which can mean whatever straw man you want it to mean since this phrase is never found in the literature and 'catastrophic' is a pretty subjective word.

Those aren't exactly doomsday predictions, and it is not clear that they have been proven wrong, so I'm not sure they are especially good examples of doomsday scenarios that have been proven wrong. To me they just look like incremental improvements to our understanding of their subject matters.

How many papers with the phrase "global cooling" can you find that show that the current warming trend is not primarily caused by humans? None of course. Any papers with the phrase "global cooling" are looking at periods millions of years ago. Why would slogging through thousands more papers that are not focused on the current warming be expected to have any thoughts on whether the current warming is caused by humans? Please find me even one paper with the phrase "global cooling" that takes a negative stance on the human contribution to the current warming.

The papers were also evaluated by the people who wrote them. The authors themselves found greater consensus (98%) than the third party reviewers. So if the reviewers had a bias, it was towards non-consensus.

We have an array of temperature sensors scattered across our planet. Even still, some doubt that our planet has warmed. Surely we cannot measure the global mean surface temperature changes on other planets (where we have possibly one or two data points) to determine with any confidence whether they have warmed, cooled, or by how much.

Bullshit. The IPCC reports are a synthesis of the existing science. If you are alarmed by the findings of the IPCC reports then you are alarmed by the science.

I notice you are being pretty selective on what you quote (Watts is probably the worst place to go for science reporting). For instance, you quote "There is low confidence that the rate of Antarctic ice loss has increased over the last two decades" (BTW, this means that evidence is sparse but indicates that the rate of mass loss has in fact increased over the last two decades.), but you did not quote the next line "however, GRACE data gives medium confidence of increasing loss over the last decade."

So yes, we have observed that it is currently losing mass. All evidence indicates that the rate of mass loss has been accelerating over the last decade or more. Our confidence in this finding is increasing as newer instrumentation is developed and deployed.

You should also understand that SMB can increase (reducing sea level rise), but if outflow also increases then you will still end up losing mass and increasing sea level overall. This is exactly what they find: "Overall, increased snowfall seems set to only partially offset sea level rise caused by increased outflow," Again, Watts doesn't seem to understand that SMB is not total mass balance and somehow glossed over everything else.

They also presciently warn that tipping points could be hit (and that have since been observed): "outflow from an ice sheet resting on bedrock below sea level increases if ice at the grounding line is thicker and, therefore, faster flowing. On bedrock that slopes downward towards the ice-sheet interior, this creates a vicious cycle of increased outflow, causing ice at the grounding line to thin and go afloat. The grounding line then retreats down slope into thicker ice that, in turn, drives further increases in outflow. This feedback could potentially result in the rapid loss of parts of the ice sheet, as grounding lines retreat along troughs and basins that deepen towards the ice sheet’s interior. Future climate forcing could trigger such an unstable collapse, which may then continue independently of climate.

Here is the full report on the cryosphere: http://www.climatechange2013.o...

According to earlier you: "the world is on average more humid by perhaps 1% than it was 100 years ago. Which would be more than enough to account for ALL observed warming."

As you noted before, you can: "put pen to paper and make the calculations yourself". If you do so, you will find we have already caused 0.57C warming before feedbacks. We have observed ~0.8C. How close do you get to that when you account for the observed water vapour feedback?

The site you have linked shows that atmospheric moisture holding capacity increases dramatically with increasing temperature. The increase is exponential across the curve. That is exactly the opposite of what you are trying to claim. Further, oceanic lower-tropospheric water vapour has increased by about 4% since the 1970's, which is consistent with what we should expect given temperature increases over the period.

"Observations of oceanic lower-tropospheric water vapour reveal substantial variability during the last two decades. This variability is closely tied to changes in surface temperatures, with the water vapour mass changing at roughly the same rate at which the saturated vapour pressure does. " - www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch3s3-4-2-1.html

So you are right. "AGW "denial" would be reasonable if there were an argument that the amount of CO2 we have put and are putting into the atmosphere won't cause a feedback loop." ...and... Water vapor is a very powerful greenhouse gas that "has a gigantic broad "peak" that swamps most other signals". Increased water vapour is an expected result of global warming from CO2, and one of the more powerful feedback mechanisms. You are also right that all this can all be derived from first principles without any need for climate models. You can use "pen to paper and make the calculations yourself, assuming you understand a little physical chemistry."

This is one reason why mitigation is a lot cheaper than adaptation. Predicting how climate change will impact each city is more difficult than predicting that temperatures will rise and there will be impacts. Should a city invest in sea walls or desalination plants? That depends on whether you should expect more storms or less precipitation. You would need a high degree of confidence in the models before you could plan for adaptation. Seems like the obvious choice is to mitigate.

Why wait for 2214? One solution to the current problem is to go full steam ahead with a technology revolution. Humanity has spent most of its existence getting energy by burning shit. We have an opportunity adopt newer energy technologies that could be disruptive in the same order of magnitude as the internet. This scares the heck out people heavily invested in existing industries who would like to hold us back, but that isn't a good reason to remain stuck with the technologies of the past.

"While solar currently accounts for less than 1% of the energy supply, it is an exponentially improving technology, both in terms of price (14%/year) and pace of construction (60%/year). Already it is approaching parity with other energy sources in the Western US. Assuming this trend continues for another 10 to 20 years, and there’s no reason not to, solar power will become 5 to 10 times more cost effective than it is today. This raises an interesting question. What happens if solar becomes an order of magnitude cheaper than other sources of power?

This is the nature of disruptive technology. It represents such an improvement that it renders existing industries obsolete. We saw waves of disruption take place as the Internet upended entire industries. Expect to see a lot of this in the coming years." - https://medium.com/armchair-ec... .

So you think there is a conspiracy among all journals to keep out contrary evidence? Really? Don't you think one of them would break from their secret pact and scoop the others?

http://news.slashdot.org/story... - When the 1981 paper was written, temperatures in the northern hemispheres were declining, and global mean temperatures were below their 1940 levels. Despite those facts, the paper's authors confidently predicted a rise in temperature due to increasing CO2 emissions.' The prediction turns out to be remarkably accurate

http://www.theguardian.com/env... - The paper, published on Wednesday in the journal Nature Geoscience, explores the performance of a climate forecast based on data up to 1996 by comparing it with the actual temperatures observed since. The results show that scientists accurately predicted the warming experienced in the past decade, relative to the decade to 1996, to within a few hundredths of a degree.

There are scientists who take contrary positions on every scientific issue.

Possibly, but how much water vapour air will hold is a function of how hot it is. Spray water into the air in winter and you will still have low humidity. Heat the planet and you will end up with more humidity. This is a feedback - and as you note - a serious one.

Your intuition fails you in this case (and the scientific method is in fact your friend). It turns out we can measure this with the CERES satellite and we find that low thick clouds cast a refreshing shadow and reflect sunlight back into space, while high wispy clouds reflect little sunlight but will trap the infrared heat beneath them.

CERES is a package of three telescopes that watch our planet from Earth orbit. "One telescope is sensitive to ordinary sunlight," says Wielicki. "It tells us how much solar radiation is reflected from clouds or ice." The other two telescopes sense longer-wavelength infrared heat. They reveal how much heat is trapped by clouds and how much of it escapes back to space. - http://science.nasa.gov/scienc...

Although volume is possibly more important because that is driving sea levels higher.

Here is an even better summary of factors that influence arctic sea ice: http://www.skepticalscience.co...:

Here are some of the leading hypotheses currently being explored through a combination of satellite remote sensing, fieldwork in Antarctica and numerical model simulations – to help explain the increasing trend in overall Antarctic sea ice coverage:

Increased westerly winds around the Southern Ocean, linked to changes in the large-scale atmospheric circulation related to ozone depletion, will see greater northward movement of sea ice, and hence extent, of Antarctic sea ice.

Increased precipitation, in the form of either rain or snow, will increase the density stratification between the upper and middle layers of the Southern Ocean. This might reduce the oceanic heat transfer from relatively warm waters at below the surface layer, and therefore enhancing conditions at the surface for sea ice.

Similarly, a freshening of the surface layers from this precipitation would also increase the local freezing point of sea ice formation.

Another potential source of cooling and freshening in the upper ocean around Antarctica is increased melting of Antarctic continental ice, through ocean/ice shelf interaction and iceberg decay.

The observed changes in sea ice extent could be influenced by a combination of all these factors and still fall within the bounds of natural variability.

The take home messages is that while the increase in total Antarctic sea ice area is relatively minor compared to the Arctic, it masks the fact that some regions are in strong decline. Given the complex interactions of winds and currents driving patterns of sea ice variability and change in the Southern Ocean climate system, this is not unexpected.

But it is still fascinating to study.