An argument from authority is not a fallacy as long as the authority is a legitimate expert on the subject and there is a consensus among the majority.

And how many authorities are there who are legitimate authorities in ALL of the required fields to declare that human CO2 emissions have caused the last century of warming? It spans virtually every scientific discipline that there is. There is meaningful individual consensus on specific, isolated facts. It has indeed been warming over the last 100 years. Human's have indeed been releasing measurable levels of CO2. CO2 is indeed a GHG that contributes to warming. I'm afraid however, that there is no legitimate expert and majority consensus that those individual pieces prove unprecedented and potentially catastrophic anthropogenic global warming is underway.

The legitimate experts that tell us the last 100 years have been warming equally have records showing similarly high temperatures within the last 2k years, with temperatures previously dropping as quickly as they are warming today(see even Mann's own corrections to his previous work). That seems to argue against the last 100 years of warming indicating catastrophic AGW is underway.

The legitimate experts that tell us that humans are emitting measurable levels of CO2 each year also tell us that those are a mere 3% of the natural emissions our planet produces every year. That seems to argue against our CO2 emissions being proof that catastrophic AGW is eminent.

The legitimate experts that tell us that CO2 is a powerful GHG also tell us that it is responsible for 10-25% of the greenhouse effect, while water vapor accounts for better than 70. Combine that with the small contribution humans make to natural CO2 emissions, and it is hardly compelling that catastrophic AGW is upon us.

The tricky part about science is cross-disciplinary studies and a failure to recognize uncertainties in results that get picked up as input from another discipline. The IPCC has tried to get around that with committees of experts, but it seems to have only managed to add the additional problem of politics into the mix.

Agreed on them both needing to be accounted for. Why is it then that a google scholar search for scientific studies on increases in atmospheric CO2 do NOT include volcanoes, or ANY other natural sources, and instead try and correlate only human emissions to to measured atmospheric CO2 increases?

How about the IPCC's projections for atmospheric CO2 levels? They too include the built in presumption that the only variation in the carbon cycle is human emissions. That may be useful as a comparison number to say the difference humans might make, all other things ignored. It doesn't tell us anything about the overall human contribution though. A 1% shift in natural sinks and sources, which we understand poorly, throws a wrench in everything.

The science that is settled is that things have been warming the last 1-200 years, that CO2 is a GHG, and that human activity is about 3% of annual global CO2 emissions. The science that isn't settled is EVERYTHING tying those together in any quantitative manner. Our future actions rely entirely on just how much of the past and future warming is contributed to by human vs. natural activity, and one other piece of the science that is well agreed upon is that we do NOT understand the role of the natural carbon cycle and climate change very well at all.

Ah, but the scientific "consensus" is that we DON'T really understand the carbon cycle, is it not? Go do a google scholar search on the subject, half the papers are studies on why there is such discrepancy in past results. The other half that try and make claims like yours use absurd methodologies, like trying to find the correlation between human CO2 emissions and changes in atmospheric CO2 levels. That might sound like a decent study, save for the consideration that human CO2 emissions are 3-4% of natural emissions, so if natural emissions(or sinks for that matter) vary at all, the human contribution is all but lost in the noise. I've a very simple theory why their results are inconsistent and vary so much, the 3% human contribution being looked at is getting lost in the noise of the other 98% that is being ignored.

As for clouds, I have problems with arguing that it is separate from water vapor AND with any study using them as a net positive feedback. Maybe I'm relying too much on my own experience(anecdote), but I understood clouds to be inextricably linked to water vapor, almost as though being virtually the same thing in many cases. Additionally, I've never found a day to generally be warmer for the presence of clouds, making them as a positive feedback a hard thing to swallow.

I agree with your logic, but I think you misunderstand the science of it.

Human CO2 emissions are about 3-4% that of naturally occurring emissions. CO2 accounts for about 10-25% of the greenhouse effect. If we want to look at cost effective solutions to global warming, even catastrophic global warming, we need to know how much impact cutting our emissions is going to have. The evidence is very strong that the trillions of dollars it would cost, every year, to cut out our emissions in half is probably better spent on mitigation measures to live with the rising temperatures that are coming. Furthermore, that is assuming that cutting trillions of dollars out of the global economy can done with out triggering WW3, which seems at least equally as likely as our continued emissions triggering irreversible catastrophic climate change. As a matter of fact, WW3 would seem liable to cause it's own irreversible environmental damages.

Right, volcano emissions must be insignificant compared to human emissions, since they are a mere 1% of what humans emit. Before reading any further, think hard about whether or not you accept that logic, it seems pretty solid.

Here's the trick, human's emit 3-4% as much CO2 as natural sources. If the above logic still holds, we might almost dismiss human CO2 emissions out of hand as insignificant, right?

The reality is that human CO2 emissions, despite being tiny, are special in that they fall outside the earth's natural cycles. The real question is, how much impact does that small 3-4% contribution we add make on a grand scale. To answer that we need to understand what kind of flux there is in natural CO2 emission and absorption, which is openly admitted to be poorly understood, it is the consensus, if one likes that kind of phrase. AFTER that is understood, we can begin to estimate the impact of the whatever net increase in CO2 we are causing has on temperature. That means understanding the role of water vapor, as it accounts for ~70% of the greenhouse effect while CO2 is a comparatively meager 10-25%. And, once again, the 'consensus' for those that like that phrase, is that the role of water vapor is poorly understood, so much so that different climate models aren't even agreed when to use water vapor as a positive or negative feedback...

Sorry, I'm just some ignorant, unscientific heathen trying to understand things out loud.

Did you miss the part where Clinton threatened to bomb them if they didn't give in? That's not an option anymore.

It never was. North Korea's nukes haven't changed much, yet. The North's conventional, 50's era, long range artillery was already sufficiently stocked and positioned to turn Seoul into a million little craters on a moments notice.

On the one hand you have a messy deal full of threats and bribes, on the other, NK gets the bomb. If you prefer the latter, you got it.

You've misrepresented the problem. North Korea gets the bomb on BOTH hands. That's trouble guys arguing like you seem to miss. When a dictator says, I only committed this terrible thing because of X, they are generally LYING. The truth is they commit their crimes because it benefits them, whether condition X is met or not doesn't matter one bit.

In addition, the level of isolationism in the US is frankly frightening. It's nothing like North Korea, of course, but there are a LOT of Americans who are incredibly insular. It isn't as bad as some of the numbers suggest--the very few Americans having a passport is more a testimony to the fact that you have to go farther to cross a border than you do in Europe--but it's bad. Most people in the US know effectively nothing about modern international affairs, and only a small percentage know anything about international history. During the presidential election, for example, then-candidate Obama expressing his willingness to go into Pakistan if necessary was a relatively small bit of trivia here, and most people had no freaking clue how upset his statements to that effect made pretty much everyone in Pakistan. Fast-forward a few years, and you see the consequences of that ignorance--the public's response to Pakistan's being upset with the actual raid isn't "We know how big a deal this was for you, we felt we had to do it, and we'll make it up to you," it was "if you're upset it must be because you were hiding Osama!"

Your showing your own ignorance. You need to follow Pakistan's papers more closely. The JUI-F political party had it's members standing up in Pakistan's National Assemblies demanding to know why the military failed to protect a muslim hero like Osama Bin Laden, because clearly he could not have been where he was without the ISI or military's knowledge. So, it's not just American's ignorant of Pakistani politics that believe there were officials in Pakistan that were hiding him, elected Pakistani politicians believed so as well, and they deemed him a hero!!!(Google the JUI-F if you won't believe me)

It provides an international mechanism for justice and oversight of elections and regime change when countries are ready for those things. (The International Criminal Tribunals and later the International Criminal Court, for example.) It also determines whether wars are legal or illegal under International law

Right, like the ICC convictions of Omar Al-Bashir and Gadhafi. How is that working out so far?
Justifying wars like they authorized action in Libya?

The UN is petty political maneuvering, just on a grand scale and with callous disregard for the lives of people.

It sounds a lot hippie.

How is it helping to never have any consequences when a nation deliberately, repeatedly and blatantly violates everything the UN stands for? It is a slave state, where the population is callously used up as so many food powered robot slaves. Those born with disabilities are still put to work in the fields most suited them, guinea pigs in testing the lethality of their chemical weapons research program. That's right, an escaped military officer explained how watching a fellow officer struggle with giving up one of his children to the 'cause' was a major reason he eventually fled the country.

Aside from how North Korea treats it's own people(which is unforgivable enough of itself), there is also it's pursuit of nuclear weapons, and it's continued assaults and attacks against South Korea's assets and people as well.

You ask what good can come from shunning North Korea? I demand what justification you think there is for dignifying a nation acting so horrifically by welcoming them as diplomatic equals. Our differences are not just cultural or regional disagreements, it is about the most widespread human rights violations and war crimes our world has seen since Stalin.

Clinton's goodies included offering them 2 nuclear reactors and enormous supplies of oil bought and paid for with American money. Basically, offering billions of dollars of aid and 2 nuke plants for their previous bad behavior. Isn't the lesson that threatening and bullying America is a good way to get paid handsomely?

Are you serious or just trolling? Once again, Mann's own comments on his reconstruction:
The EIV reconstructions suggest that temperatures were relatively warm (comparable with the mean over the 1961–1990 reference period but below the levels of the past decade) from A.D. 1000 through the early 15th century, then fell abruptly.

So, in 1500 absolute temperatures were comparable to those from 1961-1990. That means over the intervening 400 years temperatures cooled and warmed back to where they started around 1500. The cooling after 1500 was no more or less abrupt than the warming leading up to the 1960-1990 comparable temperature range.

Get your head on straight and accept that Mann's research clearly shows that cooling after 1500 was just as abrupt and anomalous as the warming that brought temperatures back to what they used to be in 1500.

I know, it makes it harder to persuade people to believe AGW is real and important, but denying what the basic evidence says does that too.

Right, I'm the one misreading the paper. Here's a direct quote:
The EIV reconstructions suggest that temperatures were relatively warm (comparable with the mean over the 1961–1990 reference period but below the levels of the past decade) from A.D. 1000 through the early 15th century, then fell abruptly.

I said the last century's temperatures where found to not be anomalous over the last 2k years, as opposed to Mann's earlier work which found that they were. So, which method does Mann endorse?
we find in these experiments that the EIV reconstructions are significantly more skillful

So, the new EIV set is endorsed as the more accurate recreation by Mann himself.

I stated that the last century was shown in this paper to have been matched in temperature previously over the last 2k years, and I've quoted where Mann stated such about the period from 1000 through 1500.

I additionally stated, and now quoted that Mann declares ONLY the last decade to be an anomaly over the last 2k years. The SOLE extrapolation I make beyond what Mann has openly and unmistakably declared is to comment on the last decade of data available to him. I made the observation that proxy data was absent for that decade. It is noted repeatedly in the literature, if you're familiar, that proxy sources frequently have sensitivity limits. What does that mean? Simply that proxy records for the last decade could very easily be in line with the last 2k years, we don't actually know. What we DO know is that for 100% of the proxy data that Mann DID have access to, NONE of it showed anomalous warming...

Oh, and if your truly out of touch with the science, make the additional note that Mann's work is a poster child for the most pro AGW crowds out there and by nobody's imagination any form of 'questionable' nutty skeptic.

Please, point out where I misrepresented the basic science here. I haven't, and crying it's too complicated for you is evidence of nothing but your own ignorance of the matter.

Go read Mann's paper I linked to yourself. His EIV method, which he admits is the more accurate, clearly shows a recreation of historic temperatures that exceeds the warming for any modern proxy data. The entire warming from 1850 through to 1990 had been seen or exceeded previously, on multiple occasions over the last 2,000 years. Take your head out of the sand and examine the actual paper.

Reading seems to be hard for you, so I'll repeat myself for you:

You keep talking about the scientific consensus. What is that exactly? Is there are a secret cabal somewhere? Perhaps a divinely inspired holy book only available to the acolytes of the one true science?

If you can explain what this 'consensus' you speak of represents than your question might make a lick of sense.

You keep talking about the scientific consensus. What is that exactly? Is there are a secret cabal somewhere? Perhaps a divinely inspired holy book only available to the acolytes of the one true science?

Mann is one of the pinnacles of the AGW supporters movement. Your 'consensus' minded folks all hold Mann up as one of their heroes. If I was gonna cherry pick my sources, I'd choose a paper by someone that wasn't a strong and vehement AGW advocate. You don't need to read his conclusion, read his graph of historic temperatures, the green line of his updated reconstruction shows CLEAR AS DAY that the warming from 1850 through 1990 has been repeatedly exceeded over the last 2k years.

Mann's prior paper is also upheld by the IPCC(another 'consensus' body) as a pinnacle in their analysis. The idea of unprecedented warming since the industrial age began around 100 years ago is the lynch pin of the catastrophic AGW crowd. Incidentally, it is strongly contradicted by Mann's own corrections to his work here, science in action.

This paper is the follow on to Mann's previous one where he concluded the last century was anomalous.

If you read closer, you'll find multiple references where Mann notes that warming similar to the 1980's is observed over the previous 2000 years:
The EIV reconstructions suggest that temperatures were relatively warm (comparable with the mean over the 1961–1990 reference period but below the levels of the past decade)

The bigger truth is to just look at the graphs. His new(EIV) method graphs show repeated peaks much higher than the current proxy data. The last 'decade' he keep referring to is PURELY instrumental data, as the proxies don't come up that recently.