Oh, Mann, that's gotta hurt!

First the pause wasn’t long enough to be a pause and therefore was not significant. Then the pause was acknowledged and blamed on missing heat and/or natural variation. Then the pause disappeared by using bad (ship) data to correct more accurate and robust (buoy) data.
Given all of that, how can any reasonable person not believe that our understanding of the science of the Earth’s Climate is anything but poor at this point. I wish I could share your confidence, but after examining the data, methods, predictions and assertions I cannot.

Brandon, pretty much by definition, less than 1C of warming is not going to be significant.

“Never argue with a fool, onlookers may not be able to tell the difference.” – Mark Twain
Hopefully you can tell the difference between Brandon and me, but I will take the risk. I am not sure that anyone actually took him on point for point regarding the specific quotes (sorry, I could only watch so much bad thread tennis before my neck got sore). I am actually going to partially concede that he has a minor point, but don’t worry I will take him to task on the bulk of it.
[quote]Though global average temperature may have warmed during the twentieth century, no direct instrumental records exist that demonstrate any such warming within an acceptable degree of probability.[/quote]
He says that this is an embarrassingly bad quote because it is essentially trying to deny the temperature record. Most reasonable scientists can look at the surface temperature record and conclude that the general trend of the 20th century was a mild positive slope. This quote makes that point a bit of a mess.
There are questions about the precision of the instrumentation in the early 20th century, the consistency of data gathering, the corruption of many data stations by environmental encroachment, and a number of other issues. One could reasonably say that given all that, putting an error range into place, and accounting for precision, you could make the argument that the temperature rise is statistically small compared to the precision and error range. But that is a stretch.
Stronger points could be made: historical proxies show sharper rises over shorter periods; the rise is very gradual and therefore not dangerous; despite the rise, we are still at the lower end of the temperature scale historically speaking; more recent data with precise and reliable instruments show the rise has stopped. Leaving the impression that there was no rise in the 20th century is disingenuous.
I stop well short of Brandon’s characterization that this is an intentional misleading statement. I would say that it is an awkward way to say something that could give the reader (such as Brandon) an impression which is not intended.
[quote]The first 100 parts per million (ppm) of CO2 have a significant effect on atmospheric temperature, whereas any increase from the current 400 ppm will have an insignificant effect.[/quote]
Brandon takes issue with the fact that this leaves the impression that further contribution to the CO2 level will not lead to warming. He is correct that is the intended message, but incorrect that it is wrong. CO2 has a diminishing effect as concentration increases, and the current level is well beyond the level of significance (as far as planet temperature is concerned). Additional CO2 does help plant growth, which is good for the environment.
While it is technically correct that adding C02 will still have a tiny marginal warming impact, it is at a level that is well below our current ability to measure it. Brandon’s taking exception to this missed the point of the quote.
[quote] ii. The increased carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, will lead to ever increasing global warming. Point (ii) has shown to be invalid on all time scales. [/quote]
Brandon seems to think this statement too is false. Thank God he is wrong on this one. If increasing CO2 lead to increasing temperature, then the rise in temperature would cause outgassing of CO2 from water and soil, and the snowball effect is on its way to a runaway burning planet. The quote points to the proxy records which show that CO2 levels have been many times higher than present without much increase in temperature. Indeed temperatures have been lower with higher CO2 levels at points in time.
See the previous point on the diminishing returns from the effect of CO2 on temperature, and the negative feedbacks that exist in the system to neutralize the temperature/carbon cycle. The proxy record shows that CO2 rises in response to temperature rise (not the other way around), and because of the diminishing returns and negative feedbacks, Brandon’s fear of the present and future CO2 level is misplaced.
[quote] Robert Carter shows that any human effect on climate is trivial compared to natural variation, and that there is no evidence the next 50 years will bring human induced warming [/quote]
Brandon likes this quote least of all, but it is true. There is no hard, direct, meaningful science that can definitively point to any activity that man has done thus far has a statistically meaningful effect on climate compared to the natural variation of the system. There is a theory which is untested and unproven as to how significant man’s contribution may be, but as yet nothing empirical that state with any level of confidence. As there is no evidence of past impact, there can be no evidence of possible future impact.
If such proof existed, it would be cited as rebuttal each time a quote like this is put forward. Brandon has none because there is none.

Brandon,
There has been warming since the depths of the Little Ice Age, c 1700, not just since 1900. Since c. 1850, the planet has been coming out of the LIA cold period into another warming interval, as has happened repeatedly during the Holocene. However, each successive warm period since the Minoan, over 3000 years ago, has been progressively less warm. Earth is in a long-term cooling trend.
The recovery from the Maunder Minimum depths of the LIA in the early 18th century was greater in duration and amplitude than the late 20th century warming phase, c. 1977-96, without benefit of increased man-made CO2. The warmings of the late 19th century and early 20th century were comparable in magnitude to that of the late 20th century, again without greatly increased CO2. The natural, late 20th century warming occurred accidentally while CO2 was rising, but it was preceded by the cooling cycle of the late 1940s to c. 1977, despite rapidly rising CO2 during that interval as well.
Thus, there is no reason to imagine that man-made CO2 actually contributed to the natural warming or cooling cycles of the past more than 300 years. All observed warming and cooling cycles since then have been within normal bounds (century to century fluctuations of one degree C), so no valid way has yet been devised to tease out a human signal from this normal variation. It might well be that the net effect of human activity has been to cool the planet, but in any case, the effect either way is at best negligible.
This doesn’t mean that there is no GHE from increased man-made CO2. It does mean that, if any, it’s not detectable. Perhaps earth’s self-regulating climate system quickly compensates for any such warming with prompt negative feedbacks. Maybe man-made cooling more than compensates for the hypothetical warming. Science doesn’t know. But clearly natural variation is far more important in climate change than growing beneficial plant food from 280 to 400 ppm. Hence it’s impossible to reject the null hypothesis that nothing out of the ordinary happening.
So the supported scientific conclusion, based upon evidence, is that there is no discernible anthropogenic global warming, although there are local effects from human activities such as urban heat islands.

Mr. Brandon simply likes arguing nothing, argues for the sake of arguing and likes wasting peoples time…That is all I got out of the whole thing.

It was recently revealed that Russia has been funding troll farms. Mostly they are focused on trying to clean up Putin’s image and deny the various atrocities that Russia has been committing.
Beyond that, it’s well known that Russia has been funding various green and anti-drilling groups in both Europe and the US.

Well said.
I’d comment though that quite possibly the land surface was better sampled 100 years ago than now, with colonial stations more numerous and better maintained and observed, and all with similar equipment so that fewer adjustments were needed.
The oceans of course are better sampled now, but still with many issues.
As I’ve written before, there apparently was some modest warming in the late 19th century, and then another spurt between (and possibly during) the World Wars, followed by cooling during the Cold War until the late ’70s.
From looking at raw data, IMO there has been little to no global warming since the peak of the c. 1918-47 hot spell. The first part of the late 20th century warming just clawed back the cooling of the ’40s-70s. Whether it beat the Dust Bowl years or not no one can say with certainty because the data have been so bent, folded, spindled, mutilated, stepped on, mutated, homogenized, extrapolated, guessed at with extreme bias and adjusted beyond all recognition.