The effect of CO2 declines logarithmically. The first 20ppm CO2in the atmosphere has a greater effect
than the following 300ppm. The incremental effect of increasing CO2at the present 385ppm level is almost immeasurable. Why don't climate "science" articles acknowledge the actual physics of CO2? It's lower now than it was before there were human beings to invent acronyms like AGW.

We are nowhere near the saturation point. This idea stems from a misunderstanding that CO2 is evenly distributed vertically through that atmosphere.

The mechanism is explained well here .

Your assumption that scientists have overlooked these mechanisms are quite incorrect, and have featured in models of climate change going back to fouriers original work on the topic of the greenhouse effect in the 1800s.

So we know that the earth has warmed and cooled many times before. We really have no credible evidence regarding the actual rate of change in these prior instances

Wrong! We have icecores, geological evidence and tree ring evidence (Although since about the 60s the tree ring evidence appears to have gone off the rails, due to the changes in carbon isotopes we put into the air from nuclear testing and cheynobyl).

CO2 levels seem to have varied wildly, up to 7000 ppm, during both heating and cooling cycles. Has anybody isolated the reasons for heating in the past? Can those reasons be ruled out in this instance?

Yes, this has all been accounted for. You should not that 7000ppm is not a CO2 concentration conducive to human life at all.

If not, then AGW alarmists are in thin ice. Natural processes are almost always much more complicated than we realize

And yet you have a strong opinion on it that makes you feel you understand it better than atmospheric physicists. Why IS that?

If your theory is so wonderfully complete, why can't you create a computer model that can start with conditions twenty years ago and work out a correct description of the present?

They can and they do. Most models are tested against earlier data to see how it lines up. Current models are pretty damn accurate.

Please note, I'm not denying that it's getting warmer. I simply don't subscribe to the current hubris that makes humanity responsible for all of it.

Physics hasn't got a lot of room for opions I'm afraid, the universe is somewhat oblivious to the whims of political opinion.

As someone who has a lot of Perl on his resume, I heartily endorse companies hiring people who work with boring old technologies!

As a python coder I'm somewhat pleased that my boring old technology is currently seen as flashy new technology right now.

Grunge, is back in fashion, apparently.

Yep, I remember as a kid building a crystal radio with my dad, and he used a photo-resist etching solution to build the pcb. The end result was pretty damn pro. I still have that radio, 30 years later, and it works great.

Apt, considering this same government is pretty much implementing an NSA style metadata retention scheme as we speek. Apparently we have to trust that they won't mishandle the data and this example clearly shows they can't.

You can't, however, use the change as proof of AGW, because that would be circular reasoning.

No, it would be called science.

(A) We've known the mechanism since the 1800s when Fourier et al first raised warnings about CO2s spectral absorbsion lines and the implication the coal spewing industrial revolution might have on atmosphere. This is validated science and underwrites so much physics that we'd have to turn the clock back on at least a century of scientific understanding in multiple fields if it wasn't true.

(B) We have a solid graps of how much CO2 is being put into the atmosphere from both economic modelling and satelite and terrestrial telemetry.

(C) This permits us to do a back of the napkin calculation as to how much energy (thermal and kinetic) is being added to the climate system from human intervention (its a lot).

(D) This in turn gives rise to more complicated modelling that can tell us how much of that energy goes to warming, how much to increased kinetic activity (cyclones/etc), how much gets absorbed by the ocean and how much radiates back out.

(E) The end result both matches up with observation (And *n o* natural process can account for what we are seeing. Volcanic activity is incredibly insubstantial. Even krakatoa hardly put a dent in it. And solar activity is also quite minor).

Occams razor says we *must* conclude humans are causing substantial climate change, because if they are not we have to find a mechanism that (A) Prevents physics from working as it is known, and (B) Makes it look like physics is working as it is known. Should this be found, it would be Nobel prize level monumental. However, as they say, big claims require big proof, and that proof is not remotely forthcoming.

The fact that it's getting warmer isn't proof that AGW is correct

Yes, but the fact that the data matches the theory, and if it didn't we'd be rewriting nearly a century of physics indicates that suggesting something is magically making it only appear that physics is correct is some seriously magical violations of occams razor.

Yeah Shorten is proving to be somewhat of a ... loyal... opposition. Its a messed up situation and shorten is going to get punished in the polls for this. He's already taken a big hit to his polling.

Not SJW-ism at all. Somebody is finally saying what many of us already knew.

You can pretty much just replace "SJW" for "Opinion I disagree with" or "City slicker opinions I dont understand" whenever you see it appear. Helps if you picture the poster chewing tobacco and cussing at "Them commie professors" when its used in relationship to academics. Its a pretty damn meaningless term, and it seems to get thrown at scientists and academics a lot on this board. I'd expect it out of the fox news comment section, but I honestly thought that sort of anti intellectualism didn't have a home on slashdot. Apparently I'm wrong.

I used to, but we haven't really got much in the way of that these days since Myspace shat the bed and our singer moved to the US. I should probably do something about it.

You can probably thank apple for this, to some extent. The growing popularity of the Mac has meant that porting there has become viable and this means fairly generic C++ with Open GL and unixy OS expectations. From there to linux is really just a change of compiler flags.

Well, that and steam.

How about the cops doing some time for shooting a random innocent?

Theres definately an argument to be made for that.

With all that said, I sort of understand how it happens. If they get a phonecall saying someones berking out with a machine gun or whatever , they *have* to respond, and unfortunately this seems to be the consequences.

What I do wonder is why so many SWAT raids end in violence in the US when so many other countries just dont have that sort of problem. My guess is poor training.

There was one case where the cops shot the father of a swatting victim. I believe the person behind the swatting attack is doing some fairly serious time though.

Apologies on my dismal spelling/etc above. Serves me right for posting before my first coffee