Avant, a few items, largely piecemeal.
1) Do you know of any peer-reviewed literature out there that provide a percentage of warming that is directly attributable to Man’s activities? I’ve never seen anyone offer a quantitative breakdown or range.
2) The article you posted above states that the earth is even more sensitive to carbon dioxide than originally thought. Why then, since carbon emissions have been rising almost exponentially for decades with the rapid development of BRIC nations, has temperature maintained a more or less linear rate of increase? (Some might say there’s been a pause). Shouldn’t such sensitivity and strong correlation suggest we should have observed rapid temperature increase for some time?
3) You say emotional appeals are effective. Quite true. Propagandists throughout history, from Sam Adams to Joseph Goebbels, would vehemently agree with you. But if you have to resort to half-truths and hyperbolic claptrap, it almost argues that the science itself isn’t compelling. Hyperbole has no place in any field purporting to be scientific. Science requires a dispassionate, empirical approach wherein hypotheses are proposed, tested, refined, altered or rejected. Open debate with opposing viewpoints is healthy and essential for that refinement or rejection process. As Einstein said, “No amount of experimentation can prove me right, but a single experiment can prove me wrong.”
4) To say the “science is settled” assumes the whiff of religious dogma. How was it settled? Was an ecumenical council convened, as at Nicaea, to agree upon doctrine, orthodoxy, heresy, etc.? Are we to accept the council’s findings as a matter of faith? Suppression of opposing views is another vestige of religion. If such methods had survived the Middle Ages, we might still have a geocentric model of the Universe. Science is never settled. In some sense, there aren’t even laws, just models describing behavior, some of which work very well. Newton’s Laws worked perfectly for centuries, until they were found to break down in quantum mechanical and general relativistic scenarios.
Climate science remains in its infancy, as does our understanding of Earth’s staggeringly complex self-regulatory mechanisms. The interplay of every forcing and feedback mechanism is not well understood, and there may be other factors at work that remain to be discovered. So how does one put one’s faith in temperature projections for decades in the future, when even small initiation errors or incorrect assumptions compound dramatically as you step forward in time? Moreover, how can you expect the average lay person, with no interest in climate or weather, to believe long-term predictions when their weather forecasts bust all the time? Think of the public’s mistrust last year after the Euro’s epic bust during the blizzard in New York. That was the best weather model on Earth, using massive computing power and superior data assimilation, busting with a twenty four hour lead-time.
By the way, I am not seeking to vitiate climate research. I believe Earth has warmed, that Man likely plays some role, and that we should firmly support incentivizing clean energy and conservation. I merely want to decouple the science from unhealthy extremism on both sides, the existential threat spewing alarmists and the anarchist hokesters alike.
