Regarding Yellowstone, I think you mean "it was a lovely continent". Yellowstone is projected to bury pretty much everything between the Rockies and the Appalachians.

M. Simon,

Just to point out one obvious problem: the article you quote claims a huge increase in sunspot activity - 1825%. But the variation in solar luminosity hasn't been more than 0.1%.

So what's he supposing is the mechanism for heating? Molecules of mercury that are secretly fantasizing about sunspots, getting excited, and jumping up & down?

With respect to temperature trends: apply a 5-year smoothing filter (typical for climate considerations) and look at the trends over the last 100 years. It's pretty clearly upwards.

Neal,

The mechanism is clouds. Which the AGW modelers admit are not well understood or well modeled. Big hole that one.

As to the smoothing filter - all we have to do is wait another 5 years. It is snowing in parts of Argentina for the first time in 89 years.

In any case raw data has its value.

BTW I have heard that CO2 levels in the atmosphere are stable as well. I wonder why?

In addition according to the AGW folks there is a missing carbon sink in their estimation i.e. there should be more CO2 in the atmosphere than is accounted for in the Global Climate Guesses (sometimes referred to as Global Climate Models).

Thank the Maker for the scientific consensus (2,500 IPCC scientists vs 4,000 who say it is bunk) or we wouldn't know what to believe.

AGW has almost reached its sell by date. I expect serious discounting to start in another year or two. By then I expect a stock rotation. Global Cooling will be back in vogue. From here on out no new scares will need to be developed. Recycling will suffice. Very ecological.

BTW what should we do about Yellowstone?

M. Simon:

- What are you proposing that clouds would be doing that would INCREASE warming? Everyone I've heard on this matter (including the skeptical climatologist Lindzen) asserts that additional clouding will cool the planet. In fact, that is his big shtick: He's expecting an "iris effect" to give a negative feedback to GW. (Unfortunately, most climatologists don't agree with him on this point.) The fact that climatologists themselves are still trying to understand how clouds act in this matter should not be taken as license to invent options that no one knowledgeable thinks plausible. For example, the fact that there is some doubt as to exactly how fast the Arctic ice shelf is melting does not give us license to believe that this will suddenly reverse.

- Snowing in Argentina: Strange weather, yes? Unfortunately, many kinds of bizarre weather (not just warming) are compatible with the expectations of GW. The point is that such extreme weather requires energy. Snow in Argentina does not come from the air in Argentina "just getting colder": It means that there has been an unusual atmospheric motion which has taken very wet air and mixed it with very cold air. GW is due to an imbalance in the power absorption/radiation balance that gives an increasing input of power, with which the atmosphere will do "interesting" things.

- If the C-O2 levels were stabilizing, that would be surprising. Do you have an actual references on that? Here's what I found, at http://environment.newscientist.com/article/dn11899-recent-cosub2sub-rises-exceed-worstcase-scenarios.html: "The world's recent carbon dioxide emissions are growing more rapidly than even the worst-case climate scenario used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, say researchers.

The team, led by Michael Raupach of the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, looked at the growth of CO2 emissions and found that emissions growth suddenly accelerated in 2000. During the 1990s, emissions grew by 1.1% per year on average, but the number shot up to 3.3% between 2000 and 2004, when the study ended."

- My understanding is that about half of the C-O2 that has been added to the system through fossil-fuels has been taken up in the oceans. If you think this is problematic, please point to a real scientific article that states it as such, and what the scientific issues are.

AGW is not, unfortunately (and I sincerely mean that), going to have a sell-by date. The fact that people are not promoting the issue as much right now is natural: There was a lot of excitement about the creation of mathematical physics by Newton et al. 300 years ago, but people have accepted it and gone on. They don't need to have parades about it anymore. In the same way, once one sees the scientific case for GW, it's not necessary to get up every morning and have a demonstration. It's just the simplest way of understanding what's going on with the planet that is compatible with all the science we've learned since Newton.

- wrt Yellowstone: What do you suggest we do about Yellowstone? We can only take care of what we can take care of. If your argument is that we shouldn't worry about GW because Yellowstone could get us, then why worry about your children's education, because eventually Yellowstone could get us?

Neal,

I know your mind only works in one direction when it comes to AGW.

However, consider this: reduced cloud cover will increase warming. Just because I was referring to clouds doesn't mean I was predicting more of them.

Read your Shaviv and Svensmark again. There are viable theories out there that have been confirmed by experiment starting with the Wilson Cloud Chamber and leading to Dr. Svensmark's recent work. We are now awaiting re-confirmation. Once that happens the importance of CO2 in the equation will greatly decline and the AGW scare will be over. Since you once said such proof would make you happy, I'd say have your party clothes ready to go.

Then we can focus on Yellowstone. A plan to relieve the pressure without causing the whole place to blow would be a good place to start. Then we can figure out how much it will cost and see if we can start taxing the whole world to pay for it.

M. Simon,

Yes, my mind does only work one way on AGW: I try to actually understand the science.

As we have discussed quite a bit already, the main problem with the Shaviv & Svensmark scheme is that even if their was shown to be a clearcut association between cosmic rays and warming, the problem is that there has been no trend in the cosmic ray flux. That's a matter of measurement record, over the last few decades.

Sorry about that, but nothing that happens with the experiment in the cloud chamber is going to affect that basic fact.

Ah, you are so correct about cosmic rays. No trend.

Except above 10 GEV where the effect takes place.

Nice try though.

Simon,

Please point to what you're indicating, with respect to:
- trend
- relevance to clouds