Theo Goodwin says:
“Do not make the Alarmists most ridiculous assumption, namely, that all causes are known. We don’t know diddly about Earth’s climate. We don’t know what causes AMO. We don’t know what AMO is. Some Alarmists argue that it is nothing physical, nothing in the real world.”
The point I try to make that no one seems to get, is that there is no justification for extending a trend to 2100 when the cause of the trend is unknown. Why the not extending the trend to the year 2200 or 2300 or 2400?

While respecting his decision to resign he has lost all credibility by posting his reasons on the childish SS (Skeptical Science) site. Or perhaps he would like a photoshopped picture of himself on the head of a Nazi?
Unfortunately for most skeptics, posting his reasons on a site whose members waste taxpayers money designing “research” to show that skeptics are delusional would only demonstrate the posters own bias toward the global warming religion.

Chris Schoneveld:
Your post at September 9, 2013 at 11:29 am says in total

Richard and milodonharlani
I maintain that the word “recovery” needs an explanation when it forms an integral part of Akasofu’s projection until the end of this century? If the recovery, for instance, was due to a more active sun then we might expect a flattening of the linear trend during this century if (!) the sun returns to a Maunder-like minimum.

I maintain that you are guessing because you have a pet hypothesis which Akasofu’s extrapolation does not confirm.
Akasofu extrapolates what is observed to have happened since at least the start of the twentieth century. That extrapolation could differ from what eventuates in the future because any extrapolation may be misleading and usually does break down when distant from the extrapolated data set. But Akasofu’s extrapolation makes only one assumption; viz.
what has been happening will continue to happen.
The extrapolation needs no definition and no “explanation” of “recovery”. It only needs identification of the rate of the observed recovery, and Akasofu does that (anybody could do it by use of a ruler and a pencil).
You are guessing causes which are not known and interpreting that those causes will induce a change. OK. Publish your guess and see how it ‘stands up’ after a few more years of observations. That is what Akasofu is doing in his paper which has resulted in this thread: he published his extrapolation a few years ago and his recent paper reports that the extrapolation still agrees with that extrapolation. Hence, it may be inferred that whatever generated the data set used to create his extrapolation has not (yet) altered discernibly.
Richard

Willis Eschenbach: Having read both the paper and Brierly’s explanation, I find myself unimpressed by both.
We agree again!
Oh, happy day! 🙂

Richard,
I have no pet hypothesis. I just played devil’s advocate and used one of the common explanations for the warming of the last few centuries to make my point. I have yet to see a convincing explanation for The Roman Warm Period or the MWP or LIA and the “recovery”. So any projection, especially 90 years ahead, is guess work and lacks any scientific basis .

Sincere thanks to all here for the kind (and accurate) words about the courage of Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen.
Sonja has taken a strong stand for her scientific and ethical principles, and has stood firm against unethical attacks by global warming extremists.
I published the following article in E&E in early 2005. The thuggish bullying by the pro-Kyoto camp was evident years before the Climategate emails provided incontrovertible proof of their unethical and even criminal behaviour.
This bullying by global warming extremists continues to this day, but it will not continue much longer. Their attack has faltered, and some of their company are starting to retreat.
One already sees papers published by global warming alarmists that acknowledge the significant role of natural climate variation. The significance of these papers is not that they say anything scientifically new – many if not most skeptics believed decades ago that natural climate variation was highly significant – the significance of these recent warmist apologia is that they are primarily political – I suggest that these authors are gradually retreating from their extremist views as the credibility of their warmist alarmism becomes scientifically and politically untenable.
Natural climate variability trumps global warming extremism.
Regards, Allan
Drive-by shootings in Kyotoville
The global warming debate heats up
Allan M.R. MacRae
[Excerpt]
But such bullying is not unique, as other researchers who challenged the scientific basis of Kyoto have learned.
Of particular sensitivity to the pro-Kyoto gang is the “hockey stick” temperature curve of 1000 to 2000 AD, as proposed by Michael Mann of University of Virginia and co-authors in Nature. Mann’s hockey stick indicates that temperatures fell only slightly from 1000 to 1900 AD, after which temperatures increased sharply as a result of humanmade increases in atmospheric CO2. Mann concluded: “Our results suggest that the latter 20th century is anomalous in the context of at least the past millennium. The 1990s was the warmest decade, and 1998 the warmest year, at moderately high levels of confidence.”
Mann’s conclusion is the cornerstone of the scientific case supporting Kyoto. However, Mann is incorrect.
Mann eliminated from the climate record both the Medieval Warm Period, a period from about 900 to 1500 AD when global temperatures were generally warmer than today, and also the Little Ice Age from about 1500 to 1800 AD, when temperatures were colder. Mann’s conclusion contradicted hundreds of previous studies on this subject, but was adopted without question by Kyoto advocates.
In the April 2003 issue of Energy and Environment, Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and co-authors wrote a review of over 250 research papers that concluded that the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age were true climatic anomalies with world-wide imprints – contradicting Mann’s hockey stick and undermining the basis of Kyoto. Soon et al were then attacked in EOS, the journal of the American Geophysical Union.
In the July 2003 issue of GSA Today, University of Ottawa geology professor Jan Veizer and Israeli astrophysicist Nir Shaviv concluded that temperatures over the past 500 million years correlate with changes in cosmic ray intensity as Earth moves in and out of the spiral arms of the Milky Way. The geologic record showed no correlation between atmospheric CO2 concentrations and temperatures, even though prehistoric CO2 levels were often many times today’s levels. Veizer and Shaviv also received “special attention” from EOS.
In both cases, the attacks were unprofessional – first, these critiques should have been launched in the journals that published the original papers, not in EOS. Also, the victims of these attacks were not given advanced notice, nor were they were given the opportunity to respond in the same issue. In both cases the victims had to wait months for their rebuttals to be published, while the specious attacks were circulated by the pro-Kyoto camp.
*************

“Pamela Gray says: September 9, 2013 at 7:57 am
It appears to have been published. I would have resigned as well…”

I doubt that statement. When one is in a position to provide ongoing influence for better science, better writing, adherence to standards; going ballistic and committing career seppuku over a snit is not professional. Protest, withhold approval, insist on independent research; all are possibilities, but do it professionally with dignity.

“Steven Mosher says: September 9, 2013 at 9:04 am
Ya Pamela.
i would have resigned as well.
…
A controlled experiment approach is also out of the question. we cant vary the parameters in a controlled fashion– hey you, hold the sun constant while I vary land use so we can untangle them.. or you, you hold black carbon constant while I vary C02. we are doing an uncontrolled experiment on the planet.
That leaves one path for understanding the time series: build a physics model. Not pretty, and as the pause has shown, not entirely accurate.”

Steven:
I also don’t think you would’ve resigned either for the exact same reasons I stated for Pamela. And as for Pamela, the professional dignity stuff is what I would expect from both of you, without prompting by us peanuts in the gallery; it is how we would see your records after the fact, i.e. for the good of science and with dignity, honor and all that.
Now, considering your lark about a “controlled CO2 AGW experiment”; surely you jest? I would think there are observations that could be made, beginning with CO2 activity in the atmosphere. Haven’t you thought about experiments to verify component explicit contributions towards atmospheric temperatures? Perhaps infrared readings?
To me it comes across as incredible hubris that the CAGW crowd not only expect to easily build a reliable and accurate computer model of earth’s atmosphere and then to push the models as proof of disaster.
Remember, the thread is about a lightweight throwing a hissyfit and resigning. The paper discussed is also a lightweight and remember, journals publish light informational articles as well as genuine heavyweight research. Resigning over a light article is all the more puzzling.
If only the big publications demonstrate a hundredth of scientific rigor expected in this case.

richardscourtney says:
September 9, 2013 at 12:14 pm
“As I explained, extrapolation of that change has a completely “scientific basis” in that it provides a falsifiable hypothesis; viz.
what has been happening will continue to happen.”
You really made a fool of yourself by thinking that if a hypothesis is falsifiable it has therefore a “scientific basis”. That’s like: Because a football is round every round object is a football. And then conclude with a laughable “what has been happening will continue to happen”. Are you really an editor for E&E, the magazine for which I reviewed two papers in the last special (July) issue?