"There was actually a guy who tried to show what a sham the whole art thing was by forging many famous original works and then burning the original. "

That's a copy. The original artist still made all the important artistic decisions, the part that makes the art good. A new copy of the execution doesn't show the original is a "sham" in any way.

Michelangelo had great skill with a chisel and file, but that's not why he's a genius.

Even more interesting however was a man around the WW2 who make 'original' Vermeers, i.e. paintings which were not copies of existing paintings but were so good and a such a match to the style and quality that people believed they were (almost) real Vermeer works.

Even still, he was working in a plan and style defined and refined by Vermeer.

| Steinway pianos are indistinguishable from other high end (but much cheaper) pianos, when played out of sight.

The important criterion here is what the pianist can do and feel.

| Some of Rembrandt's greatest paintings, the very paintings that made him "great", and were considered quintessential Rembrandt masterpieces that could never be equaled by lesser artists, turned out to be fakes.

Which ones are these?

| So you're saying that food crops, when grown in conditions a few degrees warmer and with more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, will be less productive?

Yes.

| I think operators of greenhouses would disagree with you.

They aren't growing food crops, they're growing orchids in Europe.

The problem is the minimum night time temperatures. Many crops need a certain minimum night time temperature to function well.

http://www.pnas.org/content/101/27/9971.full

| One would think that agricultural lobbies worldwide, which are often quite politically powerful, would be screaming their heads off about climate change affecting crop yields

Think more carefully.

Agricultural lobbies of poor farmers in India don't really have a whole bunch of influence in many areas.

Wealthy commercial global agribusinesses? Well, they don't have a problem, really---they sell materials and processing, and their services will always be in demand---perhaps even more during times of agricultural stress. Besides, they will have many new clients from Canada & Russia.

The consequences of lower crop yields will be borne by the people who own increasingly poor land and by the people who have to pay more to eat. These aren't the powerful ones.

And yes, there already is a business: http://www.climate.com/. It was just acquired by Monsanto.

When money is actually on the line, they use scientifically justified climatology, not 'skeptical' 'denier' bs.

| Climatologists have yet to quite realise that they need a small army of coders and computer sysadmins to provide them with the kit and the code to run their simulations, and no, this support cannot be done by the hired help on a shoestring. Until they realise this, we will not be able to trust their results.

Oh they realize it just fine. So what happens when they ask for much more money?

And yes there's a difference in computing infrastructure & software maturity between what a tiny academic group does and an organization which is more seriously involved with long-term data reduction & infrastructure like national space and meterology institutons.

| The BEST form of sequestration is to grow forests, turn them into paper, and print books on them, with chemically treated paper so it won't decay.

The BEST form of sequestration is to put solid, compressed, carbon in permanent long-term geologic storage.
Thing is, it already comes this way, it's called "coal". We just have to STOP unearthing it, but that's not profitable.

Yes, because the composition of the atmosphere has changed in a way which hasn't ever occurred before.

The "UN" as an institutional body of government bureaucrats has little influence.

The IPCC climate commissions are formed by professional working scientists who have regular jobs in universities and laboratories over the world.

The US can always pay the interest on its loans denominated in US dollars by making dollars.

In any case, in 2013, the current interest on the US debt is about 400 billion USD. The US GDP is 16,803 billion USD, so the interest payment is about 2.3% of GDP. The US GDP could go down a bunch further.

This is a completely different situation from actually changing the global composition of physical molecules in the atmosphere, which cannot be redefined by any human action. The risk of long-term nearly irreversible changes in the physical environment vs human-to-human financial contracts?

| 1/ What is the ideal temperature of the planet that we should doing everything possible to achieve.?

Without any other knowledge? The one which supported the rise of technological civilization from 8000 BC to now.

| 2 / As it appears that the major science organisations fear a catastrophic global warming, how much colder should be the global temperatures we should be trying to achieve ?

Generally 2 C warming over pre-industrial levels is about as much risk as they want to take.

| 4 / What is the ideal sea level?

Today's. More increase will cause major property and agricultural damage.

| 7 / What proven methods that are within in our technological capabilities should we use to achieve those ideals of temperature and CO2, global sea levels and Arctic / Antarctic ice amounts?

Stop coal mining. Make coal mining & burning a global death-penalty offense. Build modular nuclear plants in geologically safe areas and all other non0-emitting stationary energy generation where feasible. Seriously stop all non-CO2 greenhouse forcings which are easier economically to limit.

| 11 / Will the principals of those major science organisations take full total and personal responsibility and be prepared to suffer the undoubted consequences for any major reduction in the living standards for global citizens as a direct result of the effect of their proposed solutions to the supposed catastrophic climate situation that they claim to able to foresee?

Yes, certainly because they believe that they are much less than the consequences of the alternative. The consequences of major reductions in greenhouse gas increases mean: higher taxes on carbon-based fuels, potential radiological accidents from large expansion of nuclear power. The consequences of failing to do so will be much greater on the standard of living, except people have this habit of assigning "blame and accountability' for active human actions and none for indirect effects of change of climate, which is completely screwed up.

"many of the pro global warming people have gotten extremely rich pushing this stuff"

A pro global warming person is somebody who makes money off uncontrolled mining and release of greenhouse gases. And yes, they've gotten extremely rich pushing that "stuff".

A pro-empirical-science-regarding-global-warming-regardless-of-inconveniences-to-powerful-and-rich-people person?

Who has gotten "extremely rich" pushing THAT stuff? Name them. Name their money.

"You would think there are enough math geeks who would be able to see the vast amount of BS the GW people are putting out, but since they hide the raw data and have no way of adjusting for varying albedo at ground stations we just have to go by the fudged data."

This is simply and completely wrong. The data sets are OK and there is numerous adjustments & corrections applied.

Remember the Berkeley statistician who was a skeptic about the data quality & reduction procedures for various reasons? Well, he did what you said was impossible: he got the not-actually-hidden raw data, and with some colleagues re-did everything. The conclusion? The climatologists were right all along and didn't screw anything up.

And why would thousands of scientists all over the world suddenly and nearly uniformly "want" a specific outcome?

And if it's all just a giant magic trick for "moar funding!!!!" somehow maintained across generations and countries why hasn't this happened in any other area of science? And if it's all a scam, why choose one which would be opposed by many of the most powerful forces on the planet?

The ones who really "want a specific outcome" are actually the other side, for obvious reasons.

| The only question is WHY DO THEY GO ON RECORD with the bullshit denials?

Because they'd be put in federal prison---no parole system, extremely long sentences---if they don't. This is not an exaggeration, they were obviously forced to agree to certain national security requirements, and this is what they mean.

The USA is slightly kinder than the equivalent in China or Russia (and there's no doubt they do just as much, but no defectors)---you'd get a multiple-gunshot suicide and polonium in your tea.

SpaceX is not doing space exploration. It's doing space logistics.

Jet Propulsion Laboratory---government partnership between NASA and Caltech, filled heavily with scientists & engineers, is doing space exploration and they're reasonably good at it. (the loss of Mars mission due to the famous units problem came about because Congress required a certain piece to go to a typical MIC contractor in a midwest state, and they were using archaic units and assigned the task to an inexperienced fresh graduate to save money. Missions that JPL runs heavily tend to be successful, and sometimes spectacularly successful---Mars Exploration Rovers).

In a nutshell, the change in NASA's attitude and the cancellation of the old Constellation program---which was government doing it poorly, and in particular with money going to deep-red Alabama employees and contractors---came under and with the support of the Obama administration.

Is there any Democratic angst about SpaceX? No, none. And funny enough, they manufacture most of their equipment in Los Angeles area.

He was pro-Russia, but not pro-give-up-Crimea-for-free-pro-Russia. For instance a deal Yanukovitch would have taken would be 'Russia gets Crimea, Ukraine gets lots of money and gas for many years, and permanent leases for military bases in Crimea, just as Russia had the reverse when it was Ukrainian."

Right now, he has FSB following him everywhere. He is now Putin's bitch.