...
Second, our study suggests that global surface air temperature, although an important
diagnostic, is a flawed metric of planetary “health”, because faster ice melt has a cooling effect
for a substantial period. Earth’s energy imbalance is in some sense a more fundamental climate
diagnostic.  Stabilizing climate, to first order, requires restoring planetary energy balance. The
Framework Convention never mentions temperature – instead it mentions stabilization of
greenhouse gas concentrations at a level to avoid danger.  It has been shown that the dominant
climate forcing, CO2, must be reduced to no more than 350 ppm to restore planetary energy
balance (Hansen et al., 2008) and keep climate near the Holocene level, if other forcings remain
unchanged.

Rapid phasedown of fossil fuel emissions is the crucial need, because of the
millennial time scale of this carbon in the climate system. Improved understanding of the carbon
cycle is needed to determine the most effective complementary actions. It may be feasible to
restore planetary energy balance via improved agricultural and forestry practices and other
actions to draw down atmospheric CO2 amount, if fossil fuel emissions are rapidly phased out.
..

source: page 50, http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/15/20059/2015/acp-2015-432-manuscript-ver...

http://www.coastalreview.org/2015/11/changes-in-atlantic-sooner-than-expected/

You have been reading 350.org too much

'Paleoclimate data show that climate sensitivity is ~3 deg-C for doubled CO2, including only fast feedback processes. Equilibrium sensitivity, including slower surface albedo feedbacks, is ~6 deg-C for doubled CO2 for the range of climate states between glacial conditions and ice-free Antarctica. Decreasing CO2 was the main cause of a cooling trend that began 50 million years ago, large scale glaciation occurring when CO2 fell to 450 +/- 100 ppm, a level that will be exceeded within decades, barring prompt policy changes.'

So decreasing CO2 was the cause of glaciation and you want to go back to that?

http://arxiv.org/abs/0804.1126

Sorry the above was from Hansen et al 2008.

lee wrote on Mar 26^th, 2016 at 8:59am:

 
..let's not forget the bit you highlighted for some reason 

lee wrote on Mar 26^th, 2016 at 12:35pm:

The_Barnacle wrote on Mar 27^th, 2016 at 10:38am:



Yes, Did you understand the thing about "Decreasing CO2 was the main cause of a cooling trend that began 50 million years ago, large scale glaciation occurring when CO2 fell to 450 +/- 100 ppm "?  CO2 dropping resulted in the glaciation.

You mean decreasing CO2 led to an Ice Age? Of course there has been no evidence of increasing CO2 leading to runaway global warming ever.

lee wrote on Mar 27^th, 2016 at 11:26am:

Not sure what you are trying to define as "runaway" global warming - but that is generally complete bollocks.   There is actually a lot of evidence that increasing CO2 has caused significant global warming in the past.

During the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), ∼56 Mya, thousands of petagrams of carbon were released into the ocean-atmosphere system with attendant changes in the carbon cycle, climate, ocean chemistry, and marine and continental ecosystems. The period of carbon release is thought to have lasted <20 ka, the duration of the whole event was ∼200 ka, and the global temperature increase was 5–8◦C

The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum: A Perturbation of Carbon Cycle, Climate, and Biosphere with Implications for the Future
https://repository.si.edu/bitstream/handle/10088/16827/paleo_McInerney_Wing_2011...

The injection into the atmosphere of approx,200–2,000 gigatons of carbon, as methane from the decomposition of sedimentary methane hydrates, has been proposed to explain a delta13C anomaly associated with high-latitude warming1 and changes in marine and terrestrial biota near the Palaeocene–Eocene boundary, about 55 million years ago.
Carbon cycling and chronology of climate warming during the Palaeocene/Eocene transition
www.nature.com/nature/journal/v401/n6755/abs/401775a0.html