Technology investment is progressive, however will require several decades to bear substantial fruit.

The AGW high priests are intentionally scaring people about "tipping points" during the current decade. This is incompatible with the time frame of any serious technological change and is leading politicians and the public towards a march of the Lemmings.

The hysterical scare tactics being used by Gore, Hansen and Lovelock are most certainly not progressive.

I find it fascinating that a doctoral candidate from a left wing school like Columbia (host two months ago to the evil dictator AchmadeniJIHAD and who employed the left wing political hack Hansen) would feel this way. I wonder if this feeling of his would in any way shape or form jeopardize his ultimate achievement of obtaining his PH.D.

Environmentalism the politics of fear??? Nah, it's the politics of the children, and the polar bears, and the fiddler crab, and the redwoods!

As for the term cheap fuel, that is an oxymoron. There is no longer any such thing. Especially when we have to obtain our fuel from evil doers on this earth. The real threat the planet and national security that guys like our "progressive" friends (you know who you are) are too blind to see. Sometimes you have to make deals with the devil. But then again, when you aren't premitted to fend for yourself because of excessive regulations, then unfortuneatly, that's what has to be done.

Save the planet from hot air. MOVE TO PITTSBURGH!!!!

Wow.. after reading the article, and many of the comments, I am struck as to how these guys think they are so superior in their ability to understand everything. I especially like the comment that Plymouth rock will need to be viewed by glass bottomed boats. How sad...and kinda funny. Very elitist discussion.

Really, can they tell us exactly how many people have actually been killed as a direct result of an extreme weather event related to GW? hmmm... I often wonder if the AGW crowd is as wound up about an asteroid impact. The impact on the planet, pun intended, would be quite the same as the doom and gloom being pitched as a result of GW.

Oh, and by the way, I do not recall seeing, or hearing, Mother Nature directly threatening our lives because we do not believe in HER version of the proper religion. Remember kids, anyone who does not believe in the proper version, of the proper religion, has been declared a viable target for extermination. Doesn't matter where you live or what country.

Believe there are 3 aspect of climate change that contribute to this perception.

First, is time scale. Climate change is very slow and over the long run adds up. The most serious problems are 50 years or so in the future. It is like watching grass grow, but slower. So, while there is danger involved, it is a very slowly progressing problem.

Second is momentum. We know that even if we managed to hold CO2 emission constant, the worlds climate will continue to warm for about 20 years. Hence, our ability to effect changes are muted.

Third are the skeptics. We know that there are some people totally opposed to admiting that change has happened in the first spot and seek to spread what amouts to dis-information at best or out and out lies at the worst. Consequently, there is a temptation to focus on the extreme to achieve balance.

Forth are tipping points. We know they exists, but nobody is highly confidenet about when they are crossed. In fact, we could already have crossed one with Arctic Sea ice. As has been pointed out climate models have lots of uncertainity. There is plenty of room for either the optimist and pessimist to be correct.

Take a look at current Arctic Sea ice levels. The sun set in the Arctic over a month ago, and yet sea ice extent is even further below the long term trend than it was back in Auguest when records were being set. I don't wish to scare people, but I can not say the situation is very encouraging either.

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.365.jpg

"Unless we announce disasters, no one will listen" Sir John Houghton, first chairman of IPCC

Andrew:
You talk about dis-information as though it is never used by the fear mongers.

Yous said: WE KNOW that even if we managed to hold CO2 emission constant, the worlds climate will continue to warm for about 20 years.

The truth is: You believe ....
Until you can prove it, it is still just a hypothysis.
You don't actually KNOW any of it.
Spreading Fear maybe?

Climate change is very slow and over the long run adds up.

False. This is not always the case. The LIA came on quickly.

We know that even if we managed to hold CO2 emission constant, the worlds climate will continue to warm for about 20 years.

False. You getting this info from models that simply attribute the 1 degree increase we have seen in the last 200 years, which coincidentally was the end of a period that was 1 degree cooler than today, to CO2?

We know that there are some people totally opposed to admitting that change has happened in the first spot and seek to spread what amouts to dis-information at best or out and out lies at the worst.

Care to provide any examples? What I have seen most hotly debated is not whether temps have risen, but rather why is it rising and how much has it risen.

Consequently, there is a temptation to focus on the extreme to achieve balance.

A temptation? Have you seen the worst LIE put onto film, "An Inconvenient Truth"? At least thirty five lies or gross misrepresentations are in it. Lovelock, Gaia is going to kill us. Hansen, the sky is falling. Simon, I'm still depressed down under.

Forth are tipping points. We know they exists

Really? Can you name one, how about two? Please provide how as well as what.

There is plenty of room for either the optimist and pessimist to be correct.

Then why is the AGW crowd tempted to spread fear of impending doom and contempt for non-believers?

Andrew, I don't wish to engage in a pissing contest as I did with BT, that was to prove a point. I'd simply like it if you would back up your statements.

Regards,

Steve

Andrew,
You wrote,

"Forth are tipping points. We know they exists, but nobody is highly confidenet about when they are crossed. In fact, we could already have crossed one with Arctic Sea ice. As has been pointed out climate models have lots of uncertainity."

That is not a very percise, nor is it a very confident statement. If you know they exist, then they must be quantified. Tipping points, run-away feedback loops, or what ever you call them, should be expressed in concise scientific terms, with all the attendent hard mathematical/physical data to support them. Otherwise, they are just theories. No one is saying they don't exist, or they will not happen. However, to warn people of them, and to get people to listen, one needs hard scientific evidence. In short, prove it. If the people who warn about tipping points cannot say with reasonable certainty when they will occur, those people should not be trusted. It is one thing to say something exists; it is quite another thing to predict when it will occur.

Also, I would not fret about the Artic. Last year 2 Scandanavian hikers attempted to hike the Artic Circle only to turn back because of extreme cold and hypothermia (-70 deg F temps will do that). They were shocked to find it so cold, windy and frozen. They expected to see hundreds of icebergs floating on warm waters.

The left loves using the politics of fear. Not only with the envoronment but with nearly every issue. It's the only way they can anyone to notice them.

Andrew,

...even if we managed to hold CO2 emission constant, the worlds climate will continue to warm for about 20 years.

Are you saying that there is a 20 year lag time? I seem to remember at least one AGW fanatic on this thread pooh-poohing time lag.

Forth (Fourth) are tipping points. We know they exist(s)...

Name one. A tipping point, that is.

I'll let Patrick H. handle the Arctic sea ice.

AGW is all about money...its tactics are fear, emotions, deceit, politics...why, because their science cannot stand up to critical review and there is zero proof for their claim...it reminds me of an old saying, if you cannot intellectually win the argument, then baffle them with bull----, and boy, there are alot of bovines out there...let's interpret the post by andrew in his final conclusion summing up his post...in my opinion, it highlights the tactics of this disenginous AGW crowd..."i dont want to appear as a fear monger (a feeble attempt at humility i might add), but nevertheless i cannot resist the temptation to scare you by saying the arctic is melting and we're all doomed if we dont do something", nevermind the fact, that this blog posted a NASA article that stated the current low arctic ice count was due to unusual winds since the turn of the century...what he didnt say is just as loud, the failure to mention the reason for the current antarctic maximum...examination of his arguments says it all 1) change is slow so you may not see it but only believers recognize the impending catastrophy so just trust us 2) its so bad that if we completely shut off c02 output, we'll still be burning up for the next twenty years so expediency is paramount (i want your money now, not later) 3) anyone that doesnt agree with the AGW scam crowd is a liar (doesnt all this smell of something rotten in AGW and confirm the headlines of the article?)...Andrew, my opinion is that AGW is a scam to pilfer money from those that earn it based on the facts i have read...it is a scam to gain power so that they can pilfer more money...their solutions are ridiculous, unachievable, and uneconomic, but they dont care who they hurt as long as they get their piece of the pie just look at the biggest promoters of this farce who dont even care to come close to living the life they preach...it is my opinion the AGW fear tactic has reached a crescendo because they realize that their little game is being picked apart piece by piece by real science and with no science to back the claim all they have is an argument propped by fear...AGW using fear as the means for the cause isnt a perception andrew, its a fact, just like the headlines of the above article suggests...this is to be expected when you dont have any real science legs to stand on whereby, the #1 AGW storyline is a magical, crystal ball, future predicting algorithm based on faulty input parameters and thats it...i'm surprised you didnt mention something about the poor old polar bears drowning in the vast new arctic sea just like the chief alarmist Al Gore did...brett, thanks for posting all sides of the argument...i have seen some of the other weather sites...it is obvious, fear is not the only tactic used to forward to the AGW agenda...it gives me comfort at least there a few out there in the media that give debate an open forum...

Andrew,

Last winter was very warm in the Arctic. Sea ice extent and thickness was low. During the summer, SSTs in the anomalous melt areas got well above normal because they were exposed to the sun.

The arctic is colder this year and is freezing quickly, much faster than last year. There is still a large area near eastern Siberia where the water is a few degrees above freezing and has not frozen yet. This will change over the next 2-3 weeks and the ice deficit will disappear. Note the very steep upward slope in the graph (nearly vertical) and the cold Pacific temperatures on the SST map south of the Bering Strait to understand why.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.365.jpg
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/research/sst/ani-weekly/5.gif

Why would you want to alarm people anyway?

Well, considering that our denier friends constantly talk about nuclear armageddon, I think politics of fear is right up their alley.

Most of those who agree with the scientific consensus on AGW are aiding public policy makers with developing solutions to the problem. If anything, it is the corporation apologists and their Libertarian friends who try to scare people by saying that we're going into the Stone Age if we regulate CO2.

It's amazing how much so-called free market supporters have so very little faith in the free market. So very little.

With their track record and their proven lack of concern for ordinary people and the planet,it is difficult to trust the Right Wing when they tell us that Global Warming is not happening. It seems they are turning science into politics and just following a party line that favors the elite.
In this brief space I am not going to make a list of all the deceptions and mistruths spewd out as gospel truth by the over the past 20 by the leaders of the same political pursuasion as the Global Warming Skeptics.
I do not trust the messengers because they have proven over and over again that they do not care.

Paul,

A tipping point is where feedback mechanisms become more important than the forcing. The key characteristic of crossing a tipping point is that what was originally a slow gradual change eventually turns into a rapid change. Probably the best example are ozone holes from Cholorfluorocarbon emissions. Fortunately, conditions for that tipping point are confined to just the south polar region. However, it would not have taken much for it to have been occurred more extensively in both the north and south hemispheres.

JP,

There is no requirement that human must be able to quantify tipping points in order for them to exist. It wasn?t until after the fact that people were able to figure out the ozone hole. The same may turn out to be the case with arctic sea ice and/or/maybe the thermohaline circulation. Only in a perfect world would science be able to precisely predict all future outcomes. The reality is that there is always some uncertainty.

Steve,

Perhaps there should be a differentiation between what is commonly referred to as an act of God like supervolcanos or comet impacts and what would be considered normal climate change. Either way, the current warming is far more dramatic than anything of the past.

AGW has only become clearly dominate since the 1950s. AGW was a minor component of climate change prior to that time.

Also, PH is a prime example of what I was referring to as an extreme skeptic. Hate to name names, since as a biker I'm sure he is a great guy, but you asked. Of course there is a wide spectrum of skeptics. Some of it is healthy and productive, but others are just polarizing.

Also, Arctic Sea Ice and the thermohaline circulation are 2 most commonly discussed tipping points where feedbacks may become more important than warming from CO2 emissions. I have my hunches about each, but to be honest the science is not settled on these topics. Changes in albedo and increased water vapor are the prime feedbacks for arctic sea ice, while salinity and precepitation changes are key to the thermohaline.

Interesting article from one of the IPCC Nobel winners.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119387567378878423.html

Excertp:
I'm sure the majority (but not all) of my IPCC colleagues cringe when I say this, but I see neither the developing catastrophe nor the smoking gun proving that human activity is to blame for most of the warming we see. Rather, I see a reliance on climate models (useful but never "proof") and the coincidence that changes in carbon dioxide and global temperatures have loose similarity over time.

There are some of us who remain so humbled by the task of measuring and understanding the extraordinarily complex climate system that we are skeptical of our ability to know what it is doing and why. As we build climate data sets from scratch and look into the guts of the climate system, however, we don't find the alarmist theory matching observations. (The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration satellite data we analyze at the University of Alabama in Huntsville does show modest warming -- around 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit per century, if current warming trends of 0.25 degrees per decade continue.)

It is my turn to cringe when I hear overstated-confidence from those who describe the projected evolution of global weather patterns over the next 100 years, especially when I consider how difficult it is to accurately predict that system's behavior over the next five days.

Kind of makes you wonder what would have happened if Gore won the election......

Instead of pouring billions into the war on terror, we would have poured billions into carbon taxes and cap and trade. While the earth continued to warm, many would demand an end to these taxes as a waste of resources, others would say that we need to be patient, and it would get worse before it would get better....

Instead of tax cuts to generate economic growth, we would have tax credits for solar and wind power projects. There would be no coal power generation projects on the drawing board, but we would still be generating more than 50% of our power from coal fired utilities, as many wind power projects would not be able to get permitted due to local opposition...

The nuclear power industry would be the same as today, hoping to get their first new permit approved.

All this is speculation of course, but it would be safe to say that despite making a movie, writing a book and going on the lecture circuit to pursue the war on terror, George Bush would not have won an Oscar or the Noble Peace Prize. On the other hand, Gore's rating as President would likely be at all time lows, just like Bush.

Tipping points,

Permafrosts melting are already releasing a plume of co2 equivalent gas that was not being released a few years ago.

Warmer seas have also increased methane hydrate release.

Sea ice is disappearing and no longer reflecting solar energy which causes warmer waters and warmer winds which and has increased arctic melting.

Soot trapped in arctic ice has also increased the rate of melting, another effect caused by human activity

Acidic seas are dissolving and leaching sequestered co2 from limestone coasts which has increased atmospheric co2 content.

Forests die off caused by unstable permafrost soils and insect attacks will decrease the amount of co2 stored in the Tundra and increase methane and co2 emissions from nature.

Land is no longer absorbing and storing as much co2 as it once did, and is, in some regions during hot weather, actually emitting more co2 than a developed nations industry.

Oceans are no longer absorbing as much co2 as the seas get warmer.

Ocean currents have lost power which has resulted in an increase of fuel demand by developing nations.

Forest are releasing co2 in greater volumes as heatwaves increase in frequency.

Forest fires are increasing in frequency and getting larger due to the increase in dead litter or matted exotic grasses bought in for cattle feed which makes a fire hot and causes the fire to spreads uncontrollably once sparked by lightning or arsonists.

A natural fire in a pristine environment will burn at lower temperatures and regardless of the cause can be controlled. However if the land is already infested with introduced grasses or mono culture turned to weeds the fuel source will allow the fire to burn until all fuel has been exhausted.

As the ice melts in the arctic the rebound of land will increase sismic activity which will release more natural co2 from volcanic activity

Although a tipping point are normally associated with a human introduced trigger that introduces a release of co2 from natural stores, a tipping point can also occur when human populations encroach upon and destroy carbon sinks.

As populations grow, people will migrate inland or just to escape rising seas and an enormous amount of extra resources will have to be found to replace human habitat loses, cater for expansion and the extra land will be developed and more found to feed and accommodate growing populations.

This tipping point will take away any opportunity to prepare for GW as war breaks out just to secure a place fit for survival.

Is there anything I have forgotten? Something less alarming or not as depressing, perhaps NGW Steve can point out the happy side of GW,
I need a laugh.

Patrick Henry,

I'm a little skeptical of your claim,

"Last winter was very warm in the Arctic. Sea ice extent and thickness was low. During the summer, SSTs in the anomalous melt areas got well above normal because they were exposed to the sun.

The arctic is colder this year and is freezing quickly, much faster than last year."

I personally have been focusing on observing Nunavut this fall and winter, where there has been a warm October, as has been usual for thelast several years. I also had heard that Siberia has had a generally warmer october than average. Do you have data showing that the arctic as a whole does not have a signficant warmth anomaly? (I do know that Summit in Greenland has been quite cold. As always, you know that this is a serious and respectful question on my part, not an attack.

Thanks

Andrew,

There is nothing extreme about recognizing the latest populist doomsday scenario as nonsense. I've lived through many pointless scares and each was a idiotic as the previous. Screaming a lie enough times does not make it true. How about Y2K and the 1970s ice age? Nuclear winter and TMI. The domino theory, AIDS, Khrushchev, Mao, polio, anthrax........ Jimmy Carter was sure swine flu was going to kill 20,000,000 Americans, and that if we didn't destroy western Colorado and Wyoming with oil shale development, America would run out of oil before 1985.

The latest South Park has terrorists attacking America's imagination through the manbearpig. Very entertaining and timely.

Al Gore is a charlatan making money scaring schoolchildren. People need to get a grip and fight back.