United Nations Environment Programme uses unreviewed graph from an anonymous Wikipedia author for official report.

It’s a disgrace to deceive the public like that.
Thanks for publishing this.
Deceiving the public has happened before and we can learn from our history.
http://www.ecofascism.com/article20.html

I’ll say here what I said at CA: that is the most rediculous temperature reconstruction I’ve ever seen. It is so absurd, it really is insulting.

It’s pound the table, argue the law time with these alarmists. They have to save their tax scam, now that Obama has signed on, one way or the other.
The ‘lies’ have it.

At this point, with Copenhagen coming up and all, they’re more focussed on dramatizing. This though will only undermine their credibiliity.

The scary part is, that this “data” will be accepted by the masses.

Another reason that I object to this figure, aside from the splicing data/hockey sticks, is that it displays CO2 concentration and not rate of CO2 accumulation. The rate is dependent upon many different factors, both geophysical and biological. One interesting correlation is that the year to year change in CO2 concentration varies with the ENSO and tropical lower troposphere temperature. Several reports have pointed this out, and IIRC has been discussed here.
The paragraph in the UNEP report describing of the flux of CO2 in and out of the atmosphere is so simplistic and incomplete to be laughable.
Gotta run to work……….

OT. Is it anything wrong with the DMI polar temperature site at the right column? (just below the sea ice graph) it gives me a 404 not found error every time I click.

My son has been told he must not use wikipedia for school work as it is unreliable.

Jordan: “But the giveaway is Hanno’s phrase ‘It can namely be some time between each time I visit’. A common error by german speakers to adopt “namely” where they would use “naemlich” in German.”
The error is Google’s, and the original text was in Norwegian. The link is a machine translation.

A couple of Google searches points this way:
http://www.bio.ntnu.no/users/hannos/engelsk.htm
Apologies if it is not the correct Hanno.

Remember this quote from Michael Coulter in Australian newpaper The Age?
“There is not, now, much value in arguing about the science of climate change. Even if it’s wrong, enough people now believe it that it may as well be right.”
Someone at UNEP must have read this, taken it to heart and then tried to demonstrate that even if a graph is purely made up, enough people now believe in man-made climate change that it may as well be published, peer-reviewed science.

LOL HANNO 2009! This will be cited as scientific evidence in the future alongside youtube and wikipedia users girlpowerfan1987, greenman9610, mymomrules696969, downwithcapitalism and bleedingheartliberalheartsblackbabies. The new phase of the Enlightenment will be anonymously social generated content! 15 year olds of the world unite!

Ah Hanno has a face now. Well, at least that is sorted out but the UN certainly did not know his name or anything beyond the Wikipedia username.

At.what point do the people responsible for [snip] such as this get called to account? I can imagine that after the whole AGW scam has died this will simply be forgotten and the authors move on to some other ’cause’. But in perpetrating these fictions in an attempt to persuade governments to spend billions of our money they are behaving in a fraudulent manner. Is a defence of this such as ‘I believe in this cause’ enough? It smacks of religion but is dressed up as science and is therefore rather more deceitful.

oops already posted sorry.

Similar deceit on residence time of Atmospheric CO2 by the IPCC.
Complete denial of all the scientific studies that have been performed.
http://heliogenic.blogspot.com/2009/09/ipcc-outlier-as-usual.html

The IPCC says its so, congress says its so, Obama says its so, Lisa Jackson says its so, NOAA says its so, GISS (James the statistician) says its so, Al Gore says its so, Kerry, Pelosi , Waxman …… common thread they want something from you, facts must be ignored.

Another link, “Framtiden i våre hender” (The Future in our hands) is an environmental organization. A google translation of http://www.framtiden.no :
http://translate.google.com/translate?prev=hp&hl=sv&js=y&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.framtiden.no%2F&sl=no&tl=en&history_state0=
A headline “People’s Board, a climate threat?” suggest that democracy is a threat. (There was an election in Norway last week, and it become a close race between the left and the rigth; the right was supposed to win but didn’t.)
Another banner says “We’re seeing the connections – between economic growth and global differences [/injustice] and the environmental crisis.”
A kind of funny — or probably scary — article they link is “The unproductive gonna save us”, which says that those whi’s not study and doesn’t contribute to growth shall are the heroes that shall save our society (I havn’t read it all yet, but…) :
http://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?hl=sv&sl=no&tl=en&u=http://www.folkevett.no/artikler/steinar-lem-i-utvalg/de-uproduktive-skal-redde-oss/&prev=hp&rurl=translate.google.com&usg=ALkJrhjZTvnH_15oGFVwhnt0YU1xNTzZgg
Also “Fair trade”, agriculture without fertilizers etc. the environmentalism of today. Do we have …a moonbat tsunami, or?

Hanno’s graph is a complete hoax. Here the graphs from Möeberg’s database (red line) and Yang’s database (blue line):
http://www.biocab.org/Medieval_Global_Warming_Yang-Moeberg.jpg

Did anybody notice the UNEP document also had a full two-page spread where they confused weather and climate? It was titled “Significant climate anomalies from 2008 / 2009”

Nasif Nahle (13:30:46) :
Why such a difference between the two graphs?

There are other issues with the UNEP report.
It the world map at the beginning of the report, “Significant Climate Anomalies from 2008/2009”, a small paragraph says that
“Artic Sea Ice (Sep 09)
Second lowest extent on record behind Sept. 07”.
Maybe they finished the report before they could know, and based this on a guess.
Or maybe it’s just a “scenario”.

ChrisM (11:30:31) : My son has been told he must not use wikipedia for school work as it is unreliable.
It’s a good reassurance that it’s generally understand that Wikipedia isn’t a reliable source!
But some have spent many, many hours of their lives over the past few years entering biased information at Wiki thinking that it will somehow change the public’s view of global warming. Sucks to be them.

Icarus.
I am not proposing to spend tens of billions of dollars of other people’s money on the basis of highly debatable climate ‘predictions’. Niether am I fabricating data to ‘prove’ those predictions. I am therefore very willing to be called to account for having asked questions – even if I am wrong.

Stuart Huggett (12:26:47) : At.what point do the people responsible for [snip] such as this get called to account? I can imagine that after the whole AGW scam has died this will simply be forgotten and the authors move on to some other ’cause’
History didn’t keep track of the names of people who said man was responsible for eclipses of the sun. So I agree with you, they will be forgotten.
Heck, people don’t even know who Michael Mann, Steven Schneider, William Connolley, and James Hansen (et al) are now, let alone in the future.
And you’re right about moving on to another cause—people don’t remember that Steven Schneider was part of the coming ice age scare.
I think the only name that will be remembered for global warming will be Al Gore.

Wiki truly is a place where the inmates run the asylum

Icarus.
One thing needed for more than one degree heat from by human added CO2 is reinforcement, i.e. total positive feedback. Positive feedback would mean that climate is quite instable, which it isn’t. Also many measures of the response on Earth’s temperature from e.g. volcanoes and changes in clouds has showed negative feedback, which reduces impact from CO2.
The CO2 impact without feedbacks ,or we can say neutral feedback, is about +1 degree C when CO2 concentration is doubled year 2100. But a delay should be there, so we’ll have +1 C in 200-300 years. This is if we have neutral feedback (it should be negative and result in lower temperature rise), and if we are able to increase the CO2 concentration that much. (Less human contribution and negative feedback produce only single tenth of a degree.)
Note that IPCC says +1 degree C is the temperature change if no feedback affect the system.
The feedback representation of clouds in the models is just a guess and not based on empirical knowledge. This is also the case for H2O and water vapor content in the atmosphere. The models are tuned in to result in a quite strong positive feedback, and that in a quite limited range. Models which falls outside this feedback range are discarded as non-consensus. Science is settled…

Greenorblue (13:44:51) :
Nasif Nahle (13:30:46) :
Why such a difference between the two graphs?
The proxies, number of proxies, locations and number of locations make the difference. If one examines all the databases on paleotemperatures, one would find they all look different.
It seems that Hanno took a database from treerings (any) and only added the historical temperatures, without proportion at the right end of the graph with respect to the proxies database, however.

I had an honest LOL at the title of this one.
Wikipedia itself, on the page that generates citations cautions that it is a tertiary source, and thus not usually acceptable as a reference.
In other words, the latest UN paper on climate change probably would not have received a passing grade as a undergrad-level assignment. Bravo. I’ve been thinking for a while now that there must be some in the AGW camp that know the theory is bogus, but are aware that when the theory dies, it will take reputations (not to mention careers) with it. Seems like some must be in a hurry to do away with their reputation sooner than later.

As the person who raised this with Steve/CA – I’m glad the majority of comments on both blogs share my concerns.
I found the UNEP document via an article in the Daily Telegraph:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/6228179/Climate-change-accelerating—UNEP.html
and this clearly suggests that the report is authoritative stuff (“400 scientific reports released through peer-reviewed literature, or from research institutions”) so I was just curious when I saw a reference to a 2009 hockeystick.
In fact I got completely sidetracked from my initial thought that there I’d spotted an anomaly between the DT headline:
“Climate change is happening faster than previously thought”
and the actual reporting:
“made a rise of between 1.4 and 4.3 degrees Celsius (2.5 to 7.75 F) above pre-industrial temperatures more likely”
I had thought this could be a case of the ‘future-present imperfect imperative” (courtesy of climate-resistance):
http://www.climate-resistance.org/2009/08/future-present-imperfect-imperative.html

tarpon (14:21:11) :
When is all of the credibility left in science going to be sacrificed at the alter of the AGW hoax? Credibility is not a renewable resource, regardless how much grant money they shovel your way.

I fear that time is past (or at least fast approaching). It may take decades before the public regains its trust in science. And particularly so if whole nations are sacrificed in the name of AGW as the UNEP, IPCC and certain “progressive” politicians are demanding.

No one has so far commented on the front page of the report, which is loaded with powerful metaphorics: The time is running out, our beautiful earth is going down the drain and will come out as a desert. The message here is clear and synthesized: We are destroying the planet, turning it into a desert. The desert sand in the bottom contrasts with the beautiful planet as we learned to see it from space, from the Apollon (though it’s true that we see large areas already consisting of desert, like the Sahara), and evokes old biblical wisdom like not to build your house on sand; in Norwegian we say “run out in the sand” (come to nothing), and also the expression “bury one’s head in the sand” comes to mind.
This is very professionally done, as opposed to the not-so-very-professional inclusion of the not-peer-reviewed hockey-stickish graph. They must have used true craftsmen in the field of advertising here, there is not much amateurish about this.
It reminds me of a comment from Green and Armstrong’s “forecasting audit” of the AR4:
“(…) the Chapter [8 of the IPCC report] reads in places like a sales brochure.”

Jeez,
Phil… Jones?
Phil…Collns?
Phil…ippi?
Phil…Spector?

Hanno: Watts in a name?

The same UNEP report has Figure 1.2 credited to two, the second being Rhode 2009. Who? Looks like it’s Wikipedia image http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mauna_Loa_Carbon_Dioxide.png with some background removed.
The report also uses illustrations from the other scientific sources “National Geographic” and “WWF”.
What is the U.N. position on copyrights and licensing?

Stuart Huggett (18:53:01) : Icarus
Thank you for considering these things. Several points I should like to make:
1 When I talk about the AGW ’scam’ I am referring to the alarmist rant we are continually subjected to in the MSM. Not to the many dedicated scientists an others who spend their lives collecting and interpreting dat.
Fair point. The ‘MSM’ as you call it are in the business of making money and that is all they care about – they will sensationalise, distort and invent information freely if they think it will make an extra quid. They will be controversial and contrary purely for the sake of it, regardless of the merit of any particular argument. Nevertheless, that doesn’t mean that any particular argument you see in the MSM is wrong or exaggerated. They could just happen to be right.
2 Your long speech about forests, resources, fuel and the environment reflect my views entirely. Why wrap it all up in some specious and politically motivated clap trap? In the end the fallout will so degrade the credibility of science and the environmental movement that the problems in your list will be even more difficult to solve.
I don’t know what ‘claptrap’ you’re referring to. I’m only interested in the science.
3 Icarus is a great pseudonym for someone who thinks that CO2 rather than the sun drives our climate. Please give me the actual data as you understand it that makes you think this.
I don’t think that at all – in fact I think the sun has quite a substantial effect on the climate with relatively small changes in solar irradiance, which makes it all the more alarming that we’re ‘twiddling the knobs’ by making substantial changes to atmospheric greenhouse gases when it appears that the climate is really quite sensitive to relatively small forcings, including greenhouse gases.
For example: The last glaciation is thought to have resulted from a forcing of around 7 W/m2 (causing about a 5°C change in global temperature), but that includes long-term feedbacks from ice sheets, vegetation changes etc. – the actual change in solar irradiance was maybe half that, or a 2% change in solar forcing.
The radiative forcing for a doubling of CO2 is estimated at 3.7±0.4 W/m2 – not much different from that 2% change in solar irradiance… and that is before the long-term feedbacks are taken into account. So, doubling CO2 is likely to have the same magnitude of effect (in the long term) as the difference between an ice age and an interglacial – perhaps a 5°C change in global average temperature. That’s pretty significant, isn’t it?

Well, Icarus, with the planet cooling while CO2 rises you are at least in less danger of the sun melting your feather wax and causing your gross weight to exceed your coefficient of lift.

Icarus. Anna V has put it far better than I could. We are expected to make major changes to our civilisation on the basis of highly disputed ‘estimates’ and ‘predictions’. We need better reasons and much less hysteria if this to be done effectively

jeez (15:37:52) : Oh and by the way they’ve also noted you’re a fanatic socialist ecofreak with delusions of ecotopia. Want to come by and comment on it?
Thanks for the good laugh!!

Here’s an insight into what’s going on at British science institutions. Apply it to alarmist nonsense for a clear picture of how scientists have become pimps and advertisers for 3rd parties
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8270688.stm

Gene Nemetz (23:50:23) : Say, have you done the math in this video to see if the man is right; that there can be no runaway warming from increasing amounts of co2 ? There has been an open challenge for 2 years for someone to show that he is wrong. Until now no one has done it. Can you?
The argument states that the optical depth of the atmosphere is a constant. It isn’t. The addition of one kind of greenhouse gas isn’t magically and automatically counterbalanced by an equivalent removal of a different kind. There is no mechanism by which (for example) increasing atmospheric CO2 by 40%, as we have done, causes just the right amount of water vapour to drop out of the atmosphere to result in no change in the greenhouse effect. Indeed, the opposite is true – increasing atmospheric CO2 causes warming which in turn causes an increase in atmospheric water vapour (warmer oceans cause more evaporation and a warmer atmosphere holds more water), hence there is a positive feedback.
So, the argument is clearly nonsense.

Icarus
“that ‘optimum’ climate you’re talking about isn’t just some arbitrary state, but the one that has supported all of human civilisation for the last 10,000 years or so. Don’t we at least have a responsibility to try to avoid causing dramatic changes which will have to be dealt with by future generations?”
And just what optimum climate are *you* speaking about? The postglacial climate optimum? or the Preboreal cold event? or the 8,2 Kyr cold event? or the 4.2 Kyr cooling? or the Roman Warm Period? or the MWP? or the LIA? or….
For your information climate has changed a quite a bit during those 10,000 (actually 11,700) years since the last ice age ended. Generally speaking human civilizations have flourished best when it was warm.

Icarus,
When you highlight positive feedbacks in solar TSI, as you did when you cited the excellent paper by Douglass et al, and use that to make general extrapolations to conclude that positive feedbacks dominate the Earths climate, you are committing an error of logic.
Solar cycles may well cause temperature amplification by positive feedback. Indeed, this has been claimed by Svensmark’s GCR hypothesis. In that scenario, the higher solar activity would result in a reduction in cloud cover that allows more insolation of the Earths surface and subsequent warming.
Now, consider that the effect of this warming would lead to increased evaporation, formation of Cu Nimb clouds raising sensible heat to the tropopause, and consequent precipitation. The clouds increase albedo AND lift sensible heat where it can radiate into space. This would be a net negative feedback.
Of course, the two feedbacks do not happen contemporaneously. First there is the positive feedback as described by Douglass and there is a time lag before the oceans can warm sufficiently. Then the negative feedbacks increase and overwhelm the positive. Therefore it is perfectly possible to envisage positive feedbacks operating on particular forcing mechanisms while still having a net negative feedback operating on the climate at a later point in time.
There should be nothing strange or difficult to understand about this.

I just love the way they say “Hanno 2009” as if the graph comes from a legitimate publication. Too bad Hanno’s user handle wasn’t something like “racoon37”

Icarus:
“It seems to me that at the moment at least, the ‘grasping, selfish, greedy elite’ are trying very hard to carry on with ‘business as usual’ and not spend anything at all on mitigation.”
Who are these ‘grasping, selfish, greedy elite?’
Do you mean Goldman Sachs who are actively lobbying Congress on a cap & trade mechanism to they can pocket billions running the trading markets?
Do you mean General Electric who is lobbying for Waxman Markey so that consumers would be forced into buying expensive GE products?
Do you mean General Motors who are taking tax dollars to manufacture so called “green autos”?
Do you mean the likes of Duke energy, Dow chemicals, Caterpillar, Deere, who are actively lobbying congress to pass Waxman Markey for no obvious gain?
Do you mean Al Gore’s company that trades emission trading certificates in London?
I’m not trying to score debating points here, I just want to know which companies you have in mind and why?

Icarus:
“increasing atmospheric CO2 causes warming which in turn causes an increase in atmospheric water vapour (warmer oceans cause more evaporation and a warmer atmosphere holds more water), hence there is a positive feedback.”
What you describe is an unstable system. The cause of the intial warming in such a system, wheather it is co2 or solar, is immaterial, once started it will continue until some other factor intervenes. Where does it end ? It ends when the atmosphere saturates (clouds) and the water precipitates out (rain). What Miskolczi indicates is that we already have a runaway water vapor ‘greenhouse’. The addition of co2 just alters the distribution of greenhouse gases slightly. The system is completely dominated by water vapor. You might look up the changes over time of the water vapor at various altitudes. It has been decreasing as Miskolczi predicts.

tty (05:18:42) : For your information climate has changed a quite a bit during those 10,000 (actually 11,700) years since the last ice age ended.
By what measure has the global climate ‘changed quite a bit’ in the last 10,000 years? All the evidence shows just the opposite –
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Paleoclimatology_IceCores/

******
Icarus (19:06:17) :
It seems to me that at the moment at least, the ‘grasping, selfish, greedy elite’ are trying very hard to carry on with ‘business as usual’ and not spend anything at all on mitigation…
******
Do you have any idea of the money, effort and time that has been spent in the last 30 yrs in developed nations, and continues at increasing rates, for environmental “mitigation”? The cost-of-living has increased considerably in those nations due to “mitigation”. That’s been “business as usual” for decades.
What dimension do you live in?

brazil84 (06:05:42) :
I just love the way they say “Hanno 2009″ as if the graph comes from a legitimate publication. Too bad Hanno’s user handle wasn’t something like “racoon37″

For “Hanno 2009” they used his account name. For “Rohde 2009” they used his real name instead of the more consistent “Dragons flight 2009”.

In trying to make a point about this issue elsewhere, I went to a random page in the document and picked a random paragraph. The first full paragraph on page 15 is
“Documentation of this trend has been building for the last century and studies of glaciers and ice caps are becoming more sophisticated with new satellite-based observation technologies and attempts to distinguish glacier responses to multiple variables (WGMS 2008a, WGMS 2008b, Braithwaite et al. 2009).”
The intent was to show that the bibliographic citations in the main body of the document are connected to bibliographic references in the nine page reference section. The only problem: Braithwaite et al. 2009 isn’t listed in the references.
I did not perform any other cross checks. The first and only cross check that I did perform showed a discrepancy. So, how many other citations in the main body are not listed in the references section? And how many of those nine pages of references are never cited in the document?

Icarus (03:57:19) :
Troll,
The ad hoc assumption is made by the IPCC.
Miskolczi’s math still has not been found wrong.
If you have found it wrong then lay out your case. Leave it open to the entire math and science world as Miskolczi has done.
Also, send your work to Miskolczi. See what his reply is.
Submit your work to the public. Let’s see what we find.

Vincent (05:19:16) : Icarus
This water vapour feedback argument is quite strange on three counts. The IPCC say that if the temperature increases by about 1.2C (the acknowledged temperature sensitivity to doubling CO2 without feedbacks) then the warming will lead to increased water vapour that will drive temperatures up by 3.5C. However, the first problem with this is that the global average temperature varies by 4C during a year. Could you explain why this does not invoke the water vapour feedback as described?
I haven’t read that the global average temperature varies by 4°C in the course of a year – can you find a reference for that? Regardless of the value though, it seems to me that any such temperature range would necessarily already include the water vapour feedback, since it responds on a very short timescale (a few days).
The second point about warmer air holding higher absolute amounts of water vapour is true as far as the train of thought goes, but it does not follow this to its conclusion. It ignores the fact that this water vapour eventually comes out as precipitation as warm fronts rise over cold air masses. This is basic meteorology. If this was not the case then there would indeed be a positive feedback that forces water to evapourate in ever higher absolute amounts, causing ever higher temperatures until the whole of the earth’s oceans will end up suspended above our heads. Such a thing has never been observed.
It’s precisely because of its short residence time in the atmosphere (a few days) that water vapour is a feedback, not a forcing, and therefore cannot have this ‘runaway’ effect that you suggest. On its own, any increase in water vapour in the atmosphere would have a negligible effect on global temperature because it would (as you say) precipitate out in at most a few days. A long-term forcing such as an increase in solar irradiance or long-lived greenhouse gases is necessary to support a long term change in water vapour in the atmosphere, with its resultant increase in greenhouse effect (positive feedback) added to the primary forcing.
Thirdly, if CO2 has such a violent affect on climate, then can you explain why CO2 levels averaged around 2000ppm during the Mesozoic without the catastrophic effects you imply should happen? This is not 1 but 3 doublings. By your numbers this should have led to a temperature increase of 10C, utterly catastrophic!
From what I’ve read, the Mesozoic was indeed up to ~10°C warmer, so this fits quite well – especially as the solar flux was at least 1% smaller than it is now (although I think your average CO2 of 2000ppmv is an exaggeration – I’ve seen quoted a *peak* of 1,130 ppmv). If the sun was weaker, the CO2 concentration was subtantially larger, and the global temperature was substantially higher, doesn’t that support the concern that anthropogenic increases in CO2 will cause climate change well outside the normal range of the last 10,000 years or so?
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v1/n1/full/ngeo.2007.29.html

auto249243 (06:46:15) : Icarus:
“increasing atmospheric CO2 causes warming which in turn causes an increase in atmospheric water vapour (warmer oceans cause more evaporation and a warmer atmosphere holds more water), hence there is a positive feedback.”
What you describe is an unstable system. The cause of the intial warming in such a system, wheather it is co2 or solar, is immaterial, once started it will continue until some other factor intervenes. Where does it end ? It ends when the atmosphere saturates (clouds) and the water precipitates out (rain). What Miskolczi indicates is that we already have a runaway water vapor ‘greenhouse’. The addition of co2 just alters the distribution of greenhouse gases slightly. The system is completely dominated by water vapor.
My understanding is that water vapour is a feedback, not a forcing, due to its very short residence in the atmosphere. While it’s there, certainly it is the single largest absorber of long wave radiation in the atmosphere, but it’s only there because other much longer-lived greenhouse gases create the right conditions for it to be there, warming the oceans and atmosphere so that evaporation can occur. The system is not ‘completely dominated by water vapour’ – far from it.
You’re right when you say “The cause of the intial warming in such a system, whether it is co2 or solar, is immaterial” – that’s the whole point. Turning up the CO2 isn’t much different from turning up the sun, and we all agree that turning up the sun would make the planet warm up.
You might look up the changes over time of the water vapor at various altitudes. It has been decreasing as Miskolczi predicts
One obvious result of AGW is that, in the short term, temperature in the lower atmosphere rises while temperature in the upper atmosphere falls (because less long wave radiation is reaching the upper atmosphere – instead it’s down here warming up the planet). Colder air in the upper atmosphere of course holds less water vapour, so this result actually confirms AGW.

Icarus
I see you failed to produce your proof work showing Miskolczi is wrong.
I still wait.

Icarus (16:22:54) : What do you attribute this to, if not primarily the anthropogenic increase in greenhouse gases?
Natural variation causes the earth to warm and cool. But trolls can’t say the words ‘natural variations are the reason for climate change’. Because as soon as they say them they stop being a troll.
As soon as you want to become human Icarus say those words. It’s magic.

Icarus (16:44:26)
You say: “Turning up the CO2 isn’t much different from turning up the sun, and we all agree that turning up the sun would make the planet warm up.”
The question is how much will it warm up. Your claim above was 3.7 W/m2 for a doubling of CO2. Not catastrophic. You then implied catastrophe would come from water vapor feedback. But an increase in water vapor will lower the 3.7 W/m2, cut it in half in a likely scenario. This is not difficult to understand, the spectral lines are filled with the extra water vapor.
So “scientists” on your side invented a new theory, CO2 GH effect in the upper atmosphere where there is less water vapor. You might want to read about it so you can add it to your spiel.

Icarus
I see you were back here again and still failed to produce your proof work showing Miskolczi is wrong.
If your findings show that his assumption is wrong than lay out the case here, with all its detail. Let us see if you work is correct.
Do you have proof work for your claim?

Jeff Alberts (17:26:47) :
You said it better than me!!

Hanno (01:57:08)
Thanks for commenting. I am sorry that you received intimidating emails. I do not believe they are representative of the vast majority of readers or commentators of this site.

Icarus:
“If the sun was weaker, the CO2 concentration was subtantially larger, and the global temperature was substantially higher, doesn’t that support the concern that anthropogenic increases in CO2 will cause climate change well outside the normal range of the last 10,000 years or so.”
During the late ordovician, CO2 levels climbed to 5,000 ppm yet the world entered a glaciation. Doesn’t that cast doubt of the claim that CO2 drives climate?

Vincent (04:41:51) :
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2006AGUFM.A13D0970S
This NASA site says that “The annual cycle in temperature is massive relative to most climate variations, generally exceeding even the amplitude of glacial-interglacial temperature changes.”
Thanks for the link – very interesting. However, the paper appears to talk about the annual cycle in particular regions, not the planet as a whole. Of course we all know that in extratropical regions there is a large difference between the mean temperature of winter and summer months, but that doesn’t mean the planet is warming and cooling as a whole, in the course of a year. I’d be interested to find out whether it does.
You then said: “Regardless of the value though, it seems to me that any such temperature range would necessarily already include the water vapour feedback, since it responds on a very short timescale (a few days).”
Then doesn’t it seem very strange to hypothesise a run away warming when global average temperatures exceed 2C (or whatever they regard as a tipping point) when the global average ocillates twice this amount annually?
I think ‘oscillates’ is the key word here. If, for example, you had summer weather in the Arctic all year long then there would be no ice left in a very few years, but of course that is not the case – it gets cold again in the winter, and the ice reforms. When you’re talking about global warming you’re talking about a sustained rise in temperatures over decades and centuries, not something that oscillates around a mean. You’re talking about warming that isn’t counteracted by equivalent cooling (that’s the whole point) – Isn’t that why the glaciers are shrinking, the permafrost is thawing etc?

Hanno:
I join those who have expressed regret at the offensive emails you have received. Over the years I have obtained many such offensive emails from AGW-believers and I am shocked that you have received similar distressing messages from persons who disagree with your views. All such unsolicited messages should be condemned, and I condemn them.
Icarus:
You correctly say:
“Thanks for the link – very interesting. However, the paper appears to talk about the annual cycle in particular regions, not the planet as a whole.”
For actual source data go to
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/anomalies/index.php
It says there (I hope this will line up in this copy).
Global Mean Monthly Surface Temperature Estimates for the Base Period 1901 to 2000
Land Surface
Mean Temp. J F M A M J J A S O N D Annual
1901 to 2000 (°C) 2.8 3.2 5.0 8.1 11.1 13.3 14.3 13.8 12.0 9.3 5.9 3.7 8.5
1901 to 2000 (°F) 37.0 37.8 40.8 46.5 52.0 55.9 57.8 56.9 53.6 48.7 42.6 38.7 47.3
Sea Surface
Mean Temp. J F M A M J J A S O N D Annual
1901 to 2000 (°C) 15.8 15.9 15.9 16.0 16.3 16.4 16.4 16.4 16.2 15.9 15.8 15.7 16.1
1901 to 2000 (°F) 60.5 60.6 60.7 60.9 61.3 61.5 61.5 61.4 61.1 60.6 60.4 60.4 60.9
Combined Mean
Surface Temp. J F M A M J J A S O N D Annual
1901 to 2000 (°C) 12.0 12.1 12.7 13.7 14.8 15.5 15.8 15.6 15.0 14.0 12.9 12.2 13.9
1901 to 2000 (°F) 53.6 53.9 54.9 56.7 58.6 59.9 60.4 60.1 59.0 57.1 55.2 54.0 57.0
As you can see, global temperature rises by 3.8 deg.C from January to July and falls by 3.8 deg.C from July to January.
Please note that the highest global temperature is when the Earth is furthest from the Sun during each year and, therefore, it is an empirical fact that mechanisms within the climate system have much more effect on global temperature than change to incoming vs outgoing radiation.
And I wonder why some people think a rise of global temperature of 2 degC would pass a catastrophic “tipping point” when global temperature rises by nearly double that during each year and recovers within the same year, and it does this every year.
Also, you seem to think that transitions between glacial and interglacial conditions support your arguments. They do not.
The Earth is constrained within close limits of global temperature in each of two stable states; viz. glacial and interglacial. And its temperature has been the same within narrow bounds in each of those stable states throughout the ~2.5 billion years since the Earth gained an oxygen-rich atmosphere. Importantly, the Earth’s surface has had liquid water throughout that time, but heating from the Sun has increased by about 30% over that time. If that additional radiative forcing from the Sun had a direct effect on temperature then the oceans would have boiled to steam long ago.
Clearly, the climate system contains very strong constraints that keep global temperature within close boundaries in each of the two stable states.
So, I wonder why an increase to radiative forcing of at most 0.4 per cent from a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration is supposed to threaten a “tipping point” when ~30 per cent increase to radiative forcing from the Sun has had no discernible effect on global temperature.
But the global temperature does constantly vary within the boundaries of its stable state. Its present state is the interglacial state and has been for ten millennia. At issue is why the global temperature varies within the boundaries.
There are many known and unknown reasons for the variations. But, clearly, atmospheric CO2 concentration is not a significant reason for the variations.
Richard

Vincent (05:08:48) :
During the late ordovician, CO2 levels climbed to 5,000 ppm yet the world entered a glaciation.
Cite, please?
Doesn’t that cast doubt on the claim that CO2 drives climate?
My understanding is that atmospheric CO2 is closely correlated with global temperature for many millions of years into the past, as demonstrated by several different data sets, e.g:
http://www.ipcc.ch/graphics/ar4-wg1/jpg/fig-6-3.jpg
It’s difficult to dispute this kind of evidence, unless you’re going to claim that the evidence is entirely fake – a complete invention. So, can we agree that generally when the world has been warm, CO2 has been high, and when the world has been cool, CO2 has been low?
Obviously in the distant past you had a cooler sun (which would mean higher levels of greenhouse gases to achieve a particular temperature than is the case today), you had very different arrangements of the continents (e.g. a large proportion of the Earth’s land mass centred on the South Pole), and so on – factors which make a direct comparison with today’s climate impossible. Saying that (for example) there was a particular time many millions of years ago when CO2 was higher and global temperature was lower doesn’t disprove this correlation between CO2 and temperature. It remains a fact that higher temperatures are correlated with higher CO2, and lower temperatures are correlated with lower CO2.
Agreed?

Icarus
You still have not provided proof for your claim about Miskolczi.
How many times will I be asking for it? For how many years?

Smokey (15:37:27) : …can we agree that CO2 does not cause runaway global warming?
Two different issues here:
1: Whether CO2 causes warming at all;
2: Whether the right conditions exist for ‘runaway’ warming.
If there are ‘tipping points’ then an initial relatively small amount of warming can be magnified by positive feedback mechanisms (albedo, methane deposits etc.) and the cause of the initial warming is irrelevant. Therefore you only need to decide whether CO2 can cause warming. Since it is a greenhouse gas, the evidence suggests that it can.
…That chart shows that elevated CO2 levels have been many thousands of ppmv, for over a hundred million years at a time. During that time the planet both warmed and cooled.
To imply that you can take two data points 100 million years apart and draw a straight line between them, and just assume that represents reality, is clearly absurd. The IPCC’s Figure 6.3 has many more intervening data points and shows a strong correlation between atmospheric CO2 and global temperature. Regardless of that, of course we know that there are numerous factors affecting global climate other than CO2. This is not news, and it certainly doesn’t represent any kind of argument against AGW.
And to find evidence of a ‘cooler sun’ you will have to go back billions of years, not millions.
Cite, please? This disagrees:
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1868609&rendertype=figure&id=fig2
“My understanding is that atmospheric CO2 is closely correlated with global temperature for many millions of years into the past… It remains a fact that higher temperatures are correlated with higher CO2, and lower temperatures are correlated with lower CO2.”
Your understanding is wrong. The only correlation between temperature and CO2 is when rising CO2 follows rising temperature. There is no cause and effect between rising CO2 and subsequent rising temperature.
So there *is* a correlation, which was what I said, and what this data shows:
http://www.ipcc.ch/graphics/ar4-wg1/jpg/fig-6-3.jpg
If you’re going to argue that there is ‘no cause and effect’ then you are of course arguing that CO2 is not a greenhouse gas. Care to support that claim?
Finally, the R² correlation between recent increases in CO2 and the temperature is so low that it is indistinguishable from noise
Oh dear. Are you *seriously* claiming to disprove a correlation between atmospheric CO2 and global temperature based on 10 years of data – a shorter period even than one solar cycle? You seem like a reasonably intelligent person, and this is just lame.

Icarus
You continue to not provide proof for your claim about Miskolczi.
Since you have not provided proof should I assume you do not have backing for your claim?
Should I assume that what you said about it is something you found on a blog somewhere? Or in Wikipedia?
Is your claim something you say just to reject the science?
Is your claim about the work of Ferenc Miskolczi something you never did look in to for yourself?
Should I assume you are a troll with no real appreciation and respect for the data that is the real science of climate change?
Was Ferenc Miskolczi’s theory peer-reviewed?

With regard to citing the graph as Hanno 2009, they are probably correct as the standard is to cite the date that the web page was last updated, i.e. 21 July 2009 and the date that the page was accessed. One can easily check this by referring to the list of references and seeing what dates they cite, except that Hanno 2009 does not appear in the references.

Icarus
You are just another case of stonewalling of data?
No, you’re not.
You are stonewalling your lack of data.

Yes, by-the-way, these STTM reports are not just peer reviewed but also reviewed by Party members’ scientific staff. They also must be approved by the UN environmental scientific agency: http://www.unep.org/science/centres/index.asp
then, once the report is approved, it becomes a guide line to policy making
Obviously, if a country (Party) member is against a international policy – which later becomes international law – this country will do anything to destroy the arguments and recommendations of the report.
But, if this country is minority, this means, it is not convincing to other countries, its action will not mean anything: the report will still be valid.
For instance, although the USA administration has done anything to destroy the liability of the Brundtland commission report, which was the basis of the UNEP, UNFCC, SCBD, etc., the Conventions has been signed in 1992 during the Earth Summit, and are still valid, BECAUSE the international scientific community outside the USA still approves and backs the Brundtland.
Someone must be really “arrogant” to think that s(he) knows more than the majority of scientists of the world!

The fact that a same graph was found in the report of United Nations Environment Programme and the Wikipedia may just be a form of synchronicity, that being the experience of events which are causally unrelated, and yet their occurring together carries meaning to the person observing the events.
Some people tend to search for or interpret synchronicity in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions and avoids information and interpretations that contradict prior beliefs. This is defined by the cognitive science as the “confirmation bias”.
In the context of “confirmation bias”, coincidences sometimes lead to explanations that a person or persons intentionally acted and the syncronicity is the evidence these actions. That is the beginning of “conspiracy theories”, this means fringe theories which are used to explain a historical or current event as the result of a secret plot by usually powerful Machiavellian conspirators, such as a “secret team” or “shadow government”, rather than broad social forces and large structures of human collectivities.
We may be watching an example of conspiracy theory happening right now in structure of the conservative belief that the “climate change issue” is a part of a organized plan of the international governance (UN, World Bank, IMF, etc.), and/or developing countries to run the world… or, still, in the opinion that “monied interests who now see the ‘green’ (old slang term for MONEY as in green backs) of new markets including carbon-credit trading.”
Finally, the White Queen says to Alice: “It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards” (Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll)