So that's a no on having any source to back up your claims. Even more, you seem to hold the fact I have actual sources to support my claims as proof I must be fabricating something? What's the deal man, check my sources and look for the truth for your own self. I am making an effort to lead you by the hand to the truth.

I'm glad you find his comments disturbing. Did you not read further on though where I noted the man that spoke against him was assassinated a year later?

You don't seem to be familiar with Pakistan's political history. The so terribly rigged elections were also the very first time in the entirety of Pakistan's history that power of an elected government was NOT stripped by a military coup but legitimately was passed on to another civilian government, corrupt and fixed elections not withstanding.

Maybe you should start getting some prepared notes before expounding in ignorance about what is best for a place you nothing about? I first got interested in Pakistan on reading two books, Benazir Bhutto's biography and 3 cups of tea by Greg Mortenson. They are both excellent primers on Pakistan from the eyes of two fantastic people working to help the Pakistani people. From there, I was hooked and have read many other books by people in the region and from all sides, including Pervez Musharaff's autobiography. It's interesting that my copy of Bhutto's biography was printed after her assassination, and includes in the appendix a letter she sent several friends before returning to Pakistan. In it she states in no uncertain terms that she expects to very likely die and that Musharaf is her top suspect for who will kill her. If you read Musharaff's own biography afterwards, he makes a compelling argument to support exactly that. Seeing as he ran the investigation, the lack of result speaks for itself.

I state how bleak the situation for moderates is in Pakistan because it is simply speaking, the unavoidable truth. The extreme spread and influence of multiple flavours of jihadist bent on killing moderate Pakistani Muslims is not a fact that can be ignored in seeking to assist. Point in fact, Drone strikes are killing jihadist leaders at a remarkable clip, and with far lower civilian deaths than any ground offensive the Pak Army can hope for. Support for that positive is part of my motivation for laying bear the hard truth. At the same time, Greg Mortenson is building schools in tribal Pakistan and by all means join those of us supporting him and his work too. Do not go misleading people though by giving a false image of the state of affairs in the country because that helps only those brutally exploiting and repressing our moderate allies suffering over there everyday.

Care to provide any proof for your fantasies? It's not American sources that talk about the TTP as being matter of fact consisting primarily of Pakistani tribal peoples and Saudi backed imports. It's the news organizations in Pakistan itself. It's the people living in Pakistan and being killed by them that identify it. If you've got some brainwashed fantasy they're all white skinned Alabama boys dropped in by chopper, you need to get out into the real world and listen to the people who have lived there.

The only source I linked to was The News Pakistan, I wholly Pakistani owned and operated news outlet that has no love for America. You should probably follow it for awhile. My primary news source though is Al Jazeera, you'll find it is a pretty good vaccine against the lies you've apparently been fed by some conspiracy nutters. Unless you already view these sources as also part of the pro American conspiracy. I would ask you maybe point out what, if any, sources of information are left that you count as even remotely reliable.

Hardly seems to make much difference if guys like the JUI-F are in power by popular vote or rigged vote to me, you've still got guys paying tribute to Bin Laden party to the ruling coalition of a nuclear armed state...

So much of what you said though is just utterly delusional or pure fabrication. If your not prepared to offer any evidence, stop making so much noise.

The JUI-F speech can be read here. Fouled up the link somehow in the parent.

Take your filthy lies and go away. CNN and FOX entirely ignore the situation in Pakistan, and the reality is that things there are not much milder, but are in truth many, many times worse than anyone only watching western media would see. Seems likely why you've missed things altogether too.

You should maybe look at the deadly game of Pakistani politics. Politicians who spoke of changing the blasphemy laws away from the current death sentence, have themselves been killed for it. One by his own bodyguard who proudly announced his reasons, and was hailed widely as an Islamic hero.

Others have asked about Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan's former female leader, surely that is a good sign! Of course, she is dead now, having been assassinated by the extremists.

Let's pay more close attention to the perpetrators for a moment now, like the JUI-F party. Have a look here what their deputy parliamentary leader had as his prepared speech at the Parliamentary Assembly after the death of Osama Bin Laden. He railed against the injustice and loss of a great Islamic hero. To be fair, he was countered across the aisle a Bashir Bilour who asked were the indignation from the JUI-F was while thousands of civilians and hundreds of soldiers died at the hands of the TTP and other extremists. If you look to Bashir Bilour for hope though, you'll be disappointed, though perhaps unsurprised, to learn that he too was assassinated in December 2012. Noticing a trend yet how things fair for the moderate advocates in Pakistan?

But the best has been saved for last. You wanted to talk about how ignorant people are of the situation in Pakistan. You were correct to observe just how ignorant people are, but your suggestion it is better there than portrayed reveals you are among the ignorant.

The current ruling government in Pakistan is a coalition between three parties. The second largest party is... the JUI-F, the party that declared in the official assemblies it's support for Bin Laden as an Islamic hero.

I'm afraid in your ignorance you've missed that the reality is things in Pakistan are far, far worse than you could've imagined.

The JUI-F party is sitting on 15 seats in Pakistan's elected National Assembly. The JUI-F deputy parliamentary leader, Mufti Kifayatullah, gave a grand speech for his party after Bin Laden's death lamenting the loss of a great Islamic hero. You can read about his speech here. Mufti is still alive and well as a member of the JUI-F. The leader of the ANP party member that spoke against him was assassinated just before Christmas a year later in 2012 though.

You grossly misrepresent the threat facing moderate Pakistani civilians by falsely claiming a mere 15% are radicals.

Did I mention the JUI-F is 1 of three parties that make up the current RULING coalition government in Pakistan? That's correct, nuclear armed Pakistan is currently ruled by a coalition including a party that declared Osama Bin Laden a hero. That party won popular election to 15 of 300 some seats.

Who are you counting in your mere 15% of 'radicals'. The lynch mobs and assassins that have busily killed not only those accused of blasphemy, but even those that proposed changing the laws on it number more than 15%. I very much believe it unjust to count those in favor of the death penalty for blasphemy as anything but radical.

Oh, forgot to add the scariest part. The JUI-F, who shed tears and shook their fists over Bin Laden's tragic loss have something more than just 15 seats at the National Assembly. The current ruling and official government of Pakistan is a coalition government between the following parties: PML-N, PML-F and yes, you guessed it, the JUI-F.

You can read about the JUI-F praise for Bin Laden here and here.

Shiver.

India and Pakistan is an apples to oranges comparison alright, as Bhutto is hardly the lone moderate or liberal minded victim in Pakistan.

Shabaz Bhatti and Salmaan Taseer are two other high ranking Pakistani politicians murdered in 2011 for the reason that they announced a wish to change the penalty for blasphemy to something other than the death penalty.

Or perhaps more telling, is Malala Yousef, a small school girl who's threat to the extremists was voicing the opinion that girls should attend school. So the brave jihadists stopped her school bus and shot her in the head. She survived, but is still living in the UK because the Taliban has not only accepted responsibility for the attack, but has sworn to finish the job if she returns.

These are just a few of the big name assassinations in the last few years. The list of atrocities committed by extremists in Pakistan could go on and on. Just follow Pakistan English language news for a few days and see for yourself. The JUI-F party currently holds 15 seats in Pakistan's National Assembly. The JUI-F leader gave a grand speech after Bin Laden's death condemning the Pakistani government's failure to protect an Islamic Hero, and for their obvious complicity as given Bin Laden's location the government must have known about him long before the American attack.
 

I'm not sure you are defining "radical" the same as we would in the western world. Does support for punishing blasphemy and apostasy with the death penalty count as "radical"?

Shahbaz Bhatti was Pakistan's Minister for Minorities Affairs and he made his opposition to the blasphemy laws known, and he was assassinated in 2011.
Salmaan Taseer was the Governor of Punjab and he made his opposition to the blasphemy laws known. He was assassinated by his own security guard once again in 2011.

Now, before you declare that assassinations are often a fringe movement, lets look at the treatment of the guard that killed Taseer. Nearly 500 clerics praised the murder and called for a boycott of Taseer's funeral.

Also take a close look at the blasphemy cases brought up regularly in Pakistan. Very often the accused don't make it to trial or execution before they killed by an angry mob, or while under police 'protection'.

There are moderates in Pakistan that are opposed to the same radicals that we are. People like Sabeen Mahmud, Salmaan Taseer, Shabaz Bhati, and Benazir Bhutto all share many of our more moderate and tolerant views and values. The severity of the problems in Pakistan though are revealed in that same list as those moderates are increasingly ending up dead like EVERYONE in that list. We have survivors as well, like Malala Yousef, the young school girl shot in the face on her bus by the TTP. Of course, she is carying on from Britain right now because the TTP have sworn to finish her off should she return.

Oh, and it should be noted that everyone on that list save Shabaz Bhati were muslims as well. The severity of the extremism in that ?15%? is staggering and I also seriously question that the percentage is fairly characterized as merely 15%.

Because E-Meters, thetans, engrams and Xenu are all so very natural...

Every organization sued or otherwise attacked by Scientology is also "victimized" by them. Are you interested in warning people against joining Scientology by telling them what it's really about? Prepare to be sued for releasing their Trade Secrets. Scientology's victims are hardly limited to their membership.

In 1978 11 high ranking Scientology leaders were convicted in one of the largest counts of internal espionage of the IRS and federal attorney's offices.
In 1978 France convicted, in absentia, L Ron Hubbard of fraud.
In 1988 in Spain the Spanish head of Scientology and ten others were arrested on charges of fraud, coercion and labour law violations.
In 2009, a Paris court found the French Church of Scientology guilty of organized fraud and imposed a fine of nearly US$900,000.

Noah Lottick, died 1990
Lisa McPherson, died 1995

The measure and notion of forcings as applies to computer simulations like the Hansen paper can be confusing when applied/translated to immediate conditions at a point in time. As you note in your quote, the 2.75 number is the impact from the total change in GHG's(not just CO2, nor just human emitted GHG's) from 1880 through 2003. Hansen later notes the overall forcing(not just GHG) from 1880 through 2003:
The net change of effective forcing between 1880 and 2003 is +1.8 W/m2

I'm going to reference the +1.8W/M^2 for my prior example, because Hansen does the same later so it's easier to verify against his own words. With a net increase in forcing from 1880 to 2003 of +1.8, and with a imbalance today between 0.5 and 1 we can work out what has already been responded to and what has not. For ease of use, let's pick(as Hansen does) a current imbalance of 0.8W/M^2. In that case, the planet has already responded to 1W/m^2 of the forcing and has 0.8W/m^2 to go. Alternatively to state it as I did earlier, if we returned our atmospheric conditions to 1880 but at our current global temperatures, we'd see the energy imbalance drop by 1.8W/M^2, or a net -1W/m^2, and we'd be forcing ourselves back to an 1880 equilibrium. Hansen says the same thing in different words in your article :
This imbalance is consistent with the total forcing of +1.8 W/m2 relative to that in 1880 and climate sensitivity of +2/3-C per W/m2. The observed 1880 to 2003 global warming is 0.6- to 0.7-C (11, 22), which is the full response to nearly 1 W/m2 of forcing. Of the 1.8 W/m2 forcing, 0.85 W/m2 remains.

That is all to say that forcings are just measures of changes to the green house effect from one time to another, mostly used in climate simulations as a means to test and understand the workings of the underlying system. If removing XX W/m^2 of forcing from a simulation instantly and with no other changes DOESN'T shift the energy balance the exact same amount, then the underlying basic physics model of simulation is broken. That's why the effort and notes by Hansen to rectify the two and note they remain consistent with one another as one or the other rises.

Also observe that Hansen's work is entirely with simulations, with only about 9 variable forcings taken into account in effort to simulate a portion of what happened since 1880. He also doesn't distinguish which parts of the forcings are anthropogenic versus natural. His underlying effort was to look at the speed with which temperature and energy imbalance may have responded to the changes since 1880. His only references to observed energy imbalance reference Levitus Ocen heat work, and the note that from 1955 through 1998 the ocean's heated at a roughly steady rate of 10W/M^2, or approximately 1W/m^2 globally. Hansen later notes his simulations from 1993 through 2003 that show 0.6 W/m^2 recently are in good agreement with Levitus newer observations of that same time of 0.55 W/m^2.

I will observe that the energy imbalance is decreasing over time by observations, as stated by Hansen. That has been happening while our CO2 emissions and concentrations are still increasing. I count that cause for optimism versus panicking that CO2 impacts might be even worse than IPCC projections.

The energy imbalance is NOT a function of change in forcing over time. The energy imbalance is the energy leaving the earth at the top of the atmosphere subtracted from the energy entering. Forcings are anything that works to change the energy imbalance over time. The energy imbalance doesn't care about how we model or measure the changes to the atmosphere and climate system. The physics it operates under is energy from the sun trapped in versus what is reflected or otherwise bled off. GHG's like CO2 all work to absorb that radiation and help decrease the radiation out number.

Forcings, like our emissions of GHGs, work on the simple principle of increasing concentrations of gases that then absorb more energy. There are many calculations for what overall impact our emissions have had, one estimate as you say is a net contribution of trapping an additional 2.9 W/m^2. Subtract that concentration of gases we've contributed to absorb 2.9 W/m^2 and that much extra energy escapes, by definition. That moves the energy imbalance down by 2.9 W/m^2, by definition.

I'm willing to rely on the scientific method and data collection to make best guesses at what impact it will have on the future. Then from that data making decisions that are sensible based on that data. Right now, catastrophe is strongly counter to observations and so your desire to panic is uncalled for. The cost/benefit of reducing our contribution is still very, very poorly known, but we do know that preparation measures are called for so we should start that before pouring dollars at 'solution' we know neither the cost nor value of.

That's not how physics works. With a human contribution of 2.9 @/m2 and net imbalance when including natural forcings of 0.6W/m2, the natural system already has balanced all but 0.6W/M2 of our 2.9W/m2 contribution at current temps.

Correct, that's the 101 portion. The next question is at what rate should we expect the rise to be. From a constant energy balance as we've seen since 1980 in Sat observations we should expect a linear increasing temperature. If you go look at the IPCC's fifth assessment report, you can look at the models long term projections all the way to 2300 in Chapter 12. If you go to the section on energy budget, you can see where each of the IPCC's 4 main scenarios project the energy imbalance to be in the future. If we take the shocking approach of expecting the trend from the last 30 years of Satellite data to continue, then our future should track somewhere under the IPCC RPC4.5 scenario and somewhere above their RPC2.6 scenario. If you look at the IPCC chapter 11, they model temperature projections out to 2100 for RCP4.5. The prediction from my above approach would be to expect that observations will track on the low end of or just under the RCP4.5 predictions. You don't have to wait to see if I'm correct, the IPCC also graphs Observed temperatures against their predictions, and so far observation track at the very bottom range of the RCP4.5 predictions.

What that means if you follow the RCP 4.5 and 2.6 actual climate scientists work, the expectations we should see by 2100 are linear temperature increase and an increase between 1 or 2C, with a better guess than at 1.5C. That's not a number that calls for panic, nor one that supports any fears of it could be so much worse so we better spend billions now to drop our CO2 emissions. We are facing warming, but we should be building stuff to deal with that because as demonstrated for all we know billions spent on CO2 reductions could leave us at 1.4C in 2100 instead of 1.5C which is a big wast of dollars that could've built up levies in New Orleans instead.

If you want to argue for 'playing things safe' that's exactly my point. With what we currently don't know, we could spend billions on reducing CO2 emissions, and make little noticeable difference to future conditions. We could spend those same billions on dykes, irrigation and water management to deal with the warming that we DO know is coming. You seem to think we should gamble on being able to make a difference with reducing our CO2 emissions, I'm saying let's have some better info before risking wasting dollars we could really use to deal with changes.

You need to read more closely, the numbers for total radiation coming into the atmosphere and leaving are in the hundreds, and the net difference is near zero. The impact of greenhouse gases, like human forced ones are the 2.9 W/m^2 you reference, are but of a bigger whole. That is meaning without the 2.9W/m^2 from our human emissions we'd be facing a much bigger imbalance, but in the opposite direction around -2.5W/m^2. If gaining energy at 0.6 is scary, losing it at -2.5 should be even scarier, no? Might really be disappointed in a hundred years if we spend billions to drop temps 3-4 degrees for fear of them warming by 1 or 2.

Reality would appear to dictate that our actual influence on the energy budget isn't nearly that extreme, as I've pointed out twice already. The entire time our contribution(forcing from human GHGs) has been rising steadily, the energy imbalance has remained oblivious to that, or at least hasn't changed to an extent that we have the precision to measure yet. More good news, if you look at the energy balance reconstructions and studies that have been done, the biggest historic forcings on the energy balance have been volcanoes. What's the good news? Well, the energy imbalance corrects itself back to were it left of in a very short time, and very close to were it left off, over and over again. That's pretty good evidence that natural forcings, like the poorly modeled and understood GHG known as water vapor, act heavily to drive the energy imbalance back to equilibrium when faced with an external forcing like volcanoes. That's good news because we can look for signals that those same natural forcings might affect CO2. We'd then expect to see an energy imbalance that doesn't run away in the face of continually increasing human GHG forcings... You know, exactly like what we are seeing.

We know more energy will cause systems to be more chaotic. We don't know how much a given reduction in human CO2 emissions will reduce the energy imbalance. We don't know HOW costly the difference in adaptation is for that unknown change in energy imbalance. I'm not seeing a strong reason here to advocate for CO2 reductions over adaptation unless the CO2 reductions are really cheap, which no meaningful ones are.