Comment Re: Anti-science? See, now you have proof! (Score 2) 316
Yes, I've seen the 'escalator' animation and have read the relevant articles at skepticalscience. The real question isn't whether there's warming, it's what the slope of the red line actually is, when we add CO2 the way we have been.
I'm not saying that "unprecedented human activity cannot cause unprecedented environmental responses". I'm also not stating that "unprecedented human activity MUST cause unprecedented environmental responses", which you are. Look, from the IPCC AR5 report:
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The equilibrium climate sensitivity quantifies the response of the climate system to constant radiative forcing on multi-century time scales. It is defined as the change in global mean surface temperature at equilibrium that is caused by a doubling of the atmospheric CO2 concentration. Equilibrium climate sensitivity is likely in the range 1.5C to 4.5C (high confidence), extremely unlikely less than 1C (high confidence), and very unlikely greater than 6C (medium confidence)16. The lower temperature limit of the assessed likely range is thus less than the 2C in the AR4, but the upper limit is the same. This assessment reflects improved understanding, the extended temperature record in the atmosphere and ocean, and new estimates of radiative forcing. {TFE6.1, Figure 1; Box 12.2}
16 No best estimate for equilibrium climate sensitivity can now be given because of a lack of agreement on values across assessed lines of evidence and studies.
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So the ever-so-sophisticated estimate (sorry, not 'guess'!) is from 1.5C to 4.5C, and unlike previous reports, they declined to give a best estimate (previously mentioned at 2.5C with high confidence). I believe that most people would agree that we don't have much of a problem at 1.5C and that we have a big problem if it's 4.5C, so their estimates don't really tell us much at this point. Add to that the fact that the observed temperature trends have been way at the bottom of what most of the models predict, and I don't think it's a stretch to say that alarmists like you have been seriously overestimating the dangers here.
But that wasn't the original point of the post. The point is that you cannot replicate or test the results in most of the current climate papers, other than to wait 50 years. We've waiting around 15 years since the initial predictions, though, and the initial ones weren't very good.