The whole page is just about 'energy balance', and that fails as soon as there is any significant change. E.g., as there is any significant warming, there may be more water vapor and clouds, and clouds may reflect more sunlight and tend to cool the earth. So, no way can we use such an energy balance calculation to discuss significant changes in temperature over decades, as the alarmists want to predict. So, right away it's time to start flushing their stuff. That is, even if the energy balance calculation is correct, then it says what will happen over, say, tomorrow.
The 'radiative forcing' term was not well defined and, as I recall, nothing like what Ramaswami explained in the main, relevant IPCC document. Ramaswami's stuff was junk, but the usage at the Web page seems better but a long way from good.
That a 30% increase in CO2 concentration leads to an increase of 3 degrees C is tough to swallow: CO2 absorbs such a small amount of energy, especially after what would be absorbed by water vapor, methane, etc. Also, I'd want to see that CO2 calculation in detail, e.g., in terms of the CO2 spectral lines and the radiation from the surface of the earth. Also the page mentioned 'saturation': They didn't say just what they meant, but a guess is that some gas is asborbing all it can. They didn't say how close CO2 is to 'saturation'. My guess is that CO2 is close to saturation now. I'd want to see some details.
At one point they want to refer to 'sophisticated global climate models': That's easy -- it's the empty set.
In places their writing tries to be a snow job, e.g., using undefined acronyms.
They reference Hansen -- TILT! He used to be a big global cooling guy.
Generally, though, the stuff from Al Guru and the IPCC (Tom Friedman is MUCH worse) is so bad that I lost patience with this stuff: The whole thing is at least 99 44/100% flim flam fraud deceptive manipulation,
I'm not sure why you keep suggesting that the credibility of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) depends on the accuracy of Al Gore's movie. Furthermore, it's not just the IPCC that provides evidence. There are thousands of peer-reviewed articles on the topic as well. Do you think that editors and reviewers at Nature and Science are acting in bad faith? If so, why? If not, then do you know something they don't? If so, what? Or do you think that the entire AGW "industry" is one that provides a "signal" that encourages people to down-weight/overlook evidence against AGW? If so, then why do you seem to believe that the fossil fuel industry wouldn't have a similar influence in the other direction? Indeed, the fact that news articles suggest AGW controversy far more frequently than scientific articles do suggests influences on the public sphere that come from outside of science.
Science provides huge rewards to those who disprove an existing theory. By the sounds of it, you seem to think it would be "easy" to do so with AGW. So why not just systematically lay out your refutation? If you're right you'll be famous and save the planet billions/trillions of dollars. You'll be able to command huge fees to give speeches, etc. etc. If this doesn't work out, then it suggests that science is broken for AGW. In which case, why would this happen when it's the same process that works pretty darn well for everything else?
> They reference Hansen -- TILT! He used to be a big global cooling guy.
So? People can't change their minds when confronted with evidence?
I started with the main, loud evidence -- Al Guru and, at the time, the main IPCC technical document. Flush. Bubble, bubble.
It's possible to do some good work in 'climate science', and maybe there is some by more than just the one guy at MIT or the one in Georgia. If they do good science, then maybe Nature would publish it. Here I mean they can do some good science which, however, is a very long way from really answering the main question, are we about to cook the planet? E.g., the MIT guy did some diffusion in a column calculation. Looks okay, but it's a very, very long way from an answer to the main question.
But generally my view would be as you put it that on 'AGW' -- anthropomorphic global warming? -- science is broken.
Why don't I get rich and famous debunking the alarmist nonsense? Because the alaremist 'science' is making various approximations. Maybe with their assumptions, their arithmetic is correct. E.g., if do the energy balance arithmetic carefully and get it right, then okay. Nice work. If it says no changes, good. If it says big changes, then, sadly, the work is good only until the changes start to become significant. If they do everything correctly on energy balance, then my objection would be, in the case of big changes, using that analysis to say what the climate will be in 10, 50, 100 years. I could say that, and maybe it would get published, but it would hardly make me rich or famous.
Broadly Al Guru picked a 'good' problem, that is, like the Mayan priests who scared people without enough solid information do debunk. Again, the solid science we want is not available. With such science we could debunk the alarmists by saying in rock solid terms what the climate would be year by year for the next, say, 500 years. I can't do that. No one can do that.
So, why is science broken for AGW? The fundamental reason is that no one can really get a solid answer to what the climate will be decades into the future under various scenarios of human activity. The shorter term political reason is that the 'climate science' community was started heavily by VP Gore's direction of the funding and, then, the interests of the IPCC to find a way to send money from rich countries to poor ones. So, there are lots of vested interests and not much science solid enough to settle the issue.
So, again, note (1) the temperature is, as far as we can tell, now just where it was before the start of the Little Ice Age; (2) from the good temperature data we have now from satellites, apparently the planet is not getting warmer now. So, what to do? Just keep watching the data and the science, If there is any that is very important, and then readdress the question once it begins to look important.
But there's a big HUGE thing NOT to do now: Wreck the world economy over very inconclusive science.
The 'radiative forcing' term was not well defined and, as I recall, nothing like what Ramaswami explained in the main, relevant IPCC document. Ramaswami's stuff was junk, but the usage at the Web page seems better but a long way from good.
That a 30% increase in CO2 concentration leads to an increase of 3 degrees C is tough to swallow: CO2 absorbs such a small amount of energy, especially after what would be absorbed by water vapor, methane, etc. Also, I'd want to see that CO2 calculation in detail, e.g., in terms of the CO2 spectral lines and the radiation from the surface of the earth. Also the page mentioned 'saturation': They didn't say just what they meant, but a guess is that some gas is asborbing all it can. They didn't say how close CO2 is to 'saturation'. My guess is that CO2 is close to saturation now. I'd want to see some details.
At one point they want to refer to 'sophisticated global climate models': That's easy -- it's the empty set.
In places their writing tries to be a snow job, e.g., using undefined acronyms.
They reference Hansen -- TILT! He used to be a big global cooling guy.
Generally, though, the stuff from Al Guru and the IPCC (Tom Friedman is MUCH worse) is so bad that I lost patience with this stuff: The whole thing is at least 99 44/100% flim flam fraud deceptive manipulation,