"Scientists... are used to dealing with doubt and uncertainty. All scientific knowledge is uncertain. This experience with doubt and uncertainty is important. I believe that it is of very great value, and one that extends beyond the sciences. I believe that to solve any problem that has never been solved before, you have to leave the door to the unknown ajar. You have to permit the possibility that you do not have it exactly right. Otherwise, if you have made up your mind already, you might not solve it."

Maybe the globaloney twerps should pay attention to a real scientist.

Once again your words imply that you have stumbled on some great unanswered mystery in the data, when in fact, the model parameters, when parsed out, show precisely how the additive effects of the various warming and cooling drivers combine to yield the net warming effect on the time scale that they do.

Really Tano? Please provide a link or reference to this explanation.

Would those paid scientist be the ones receiving grant money to push AGW? Those receiving money from oil companies? Those receiving money from book publishers for doomsday predictions?

Money is involved on both sides of the argument.

The comparison to tobacco may seem convenient but this is a different kind of debate and carries a much higher cost for societies. With so much at stake a good long discussion would seem appropriate and calling the opposition "deniers" exposes the impatience of one side not getting it's way immediately.

We're having this discussion because some people with economic interests at stake PAID SCIENTISTS TO MISREPRESENT THE STATE OF THE SCIENCE to make it appear that there was a real controversy. Just like the tobacco companies did before them.

"Natural variability as a contributing factor cannot be discounted."

Who discounts it as a contributing factor? As you are apparently quite aware, it is accounted for in the models, and its effect has been measured and it has an identifiable, though relatively small warming effect. Your rhetoric seems to imply that this is some sort of a blind spot in the models, when in fact it is fully accounted for. Unless, of course, you have some specific critiques of the how the natural effects have been measured. But that is not what you offer, nor what your words imply. So what gives?

Also: "CO2 in the atmosphere has been rising sharply since the end 1945 and yet from 1945 to the early 1960s there was cooling going on. Why?"

Once again your words imply that you have stumbled on some great unanswered mystery in the data, when in fact, the model parameters, when parsed out, show precisely how the additive effects of the various warming and cooling drivers combine to yield the net warming effect on the time scale that they do.

The question you raise is not a controversy in climate science - once again, if you have some specific critque about how the various drivers have been measured or combined, then spit it out, but it just seems that you are asking these questions for the purpose of pretending that there is some unaddressed issue, when that is not the case.

"If the scientists are so sure of their models and what is going on there should be a really good, elegant and ironclad explanation for this"

And I dont know how to interpret this statement other than as evidence that you are not, in fact, familiar with the science in this area.

I've been familiar with the GISS data for quite sometime. I've downloaded quite a few of their time series and looked at graphs, done statistical analysis, etc.

Real scientific debate does not depend on defaming those with competing views. Obviously there is not a consensus or we wouldn't be having this discussion.

The issue with Dr. Taylor is not him losing his title but the Governor taking it away so he can appoint someone with the same views. He states clearly in his press release he wants a scientist with the same position on global warming so the state can present one unified voice.

That's a lie, son. Ref: Oreskes' study which has held up despite paid attempts by the AEIs of the world to desperately prove otherwise.

The person who compared this to MDs re: homeopathy has it right on. The difference here is that there's no large vested political and economic interest groups pushing the false controversy about homeopathy.

The witness marks of propaganda attend all of the blaring, and false, claims made by the proponents of man made warming. I have yet to read any article, or news item, fostered by the CO2 heads that did not contain propaganda as part of the substance of the article.

If you would like some actual data relevant to your questions about natural variance and 20th century climate change, then study the graphs on this page, especially the lower two.

Also my main contention is that there is not a consensus on MM GW.

Taking someone’s title from them is a form of punishment. Maybe it won’t starve the person children but it is punishment non-the less. Bill Clinton having his law license token away was a punishment. It didn’t hurt him financially but it was punishment.

MM GW skeptics have shown data, models and predictions. There have been papers and books detailing their arguments. However, the MSM mostly ignore them and promote the other side including Gores movie. That is one form of silencing your opposition. Not that every side of every argument has to get equal airtime but to state it is not there is dishonest.

Also there was a story in recent past that some of the MM GW crowd including a person in power who wanted to take away meteorologists certification away from them if they disagree with MM GW. That is monetary punishment and attempt to silence debate.

By what type of thinking do you conclude that Taylor is being "punished" for what he believes? Is he losing his job? No. Is food being taken out of the mouths of his children? No. Is he losing his property or liberty? No. He is simply being stripped of the title of "state climatologist", a title that he objectivly does not have any right to hold, given that his views are not in accordance with the accepted views of the state, nor with the generally accepted scientific consensus.

This is entirely different from an attempt by the state to suppress his work, or to modify it, or to forbid him from communicating it to the public, all of which are things that the Bush administration has done.

Your statements regarding the existence or the non-existence of a consensus in the scientific community are simply false. GW skeptics are sometimes ridiculed, but that is not some sort of prima face evidence that they dont deserve ridicule, or at least opposition.

You are correct that people who disagree with a consensus are, in fact, sometimes right, while everyone else is wrong. I call this the "starving artist" syndrome. There have always been millions of starving artists working away in obscure attics convinced in their own minds that they are the truly great artist of their time. The fact that occasionally one of them emerges to be recognized as such, often after their death, keeps the hope alive. But the percentage is infintisimally small.

What is truly an absurd logical step is to claim that BECAUSE someone is a starving artist, or a fringe scientist, then therefore they MUST be right. Which is the driving logic behind most of the defense of the GW skeptics.

If the GW skeptics want to be taken a bit more seriously, the first task would be to develop a climate model which better explains the data, but makes no reference to human inputs. Yelling about the fact that the sun has variable output is not a model - that merely points to a particular variable which has already been incorporated into every climate model ever made.

http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/regv15n2/reg15n2g.html

“Why, one might wonder, is there such insistence on scientific unanimity on the warming issue? After all, unanimity in science is virtually nonexistent on far less complex matters. Unanimity on an issue as uncertain as “global warming'’ would be surprising and suspicious. Moreover, why are the opinions of scientists sought regardless of their field of expertise? Biologists and physicians are rarely asked to endorse some theory in high energy physics. Apparently, when one comes to “global warming,'’ any scientist’s agreement will do…..”