There is no formal definition of what CAGW is, you could even stick to one definition for a single sentence, you used two very different examples of what it supposedly means. All in all, it's useful rhetorical trickery used to make sure you never have to deal honestly with people you disagree with. You always just one goalpost shift away from continuing the argument.

Dealing with AGW may, in fact, be the "greatest moral challenge of our time" but that has nothing to do with your argument. It's a moral question of doing nothing now so we benefit at the cost of our inheritors, or take minor inconvenient actions now and pass the savings on to those who come after us. The cost of dealing with AGW adaptation and mitigation rises the more we delay on taking action. In addition, the atmosphere is a global commons, and dumping CO2 into it is a mostly invisible action. Can the world work together to achieve a universally beneficial goal when it's so easy to cheat the system?

You are free of course to disagree with that assessment, but my simply point is that phrase "greatest moral challenge of our time" does not need to imply that there a catastrophe lurking around the corner, perhaps you have confused it with "greatest mortal challenge of our time" which would indeed imply an incoming catastrophe.

On the other hand "no jobs on a dead planet" is a union slogan, and slogans are often hyperbolic. It is a catchy phrase that clearly communicates the point that job concerns and environmental concerns are not mutually exclusive. It is possible that I am projecting my own views onto such groups, but until you mentioned it, I had never heard that particular slogan before.

I have not changed or abandoned any of my previous arguments. It is statistical quackery, while atmospheric temperatures are rising slower than projected, those slower periods are common and expected. The quackery is in pretending that this is new and unprecedented and in choosing start and end dates to exaggerate the length of the period. Furthermore, the escalator graph clearly shows how if you followed the behaviour of these self-proclaimed skeptics you could always claim we are in a slow warming, no warming or cooling trend even while the temperature steadily rises. This is expected because the data is noisy and not monotonic. In every non-record year there is a previous higher record year, the slope from that year to any year except the next record setting year will always be below 0. This is simple mathematics and it is critically important to understanding how you are being manipulated. The current "no warming" rhetoric which you occasionally use is no different from the obviously incorrect use that could have been applied to any similar period in the past. Maybe you haven't been following my arguments as closely as you think you have?

Yes.

Ad hominem, don't attack the site, attack the argument. In this case they provided a link to the paper and summarised the findings, you didn't bother to indicate what you found "untrustworthy about that.

Just counting them isn't, but you can do some robust analysis based on frequency and distribution with a sufficiently large time period. For example, in a stable climate you would expect the frequency of extreme events to drop off and for them to be roughly evenly distributed towards warm and cold events. If your results differ significantly from that null hypothesis it indicates that the climate is not stable. That type of analysis can be informative.

Sure, a new daily maximum record isn't good evidence of global warming, but I can see how this argument relates to anything I actually wrote. I was still talking about the "pause" rhetoric and why it's statistical quackery. Specifically, if you choose the last record high as the starting point for a slope you can always choose a recent year where you can show the slope is negative or close to zero. It's deliberately misleading and very common among self-proclaimed skeptics.

Speaking of fallacies, the use of CAGW is generally associated with a strawman, goalpost moving or loaded language fallacies, depending on context. It's use is rarely associated with honest debate because there is no actual definition for CAGW.

CO2 emission records are actually what predicts accelerating warming, if C02 is a greenhouse gas and we increase the rate at which we're releasing CO2 into the air, we increase the speed at which the planet warms. And rapid is at best a relative term when applied to changes that are far too slow for human senses to observe.

My comment was about the cyclical nature of some "skeptic" arguments. There is always a previous record high which we almost always below, thus the argument can always be made that there has been "no warming" for some time period. The argument goes out of style for a bit after a new record high has been set, but give it a year or two and it comes back into fashion until the next record high is set. The comment had nothing to do with presenting actual evidence of global warming.

It is interesting and has been done. According to that paper, the split for 2001-2011 temperature anomalies was about 85% high to 15% low. According to Skeptical Science, the records were split 67% high to 33% low over 1999-2009.

That may be what some people say is the issue, but as far as I understand it, the mainstream science concern is not run away warming that renders the planet unliveable. That's actually considered fairly unlikely in the near-term scenarios. The actual major areas for concern are rising seas, ecosystem disruption, droughts, wildfires, floods, augmented storms and storm damage, heat-related illness and disease, and economic losses.

From what I've read about it, of particular note is that at around +4 degrees Celcius most of our staple food crops likely won't grow very well without extensive genetic modification. I don't understand the details very well, but I think there's an issue with heat stress and the way leaves work. As I understand it, at +4C the photosynthesis process in regular leaves is significantly impaired. Apparently, when the world came down from that temperature there was a massive die off of vegetation, somewhere around 90% of the flora died off, quickly followed by over 90% of the fauna. It's one of the great extinction events. I'm pretty sure that we really don't want to see the same thing happen to our crops and livestock on the way up.

Methinks thou dost protest too much.

Seriously, there are, in fact, many "skeptics", cogent or otherwise who dispute that the world has warmed and that CO2 does have a warming effect. For example, Jane Q. Public is a good example of self-professed skeptic on Slashdot who apparently does not believe that CO2 has a warming effect. She has several times posted "proof" that the greenhouse effect can not exist. And she is not alone, I've replied to dozens of posts from many different posters on Slashdot who claimed for various reasons that global warming does not exist. I really couldn't tell you how many more I've read and not responded but it's probably in the hundreds.

The SKS graph does not imply that "skeptics" wilfully ignore the observed warming, it simply shows why "the pause" doesn't matter in the big picture. It's happened before and will happen again, and the underlying trend continues. Frankly, you don't seem to understand that you are doing exactly what that graphs shows is wrong.

Frankly, the argument that the IPCC report deals with "the Hiatus" makes is significant is a non-starter. The IPCC report deals with because it deals with practically everything related to climate change and endless talking heads in the media have made it a significant issue which had to be addressed. To quote from the box you referenced:

"Figure 9.8 demonstrates that 15-year-long hiatus periods are common in both the observed and CMIP5 historical GMST time series (see also Section 2.4.3, Figure 2.20; Easterling and Wehner, 2009; Liebmann et al., 2010)"

and

There is medium confidence that the GMST trend difference between models and observations during 1998–2012 is to a substantial degree caused by internal variability, with possible contributions from forcing error and some CMIP5 models overestimating the response to increasing GHG and other anthropogenic forcing.

and

The causes of both the observed GMST trend hiatus and of the model–observation GMST trend difference during 1998–2012 imply that, barring a major volcanic eruption, most 15-year GMST trends in the near-term future will be larger than during 1998–2012 (high confidence; see 11.3.6.3. for a full assessment of near-term projections of GMST). The reasons for this implication are fourfold: first, anthropogenic greenhouse-gas concentrations are expected to rise further in all RCP scenarios; second, anthropogenic aerosol concentration is expected to decline in all RCP scenarios, and so is the resulting cooling effect; third, the trend in solar forcing is expected to be larger over most near-term 15-year periods than over 1998–2012 (medium confidence), because 1998–2012 contained the full downward phase of the solar cycle; and fourth, it is more likely than not that internal climate variability in the near-term will enhance and not counteract the surface warming expected to arise from the increasing anthropogenic forcing.

So yes, the slowdown is real and sure, it should be explained, and not surprisingly, it already has been. The point you don't seem to understand is that arguments about the slowed warming are nothing but a sideshow. Every time we hit a new high temperature we start a new round of "it hasn't warmed since the last time we broke a record". It's tiresome and pointless. That's what the graph is really about, and why you don't like it. You don't like it because it shows clearly why (at least some of) your arguments are vapid.

Well you just made one of the arguments that the graph dispells: "The pause is real and merits an explanation", so presumably you know at least one such person. Case in point one of the many points the graph addresses it easy to choose many different periods and say "there is no trend for this period" and confuse that with "there is no trend". In fact, you can pretty much cover the entire temperature record with cherry-picked periods that show no statistically significant warming despite the obvious historical warming trend when you look at forest and not just the trees.

I remember seeing a post on Slashdot a while ago about a study that said that downvoting actually makes the trollers and nutters more pernicious and persistent. So maybe a good site actually only allows upvoting, but starts all posts below the "normal" view level?

Of course, this is nothing new, the same tactics are recommended to deal with "problem" children who attention through negative behaviour (breaking things, tantrums, foul language, etc). I've even seen posters on Slashdot, with a history of being factually wrong and scientifically illiterate, brag about how being downmodded only proves that they are, in fact, correct. They then reach the conclusion that their insightful correctness must be a danger to the dark powers that control Slashdot, or some similar tripe, and that they must continue to battle at all costs. When it seems to me that the reason they were downmodded was because they were posting junk that was stupid and wrong.

It's simple, everyone would rather believe that they are oppressed freeedom fighters rather than ignorant buffoons, even though the latter is far more more frequently true.

Why not? What prevents them from requesting data from other national science bodies? Is there some sort of science embargo on Japan that I don't know about?

Are you sure about that? I mean sure not reading the article is pretty common on Slashdot but not reading your own sources is pretty lame. The article you linked says that New York will experience more flooding under storm conditions. The top category of flooding in my linked article for the flooding damager during Hurricane Sandy in New York City is 6-18 feet of water, because the top recorded flooding level was a little over 17 feet of water. There seems to be more than a few buildings in that top category. And the article says the average flooding level in New York city will rise by an estimated 4 feet of water by 2032 (20 years after the article was published). I don't see how that can be considered good evidence for your claims no matter how I look at the issue.

If he had removed anything they'd just claim that the removed emails contain the evidence that they were looking for, and more people would be inclined to believe them because they now have evidence that he's hiding something. Frankly, I suspect even if he opened up his email voluntarily and didn't remove anything personal they'd claim that obviously he'd already hidden the evidence they were looking for. Witch hunts don't end just because you're co-operating with your would-be executioners.

Using the numbers from Venus Atmosphere Temperature and Pressure Profile:
Average Earth temperature: 14 degrees x 1.176 = 16 degrees Celcius
Average Venus temperature at 1 atmosphere (49.5 km above the surface): 66 degrees Celcius

It appears that you shouldn't be able to do so, and that's ignoring the question of whether the surface temperature on Earth should even be directly comparable to the temperature 49.5 km above the surface of Venus.

No, generally speaking anyone who denies that global warming is occurring is labelled a "denier", because the evidence is conclusive that it's happening. The people who deny that catastrohpic climate change could occur because of global warming ir more properly lablled as a "luke-warmer", because they generally don't believe it will get "that hot".

No one (but you) is using it for that purpose.

Surprisingly, close to half of Americans don't actually believe that, they think that there's no consensus on whether global warming is occurring. Probably because their primary news sources are under the control of Rupert Murdoch who personally stands to lose money from his portfolio if it's widely acknowledged that global warming is occurring and that human emissions are a key factor. Rupert, in case you didn't know, has a lot of money invested in coal companies which would bear the brunt of the effects of regulation, carbon taxes, or carbon trading markets.

Actually, the graph you posted was quite cherry-picked, I moved the start date of each trend to the start of the indicated year or to the previous year (if it was already at the start of a year) and now they all show an upwards slope.

You're just playing games with the data.

Those nagging doubts? They're the manifestation of your political identity conflicting with the science.

And this is how you rationalize your refusal to accept the science. You use selective thinking to focus on minor issues while ignoring what should be the glaring obvious parts.

Are you referring to this? It seems like a rather minor bug.

Except that it hasn't been shown to be "nothing but statistical bullshit". I have yet to see a credible refutation of their claim that 97% of the published scientific articles that take a position on climate change support the consensus position that global warming is happening and driven by human activity. The argument that I'm assuming that you are referring to is the one made by Anthony Watts that they should not have excluded papers that do not discuss global climate change or global warming. However, it seems fair to me that when you are looking at positions taken on a issue to only look at papers which discuss the issue.

That's a very interesting interpretation of the IPCC report, but one that most people do not get after reading the report. I strongly suspect it is a result of more selective thinking. You place undue emphasis on minor details of the report like a decrease in confidence of the link between severe weather and global average temperature and the lower of the top end of reasonable climate sensitivity, while ignoring the increase in the bottom end of reasonable climate sensitivity to conlcude that the "position is weaker than ever" while I think unbiased readers generally come away with the impression that uncertainty has decreased (because both the upper and lower limits have tightened).

Personally, I didn't believe in global warming when I first heard about it in the 90s, but since then I have been convinced that it is true. My experience with so called "skeptics" like yourself has played no little part in that belief. I have found that the actual scientific proponents tends to have well researched and detailed explanations for why and how it's happening, but the so-called skeptics tend to have arguments based on emotion and finger-pointing. Time and again you, in particular, have disappointed me with claims that were poorly backed up. Invariably when I investigate your claims I find them to be blown out of proportion, mistaken, or referencing some kook's incomprehensible arguments*.

I could, in theory, be falling for the same blinded by personal ideology issue (in your case, I believe it is your libertarian political beliefs), but fortunately (in this case) I don't have many strong political beliefs, I don't identify strongly with greens, liberals, conservatives, libertarians, socialists or communists. So I'm inclined to believe that my personal views aren't filtering my view on this issue. Are you sure you can say the same?

* My personal favourite was when you linked to a kook who claimed the greenhouse effect didn't exist because greenhouses are encased in glass and the planet is not.