Rarely has a scientific idea had such a strong impact on world politics. Most countries have now recognized the two-degree target. If the two-degree limit were exceeded, German Environment Minister Norbert Röttgen announced ahead of the failed Copenhagen summit, "life on our planet, as we know it today, would no longer be possible."
But this is scientific nonsense. "Two degrees is not a magical limit -- it's clearly a political goal," says Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). "The world will not come to an end right away in the event of stronger warming, nor are we definitely saved if warming is not as significant. The reality, of course, is much more complicated."
Schellnhuber ought to know. He is the father of the two-degree target.
"Yes, I plead guilty," he says, smiling. The idea didn't hurt his career. In fact, it made him Germany's most influential climatologist. Schellnhuber, a theoretical physicist, became Chancellor Angela Merkel's chief scientific adviser -- a position any researcher would envy.


http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,687259,00.html

The language of that Die Spiegel report alone makes it clear that it's a political piece with very little scientific basis. The fact that they have dragged out the sad argument of the hockey stick data confirms this even more.

Haven't they got any new arguments that we haven't already addressed?

Quote:

True.
So why don't you have an open enough mind to believe the great majority of experts on the subject?

Correct, Grendel, correlation does not imply causation.

What it does provide, where a causative mechanism is known, is evidence that either:

- a causative relationship exists between the two observed phenomena, or
- both of the observed phenomena are influenced by another external phenomena.

In more plain English, that means that if you can provide a reason for one thing causing another, correlation suggests that it may be right, unless both things are being influenced by something else (such as US music quality and oil production, which have both been influenced by an increase in international trade).

The mechanism for warming occurs at the sub-atomic level: certain substances block more low frequency light than high frequency light, hence the energy differential is retained in the atmosphere as heat. Now if quantities of those certain substances are increasing in our atmosphere, then theoretically, warming will occur. It might be prudent then to see if warming has occurred over the same period that the substances (GHGs) have been increasing. And lo and behold ...

The correlation between GHG levels and global temperatures therefore provides evidence that either:

- increasing levels of GHGs cause higher global temperatures,
- increased global temperatures cause increased level of GHGs, or
- both global temperatures and GHG levels are influenced by a common external phenomena.

Unless,

- an uncanny coincidence has occurred.

Perhaps the following graph would have been more appropriate:

Good luck Paella. I've already given the sub-atomic explanation to Soren, who at least doesn't suffer from broken record syndrome.

I sadly suspect that I might be wasting my time here.

The pro-AGW crowd here is positively oblivious to the fact that here and in the wider world they are the kind of ambassadors for AGW that Abu Rashid is for Islam. You could be right about AGW like Abu could be right about Islam - but who the hell wants to have anything to do with whatever it is that you are selling??

AGW and Islam are political issues. Yacking on about your AGW science and Islamic science is not enough. You both want people to see the world diffrently. Pissing on them for not being like you is just the stupidest, most counter-productive way ever. You are both suffering from the same delusion - you think you are incontroveribly right.

Grendel wrote on Apr 8^th, 2010 at 7:15pm:

And just what is your standard of proof?

The tobacco industry for years insisted that there was NO PROOF that smoking causes lung cancer. And, as they were insiting on a level of mathematical, deductive proof, they were correct. Because to this day, there is NO SUCH PROOF that smoking causes lung cancer. This is because the evidence for such relies on the scientific method: a form of inductive reasoning. Inductive reasoning cannot positively and categorically PROVE anything to the same standard that, say, you can prove that a+b = b+a. There is an inherent uncertainty in the physical universe. It is one of the most fundamental laws of nature.

The tobacco industry was very successful in touting this NO PROOF mantra. No doubt the deniers will do the same, with considerable success. I doubt, however, that they will have as much success as the tobacco industry, largely because many more people are conscious of the risk management approach, as outlined my Muso, that we all take to living our lives.