Ok, then why wasn't this predicted in the 1990s or in the IPCC report? If there's another decade of stable temperatures, do you have another rationale ready to retroactively use?
Both the depth of solar cycles and year to year weather events are chaotic processes. Chaotic processes are, by definition, difficult to impossible to predict.
Short term, impossible to predict, effects like this happen. That's why all these sources say that you CANNOT DO WHAT YOU ARE DOING - you can't take short term effects (and ignore the long term effects) to attempt to falsify the theory.
What you can do is look at long enough time scales where such unanticipated things get averaged out by other unanticipated effects. Once again, thats why your own sources indicate that your premise (that the temperatures over the last few years falsify climate change theories) are not valid.
Who is suggesting scientists are "incompetent"? History is replete with scientific consensus on a belief that turned out to be wrong (remember ether?).
You are.
Scientists consistently and repeatedly refer to climate change (and AGW) as "theories". To assert that scientists are wrong and unable to differentiate between a hypothesis and a theory in their own field is to accuse them of gross and open incompetence.
The beliefs (ether etc) that you mentioned were wrong, but they were indeed legitimate theories. Even in the unlikely event that AGW is incorrect, it was still a legitimate theory.
What are you talking about? You can't retroactively predict something and claim that's proof of your theory.
Actually, thats kind of what scientists do quite a bit.
My background is from astrophysics, so I'll explain how it often works from that perspective:
Let's say that I am trying to model the evolution of a star. It would be impractical for me to write a program to predict the future behavior of that star and then wait around to compare the future state of the star to what my model predicts. The relevant time scales will be hundreds of thousands to billions of years.
So, what scientists end up doing in such long term situations is to create a model that tries to predict the present day state of the object. So, you put in all the right physics, then put in reasonable initial conditions, and see if your model correctly predicts what we see today.
As long as you don't fine tune your model by telling it what the current day state is ahead of time, this is a perfectly honest thing to do and a great way to try and falsify a model.
The results of such models are still called "predictions" because the model is predicting some behavior without knowing the answer ahead of time.
Incorrect theories will not be able to predict the current state of things given the initial conditions. For example, Newton's laws can't predict the formation of an existing stellar mass black hole because they are not really correct in that circumstance. So they can be falsified there. Einstein's general relativity will correctly predict such things.
Saying that it's warmer in the arctic (and thus seeing glacier retreat) isn't proof of man made warming. It is proof that there is a regional warming there. Since the overall temperature worldwide has remained steady for the last 10 - 15 years, that indicates that there are regions where it's cooler.
Of course it is.
Those effects were predicted ahead of time (ice melt really was predicted years ahead of time). If reality matching up with predictions isn't evidence in support of a theory, I don't know what is. Especially since there are no real competing theories that hold any water.
Also, the glacier thing is a GLOBAL problem (thats why I was saying "global glacial retreat"). Glaciers in non arctic places like the Himalayas are also melting. Ocean acidification is also global. So no, its not some weird regional problem.
Also, you are ignoring (as you have all throughout this thread) the references to peer reviewed journals that I have cited which indicates that your fundamental premise (that temperatures have leveled off) is dead wrong.
If you want to complain about me, you had better at least acknowledge things that are inconvenient to your argument. I have repeatedly acknowledged your point about the temperature level off, but you are systematically ignoring my citation to scientists who disagree with the premise to your entire argument.
I worry less about CO2 than I do about methane and deforestation in terms of having an impact
Yes, Methane and deforestation are also big parts of AGW. Methane is a greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming, and deforestation is a human effect that causes less CO2 to be removed. So if you are worried about those things, you are worried about AGW.
And I want to put this out there again: You obviously believe that humans are impacting the climate. What are YOU doing about it? What do you want the governments to do about it?
The existence of man made climate change is a scientific question. What should be done about it is a political question - something completely different. As we have seen in this thread, people repeatedly conflate political and scientific ideas (for example, complaining about scientists when it comes to carbon taxes, which are a political beast).
I think that the first step in the problem is to convince people of the scientific theory, then move on to political consequences. So, in conversations like this, I stick to the science and don't get into the politics.
Also, the rules post that you wrote at the top of these forums say I shouldn't talk about politics.
