Mis-characterizing articles in Nature hardly passes as critical thinking.

What you are doing is cute sophism but not science.

Simply because many simple climate models are not entirely correct, does not mean that all climate models are incapable of being sufficiently accurate to be used to predict future climate. Many existing climate models have already proved extremely accurate at predicting specific consequences of climate change, enough so that most rational people need to start paying attention to the seriousness that global warming poses to human survival.

Did you just admit to accepting money to provide your opinions to readers of /.?

This appears to be the new meme among the deniers, to claim that all science is bogus because it cost money and hence someone got paid to do it and therefore the evidence is somehow tainted. As is typical with this kind of sophism, it fails once again to note the distinction between science and sophism. Scientific conclusions devolve regardless of who or how much was paid to produce them. They devolve from the nature of the evidence and the set of contradictions that arise if one chooses to accept or deny as a result of the application of the scientific method.

Rather than all scientists being crooks, frauds, with perverted morals, its far more parsimonious and reasonable instead to assume several things about those who make such claims: 1) they have no scientific evidence of their own to falsify statements made and conclusions reached by scientists, 2) they think that by tarnishing and personally vilifying scientists and destroying the infrastructure necessary to do science, it will somehow disprove a conclusion reached by scientists, 3) they consistently confuse science and sophism of the kind typically used in political and religious discussions, 4) they have incredibly unrealistic notions about how much money scientists make as an hourly wage and what motivates most scientists to actually do science.

Being a skeptic is irrelevant unless you have data to demonstrate the basis of your skepticism. While its great sophism to be skeptical about everything since it makes one APPEAR to be thinking critically. However, in the absence of evidence, it is NOT science nor part of the process of science. That skepticism might appear to be a substitute for critical thinking to those unfamiliar with how to actually do science, supposed critical thinking is irrelevant unless it is backed up by real, testable observations.

It is instructive to note that every single claim of skepticism in this entire thread is based on the appearance of critical thinking that sophism provides, all of which are entirely devoid of any actual substantive data that would contradict the now obvious fact that carbon dioxide global warming caused by the burning of fossil fuels is real and getting more obvious all the time. So far, from the skeptics and the deniers all we have heard is their singular inability to distinguish between seasonal variation in temperature and climatic changes in temperature.

Skepticism without evidence is best called BS and we might as well be honest about the consequences of bearing false witness. Bearing false witness, no matter how much skepticism one couches it in, does not make false assertions true.

No warming?

Really? If that is true, how do you explain why virtually every glacier on the planet is receding simultaneously?

(I encourage all /. readers to note that this question will not or ever be answered by the skiptic/denier community, which may give you a clue as to the truth of their claims).

What most who seek "theoretical" reasons not to worry fail to recognize is that even if there are negative feedbacks that might mitigate the known and increasingly predominating positive feedbacks, such as release of carbon from permafrost and peat soils and increase in heating due to loss of ice cover, these don't matter a wiff if the species upon which we depend for human survival are unable to reproduce in their natural environments. Sadly, climate forcing that results from carbon dioxide accumulation is now progressing at a rate that many species are going extinct rather than flourishing in the newly emerging climate.

There has been no pause in the record of marine temperatures, its been steadily upward without any reversal or pause.

Which leads to a more fundamental problem for those who want to appear to be scientific and yet totally wrong about the fact of global warming:

If its not getting hotter, why have 12 of the past 15 years produced all the record high global mean temperatures? The probability of this happening by chance is exceedingly small.

and one fundamental corollary that AWG skeptics and deniers avoid answering like the plague:

If its not getting hotter, why are virtually all the world's glaciers and ice sheets melting simultaneously?

Speaking of questions, I have one for those skeptics.

If its not getting hotter, why is virtually every single glacier on the planet melting?

The interesting and extraordinarily revealing thing about this question as all will be able to soon see is that

1) skeptics and deniers never have an answer to this question and avoid answering like the plague,

and

2) skeptics and deniers of carbon dioxide induced global warming are unable to provide a credible answer of any kind.

Skepticism about climate change is useful only if one is right. If one is wrong, it is totally useless and since skepticism about carbon dioxide induced global warming is demonstrably wrong, your skepticism is totally useless and irrelevant.

Sadly for you, your progeny, and the rest of us, your skepticism will make little difference in a rapidly warming world.

If the effects of human induced climate changed were only restricted to warming, humans might have a better chance at survival. The 30% change in hydronium ion concentrations that have already taken place over the past 150 years are already causing die offs of pteropods in the NW Pacific, because it is becoming increasingly difficult for them to maintain the integrity of their calcium carbonate shells. Since pteropods form one of the single most important components of the marine food chain, their disappearance will cause the cascading loss of much of what we humans like to call seafood. This is a big deal for us humans, since we derive about 50% of our protein from seafood, which may disappear in as little as 200-300 years if present trends continue.

Sadly, human opinions don't alter the biological consequences of a rapidly warming world.

"Obviously we can handle much warmer temperatures."

The only thing that is obvious is that we weren't around when such temperatures existed.

It wouldn't take temperatures necessary to melt rock to cause human extinction, since our food and water supplies are far more susceptible to much smaller changes in temperature. Just a few degrees difference at the wrong time and entire crops and new progeny can be wiped out completely.

Why focus on those in Bangladesh, when those in New York City faces a similar threat as many recent victims of Tropical Storm Sandy will attest?

An interesting but totally useless thought, since it provides no practical solution to the imminent threat of human extinction.

" Many scientists believe those didn't die off due to climate change, but because humans killed them all and ate them."

During the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum more than half the species of mammals in North America went extinct and new species replaced them. Humans didn't eat them, because humans didn't evolve for another 50 million years and thus they couldn't possibly have eaten them. The amount of fauna change during this 10-30,000 year period was quite astonishing, as it also brought palm trees to Wyoming, replacing the redwood forests there. However, the truly amazing thing is that as fast as this carbon dioxide induced global heat spike (about 5.7 deg C increase in global mean temperature) was in terms of changes in biodiversity, the rate of change in temperature was 36-37 times slower than what human-induced carbon dioxide pollution is causing right now.

Perhaps as equally astounding is how little the average human knows about either the geological record or the origins and biology of the species that live on planet Earth with us. This may ultimately be the single greatest threat to human survival and sadly an indication that Albert Allen Bartlett may have been far more prescient than he realized when he noted that "The extinction of the human race will come from its inability to emotionally comprehend the exponential function." A corollary to the inconvenient truth of burning of fossil fuels is that because the effect is cumulative, it is an exponential function.