I really don't want to live in the Middle Ages whenever the sun goes down, and I really don't think you want to, either. People who went for late-night walks in cities in the Middle Ages ended up stabbed for their coin purses since the lack of lighting meant the criminals could get away scot-free, and I don't see how it would be any different in today's cities unless like back then, people started carrying weaponry while active during the night hours.

Loved the opening sentence (forgive the PDF copy/paste formatting issues):

The references are, of course, to IPCC 4.  2007.  I think that's the one in which the claim of Himalayan glacier retreat was based on an article from a travel magazine, but I could be wrong - coulda been IPCC 5 or 3 or...

What was interesting to me was the number of times these phrases and words appeared:

"thought to be"

"considered to be"

"probably"

"supports the idea"

"best estimate"

"suggesting"

"may"

Then there's this:

Followed by this:

Translation: The numbers are all over the effing place but if we use a number that we like, our best estimate is we can support the idea of suggesting that we may probably be fucked sooner than even the IPCC thinks.

And they call that science, folks.

You drew the correct (and most kind) conclusion, Geo:

Not really. Temperatures always go up first. That's the big problem with the CO2 AGW hypothesis.

Since clear evidence now shows there is no connection between temperature mounting and CO2 levels such a feedback loop doesn't exist.

Did we read the same article ???

The authors noticed a large discrepancy between paleosol CO2 estimates and those from other sources.

I've actually downloaded some of those data sets and I've taken a look at the CO2 "measurements" and those show large discrepancies indeed.

So the authors decicded to review how CO2 values were estimated from the soils. And they discovered that one of the assumptions that was made about the carbonate precipitation was simply wrong.

The carbonates precipitate only in the warm dry season, not during the wetter season when they may dissolve.

As a result, it's not appropriate to use properties of the soils averaged over the whole year, but it's more appropriate to use the properties of the soil that occur during the dry season.

Then they show that this results in significantly lower CO2 estimates from the soils, and that those are in line with the estimates from other sources.

It's the improved understanding of the precipitation process that brings CO2 estimates "down". It's not some manipulation of the data.

And I had hoped for some respect for researchers. It was too much to hope for  

Actually it is nearly 100% correct. The other greenhouse gases (H2O, CH4) have very short lifespans and large quantities cannot survive in the atmosphere long enough to make a difference over thousands of years.

Water vapor (H2O) survives for some days, no more: then it returns to the surface as rain or snow. It is not driving temperature by itself.

CH4 survives for about 10 years, then it decays into CO2. To have long-lived effects, this greenhouse gas would require a continuous supply of very very large quantities of CH4. There is no known source of that magnitude.

Only CO2 survives for thousands of years, long enough the influence the climate on geological time scales. It doesn't rain down, it doesn't snow. It only settles slowly as carbonates on the sea floor or is buried slowly in peat wetlands.

H2O also acts as a greenhouse gas as you state, but "only" as a direct feedback mechanism, not on its own. And it's a very important feedback as well although I wouldn't go as far to say that CO2 is negligible... the articles I've read state that the relative contribution of CO2 to H2O is about 1:2.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/04/water-vapour-feedback-or-forcing/

Using wikipedia as a source of reliable information for anything is foolish.

Look GeomanNL, obviously you are addicted to this topic post. Nobody will change your mind on your GW beliefs as you won't change anyone else's mind that disagrees with you. This continued beating of a dead horse only feeds your addiction.

Well... what can I say, some people are just playing stubborn.

It's just that, the article I found was a bit disturbing.

If ancient hot climates where "hot" at levels of 1,000 ppm CO2 giving minor extinction events, and if major extinction events would already occur at say 2,000 ppm CO2, then we're in a much worse situation than I thought earlier.

Well... yes I should stop, I cannot change the world anyway. Perhaps today's the day.

Yeah whatever. I think it's up to the next generation, this one is too much in the grip of power money and the desire for luxury.

I'm enjoying this life too while I can. Fuck the world! All power to the individual.

But what I think is really surprising here, is the general mistrust in science and scientists.

Where does that come from?

Except you, right?  You're being emminently reasonable and logical.  

This is the reason there's not much point discussing it with you.  You change whatever those who disagree with you say into these giant strawmen rather than actually addressing their points.  You take multi-paragraph, carefully crafted expressions of skepticism (or other reasons for not wanting to jump feet first into the AGW bus) and pretend that it all boils down to this so you don't have to actually address the concerns.  It's soapboxing, not discussion.  

I personally love the discussion with people who I disagree with (rather than everyone agreeing in an echo chamber) when it is approached in good faith and where the two sides try to understand the other's points and opinions.  This doesn't have to (and rarely does) result in changing of opinions. But it's an exercise that forces us to rethink what we believe and to make sure we understand our own thoughts and opinions as well as we think we do.  But that can't happen when everything one side says is trivialized into this:

You're too emotionally invested in being right to be thoughtfully invested in debate or discussion. 

I have replied to lots of people in a fair amount of detail. And whenever I find other interesting things, I add it to this discussion.

And yes, it does boil down to that in one way or the other.

1. Someone reads one of the gazillions deniers-blogs and believes their shit and posts new blogs with new shit. Full of fancy graphics and nice fitting trends, while it's really based on hot air.

The sad thing about that is, that if you read enough of that crap, that you start to believe it. If you are faced with a hundred "convincing" arguments and you read all of those, then by sheer quantity they suddenly become "convincing" or at the very least you will not trust anything anymore. Even though every single one of those arguments is based on nothing. They exploit noise in the data. They take only those points from the data that benefit their viewpoint. They try to distract with competing mechanisms and try to show a nice fit to observations. They try to discredit all the good data, and to promote their own garbage. It's just too sad.

2. Someone doesn't care, just distrusts any authority and thinks "scientists" are just another form of authority that's not to be trusted, while they're really just nice people who just do their job and don't care about anything.

3. Or they are confused by one scientists (paid by a global corp) fighting another scientists (paid by non-profit government or whatever). They don't know who's right and who's wrong, they're both scientists right? Except that one of them is paid millions for their ridiculous ranting, while the other freezes his ass of in some remote glacier collecting data for a small salary.

And the REAL shame about this is, that once trust is lost, it is very hard to gain it back.

To the benefit of big old oil companies and lobby groups and whatever.

4. Observational science is one of the hardest there is. It is hard to collect data, describe it and to deal with the noise in the observations.

And then there's people who criticize it based on ... whatever grounds they have.

I just think there's no RESPECT anymore for other people's work.

It's so sad.

Yes, useless facts are quickly forgotten, but indoctrination lasts a lifetime.