Anthropogenic Global Warming

I too had trouble with the article as soon as they made the claim that there's been no warming the past 16 years. Ummm, yes there has.

[quoteem:cu9z6ky7]The general public finds it very hard to understand how such strong disagreement can exist between two equally qualified persons on a scientific topic, a disagreement that is manifest also on the wider scene by the existence of equivalent groups of scientists who either support or oppose the views of the IPCC about dangerous anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming (DAGW)."[/quoteem:cu9z6ky7]You say toh-may-toh, I say toh-mah-toh. There is no "strong disagreement" that I can see anywhere among "equivalent" groups of scientists about dangerous AGW - I see a lot of smoke and mirrors from the opposition trying to puff up the credentials of the people they trot out as "experts". For example, while I agree with the mission of the institute of the author of the OP, I find it completely damning that they have several "scientists" who are listed on their staff as "Anonymous". If they really stood behind their work, they wouldn't hide like that.

[quoteem:cu9z6ky7]The scientific argument over DAGW is therefore about none of these things. Rather, it is almost entirely about three other, albeit related, issues. They are:
•the amount of net warming that is, or will be, produced by human-related emissions,
•whether any actual evidence exists for dangerous warming of human causation over the last 50 years, and
•whether the IPCC’s computer models can provide accurate climate predictions 100 years into the future.".....................[/quoteem:cu9z6ky7]Anyone who makes these three statements doesn't understand the data, the physics, or how the climate models work.
If you look at the projections, you see shaded wider margins around the lines - that indicates the degree of uncertainty/confidence level in the model's projections. No they aren't going to be "accurate" 100 years out, nor have they attempted to claim to do so - they have put a range of outcomes based on the various paths society can take: no attempts to reduce emissions, moderate attempts to do so, and strong attempts to do so, and the shaded parts are what they can't account for in terms of system feedback. It's meant to provide a guideline and so far, the models have hit the mark with the warming seen today that was projected a decade or more ago.

From http://www.globalchange.gov/HighResImag ... 25_top.jpg

What isn't in doubt, and is not disputed by this group either, (which boggles my mind that they'd continue to argue) is that emissions are increasing, and GHGs absolutely cause warming. Occam's Razor doesn't get any simpler than that - we continue to use fossil fuels, clear-cut the land, and do other things to cause greenhouse gases to rise, then there's no denying that it will get warmer (and at the rate that we are using fossil fuels today, we are on track for the higher projections). Warmer means more extreme weather, more droughts, stronger storms, rising sea levels, coral reefs being destroyed, ocean ecosystems getting disrupted, food chains collapsing, diseases moving into new territories and increasing in frequency, and populations undergoing massive social upheaval over fighting for scarcer resources, food, and land. The only question is when.