism with an auto-immune disorder. One functioning part of the organism has rapidly multiplied (the natural checks and balances of the organism have failed), and the rapidly increasing part (homo sapiens) is using up resources of the organism and producing toxins, which further attack the organism.

Planet earth faces three major challenges: industrial toxins, population explosion of one species that produces those toxins, and overall temperature rise. The planet may be able to rid itself of the problem species, us, and regain a balance, or it may not. In that case the seas and atmosphere will boil away and Earth will look like Mars or Venus. This is what is really at stake. It is a false assumption to shrug this off and say, "Even if we die out, something will survive and life on earth will go on." If it gets too hot, this will not happen. A massive species extermination is already well underway.

What, in the history of human behavior, gives anyone hope that we can (1) cooperate together for the common good, and (2) curb our appetites for sex and violence, dominance, and power. I suggest we experiment. Let's simply walk away from every violent conflict we are involved in and then refuse to better ourselves at the expense of any other living creature. I dare you.

Let me just put this right out here and say I don't give a damn if our planet warms up. There is no simpler way to say that. What's the big deal on that little issue? Species have been diminishing for centuries now. Our earth is currently in the middle of the most rapid disappearance of species in its 3.6 billion year history. Despite what some of you are thinking, that disturbs me because humans do cause it. I don't hear anybody speaking up for extinction the way this ridiculous climate debate has been raging on. What about the enormous amounts of pollution the western lifestyle demands for its perpetuation and world-wide, people are drawn to it, desire it. Where is the seething debate over that precious issue that will with certainty get much worse very soon?

I don't care about global warming because I realize at a very deep level that life and our earth are essentially about change. The planet has been warming and cooling over its history and of this fact I am certain. I choose not to be alarmed by any of the fear-mongers and fall into their trap that we must do something about it now. Why not just tackle the issues one by one as they arise? Despite what many believe, humans are a clever bunch. (Consider Madoff and his Wall St crew.) I'm sure we can come up with something when the need arises. We always do. What's the rush? The coastal cities aren't flooded. Allow real problems to present themselves before we rush headlong into doing 'something' and perhaps something absurd and unnecessary.

Until then can we all do two things to help our situation? Number one if you see a problem, be a responsible adult and take care of it. Ask your neighbor for help if need be. Don't like spewing carbon, move closer to work, buy a bike, ride the bus, car pool. Two, stop placing your power in the hands of those you perceive to be "in charge." Because in reality you and only you are in charge of your life. In truly free societies this is the bottom line. We are all so different, see things so differently that we won't all agree what needs to be done. Besides as we all should by now know, governments are at best inept and at worst corrupt. They don't need further temptation to steal, cheat and lie.

Not everyone will fall in line when they see you biking to work each day and that's alright. Its called individualism and relates to number two, my second suggestion, not the bowel movement. Perhaps when they see how fantastic you look and feel from your healthier lifestyle they'll step back and think. They may only think you'd make a good hood ornament on the monster 4x4 but as long as they don't actually do it, its ok. Relax people, the world is not going to end. Its just going to get a little warmer, then a little cooler as it has since our planet began its journey around the sun. Its not a big deal.

All the deniers, and yes, that is what they are, have are word games, anecdotes and superfluous analogies. Nowhere is there any data that show that global warming is not happening. On the contrary, the data that does exist shows beyond a doubt that not only is the climate getting warmer, but that human activity is to a very large extent responsible.

For word games, you have the people pretending that the emails that were hacked from East Anglia somehow show that there is a conspiracy to fake the data. Unhappily for the denialists involved, they can't actually come up with a real example, only by innuendo and selective parsing of the words.

For anecdotes you have the present snowfalls in the northeast, but notice how the denialists are very careful to refrain from mentioning that outside their provincial attitudes the rest of the world has had an unusually warm winter. Actually worldwide this winter is one of the three or four warmest on record.

For superfluous analogies look at the claim that it's all a cycle and it was warm back in the Eocene when crocodiles were swimming in the Arctic Ocean. They never want to mention that cycles just don't happen by themselves. They are driven by something. And in this case, the warming is out of cycle because if the historical pattern were being followed, we would be cooling now. That should scare people.

Will Wilkinson of the Cato Institute was complaining that both sides were being hyper about the situation and he didn't know which to believe. He failed on two counts. One that he should be able to look at the obvious (melting ice caps among many others) and not get lost in the nattering about whether thermometers were properly placed. And two that he should realize that those prophesying disaster actually were wrong. What they had been prophesying ten years ago as happening in thirty years is happening now, ten years later. The forecasts for glacier and ice cap disintegration were much too optimistic. The same goes with sea level rise and with many other parameters that are changing faster than predicted. If anything, the climatologists have been too conservative in their predictions.

Curt,

You are very confused about the "hide the decline" email. You have swallowed the spin of the climategate scientists, hook line and sinker. The fact that you attempt to defend the indefensible on an issue that is so straightforward leads me to conclude that you and the warmist crowd care nothing at all about the truth.

Even the influential, mainstream Institute of Physics has come down very hard on the climategate scientists. The circle of wagons is breaking up. I don't need to convince you, because sooner or later it will be impossible for you to deny. The truth is coming out and it is unstoppable.

Those who are interested in reading the full email context can find it at ClimateAudit in the post "IPCC and the 'trick'". There is no need to take Steve McIntyre's word for anything he claims, because you can find the original emails very easily if you google "climategate searchable database".

It is clear, when the emails are read IN CONTEXT, that (in the words of Keith Briffa) "there [was] pressure to present a nice tidy story as regards ‘apparent unprecedented warming in a thousand years or more in the proxy data’". The hidden decline in the proxy data (during a time when temperature records were rising) would have detracted from their claims of unprecedented warming because it would have invalidated their proxies.

Of course these same scientists will come up with an excuse and claim they were doing something innocent. However, their own words in the emails do not substantiate their excuse.

[Sorry if I've posted this twice, it did not appear to go through the first time.]

Tmaloney, "All such stuff interferes with concentration on the main show" is EXACTLY the reason it is done! The vast majority of denier data/websites/etc. receives financing from those tied to big coal and big oil, both of which stand to be utterly destroyed should Catastrophic Climate Change become a completely accepted theory, and as a result they are pumping huge amounts of money into anything that will help confuse and mask the realities that surround us, using the same tactics (and in fact the same people and organizations in many cases) that were used to mask the health effects of tobacco use for decades... if Exxon can delay action on global warming for a decade they make $430 BILLION in profits so it's infinitely important to them to cloud the issue in any and every way possible. If the Exxon Valdez travesty was any indication, once the clouding of the issue fails they will turn to the courts to delay action for another 10 years (and another $430 billion in profits).

Anon 23:46, if you are following the science you know the answer to this one: The scientists are not certain why recent years' tree-ring data do not reflect actual warming, but the theory is that as a result of environmental change due to warming and pollution tree growth behavior is changed. As you also know (assuming you have been following the science) the trees they try to use are those living at their limits in terms of temperature and/or altitude because these are the trees that are most "stressed" in their environment and who's rings are considered most indicative of environmental conditions. Tree rings from unstressed trees don't show the growth patterns necessary to interpret environmental conditions.
So essentially what we have is a "mis-behavior" of recent tree growth, and it is clearly RECENT tree growth, that isn't fitting in with known data, and the scientists did an excellent job of figuring out how to make reasonable conclusions out of this dilemma, demonstrating excellent understanding of the current science in their field. If you study the Manhattan project you'll find many similar events, as works of this nature are always on the bleeding edge of science and global warming climatology is on the bleeding edge. As I said the Mann graph has been vindicated time and time again and among climatologists (who are far better than you or I or some TV weatherman at understanding the science) it's accepted as reasonable. Since I have no credible scientific reason to consider it invalid and the general consensus among climatologists is that it is acceptable, I accept it. If McIntyre was a climatologist, didn't have ties to big oil, and had a credible criticism that the climatologists refused to address I might consider him more credible, but due to his nagging Nasa underwent a second huge study at considerable cost and STILL concluded that the errors in Mann's conclusions were 'not significant' (and again this means statistically significant).
Exactly how much more would you need as evidence for the irrelevance of this argument before you would conclude that it wasn't anything sinister, while you continue to push the "big oil" interpretation of the evidence?
A Newsweek article perhaps? newsweek.com at page: /id/225778 seems to have a pretty good discussion of the realities surrounding climategate.

A minor followup for those interested in the facts: As mentioned above, the tree ring science being used in climatology uses trees in their "stress zones", the outer limits of the areas they normally occur in, either at their highest known altitudes or latitudes. Unstressed trees are useless because their rings don't show minor variations in climate. The scientists believe that as a result of global warming, those trees aren't as stressed as they need to be for their tree ring data to reflect temperature and/or environmental change. Of course it will take a great deal of research (which tree ring scientists are undertaking) to "prove" this theory but nonetheless it is based on known behavior in tree growth, and if correct it will inevitably result in changes in the known ranges of trees, as well as other plant life, exactly as the AGW theory predicts. Thus, if strong evidence supporting the theory is discovered in research it will SUPPORT the AGW theory and as a direct result the criticism of Mann's graph will go from "hiding tree ring data" to "using meaningless tree ring data" or some other manufactured criticism.
Secondly, anecdotally, have those that have been following the catastrophic climate change articles on TruthOut over the last few months noticed that all those "PhD's" and "Environmental Science Majors" have disappeared recently and now we have "Anonymous'" that sound exactly like them without those deceptive monikers attached (that we could use to connect their behaviors from post to post and article to article)? I do find that curious and it almost seems like moving from one deception to another as circumstances require, and I find myself addressing the same baseless arguments over and over as if someone thinks I might suddenly suffer an instant case of Alzheimer's and lose my ability to recognize BS when I step in it. I KNOW many of these folks are "repeat customers". Another interesting study would be to check the hours of these posts and determine if they only came in for 8 hours a day on weekdays, and a good linguist could for the most part tie the posts of "Anonymous" together based on the language style in individual postings. THAT would be an interesting study to read...

Curt 14:17 Wow! Calling me a Liar and a Paid Troll. When you can't argue the science, you sure do go all out with the Ad Hominums. What a shame! You seem like a smart person ... Surely you know that by resorting to these kind of 3rd grade idiotic name-calling tactics you have ceded the high ground and the science to me! You said you have pointed me towards the correct science twice ... LOLOL!! For me, it's the data and nothing but the data that counts, as inconvenient as that might be to you.

If you would care to discuss the data, I'll be thrilled to educate you anytime.

For what it's worth, CRU's Jones, (now that he's under Parliament's microscopic), agrees with me that there has been no significant warming for the past 15 years and that the RATE of warming from 1975-1998 was equalled by the RATE of warming from 1910-1940 which was also equaled by the RATE of warming from 1860-1880. These are the facts about the data. He also admits that the Medieval Warm Period has not been disproven, and that temps then could easily exceed temps now.

So the sad truth, for you anyway, is that the sky is not falling, the Earth is not dying, there has been no significant warming for 15 years and the warming from 1975-1998 that caused all of this uproar is nothing new, it is not unprecedented, it's been matched historically twice in recent history, and undoubtedly many times in the distant past.

Here is my challenge to you ... Pick ONE CAGW issue that you think that you can support with data and let me know what it is ... ONE thing ... ONE issue that you think you can hang your hockey stick on, and let me know what it is ... Make it a good one though, because I'll poke more logical data-driven holes in your argument than you can imagine. I've been studying this hoax for over two decades ... Since before NASA/GISS cherry-picked their favorite 1500 warm temperature proxie sites from the 6000 available that they had been using previously.

Good luck Curt ...

Curt 01:57 ... You are looking for data to falsify the CO2 forced Anthropogenic Global Warming Hypothesis? Try these on for size ...

The hypothesis of CAGW would require the trend in the snow line in the Northern Hemisphere to migrate steadily Northward. If the trend in the snowline in the Northern Hemisphere migrates steadily Southward instead, that would falsify the CAGW hypothesis.

The hypothesis of CAGW would require not only continually rising sea-level trends, but an actual increase in the RATE of sea-level rise over and above the pre-CO2-increase trend. If the sea-level rise merely continued to rise at the old steady pre-CO2 increase rate, or leveled off, or ceased rising completely, that would falsify the CAGW hypothesis.

The hypothesis of CAGW would require not only a steady trend increase in Global Land Surface temperatures, a steady trend increase in Sea Surface temperatures, a steady trend increase in Lower Troposphere temperatures, but also an actual increase in the RATE of warming of all three of these data-sets over and above the natural variability found during pre-existing, pre-CO2 increase trends found during the pre-CO2-increase times. If the increasing trend RATES are not evident in the data, that would falsify the CAGW hypothesis.

The hypothesis of CAGW would require increases in Global Hurricane activity such that the Global Accumulated Cyclonic Energy figures must show a trend increase. If the Accumulated Global Cyclonic Energy figures fail to show an increasing trend, that would falsify the CAGW theory.

We have been told that the CAGW hypothesis calls for increases in the number and severity of droughts. If the trend in total drought numbers or severity fails to show an increasing trend, that would falsify the CAGW hypothesis.

The hypothesis of CAGW would require a slow but steady warming/melting of polar sea-ice extents on both poles as the warmed middle troposphere migrates to the poles where it can more easily shed it's excess heat into the polar cold. Combined polar sea-ice extent trends that fail to show continued shrinkage would falsify the CAGW hypothesis.

The problem with any hypothesis is that it only takes ONE contra-indicator to falsify the hypothesis.

So Curt ... Do you think that any or all of these scenarios might falsify the CAGW hypothesis? Or are you so confident in the data that you will bet your honor and your reputation on the hypothesis surviving all of these possible falsifications of the hypothesis?

Inquiring minds and all that ...

ExxonMoe, I'll take just one of your examples: "The hypothesis of CAGW would require the trend in the snow line in the Northern Hemisphere to migrate steadily Northward".
Snow lines are dependent on WEATHER primarily, and CLIMATE secondarily. The AGW theory predicts that WEATHER will have more moisture to work with, and increased snowfall, such that it actually remains for some period of time on the ground in places where it typically melted on landing is the result of that moisture. Secondly the AGW theory doesn't predict much of anything STEADY because STEADY is weather. ONE PARTICULAR YEAR is WEATHER. You were around when I pointed readers to the 'ice breakup' dates in the northern US, and they oscillate, but measured across the years have been steadily getting earlier and earlier.
Since you seem to think sea level rise would be constantly accelerating you obviously don't understand the theory, but beyond that, what numbers are you using to decide that the sea level has been constant before and after the timeframes that we consider AGW to be applicable to? And don't try to feed me the Argo buoys, you tried that one before and now we all know they don't measure sea level.
Droughts aren't increasing in the expected areas? Who is fabricating your numbers? Have you ever heard of: Australia? Have you ever heard of Africa? Have you ever heard of the American Southwest?
And spare us the BS about "significant warming" from Jones' interview as you continue to demonstrate your complete rejection of SCIENCE altogether by using Webster's definition of the word when you have been pointed to the correct definition of "statistical significance" at least three times by my account. I have to assume you're repeating it as you have many times over in hopes that others are too ignorant of science and the scientific method to understand what Jones really said and will fall for your INTENTIONAL twisting of the wording of that interview.
I won't bother with any more of your post as the rest of your contentions are just as much BS built on fabricated science, twisted logic, and ignorance of AGW theory.
But you know that.

Curt 18:08 Hey Mr. Gullible! Nice to see that you can count. Your response to the "one" snow-line appears to have multiplied.

Here is my snow-line response referencing data from Rutgers University Global Snow Lab numbers (1967-2010) ... They show that the just completed meteorological winter decade (2001-2010) had the snowiest Northern Hemisphere winters on record. The just completed winter was also the second snowiest on record, exceeded only by 1978. Average winter snow extent during the past decade was greater than 45,500,000 km2, beating out the 1960s by about 70,000 km2, and beating out the 1990s by nearly 1,000,000 km2. Unfortunately, I can't print a bar chart here, but suffice it to say that the three decades prior to this last decade were all in agreement with the CAGW hypothesis, as the snow-line shrank northward for three decades in a row. This past decade is not a one year anecdotal weather anomaly. This is not an anecdotal America only ice break-up anomaly ... This is a southern plunge of the entire Northern Hemisphere snow-line for 10 years running, and the increase is so great that it surpasses all of the shrinkage from the last three decades combined. Since the CAGW hypothesis cannot account for a decade long southern movement of the snowline that is so significant that it surpasses all of the past 3 decades worth of northern movement even though the levels of CO2 continue to climb, I must deduce that the CO2 forced Anthropogenic Global Warming Hypothesis has been falsified.

Next? Sea-Level rise ...

Here are a few interesting facts.

Average winter snow extent has increased since the 1990s, by nearly the area of Texas and California combined.
Three of the four snowiest winters in the Rutgers record occurred during the last decade – the top four winters are (in order) 1978, 2010, 2008, 2003
The third week of February, 2010 had the second highest weekly extent (52,170,000 m2) out of the 2,229 week record

To anonymous @02:22 -

I am not a physicist. I'm just reading what the physicists write and trying to make sense of it. Here's my understanding of earth warming, since you propose an issue.

CO2 has three strong absorption bands and one weak band in the infrared spectrum, considered as the range between 0.7 and 20 micron wavelength. (See Note 1 below.)

The three strong bands are centered at about 2.6 microns, 4.2 microns, and 15 microns. The weak band (not as great a portion of the energy captured per molecule) is centered at about 2.0 microns.

The strong band at 2.6 microns is not of great importance as a global warming contributor because it is almost completely overlapped by a water vapor absorption band that extends from about 2.2 to 3.5 microns. That is, infrared radiation in the CO2 band will be mostly captured anyway, by H2O molecules.

Visually, you look at two simultaneous spectrograph-signature images to recognize this effect. See Peixoto, J.P. and Oort, A.H., Physics of Climate, Springer, 1992, p. 93; also Goody, R.M. (1964), Atmospheric Radiation: Theoretical Basis, Clarendon, Oxford; also www.brneurosci.org/co2.html.

Inspecting such simultaneous spectrographs, one can see that the other three CO2 bands are partially overlapped by water vapor bands, but not totally subsumed. The strong CO2 band at 4.2 microns rises steeply from 3.7, peaks at 4.2, then tapers off somewhat gradually to 4.8 microns - it's unsymmetrical. There is a strong H2O band rising from about 4.0 that partially overlaps the right side of the CO2 band. Therefore, adding more CO2 to earth's atmosphere doesn't have much effect on the infrared waves from 4.0 to 4.8 microns, because the water vapor catches them anyway.

Furthermore, near the center of the 4.2 band, where the capture-ratio is already high, adding more CO2 doesn't have a big effect because the already-present CO2 is now doing an effective job of retaining energy.

The problem comes at the left side of the 4.2 band, between about 3.7 to 3.9 microns. There's no water vapor effect there, and because the present concentration of CO2 is doing a relatively poor job of capturing the electromagnetic radiative (EMR) energy, there's room for "improvement" by adding more CO2.

It is at these "wings" of the capture-bands where a large percentage change can be wrought by increasing the amount of the capturing molecule - CO2.

The above is just one instance of this phenomenon. There is another large wing on the left side of the 15-micron band. Check it out. It rises erratically, starting at about 9 microns, then asserts itself aggressively above about 12 microns. The water vapor band is erratic everywhere between 10 to 17 microns. The left wing of this CO2 band is therefore weak in its own right, and has no strong competition from the water band. It's another candidate for "help" by higher CO2 concentrations.

A similar story for the weak CO2 band at 2.0 microns. Observe that it has no competition from water vapor.

Paradoxically, WEAK absorption bands are where the most harm comes to us from increased CO2 concentration.

There is another aspect to the energy-capture vs. concentration relationship. It is not proportional. This is usually referred to as the saturation effect. Doubling the concentration of the capturing molecule does not double the amount of energy captured, because their relation is logarithmic. The first molecules to appear on the scene accomplish a lot of absorption. Additional molecules accomplish less. This is sometimes described as Beer's Law (for optical effects), but it's just a specific instance of the inverse-exponential rising function. Check out Maloney, Timothy J., Electric Circuits: Principles and Applications, Prentice-Hall, 1984, pp. 330-37.

The saturation relation mitigates the problem, but underscores the fact that the problem does persist until the concentration becomes so great that ALL the re-radiated energy is absorbed. As I understand it, for CO2 that concentration is much higher than earth's atmospheric levels - we're never going to see that condition.

So the physicists crunch all the numbers regarding these two phenomena - the weak wings on the spectrograph and the inverse-exponential saturation effect - to calculate the amount of additional energy that will be absorbed per unit of time for various factors of CO2 increase. This is not mathematical modeling (see Note 2 below). This is straight mathematical calculation of a limited-scope phenomenon which, in isolation, is well understood theoretically. The physicists can anticipate how much additional heat energy will be absorbed if they artificially raise the CO2 concentration in a gas sample to, say, 500 ppm, or 600 ppm. After prediction, they can test their results in the laboratory. This has been been carried out and replicated for various CO2 concentrations. The experimental results agree well with mathematical predictions. No competent physicist disputes our ability to perform this calculation and make such predictions.

Now if you want to discuss how much atmospheric temperature increase we should expect as a result of that additional energy capture, then OK. Different expectations are possible. This is what atmospheric physicists talk about at their technical conferences, from what I understand. Topics like re-radiation in the downward direction versus the upward direction from the warmer gas , whether the temperature gradient will concentrate the excess heat close to the earth's surface or high up in the atmosphere, etc, etc. Climate physicists are disputing all these questions.

Here's what they have agreed to say (IPCC, AR4, 2007, Fig. 3-2 for example): In the most favorable possible future emissions scenario, the direct forcing effect of anthropogenic-derived excess CO2 will increase earth's average surface temperature by 1.1 to 2.8 deg C, with a most likely value of 1.8 deg C, by the end of this century. (Under the least favorable future emissions scenarios, it's really scary - appalling even.)

That's DIRECT FORCING, by CO2 alone. It does not take into account any possible feedback effects, and it EXPLICITLY IGNORES any possible changes in the polar ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica.

When we stop right there, things don't sound all that terrible, superficially. Heck, what's 1.8 deg C? We should be able to cope with that, right?

The really big worry, as I understand it, is not CO2's direct forcing. It's the methane feedback from ancient deposits in the permafrost of Asia and North America. I get my info from a National Geographic documentary titled EARTH - THE BIOGRAPHY, and from a transcript that I read of an interview with Energy Secretary Steven Chu.

In the National Geographic documentary they show a map of frozen methane deposits that have their origin in dead vegetation from previous geologic warm periods at far northern latitudes. Then we see video of gas bubbling up to a lake's surface, as the narrator explains that this is methane released from the warming lake-bed.

Next a boy and girl walk onto a winter-frozen lake as the cameraman aims his lens at an oblong gas bubble about the size of a football, visible in the ice. The boy hand-augers a hole through the ice, then the girl strikes a match and touches it to the top of the hole, and I'll tell you - it was quite a tower of fire. It was about 4 feet high and 2 feet wide, and it burned full-strength for about 20 seconds before gradually dying down. Made an impression on me - there's methane in that there ice, that's for sure!

Then I discover that Steven Chu has given an interview, I forget with whom - I should write all such information down. Chu says that soil and lake-bed surveys indicate that earth's total frozen methane deposits possess potential infrared-capture that is many times greater than ALL the fossil-fuel deposits discovered up to the present time. This is so because methane's spectrographic signature has strong absorption peaks that fall BETWEEN those of water vapor. There is little band overlap, so if methane escapes into the air it can capture infrared wavelengths that previously were able to escape into space. Specifically, CH4 has peaks at 0.6, 0.9, 1.6 and 2.3 microns. Sure enough, when you inspect simultaneous spectrograph signatures of methane compared to water vapor, their absorption bands slip in between one another.

Apparently, this presents the prospect of a new round of warming, since methane is presently a smaller contributor than CO2. As described above, the inverse-exponential rising function would mitigate this somewhat.

We can't deny changing permafrost behavior because we see pictures of houses in Alaska that have been stable for a century, now tipped out of level as their permafrost foundations have gone soggy.

Taking into account methane's immediate absorption characteristics, and its longevity in the atmosphere (longer residence than CO2), and its chemical reaction propensities (after doing its own dirty work, it reacts eventually with O2 oxygen to MAKE MORE CO2 and H2O), methane has been assigned a Global Warming Potential (GWP) factor of 21 by the World Meteorological Organization. That is, one unit mass of CH4, over the 100-year standard measuring period, will capture 21 times as much energy as one unit mass of CO2.

If I'm understanding what Chu is saying, the initial 1.8 deg C temperature rise forced by CO2 could enable that permafrost methane to escape. There's more of it (frozen methane) than there is total coal and oil, and it's 21 times as bad on a per unit basis. Wow!

Note 1. (a) Micron is the common name for a micrometer - one millionth of one meter. (b) Electromagnetic waves are sometimes quantified in ways other than by specifying their wavelength, as is done here. Thus, the infrared range from 0.7 to 20 microns can be quantified as frequencies - the corresponding values are 430 to 15 Terrahertz (THz). Or the infrared range can be quantified as wave-numbers - the corresponding values are 14 300 to 500 centimeters-inverted (cm [exponent]-1).

Note 2. Mathematical modeling is an attempt to quantify MANY limited-scope functional relationships (forcing events with a clearly identifiable input and a clearly identifiable output) by a specific equation, and then to express the interrelations among those MANY individual equations. It's the simultaneous-equation solution idea in algebra.

Curt 18:08 Schooling the gullible part four ... Global warming!

Curt says ... " And spare us the BS about "significant warming" from Jones' interview as you continue to demonstrate your complete rejection of SCIENCE altogether by using Webster's definition of the word when you have been pointed to the correct definition of "statistical significance" at least three times by my account."

It is the scientific definition of significant warming that I am talking about. It's either scientifically significant or it isn't. The past 15 years have had no scientifically significant warming. Those are my words and those are Jones' words, and their meaning is unequivocal. The CAGW hypothesis requires a significant warming ... an unprecedented warming that is above and beyond natural variation ... an unprecedented warming that is significant enough to hang a hockey stick on. A warming that the gullible can point to and say THERE!! There is the warming caused by CAGW. It's significantly above and beyond natural variation and is unprecedented in slope ... The RATE of rise must be unprecedented in slope! Sorry Curt, that kind of warming signal does not exist. Not anywhere ... Not in the land surface temps. Not in the Sea Surface Temps and not in the lower troposphere temps. And the signal we're looking for and not finding is even with all the fudged, tricked and hide-the-decline homogenization machinations that the "experts" have been doing to the numbers to try to create a Mann-Made signal.

To satisfy me, being as skeptical as I am, and not trusting the experts ... The unprecedented RATE of global warming signal should be present in the raw satellite data and in the broad-based raw rural data, (not-the NASA cherry-picked sites), and in the raw Argo buoy data ... and those all show way less warming than the almost significant warming that Jones was talking about. And their combined RATE of increase slope is all but non-existent.

Once again ... CAGW hypothesis REQUIRES a significant and unprecedented acceleration of the RATE of increase in Global Warming, and it does NOT exist. That fact falsifies the hypothesis.

Now on to some of the "science" presented by our illustrious deniers. "Phil Jones" significant warming: Phil Jones specifically stated that there HAD been warming in the last 15 years, almost significant but not quite because they didn't have quite enough data to make it significant. IN ENGLISH this means "We have been able to demonstrate that there has been global warming in the last 15 years but we don't have quite enough data to say this with 95% certainty, we do have greater than a 90% certainty that it is statistically proveable, and once we have more datasets we should be able to say there has been statistically significant warming. Ok? You say you know what it means, now everyone does. Somehow I see the difference between 'No' and 'We're over 90% certain the answer is Yes', are you telling me you can't? And you know the definition? And you're here claiming you are the 'honest' one, and YOU'RE going to school ME? Between the Argo buoys and this your credability is thinning...
And then:
"The hypothesis of CAGW would require increases in Global Hurricane activity such that the Global Accumulated Cyclonic Energy figures must show a trend increase". Oh really? And what if other odd, unforeseen behaviors of the Pacific Ocean for example threw spoilers into the hurricane equation? And are hurricanes the only mechanism the planet uses to dump hot surface air? What about thunderstorms? What happens when cool air from the pole migrates south, perhaps due to changes in the jet stream? You're quite a scientist you presume, tell us the heat exchange process that occurs when ice melts? Like it's doing now in all the places it once didn't? As the planet is heating up, more moisture will live in the atmosphere, tell us what the heat exchange process is for evaporation?
"We have been told that the CAGW hypothesis calls for increases in the number and severity of droughts. If the trend in total drought numbers or severity fails to show an increasing trend, that would falsify the CAGW hypothesis." Droughts don't happen overnight, and your data doesn't go back far enough in the past to be able to satisfy "pre AGW". You're touching on the late stages of a very slow process that is not well-understood in a limited area and claiming it is indicative of something, and it is a process that may have become somewhat vulnerable earlier on in the rise of CO2 in the atmosphere. Go back to your list of false logic and see if you can find that one in the list.
In fact, a great deal of the data and science you rely on falls in here, and in one other place: You keep referring to AGW predictions as if the theory makes many concrete, immovable predictions on a precisely specific time scale, but it doesn't. Predictions are built upon the theory, but even the scientists themselves are generally quick to say they don't understand all the feedback mechanisms (they include more and more every day and discover new ones constantly, i.e. Pacific Ocean behavior) and that they can't put fixed timescales on anything or get more than about 5-10 years out with any certainty. Most droughts don't happen overnight like the 20th century 'dustbowl', they happen in slow, oscillating stages, normal rainfall one year, 15% less the next, almost normal rainfall the next, but gradually diminishing rainfall. And the predictions on the theory don't say "there will be droughts" as I recall, they're more of the nature of "this area will be wetter", "this area will be more dry". The problem is "more dry" for places in Africa and Australia means "we can no longer grow food here, where we once did, because there is not enough rain".
Ok, let's talk about Mann's (and Briffa's (hates to be wrong like all of us but willing to do so finally)) "hockey stick" for a moment, one of your favorites despite the place on the graph that you keep focusing on has been verified by several sources- you keep focusing on the transition from proxies to actual measurements, while the current scientists say another part of the graph is wrong. Is this focus on the transition because you don't want us to focus on the far right of the graph, where the scientists now believe it didn't rise fast enough?
Perhaps tomorrow I can get back to some more of your meticulous science, I had a long day on the job today and I'm running a bit too slow to work with a clear mind. I'm sure by then y'all will have another dozen posts backed by credible data that can demonstrate the statistical significance of your disproof of the theory.

So then, no verifiable/falsifiable predictions from AGW theory....

Instead, AGW theory is largely dependent on computer models. However, these computer codes are not independently verified. According to Phil Jones, in all the papers he published, the peer reviewers had never asked to examine his code.

So, what happens when one of these mysterious computer codes is finally released? It turns out it's buggy. John Graham-Cumming, professional programmer, has submitted a memorandum to the UK Parliament and it's an eye-opener. Just so you know, he stated “I have never been a climate change skeptic and until the release of emails from UEA/CRU I had paid little attention to the science surrounding it.”

Since climate scientists do not in general release their code for independent inspection, I think it's safe to assume there are other as yet undiscovered problems with the computer modeling on which climate science is based.

This is yet another example of how climate scientists behaving in an unprofessional manner create untrustworthy output. You can pretend that climate scientists can be unprofessional without turning out shoddy work. But that doesn't make it so. The burden of proof is on THEM to show us their code is done correctly.

"these are the people trying to maintain the alarm so that the grants will continue to flow"... Finally, we have a motive! Now let's look at it... Consider this motive against the normal background of science, where it's essentially the status quo for those that do research. Climatologists obviously would be seeking grant money regardless, and whether their research was seeking to find the theory true or false they would justify grants- any "alarm" would cause just as much money to go to one "side" as the other, and then consider Nasa, which doesn't really operate on grants, and so should be pretty much neutral on the issue. It's an extremely weak motive.
Then consider hydrocarbon companies, which have a stake amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars in profits potentially lost if they cannot in some way discredit global warming. There is only one side of the issue they support, and the money they are pouring into that side of the issue dwarfs the money going into any legitimate research. Consider that they have engaged and heavily support the Heartland Institute, which cut it's teeth on discrediting good science saying that cigarette smoking is bad on behalf of tobacco companies (hiding or clouding any research supporting the bad, hiring scientists to do "research" with a foregone conclusion and widely disseminating any they could come up with, and attacking any scientist's creditability or integrity that supported the "smoking is bad" side.)
In investigating a "crime" the primary clue is motive, this is how you determine who the suspects are- yes there are "motiveless" crimes, but this certainly doesn't apply here. We have two "groups", one with a very clear and very persuasive motive, one with a relatively weak and unpersuasive motive.
Means and opportunity are for the most part unpersuasive.
Now let's look at modus operandi. If the climatologists are the "criminals", then the "crime" has to have been perpetrated by fudging ALL the numbers, very difficult to do without being obvious, and we have for the most part only circumstantial evidence (according to your contentions) that this is the case (and of course you dispute this, but pointing to eliminated thermometers, and swapping altimeters, and difficulty obtaining data, and emails that appear (prima facie) to disclose possible malfeasance are circumstantial.) If this was the "crime" it is one of unprecedented scale by far. Now if the "crime" is the crime of clouding the issue and we look again at modus operandi, and here we have entities that are convicted criminals (remember cigarettes?) and the modus operandi is precisely the same as a previous crime committed by this entity for which they were convicted, but they were able to continue to perpetrate that crime for over 20 years (and in fact still continue to to some extent) before they were finally "convicted".
If the issue at hand were a crime and we were all police investigators, at this time the prime suspect by far would be the side with the stronger motive, the prior conviction, a modus operandi that dovetails perfectly into the evidence, and in addition that entity repeatedly points their finger at the other entity shouting "He did it!"
Without taking ANY of the science into account any examination of the "facts" (in this case the data and conclusions based upon that data) has to keep this in mind. If you're truly being objective you cannot dispute this as these are the facts even without a stitch of the science thrown in the works.
I will research some of the references you provided, but as I do with ALL references provided I have to keep the preceding issues in mind, and I have to continue to note that a statistically significant portion of the evidence I have examined thus far has been either circumstantial or clearly corrupt, less than 5% of that evidence appears "prima facie" to be reliable (and I give the benefit of the doubt rather than deeply researching those pieces of evidence, i.e. the hurricane data from that British meterologist).
Lastly I note that the issue to be decided has been spoken for by supporters based on the evidence they have yet they constantly find new processes occurring that change the basic premises in terms of how they expect this to pan out, climatology is a young science. The "side" that put forth the theory admits they are uncertain about much. The "other side" however is absolutely certain that they are right soup to nuts no questions allowed, and it's very clear that right or wrong they don't have sufficient data to support the certainty they attest to.

Curt 15:05 ... It seems that a search for motive seems to be one of your prime "motivators" ... pun intended. In my not-so-humble opinion, had this whole CAGW alarm never been raised, the 17 "scientists" involved in the Senate investigations would all be working on something else and the ARGO buoys would never have been deployed, and Topex, Poseidon, Jason1, ERS1, ERS2, ENVSAT, GRACE, OSTM, AltiKa and the HYseries would never have been funded in any way for any reason. NASA did it's job of catching us up to and passing the Russians and on the moon and robotically exploring planets and space, and then they were running out of new frontiers ... CAGW rescued NASA and pretty much created NOAA ... They both NEEDED a crisis to explore to justify their existence. The zealots in charge couldn't find one so they created one. Since NASA's Hansen was already an avowed coal hater, and EVERYTHING in fossil fuel exhaust can be cleaned, (if we try hard enough), EXCEPT CO2!!! Presto ... Damn the second law of thermodynamics! Damn the absolute maximum of a mere 8-9% of the infra-red spectrum that CO2 can possibly block! We will scream catastrophe, and the money will flow ... and it did. EVERY MODEL THAT WAS CREATED WAS CREATED BY GRANTS to investigate the coming catastrophe. And every model relied on positive feedbacks holding sway over negative feedbacks and an entire industry of fear and catastrophe was created out of almost thin air.

The real crux of the entire argument revolves around positive feedbacks dominating ... Positive feedbacks are real bastards of nature. A nuclear explosion is a prime example of dominant primary feedbacks. A nuclear reactor is controlled either by negative feedback with absorbing rods or negative feedback through fuel rod removal but one way or another dominant positive feedbacks in nature are typically damned short lived. The mere fact that we are living here in our carbon-based life-forms in a carbon-based environment where temperatures have far exceeded what they are today in the the past and where CO2 levels have far exceeded what they are today is proof positive that negative feedbacks dominate in our climate/weather physical environment.

My personal favorite for most likely dominant negative feedback device is the Tropical Clouds and Thunderstorms thermostat that Willis Eschenbach hypothesized about in his guest essay here ... (Yeah I know you hate the site, but read the damned article ... It won't hurt a bit.)

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/14/the-thermostat-hypothesis/

Let me know what you think of this article ... because the fact remains that the heat signature that CAGW must have to exist, does not exist.

Anon 19:20, all data that the IPCC had rights to was shared (unless it was lost on Phil Jones' desk), and the sources of the data they couldn't share are known. "Appearances of hiding?" Be careful of appearances. Imagine yourself a scientist, imagine you've been studying some theory and have amassed a superdome full of datasets, but aren't much of an organizer, and imagine that after the conclusions are published a huge movement to discredit the honest science you did arises and suddenly you're pressed for every single piece of paper and every one you can't find is claimed to be disproof of the theory. As has been said by Jones and other of the theory's supporters, if Jones had known it was going to be turned into a "court case" and a media circus he probably would have tried to be more organized. If I had worked at the IPCC or at one of the universities studying climate, my emails would have been of a much gentler nature I can assure you. It's not a court case, it's science, and natural science rarely reaches the level of proof required in a courtroom, and the level of scrutiny mustered by those with a stake in disproof far exceeds that of any other scientific theory in history. If you're expecting people of great minds to be well organized you never met one on their home turf.
Mo, I may give the data a look when I can scare up some time (and I do appreciate "real" data), but, without looking at it, "Isn't that the point?" I'm not certain but if I remember correctly one primary premise of the theory is that the earth should be continuing to cool, but it's not, that that cooling has started to turn around? Isn't that what is pictured in that graph you so love to discredit? A negative slope overall until modern times? And surely the climatologists have this data, what was their conclusion?

To put more emphasis on the relevance of this major issue, it is a must to log on to "DeSmogBlog" and/or read James Hoggan's "Climatre Cover-up"...
As it is simply impossible to go on "growing", particularly in the case of the release of Greenhouse Gases, but also in many other realms, such as the infringements on biodiversity, or the depletion of most of our natural ressources, our economic system has to be totally revamped to try to pave the way for a "livable" planet for our children and later on further generations...More cooperation, less competition might be key-words...
How can free citizens make appropriate choices when they are conned into doubting the validity of climate science ...by people who sometimes do not shy away from lying...
Logging on to "Skeptical Science" also provides the type of "desmogging"... which helps look at reality without goggles..or hurdles...
The challenge is how to cope withthis new looming challenge in a democratic and fair way for all human beings...