Tiny, your implication is that the very minor efforts that have been made to reduce CO2 have reduced living standards or growth. I think it would be a tall order to prove that. I heard an estimate that significant effort to reduce CO2 emissions might reduce 2050 GDP by 1% - ie delay for 6 months reaching a level of income. I don't put much store by such estimates but it might be indicative (no more) that your theory might be wrong. People and markets have always been very good at adjusting to changes in resource availability and price. I see no reason for that to have changed.

If we really wanted to raise living standards of poor countries we might remove restrictions on trade and the movement of people. Lots of people in the West object to that strongly, which implies that we value other things more than the quality of life of the foreign poor. There's plenty who object to raising the chances and health of the poor in the US - witness all the fuss about the ACA.

rhoda, I thought 'climategate' was a storm in a teacup, but I never looked into it much. Doesn't it relate to events in the late 1990s? Isn't there a lot of water under the bridge since then? Openness is much more widespread and the hockey stick has been reproduced many times in other studies. Presumably you have another perspective.

I don't know who you are referring to as outcasts, so I cannot comment there.

Are there positive feedbacks now? It seems likely - Arctic ice and permafrost to name but two. Quantifying them is the question of the day with regard to sensitivity studies. But when you say, " I know what positive feedback looks like, and this is not it" you intrigue me. What does such a feedback look like?

As far as your questions are concerned, of whom are you asking them? Perhaps you are asking the wrong people.

stewgreen, PROPERLY VALIDATED models would seem to provide proof. Other models just provide evidence, strong or weak depending upon the model.

Micky, you'd have to give me link to Hansen's words rather than your interpretation. I think you have probably misunderstood. Look at the SoD link I gave you. He finds nearer a 3K rise from doubling CO2 with no convection and no feedback (c.f. 1.2K from IPCC, *with* convection but without feedback).

"equally valid opposing ideas" - such as?

Breath of Fresh Air, no that was not what I meant. I didn't mention negative change, but clearly if we want to be pedantic it belongs in what I said. I'll restate it for you:

The pdf of some estimated responses do, I imagine, include zero and negative, as well as including values of several degrees. You don't get one tail (the zero and negative) without the other (significantly positive). So no, you cannot believe negative feedbacks cancel CO2 (or even over-cancel in the case of negative tails) except in the sense of believing in UFOs and fairys.

> rhoda, I thought 'climategate' was a storm in a teacup, but I never looked into it much.

It's starting to become obvious you haven't looked into a lot very much.

> Doesn' t it relate to events in the late 1990s? Isn't there a lot of water under the bridge since then?
> Openness is much more widespread and the hockey stick has been reproduced many times in
> other studies.

Seeing as we're starting the comedy.....

> "equally valid opposing ideas" - such as?

My dog ate it.

Discussion here of evidence, facts and experiments regarding climate models. I agree that runs of climate models are experiments that produce facts. But they are facts about the models. The leap is to claim that these are real world facts.

rhoda, "... I look out of the window" - yes so you said - and you apparently don't see positive feedback. So come on, what would positive feedback look like out of your window. Or any window? You say you'd recognise it when you see it.

Micky, can I assume you now accept that nobody in fact "assumes convection for one thing has no effect"? Or are you disputing that when you say that convection is "limited" and that "it cannot absorb or deal with energy redistribution". What do you mean by this? Convection is a means of energy distribution. It has nothing directly to do with absorbtion.

I don't know if measurement really is as lacking as you believe, but even assuming that it is, how thoroughly have your 'opposing ideas' have been measured and demonstrated by experiment? You said these ideas are equally valid but you have not yet described any.

rhoda, what happened? You seemed so sure that you could recognize positive feedback when you saw it and yet you cannot describe how, what you would look for or expect to see. I was looking forward to hearing.

And does your disgust at 'cheating' in the climate race really go no further than 'climategate', events of which occurred in the last century? What gives?

Breath of Fresh Air it might help you to understand if you knew that CO2 can act as both a forcing and a feedback. If atmospheric CO2 levels increase (as now), the increase acts as a forcing causing energy accumulation and warming. If on the other hand warming occurs for another reason (e.g. orbital or solar change) and this *causes* an increase in CO2 levels (e.g. ocean outgasing), the change in CO2 results in more warming and hence probably additional release of CO2. This is a positive feedback. Equally, if *cooling* occurs because of orbital or solar change and this causes an decrease in CO2 levels, the change in CO2 results in more cooling and hence maybe a further decrease in CO2. This is also a positive feedback.

"If a feedback system is linear, or approximately so, feedback effects apply irrespective of whether the signals are small or large - ie you don't find that feedback only kicks in once things have passed some particular threshold or magnitude. Does that answer the question?"

Actually I kinda grasped that already I was really asking if you knew of anything in the science which indicated what it was that made feedbacks only kick in when CO2 has doubled and the dreaded 5.35 number appears in the transient sensitivity equation, because that's what cliscis seem to believe, that the feedbacks only start at 1C, or so.

I, having come from the same discipline as you, also have the concept of a feedback being outwith the actual feedback of the output of some of the original signal. I am willing to accept that there are factors in climate science that can amplify the original signal, but not feedbacks in the way I understand them. I believe biologists use the same phraseology as the cliscis, and have defined feedbacks as anything that increases/decreases the growth of plants caused by the existence of the plants themselves. If that makes sense.

Of course I think you have something useful to say. A lifetime in management ensured my detailed knowledge withered on the branch, so it is with feedback theory, and much more, so your contributions are most enlightening.

Martin, climate feedbacks are unlikely to be linear. The obvious one is ice sheets as I think I mentioned before. You only get positive feedback from warming, melting, albedo change, more warming until there is no more ice. It is self limiting. The point at which other feedback loops becone active or inactive will depend upon their characteristics. I'm sure noone expects the planet to behave like an electrical control system.

raff is Chandra and I claim my £10.

"cliscis seem to believe, that the feedbacks only start at 1C, or so." Sounds improbable. Can you illustrate this idea?

Siince climategate I assume they have learned to cheat more carefully. But they still fail to release data and avoid valid FIOA requests. I do not resume trusting someone because of the mere passage of time. I don't trust them. I observe weasel tactics to this day. The most egregious of which currently is to refuse to debate openly and to try to manage admission to any debate. These are not the actions of someone sure in their arguments. As for the last century, is that not when the warming happened? May we forget it now?

Positive feedback looks like when things get a little hotter, they them get a little hotter still. Until they either run away or hit some limit. The global temperature doesn't do that. It can't stay flat for 17 years in the face of positive feedback. It looks like negative to me. It looks as if the variations are damped. It is possible that there are instances where feedbacks are positive locally or for a time. But that rain outside, that is actual indication of negative feedback happening right now. Ditto the clouds.

I don't work for you, Raff and I am not obliged to rush here hourly to give answers to your daft questions.

I find it interesting when people leap to the defence of the hockeystick and claim that it has been independently verified by other studies. In fact, those later studies and papers show that the hockeystick was not at all robust. Here is a comparison chart prepared by commentator Carrick who regularly posts on climate blogs:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4520911/Climate/Proxies/Proxy-Ensemble2.jpg

rhoda, you said "Positive feedback looks like when things get a little hotter, they them get a little hotter still." Well it works in the reverse direction too (colder). But how would you recognize it? How can you tell which part of warming is an initial change and which part the feedback and how much in each? The changes are not quantized.

From the incidents you have reported I don't really understand your 'cheating'. As for open debate, which scientists do you expect to debate, with whom and about what?

As for daft questions, you don't exactly come across as so non-daft. You are so angry about a few events from last century that involved a few of the thousands of climate scientists alive that you blacken the name of all of, you insult them all and at the same time expect them to debate with you; and you feign powers of recognition of 'feedbacks' when you see them through your window - now that really is daft, yet you are blissfully unaware of it.

diogenes, sorry I don't know the provenance of your graph. The vertical axis alone ("pseudo temperature") is enough to dismiss it.

Micky, your idea that models "don't consider horizontal distribution of energy" is most odd. Are you suggesting that they don't model changes in pressure (which will cause low and high pressure systems moving across the globe at varying latitudes)? Or are you just referring to conduction between cells?

As you say, "We aren't going to see eye to eye on this.". Nice talking to you though :-)

Raff

You are almost cute. Pseudo-temperature is, obviously, the temperature to which the various proxies have been "aligned". Perhaps you believe that tree-rings and lake varves etc indicate temperature directly. Unfortunately, they do not. unless you can show me a tree which does. So why not not just grow up and admit that Mann's original hockey stick is nothing like any subsequent hockey stick - you know, those hockey sticks that vindicate the original hockey stick? You could take it up with Carrick directly. His comment is here:

http://rankexploits.com/musings/2014/sks-tcp-front/#comment-130951

diogenes, clearly pseudo-temperature is the temperature to which proxies have been "aligned". That is the problem, right there in your quotes. Every other similar graph from a scientific publication plots temperature anomalies, defined relative to some base period. Your graph eschews this in favor "aligning" them in some unspecified way. If the curves were all of anomalies to the same baseline that would not be necessary and the axis would be labelled by its correct name. If you need someone to tell you this, you are asking to be led willingly by the nose up whatever path the author wants to take you.

Totally OT but does anyone else think about the terrible science and inquisitiveness in this article (and basically any science article in the media). Just going the first step and doubling the base would raise questions...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20578627