http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/08/dont_look_to_bjrn_lomborg_thou.php#comments

There are comments in support of Lomborg and against. I posted that it is better to replace fossil fuels with realistic alternatives (nuclear fission today, nuclear fusion tommorrow, etc) than using government coercion. One of those who supported coercion and opposed me (MikeB comment #100) said this, “As Al Capone once said, ‘You can get much further with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone.’” That floored me!

Posters who acknowleged manmade causes of global warming but advocated alternate energy over coercion were vilified.

I think your discussion and book fairly well deals with all of the objections that TCO brings up. TCO’s comments cannot help but remind one of the professional trolls who are paid to right ad hominem, non-substantive comments on blogs that offer reasonable arguments against catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW).

A. You omit the thermal lag of the oceans. And it is not sufficient to just say lag will always be there if CO2 is going up. That’s true, but we are interested in the equilibrium temp at a final CO2 level. Also if CO2 rises linearly and temp is an exponential, this lag will eventually become less (closer to equilibrium).
B. I don’t follow your argument for aerosol impact (seems very loose). Don’t think you are adressing the best work on this issue or the IPCC view. If it were really as simple as you say, then that would be a substantial finding (the whole 20 degrees in 5% areas). I think aerosols cover more ground than you think. IPCC says regional/continental not over cities.
C. You seem to take an approach of beginning with IPCC numbers and then chipping away at them. (0.6 deg rise is not right, use 0.4 or 0.5; etc.) I think there is a danger here. what if 0.6 is really the median best guess. Maybe real value is higher as likely as lower.
D. I think it is nice to solve this problem using a “pure” exponential assumption. Beer’s law. Radioactive decay. It’s a classical math method from Freshman Chem. And that’s the reason for that class. Not for chemistry, but for general problem-solving. I get 1.35C btw using that method. It’s as likely as any to be right. towards the high end of your range but makes sense for me as first approximation (it’s how your paint would work.)
E. That result is remarkable and makes me interested in what the AGW guys would say to it.
F. Agreed that positive feedback of evaporation should already be included as measurement is empirical. Nuff said.
G. I haven’t read much on the divergence of CO2 rise IPCC estimates versus observed. Will have to differ to you a bit. (Although I think if the world becomes wealthier, it is likely that we may see accelleration from the linear. The whole Heinleien curve and all.)
H. “Why the numbers might be less”: sImilar to earlier, you seem to see the delta in one direction only. I guess the way of looking at it is if AGW estimates are biased across inputs then you could be right.

P.s. Could you please respond to my comments under “Cities and Global Warming”? I’m concerned that Steve made a couple of fundamental errors. It’s not that they “change the game” so much, but that the stubborn refusal to address them worries me. It is not the attitude of a scientist. More the attitude of a partisan.

There’s a simpler way of looking at it. We know from measurements that the global average temperature has risen since 1990. We also know that solar irradiance and sunspot activity leveled off or declined since then. Of all the factors that can explain temperature rise, the only one that fits the data is CO2 concentration.

The record of the twentieth century shows that, up to 1940, when CO2 concentration was low and rising slowly, the temperature rose with increasing solar activity. From 1940 to 1948, when particulate and aerosol pollution were unprecedentedly high, temperature dropped. Between 1948 and 1970, temperature trends were inconsistent, reflecting countermoving conditions. Since 1970, when pollution controls began to be implemented, temperatures have risen parallel to higher CO2 concentration.

I think these three factors; solar activity, pollution, and greenhouse gases; have to be considered the primary driving forces. Saturation and feedback are important but not primary and so can’t prove or disprove primary causes.

I’ve put data and some discussion on a web page at Global Warming: A Guide for the Perplexed.

That being said, I have a question. Isn’t it possible that the effect of increased CO2 concentration shows up over a longer period, rather than the entire effect showing up in the year that it happens?

The analogy I’m thinking of has to do with the seasons. The longest day (in the northern hemisphere) is June 21st, but the hottest day of the year doesn’t happen until July. Could there be some similar effect happening with respect to CO2 concentration?

By the way, have you seen this from Der Spiegel via junkscience.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,500902,00.html

Further support about the duff economics of WP and interesting in view of the German source. The Germans are responsible for much of the green bias in the EU which affects everything we do in the UK including wasting vast sums on WP.

As I’m in the insurance game, I’m interested in the failure and breakdown problems as eventually, unless the designs can be improved, this will undermine insurability and thus drive up the true cost.

Studies in the UK show that WP yields only about 35% of installed capacity based on when the wind blows or doesn’t. If they start failing at this rate then their value will approach zero.

Cheers

Paul

Warren, my thanks also.

Surely one of the obvious arguments against runaway positive feedback is that if it were true, then we would see it happen every year as temperatures increase in err summer. I know this is a very simplistic statement but I think even the south of the UK sees at least a 10C increase in average temp from winter to summer. Why don’t we blow up?

Cheers

Paul