Pop Tech I think you addressed the question " there is strong evidence that changes in solar activity are no longer the primary driver of climate" with that last little list you posted. 

Sometimes when Pop Techee posts, there is a six week pause in rebuttle, while the postee victim does 6 weeks of reading.........before using the "nevermind" answer.

I find it amazing, that Since we ALL know that the END of Winter (nothern hemisphere) is brought on by the slight Tilt of the Earth towards....what ?  ? --THE SUN-- !! and yet we still hear that some Dufus's say the Sun is not the Primary driver of the climate..... 

I hope the Men in White coats are not watching this site...because there are some Escappees running around loose who think they're really Al Gore......Geezzz.

How did I propagandize the conclusions? I simply noted that one of the papers said 25%-35% of the warming during the last 30 years could be attributed to changes in solar output, and I speculated that the other contribution could be from anthropogenic sources. Just because I have interpreted the results differently than you I am a propagandist? Wow!

By the way, I started reading the very first paper you listed and guess what I found:

-------------------------------------------

Recently, detailed physical models have been developed for each individual link in the chain connecting the SN with the cosmogenic isotopes. This includes a physical model relating the heliospheric magnetic flux (the Sun’s open magnetic flux) to the SN [12,13], a model for the transport and modulation of galactic cosmic rays within the heliosphere [14], and a model describing the 10Be isotope production in the terrestrial atmosphere [15,16]. We have combined these models, such that the output of one model becomes the input for the next step. It has thus become possible to model the complete sequence of processes and to calculate the expected 10Be concentration from 1610 onwards on the basis of the SN record [17,18].

-------------------------------------------------

Whoa, that is a lot of models! Are all of these models perfect? Perhaps you could ask the authors. If not, then the results of the very first paper in your giant list are meaningless based on your own logic. Hmmm.... How many other times will I find these articles contradicting your own beliefs?

Chaos theory not relevant to models?  Hohoho.  The whole reason why Chaos theory came into existence was via computer modeling!  The essential central core being if you change the number of decimal places even by one via rounding you cause the program to get an entirely different result the longer you run it.  Chaos theory tells us why the "predictive" results of computer modeling on a complex system has such a low confidence level.  We've had this discussion before I believe or I did with someone here on a recent thread.  All things are not equal, additionally missing or assuming even one variable to be unchanging causes the result of any computer modeling to be in error.  All things change, and even a change in a decimal place leads to different results.  This is the fallacy of computer modeling.  Extrapolation is not prediction! When you base public policy on a computer extrapolation what you are saying is that it is a prediction. There is no way around that.   Correlation is not a proof of causation and extrapolation is just another way of correlating.   Claiming something might happen based on a computer program is like trying to pick a lottery number by computer, go to the local corner store and let the machine pick the number for you.  How many people win when they let the machine pick the number?  How many people let the machine pick the number on any given day?  Sure as there are little green apples someone is going to win at some point with the machine picking the number.  Would you wager your whole year's salary by letting the machine pick the number?  That's essentially what you and the AGW folks are saying we should do with trillions of dollars.  

 Lord Sidious / Darth Vader 2008  Long Live the Empire!  Come to the Dark Side, it is your Destiny.

"...because the...study... was published in 2001...makes it invalid?" 

Never said that...however, it is erroneous, because the raw data was massaged to give a predictable outcome.

"...primary conclusion has not been undone by the continued observed warming trend since 2001..."

Sorry, but the 'warming trend' since 2001 does not validate the conclusions of the study at all, because there is no evidence whatsoever that links the warming with anything manmade. The increased warming could just as easily have been caused by the increased number of wolves introduced into the western US, which is absurd - or more rationally by cosmologicval effects. In fact, as predicted by the influence of both solar and cosmic radiation effects, cooling has started to occur.

"...gave quantitative evidence ..."

Sorry again, but it gave so such thing, because the evidence was massaged data, derived solely to generate a predetermined result, that man caused global warming. There is no evidence that man can affect climate directly, over any extended period of time. And please, let's not go the doomsday routes, because even those are based on assumptions are nothing more than guesses. I repeat, there is no empirical eveidence that man can affect climate long term.

"...I can tell you with certainty..."

So. I can tell you with certainty that the moon will rise tonight as will the sun tomorrow. Both are driven by the physics of the solar system, planetary spin in my case, axial tilt in yours. Neither has anything to do with man, nor can anything man do, short of blowing up the planet, affect the results. In fact, I can tell you more about my predictions - I can give you precise times when each event will occur. You can give me nothing more than a direction of change...you can't tell me what the max/mins will be, nor when they will occur. Why? Because they are driven by chaos, and are inherently not predictable.

"...could be done statistically, with great accuracy..."

No it can't, as evidenced by the fact that it hasn't been done. All attempts are stoichastic in nature, and produce probabilities, not definites. If any statistician could do what you say, he would be phenomenally wealthy, either by using the information for himself, or by selling his knowledge to the world. And yes, he would have done one or the other.

"...that does not invalidate them..."

No, but falsifying data does - and massaging the data to give a predetermined outcome is falsifying data.

V/R

Clyde

"...the aspirants to tyranny are either the...men of the state, who in democracies are demagogues,... or those who hold great offices, and have a long tenure.." - Aristotle, Politics, c350BC

NL My old research professor gave us a piece of research that showed the ability of researchers to prove themselves right. He did this to caution us in research. As we didn't want our biases to get in the way of the truth. This was research done back in the 50's or earlier.

I've been trying to find it but can't. Are you familiar with it, or similar research and can point me in the right direction? 

Thanks.

"There is a clear attempt to establish truth not by scientific methods but by perpetual repetition."
- Richard S. Lindzen, Ph.D. Professor of Meteorology, MIT

I think this response was intended for somewhere else?

The CO2 seasonal variation is believed to be due to photosynthetic uptake during the NH growing season.  It peaks in April and bottoms out in October.  The range of seasonal variation is very small compared to the interdecadal trend.

No, climate scientists are not trying to build "empirical" models. "Empirical" implies that the model is purely statistical and only based on what we have observed in the past. Current climate models, on the other hand, are based on physical laws. Numerical techniques are used to solve the equations of motion that govern atmospheric fluid dynamics; this is not a trivial task and in no way empirical. The models are integrated over long time periods and average quantities that describe the predicted climate can be extracted. Of course there are many "tunable" parameters in climate models, but guess what? We can run the climate models many times using various values representing reasonable values of these parameters and obtain an "ensemble" of forecasts. Using many different versions of climate models which use different tunables parameters and different methods for representing various processes (like convection and clouds), a common theme emerges when the models are run over the 20th century: the only way to replicate the observed warming during the last part of the 20th century is to include the effects of anthropogenic greenhouse gases. While this doesn't "verify" that the warming is anthropogenic the way a controlled experiment using a twin Earth would, it is the best scientists can do and is pretty compelling evidence. Sure, models can be right for the wrong reasons, but most of the peer-reviewed research suggests this isn't the case with regard to the climate.

I've disregarded your long-winded counter-analogy because it assumes climate models are empirical, which they are not as I discussed above.

Also, a majority of scientists during the 1970s did not believe there was an "impending ice-age". See:

http://www.usatoday....

which describes an upcoming BAMS article. The following was taken from the USA today article:

-------------------------------------------------------------

The study reports, "There was no scientific consensus in the 1970s that the Earth was headed into an imminent ice age.

"A review of the literature suggests that, to
the contrary, greenhouse warming even then dominated scientists'
thinking about the most important forces shaping Earth's climate on
human time scales."

------------------------------------------------------------------

You have to direct me to the articles discussing the "verified" models you mention during the 1970s. These models probably were empirical! Especially if they were predicting cooling, since there was an observable short term cooling trend which ended in that decade.

Actually, nowadays hurricane forecasters rely much more on model generated forecasts than extrapolating satellite data to predict movement. They use the model forecasts to generate the large "cones" because, contrary to your statements, they DO understand the limitations of computer models, otherwise, they would simply forecast landfall at the exact location the models did. The verification of the forecasts generated by the HPC reveals that hurricanes almost always fall within their projected cones. So, you've just helped demonstrate another realm within atmospheric science in which numerical models have been useful (or not completely useless, to counter your claims). Got any others??

Nope. Cloud shape is not a parameter in climate models that a random value is assigned to. You can download the source code of a popular community climate model at:

http://www.ccsm.ucar...

Show me where a random value for "cloud shape" is excplicitly assigned.

Also, I'm glad you at least acknowledge numerical models can be useful. Additionally, keep in mind that results from climate models are only one "piece of the puzzle" in the growing body of evidence that supports anthropogenic warming.