This is the sort of conversation to expect from deniers, and not from actual skeptics.

Regarding whether the accumulation is exponential, maybe step back and take a broader look?

http://www.eoearth.org/files/112301_112400/112388/620px-Co2_atmosphere.jpg

http://www.eoearth.org/article/Carbon_dioxide?topic=49557

"Whether or not 400ppm has any other detrimental affect other than temperature (which it obviously hasn't driven to Eocene levels)"

You're missing a word. "Yet".

Remember when I said "There is no claim that the system will respond instantly. A system as large as the earth will take some time to warm up." In this thread? No I figured you didn't. Forgetting counterarguments is a specialty you guys cultivate.

Well, I did my best. Go ahead and have the last word if you must.

It's a milestone. Those of us who have been thinking about this a long time once had 400 ppmv in mind as a distant, avoidable future.

As for whether it's been linear, go look. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mauna_Loa_Carbon_Dioxide-en.svg

"Then why compare today's ppm of CO2 to the Eocene and imply that we're headed towards Eocene temperatures?"

Are you really that silly? Falling from a great height onto a cement slab is not the only thing that can adversely affect your health. But that doesn't mean it's good for you!

This is a silly argument. Nobody claims CO2 is the only factor affecting global mean surface temperature.

Anything pre-1970 is a bit beside the point; as the accumulation has been exponential, the forcing was quite small then.

Leaving aside the 1998 cherry-pick, surface temperatures have increased more slowly than expected, but it is not flat. There are at least three explanations on the table other than "climate scientists know less than nothing and therefore there is nothing to worry about".

Since probably nobody will read except you who is not really interested this I'll be brief. 1) El Ninos have been scarcer of late, since 1998. As far as I know it's debatable whether this is a climate change feature or just random. Such a shift will superimpose a one-time cooling on the trend. 2) Heat is accumulating in the deep ocean 3) Increased particulate emissions may be increasing low clouds which provides some temporary masking. The first two are not uncertain to first order. None of these will affect the long term prognosis.

You are reading unreliable sources. I suggest you open your mind to the scientific mainstream before dismissing it.

Well, I doubt it was because of the jeans.

But if it was, you might notice that you had the jeans on for some time before the accident occurred.

This is a strawman argument, though it might not be obvious to you that it is.

There is no claim that the system will respond instantly. A system as large as the earth will take some time to warm up. The energy imbalance is real and measured. There's just some delay in the system. A few decades is a very short time in earth history. Things are already heating up, but what we see is the response to the forcing up to 20 or 30 years ago.

Subpoena, sure. Fishing expedition, no.

Of course we don't want special treatment. But that's the point. People are trying to apply open records laws to us as if we were an enforcement agency and our chats were official communications.

We scientists invented email as a private, informal, asynchronous communication channel. The business world adopted it as a formal communication mechanism, and now those expectations are being forced on the culture which (please recall) invented the internet and its culture in the first place. But we don't need or use email that way. We need a way to chat with each other.

A generation of science has evolved with this informal communication mechanism. Please recall that key features of science are the global distribution of the community and the small membership of each subgroup. An informal and friendly channel is needed to keep up morale when many of your closest collaborators are thousands of miles away and not easily able to join you at the pub.

If you suddenly declare that we are government agents and that every communication is a formal statement on behalf of that government, we will be thoroughly incapacitated and demoralized. This idea that life as a scientist is supposed to suck is really not well-advised as a policy.

But in fact we should not be viewed as government agents. Rather we are contractors. We are paid by bidding on competitive RFPs. If you want to treat us as bureaucrats you should at least bring back job security.

There are plenty of people who are anti-science (that is, anti-points 1 and/or 2, and necessarily argue illogically about it). If you are lumped into that category by disagreeing with points 3 and/or 4, you are in fact on thin ice if you really understand the implications of 1 and 2.

But there is room to make the case against 3 or 4 relatively reasonably. This doesn't prevent people from making those cases unreasonably as well.

So if you're a victim of occasional false positives, I am sorry. But given what is going on around you it is not surprising. Try to start by acknowledging the parts you do accept. And then proceed by identifying how likely it might be that you are wrong on the points where you part ways, and what the risks are.

Not many people do that effectively. I'll still argue against them, respectfully. But despite the sensible observation, the best bet is still that you are talking, um, through your hat.

Either "side" of what? Once you pick sides, rational discourse is out the window.

Sensible people care about what is true. This information is useful to people concerned about the relationship between science and public opinion. It's important whenever there are motivated opinions preventing the public from taking a balanced view of the evidence.

Clearly it's not true that "all" follows. Nor is your implied claim that the paper said such a thing true.

The paper does show that such rejection is significantly correlated with such kookiness. And the response to the paper is quite amusing in that regard.

The conspiracy theorists, of course, have been quick to spin counter-theories about this work.

http://www.shapingtomorrowsworld.org/lewandowskyCCCresponse1.html
http://www.shapingtomorrowsworld.org/lewandowskyVersionGate.html

More amazing anomalies here.

+1

If Slashdot covering a weather story isn't a climate-scale outlier, I don't know what is.

Here's another strange fact: on March 18 the low temperature in Rochester MN exceeded the previous record high for that date.

I'm working on an essay linking this event to anthropogenic climate change ("global warming") which will appear on Planet3.0.

(For what it's worth I might as well submit a Slashdot story when it's up. Hose my host - see if I care.)

It doesn't mean anything anymore and has to be dropped. It leads either to confusion if used right or grammar peeves if used wrong. Avoid. Avoid. Avoid.