CAGW (CO2 science), let’s not jump to conclusions...

My splendid period of 'down time' has come and gone, my life is once again crowded with work and other obligations, so my 'puter and blogging time has been slashed.  I do have a couple projects close to finished, but nothing ready to post.  This evening I just wanted to share a comment I made over at Center For Inquiry.   It speaks to one of the issues I believe needs better enunciating and broadcasting.

Dude says: "As for the catastrophic global warming, let’s not jump from the frying pan into the fire."

Citizenschallenge writes: To my ears, this sounds like another fool ridiculing the notion of CAGW. 

That would be catastrophic anthropogenic global warming - that would be a warming of our Earth (and its climate system) causing our planet to become inhospitable to human wants, expectations, needs and ability to cope with.

Here are a few questions such individuals refuse to respond to:

CC:  What, you don’t believe in the reality of accumulating compounding interest?  What about acknowledging trends?

Why reject the evidence that Atmospheric Greenhouse gases are increasing at an unheard of rate; that we are responsible for it; and that they will remain in the atmosphere a very long time?  Science tells us these gases are atmospheric insulation. - Reality tells us temps are increasing and glaciers are melting at frightening and increasing speeds. - But Republicans/libertarians want to play word games and pretend away this reality with distractions into an endless smoke and mirrors labyrinth of trivial pursuits. 

Why do you think the trends in glacier melting are going to reverse themselves under the current regime?
                                                                                                         Why do you believe rising sea levels aren’t going to severely impact coastal cities, infrastructure and population centers in massive catastrophically disruptive ways?

Why, don’t you think the disruption of millennia’s old seasonal cycles and scrambling the interconnected coordination between a vast variety of living organisms is going to wreak havoc with our agriculture bounty?  

Here are some realities such individuals refuse to acknowledge:

CC:  We have a society today where most people don’t have a clue how complex and interdependent the public infrastructure, that enables all this, has become. People take the weather and moderate temperatures for granted never realizing what a knife edge society has always lived by. Tweak those parameters just a few degrees up or down and it makes a huge, life altering difference to the inhabitants of this planet.

Today in Earth's history, humanity with our fossil fuels burning are in the driver’s seat - what part of that doesn’t make sense to Republican and libertarian types?            Please someone explain!
How can the Republican/libertarian PR machine of supposed grown-ups justify pretending CO2 Science is a hoax?

Society has made incredible strides in the past couple hundred years, “escaping” ancient constraints - unfortunately we younger generations have become reckless thanks to our mass-media fed sense of entitlement that instills an apathy that inturn breeds ignorance, laziness and blindness.  

It’s a story that’s old as humankind, new generations thoughtlessly squandering the hard won achievements of their elders and winding up destitute.  Only this time around we’ve run out of new horizons for our children, and future generations, to escape to and start the cycle of exploitation and thoughtless destruction yet again.  

The only thing you can bet on these days is that there is a terrible reckoning barreling down on us, yet look to our political and business leaders.  All I see is smoke’n-mirrors from disingenuous scoundrels.

(This is comment 208 of a rambling affair about how to avoid Climate Model lessons, if you're curious, link here) 

Man it's cold! What happened to global warming?

Climate Science "skeptics" have been having great fun with this past week's cold wave that has many US states basking in record Arctic low temperatures.  Thus it's been hardy laughs all around the blogosphere for those who refuse to take climate science seriously.  It's a shame they don't dare look past their neighborhoods to examine the global picture.

What these folks hide from themselves and their audience is that our planet is a huge global heat distribution engine.  

The equator get's most of the sun's heat, this in turn get's moved out of the tropics and into northern latitudes through currents, both in the troposphere and the oceans and through weather patterns and storm systems.  Here are a few links to more information on how that works:

Colorado Floods - statistical certainty vs geophysical realities

Here is an article I wrote for November's Four Corners Free Press concerning last month's flooding in Colorado.  Should anyone find anything of value in it feel free to lift and use as you see fit.  Memes for the sharing.{I have added many links that offer authoritative support for my claims along with basic educational sources}.

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Colorado experienced its most extreme weather event in memory between September 9th to the 15th. Golden, Boulder and Larimer counties received the worst of it with rain accumulations of sixteen/seventeen inches and more, some areas receiving nine inches on Thursday alone, resulting in massive flooding compounded by destructive run-off from mountainsides of burned-out forests that could no longer hold water.

Predictably folks are asking: Is this related to manmade Global Warming? It's an easy and tough question to answer.

Consider please, our climate system is a global heat distribution engine and our land, atmosphere, and the oceans have indisputably warmed, not only that, our atmosphere's moisture content has been measurably increasing. Given such geophysical realities, it is self-evident that all extreme weather events contain elements of this newly energized climate system.  And that much more of the same must be expected.

On the other hand,

The problem with Mr. McIntyre and his enablers

http://climateaudit.org/2013/07/21/results-from-a-low-sensitivity-model/#comment-428501

Paul_K 

Posted Jul 26, 2013 at 11:59 AM | Reply
Citizenschallenge,"We know we are driving our climate to conditions no human, let alone a complex society has ever confronted…" 

What do you think polar sea ice conditions looked like during the Holocene optimum? 

Carrick
Posted Jul 26, 2013 at 12:12 PM 
I’d settle with reliable numbers on arctic sea ice for the 1950s.

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citizenschallenge

Posted Jul 26, 2013 at 12:35 PM | Reply 

- Your comment is awaiting moderation.-

Paul, what does that sort of question do to help understand the situation we are facing? Sounded like a mesmerist’s misdirection to me.
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We have increased our planet’s atmospheric insulating ability by over a third – the global heat distribution engine IS continuing to hold in extra heat and energy. Right ?

Please consider your(-collective) bias, that undercurrent of defending your economic/political status quo – and feeling OK about molding your science to fit your vision. Where’s the objectivity? How about a little self skepticism for a change?

What does McIntyre’s hostile, conspiracy ideation rich, belly-button gazing do to help us understand the pragmatic implications of what we are doing to our atmosphere, along with its cascading consequences?

Shameless Forbes' James Taylor - misrepresents Moore tornado - fuels myth

Forbes' James Taylor has written another case study in denialist dirty tricks with his:

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Forbes.com  |  James Taylor  |  5/22/2013  
After Oklahoma City Tragedy, Shameless Politicians Unsheath Global Warming Card

James wrote:  "Not 24 hours passed from the time a devastating tornado ripped through Moore, Oklahoma, killing at least 24 people including eight children, until shameless global warming activists in Congress began exploiting the grief and pain of a devastated community to tell an idiotic tale of global warming causing tornadoes. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), shame on you for being such hard-hearted and factually ignorant vultures preying on other people’s misery. 

Before we even get to the objective facts regarding global warming and tornadoes, can we at least respect the human tragedy in Oklahoma and give victims a few days to grieve before we try to politicize their pain? Literally minutes after the F5 tornado devastated Moore, Whitehouse rushed out to the cameras to blame “polluters,” “deniers” and Republicans for the Oklahoma tornado..."

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It's incredible listening to James Taylor trumpet "sense of decency" then dive right into malicious manipulation of the facts for ruthless political ends.

Where does simple honesty, or fairplay, fit into Mr. Taylor's world view?

For the record, which can be found at: http://www.c-spanvideo.org/videoLibrary/transcript/transcript.php?id=218984 - Senator Whitehouse's gave his standard climate speech, the one he's made more than 30 times already, before he had any knowledge of the Moore catastrophe!  But, Heartland's James Taylor {Along with WUWT's Anthony Watts, and others} is the type who seems only interested in demonizing - learning and developing genuine understanding have always been the last thing he wants to focus on. 

Explaining why Senator Whitehouse's claims are accurate

In light of Senator Whitehouse's claims, I thought this lesson, based on up to date information - explaining what scientists are observing within the Arctic Circle and the implications of those observations, was worth sharing.

It's a recent post from SkepticalScience.com that has the most comprehensive collection of digestible information I've seen to date about our Jet Stream.  Considering how much the Jet Stream influences weather this is an informative article that should be read as supplement to Senator Whitehouse's attempt to wake up Republican Senators to the stakes they are gambling away.

Thanks again to SkepticalScience.com for making these posts available to folks like me.

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A Rough Guide to the Jet Stream: what it is, how it works and how it is responding to enhanced Arctic warming (via Skeptical Science)

Posted on 22 May 2013 by John Mason Barely a week goes by these days in the Northern Hemisphere without the jet stream being mentioned in the news, but rarely do such news items explain in detail what it is and why it is important. As a severe weather photographer this past 10+ years, an activity which…

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