Overwhelming scientific support? That's a myth that is repeated over and over and over...
If the global warming scare is based largely on model predictions which have failed, and scientists are scrambling to try to explain why they failed... I really don't understand how you can say my skepticism is unwarranted. Yes, CO2 is a greenhouse gas and is likely contributing some heat to the climate. But a climate sensitivity of 3-4 degrees? That's preposterous. There is no evidence for it, it's simply assumed in the models. The latest climate sensitivity "estimates" are far lower, the latest being around 1.3 degrees. Low climate sensitivity translates directly to no dangerous global warming. That would explain why there has been no global warming for the past 17 years. Everyone's time would be better spent focusing on innovative nuclear projects, where everybody wins. Fossil fuels are dirty, finite and expensive. But no, the oceans are not going to boil if we are stuck using fossil fuels for the next decade or two. Sorry to disappoint you.
Ironically it's this misguided fixation on CO2 that is delaying our transition to new energy sources.
Are you saying that scientific claims should be assumed correct until proven wrong? If I say pink bunnies fly out of my ass at night, and you disagree, it's up to you to prove me wrong? The fact is, the models made predictions, and those predictions have failed. I don't need to prove the models wrong. They have proven themselves wrong. I'm just pointing it out. It matters because the model predictions are the basis for much of the global warming scare. I gave you the data-sets; I showed you the article from the journal Nature; I backed up my claims with evidence. And yet you are apparently unable to figure out which 17 years I am talking about? Wouldn't an informed person on this issue already know it hasn't warmed in the last 17 years? You would think that 17 years of no statistically significant surface warming would be an important fact to be aware of, but apparently you are not well informed.
You ask "Should models be falsifiable"? Isn't it blatantly obvious that climate models should be falsifiable? That we should have specific criteria by which we can judge a models reliability in predicting future results? Instead, in climate science, we get constantly shifting goal posts. "We'll know the models are wrong if there is no warming for a period of 15 years or more." 15 years later: "We'll know the models are wrong if there is no warming for a period of 20 years or more". A few years later and still no warming: "We'll know the models are wrong if there is no warming for a period of 50 years or more." That's not science.
Again, I am not making any claims about the temperature adjustments. The NOAA is the one claiming their adjustments are sound and justified. That may well be true, but I am curious how they got their results and would like to see the evidence that supports their assertions. Thus far they have not released that evidence, so I am not able to verify their results. I see no reason why I should just take their word for it. Science is about letting other people check your work. This is science 101 stuff and should be dead obvious to anyone with any scientific literacy at all.
Can you imagine an oil funded think-tank making claims about global warming but refusing to release their data or their methodology? I bet you would be all over the lack of verifiability and reproducibility in that case. Like I said, people only seem to care about scientific principles when it suits them.
The "pause" is real. In this nature article they characterize the pause as mysterious, and describe the various explanations scientists are piecing together to try to explain it. I find it interesting that they don't consider the simplest explanation - that the climate models grossly exaggerated "climate sensitivity", especially since the latest climate sensitivity estimates are much lower than the ones used in the models. (Climate sensitivity is the hypothesis that the earth is hyper-reactive to CO2, that a little extra heat from CO2 causes a major chain reaction, amplifying that heat by 3-4 times. Climate sensitivity is a key issue in the debate, at least among the scientifically literate.)
In 2009, Phil Jones suggested 15 years of no warming would be cause for concern. Judith Curry said more recently: "Climate model simulations find that the probability of a hiatus as long as 20 years is vanishingly small." At what point is this theory falsifiable? How long do we have to wait? 15 years? 20 years? 50 years? 100 years of no warming before we can say the global warming scare was grossly exaggerated?
If you are still not convinced that the "pause" is real, you can look at the datasets for yourself. Here's the HADCRUT 4 dataset, and here's the RSS dataset. You can play with the app and the various datasets, although it's not very granular.
and when they can explain why the warming has stopped for the last couple of decades.
It hasn't, at all.
According to the various data-sets, there has been no statistically significant surface warming for 17 years. How can we have an honest discussion if you won't admit to plain facts?
Work continues in this area. -- DEC's SPR-Answering-Automaton