Once again: no, they didn't change global warming to climate change. Both terms came into use at about the same time (http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/climate_by_any_other_name.html ). Global warming just refers the warming of the surface of the earth while climate change refers to all the changes that are occurring due to the changing climate. As such global warming is, and always has been, a subset of the current climate change. It's interesting that you feel the need to make up this story about "scammers" changing the name. If the case against climate change/global warming is so strong, why do you need to make up things like this?

Umm, what articles? There aren't any links in this part of the thread and it doesn't seem like it would be part of the article that started this. Your claim that back radiation violates the 2nd law is nonsense. And what's the AGW version of it? Your statement that the earth can't absorb the back radiation coming from greenhouse gases is just embarrassing nonsense. How would the earth even know what photons came from the greenhouse gases? Or is your argument that the earth is transparent to the infrared coming from greenhouse gases?

The usual remark I hear for this nonsense is that the earth is warmer then the atmosphere, so no radiation can move from the atmosphere to the earth, but that's just a misunderstanding of the 2nd law. I hope that's not your argument.

What the heck? What is this nonsense? If it can't exist, why is it possible to measure it? Here's a paper that first did it back in 1954: http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/1520-0469(1954)011%3C0121%3AAIDFMO%3E2.0.CO%3B2

How gullible does someone have to be to believe that back radiation is a violation of the 2nd law of thermodynamics? Do you even know what the 2nd law is?

But it is flawed logic. Here's one last try: Think of a car on a level surface. It's motion is determined by Newton's Laws, in particular F = ma. If you press on the accelerator, you apply more force (F) and, as a result, the acceleration (a) increases. It must increase (unless there's a change in mass (m)). If you let off on the gas, F decreases. As a consequence, either m or a (or both) must change. If we assume negligible change in m, then a must decrease. It may still be positive, but it must decrease. The same is true (in principle) in thermodynamics. If the output from the sun decreases (as has been measured), then something must change about the earth's climate - if the sun is responsible for the current warming. Either the rate of warming must decrease (possibly stay positive or maybe go negative) or the mass or specific heat must change. But the rate of warming is not decreasing, therefore either the sun is not responsible for the current warming or (for your logic to make sense), the mass of the earth or its specific heat must be dropping. Have you seen any evidence of either of these happening? (Actually, the earth's mass increases, so we know that's not correct.) Your burner analogy doesn't really relate to the sun and climate change.

Thanks for the link to biocab.org. An, umm, interesting site with, umm, fascinating ideas :). Let's look at some of those ideas: biocab's claim is that TSI has actually increased and he does that by plotting the TSI since the early 1600s and generating a linear trend. But is a linear trend correct? Think about what that means for the MWP that occurred 400 to 800 years before biocab's plot. It was much warmer then, but according to biocab's linear analysis, there was less energy coming from the sun. So according to biocab, the sun isn't that important a driver for the climate, which pretty much invalidates his hypothesis. And, of course, this ignores the question of what happens about 2.2 million years earlier when the sun's energy reaches 0. So linear is clearly an incorrect way to think of the changes in the sun. It doesn't accurately reflect how the sun changes. However, what a linear analysis over 400 years is good for is hiding the actual trends in the sun's output. What biocab's plot does show is that over the last 3 solar cycles (actually, you can extend that back to 5 solar cycles), TSI has leveled off and even decreased slightly. The peaks of the TSI curve haven't changed much, but the troughs are clearly dropping. When you do an actual analysis of this data, it shows the TSI dropping slightly. I'm not sure whether biocab is incompetent or purposely deceptive, but one thing he clearly isn't is correct. I'm reminded of Obi Wan Kenobi's line in Star Wars: "Who's the bigger fool? The fool, or the fool that follows him?"

You haven't shown much ability in physics, math, or logic, and you seem somewhat gullible to fall for a pretty lousy analysis.

By the way, if you really want to learn about the science, you might go the skepticalscience.com and ask some questions. While I am a scientist, I'm not a climate scientist and this is more of a hobby than anything else - there are actual climate scientists that contribute to that site. But given your limited knowledge of the science, I would suggest asking rather than demanding - you'll get more answers that way.

No. This is wrong and it makes no physical sense. Look at the graph again. The solar output has decreased and (while it isn't apparent on the graph), the temperature increase has, umm, increased (ok, that doesn't make much sense - the temperature increase is accelerating). There is absolutely no way for this to occur without a similarly increasing forcing behind it. The sun cannot possibly be that forcing since it isn't increasing. End of story. Maybe the earth would continue to warm, but the warming wouldn't accelerate. Something else must be causing the warming. There are other problems with your logic. For example, the changes in insolation (energy from the sun) are measured (or known by proxy prior to measurements). It is possible to look at those changes and determine how much warming the sun has caused. Look at my link again and look at the intermediate or advanced tab (here's the link to the intermediate tab: http://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots-global-warming-intermediate.htm ). Despite your flawed logic, it really is well known that the sun isn't causing the current warming.

Of course just because we know with very high confidence (and, remember, in science that's about as good as it gets) that the sun isn't involved in the current warming, that doesn't mean that something else natural isn't causing it. But there's a problem here: none of the natural causes correlate with the warming. It's true that correlation doesn't imply causation, but non-correlation strongly implies non-causation. But what does correlate extremely well with the current warming? CO2 levels do. Again we have the correlation doesn't imply causation, but in the case of greenhouse gases, we have well known physics that indicate causation. Additionally, calculations based on the known climate drivers (including greenhouse gases) are able to very well match the current warming. So throw me a bone here. We have correlation. We have well known fundamental physics which says that given the changes humans have made we should expect this amount of warming. "Skeptics" have been unable to show any other process that: (1) Can account for the current warming, and (2) Can prevent the increased CO2 levels from acting in ways they are known to act. Maybe there's another explanation - that's always a possibility in science. Maybe there's a fundamental flaw in the theory of relativity. But we use it now anyway and our GPS systems work just fine. When the physics matches, and when study after study indicates that the consequences of continuing as we have been are pretty devastating (at least in an economic sense), at some point you have to stop waiting for someone to find a flaw in the science and actually act on things.

By the way, you mentioned a link, but I couldn't find one in your posts. I'd be interested in knowing where you got your "science information". I hope it's co2science - they say the silliest things, but generally provide all the evidence to show that they're wrong.

Answer this then: Do you think the water will get hotter faster with the burner turned up, or turned down a bit. Because that's what's happened to the earth. The sun is putting out constant energy (actually slightly decreasing - see http://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots-global-warming.htm ) and yet the earth is getting hotter faster than before. This is not physically possible if the sun is causing the warming.

You've indicated by your response that you don't really have any knowledge of climate science or, for that matter, science in general. If you don't mind my asking, how do you come up with the confidence to dispute actual measured data when you have so little knowledge? This is something about the "debate" in climate science that really interests me. When I truly don't understand something (as is the case with you and climate science), I generally back off and ask questions until I do understand. But you don't seem to feel that's necessary. Why is that?

This isn't true at all. There is very little natural driving the climate at this time. There's solar, but that's been pretty constant (perhaps slightly decreasing) for decades now, so it's not really doing too much. There's orbital changes, but that should actually be making things slightly colder. In fact none of the climate drivers are really doing much - except for manmade changes (greenhouse gases, land use change, etc.). In addition, when you look at all the climate drivers and what they've been doing, it pretty much matches the global temperature changes that have occurred. I should also note that even the very few climate scientists that are "skeptics" don't agree with your comment. They understand that the current climate change is due to manmade changes. They just claim (without any proof - and, in fact, despite a great deal of evidence to the contrary) that those changes will end up not so bad.

Many, many fake skeptics have questioned the positioning of the sensors. In fact, some have put together a study of that and the data they found was that there was a problem with the sensors - there was a slight bias to underreport the warming. It wasn't for all the sensors and it wasn't a large amount, but it showed that the sensors did not make things seem warmer than they really are. In addition, a number of studies have shown that the positioning of the sensors isn't really affecting the trends. In fact, remove all the urban sensors you dislike and you get pretty much the same results.

Your anecdotal comment about north-central Arizona is just that - anecdotal. I'm in central New Mexico and I can tell you it was warmer here this winter. My dad in central Illinois was complaining about the lack of a real winter this year. All anecdotal - that's why scientists actually measure these things and look at large areas - to remove personal biases and look at overall climate/weather rather than local climate/weather.

The other problem with your calling B.S. is that there was a measured change in the jet stream last winter that is known to have caused the warming. This is an actual fact and, really, not all that hard to understand. Whether this was due to climate change or just an odd weather system is irrelevant since it actually happened.

How is it inconvenient for the pro-science group? The increased snowfall (and the warmth of the contiguous states) has a known cause - the change in the jet stream. And the change in the jet stream has a known cause - a change in the arctic oscillation. And climate theory indicates that one of the things that happens when you lose the summer arctic ice cover is that the arctic oscillation changes. And what has been causing the summer arctic ice cover to disappear? Global warming. So, while this doesn't say that global warming caused the increased snow in Alaska as well as the warm winter in the contiguous US, it would be astoundingly incorrect to call this an "inconvenient fact".

I think you should re-read the post that I replied to. The claim from that post was that you could compare the CO2 levels - and only the CO2 levels - from previous climates and say something intelligent about the current climate. I replied that no you can't, there are many other factors that drive the climate. So now, with your reply, you point out that you agree with everything that I posted. Since you agree with everything I posted and you claim I have a political agenda by discussing actual science and facts and stuff, that must mean that you have a political agenda. What's yours? ;)

Yes, wind has spread the ice cap and that makes it seem like the ice is spreading. It's important, when thinking of reports of ice extent, to remember that the systems that measure this divide the region being examined into grids. If 15% of the grid is ice covered, then the grid is marked as 100% ice covered. So when the wind blows the ice around, it can make it seem like there is more ice if all you look at is the extent - that's why people use ice extent when they want to lie about arctic ice.

A more realistic way to look at ice is through the volume. The results from PIOMAS (http://psc.apl.washington.edu/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/schweiger/ice_volume/BPIOMASIceVolumeAnomalyCurrentV2.png?%3C?php%20echo%20time%28%29%20? ) show that there's about the same volume of ice now as there was last year. Deniers like to point out that there's a greater ice extent this year than last year (which is true - as seen here: http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/files/2012/04/Figure2.png ). What does it mean if you have the same volume of ice, but a greater extent? As you point out, it means the ice is, in general, thinner and will melt faster. It should be an, um, interesting summer.

Unfortunately, you can't really compare the climate from millions of years ago (along with its CO2 levels) directly to the climate of today. In the past, the sun put out less energy, there was a great deal of volcanic action, etc. If it was believed that CO2 was the only driver of climate, you could compare CO2 levels and make your claim. But it's clear from climate science that that isn't the case. It's also clear that CO2 is driving the climate change today and that change is happening very rapidly.

Umm, no. Both global warming and climate change came into use at about the same time in the '70s (http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/climate_by_any_other_name.html ). Global warming has always referred to the overall increase in global surface temperature and since that hasn't stopped, and shows no sign of stopping, there would be no reason to change that. Climate change has always referred to all the changes occurring in the climate due to the increase in atmospheric CO2 levels, including the overall increase in global surface temperature. So global warming is just a subset of climate change. But this is all well known and it would require someone to want to remain ignorant about any of the science to still think that global warming has been renamed to climate change.

When someone says something like "e.g replace global warming with, say, climate change", I can never tell if they're making a lame attempt at humor or are just tremendously ignorant. Global warming and climate change came into use at about the same time (http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/climate_by_any_other_name.html) and they're respective meanings have never changed: global warming remains a subset of climate change. Given how widely this is known, you must remain willfully ignorant to not be aware of that. I always take comments like yours to mean "I don't care about the damn facts, they must be wrong". But I'm sure yours was just a lame attempt at humor, right? ;)