Let's ignore this graph and talk about climate change

[traininthedistance]

Your definition of the most recent ice age is also wrong- it has nothing to do with the presence or absence of ice in Antarctica. For one thing, Antarctica has been pretty much glaciated for the past 15 million years. We have NOT been in a 15 million year ice age. The Wisconsinan glacial period ended about 12,000 years ago, and the jury is out whether we will ever go back to Wisconsinan level temperatures.

To be fair I actually have heard of scientific contexts in which Snowguy's definition of "ice age" holds.

[7,052,770]

Remember, you're arguing with a guy who describes himself as having "an almost autistic obsession with this issue" (his words...) and freely admits that nothing is going to change his mind.

[Ban my account ffs!]

The average temperature of the oceans right now is 63 degrees F. Saying that ocean temperatures won't rise higher than 86 F is not comforting whatsoever.

Second: what cooling? I don't see any cooling on that chart, except for the pronounced decline in the Southern Hemisphere from 1880-1920.  Other than that it was warming, followed by plateau, followed by  warming, etc.

Your definition of the most recent ice age is also wrong- it has nothing to do with the presence or absence of ice in Antarctica. For one thing, Antarctica has been pretty much glaciated for the past 15 million years. We have NOT been in a 15 million year ice age. The Wisconsinan glacial period ended about 12,000 years ago, and the jury is out whether we will ever go back to Wisconsinan level temperatures.

The Impact Hypothesis as to the Younger Dryas Event has all but been shown to be bunk. The vast majority of evidence continues to point to a GLOF of Agassiz through the St. Lawrence River, disrupting the NADWC.

And if you seriously think that the environmentalist community is solely interested in climate change, then you are, to put it mildly, clueless about the environmental community.

Okay... I think there was a big misunderstanding between us on a few things here.

I did not mean to imply that the average temperature of the entire global ocean would not be harmful.  That would be cataclysmic for most life on earth.

What I meant is that I think many people think global warming will warm the oceans uniformly.  If we have 4*C of warming... then in the tropics water that was 30*C will not be 34*C.  That doesn't seem to be the case.  From proxies we know that the ocean doesn't get a whole lot warmer than 30*C even when the planet was warmer than today.  This strongly suggests that the ocean compensates by increasing its ability to sequester heat away into its gaping depths.

Despite the slim possibility that this heat could all come out of the deep oceans all at one time or over a relatively short period in the future, it's almost certainly not likely.  If that were the case, we'd be experiencing occasional seemingly random fluctuations from past warm periods wreaking havoc.

Instead despite some variation (more than alarmists are willing to admit) due to various factors (mainly solar variability)... the climate is pretty stable.

El Niño is probably the most disruptive global "climate" variable... and we have proxies that indicate modern strong El Niños are not unusual in the past but events stronger than that are absent.  There's a limit to El Niño, too.  But I use this to illustrate that like the argument against intelligent ET that says that if they were common, we would likely already have heard from them, if the climate were as unstable and volatile as the alarmists say... we would have constant massive shifts in the climate that would probably not allow life to evolve to the point it has.

[Ban my account ffs!]

Remember, you're arguing with a guy who describes himself as having "an almost autistic obsession with this issue" (his words...) and freely admits that nothing is going to change his mind.

Yeah Harry you're so open minded and friendly.  Not a militant, small minded humorless twat at all.

[7,052,770]

Remember, you're arguing with a guy who describes himself as having "an almost autistic obsession with this issue" (his words...) and freely admits that nothing is going to change his mind.

Yeah Harry you're so open minded and friendly.  Not a militant, small minded humorless twat at all.

Do you not realize how much of a prick you are, or do you just not care?

I (and most other "alarmists" as you so lovingly call us) always make a point to keep it civil on these debates, but you namecall (which you've been infracted for on multiple occasions), patronize people, say things "Wow, I thought even you wouldn't be so ignorant as to not know [insert some specious claim used by "climate realists" that isn't accepted by most scientists]", etc.  I tried to politely explain to you with undergraduate-level statistics principles why the "No warming since 1998" line is invalid (because I thought you might honestly not know -- the vast majority of Americans wouldn't...) and you just bit my head off and made some snide remark about how I was clueless. I tried a few more times and it never changed.

You've even started to call me out by name in threads that I don't even post in just because your ego can't handle the fact that I don't buy your pseudo scientific nonsense. Guess what, buddy, no one (aside from a few blue and yellow avatars who are openly "denialist") else does either.

Snowguy, you are not a climate expert. Period. You don't even have a bachelor's degree in science (much less climatology...). You love to condescendingly mock others for "appealing to authority!!" when that's what we're all doing.  No one here is a climate scientist, so we have no choice but to go by the opinions of people who actually are experts.  I, like many others, have chosen to trust the vast majority. You have chosen otherwise. Fine, whatever.
The difference is that I, along with the other "alarmists!!!" here will gladly change our opinions if, for example, the 5th IPCC Report says that climate change isn't a big deal after all. All of us will be so relieved and change our opinions accordingly to fit within the scientific consensus. Unless one is a legitimate expert in the field in question, not doing is so is outrageous arrogance.

In contrast, if the 5th IPCC Report says that the situation is even more dire than the 4th Report said (and all indications are that that's what it is...), you won't care. You'll just handwave it away, save for maybe cherrypicking a line here and there to say "Look! I was right all along!!!1"  and keep peddling your crackpot theories. How do I know this? Because you've explicitly said so. Feel free to prove me wrong. Oh, and as I've pointed out before, you're theories aren't even internally consistent. You just latch on to the Denial Flavor of the Month. People would respect you a lot more if you just stuck to your climate theory ... oh wait, you don't have one because you aren't a scientist.

Then you have the audacity to claim you're not a denier, even though the scientists you love to quote like Richard Lindzen (who is well-known to receive a monthly check from oil companies, in violation of all of scientific ethics) are openly deniers, the other Atlasians you like to commend on their "climate realism" are openly deniers, the graphs you post come from openly denier sites, you snidely mock everyone else on this site who says "I'm not a denier" and actually means it, etc.

Anyway, whatever. I don't even care that much, because you vote Democrat, meaning you aren't actually voting for denier politicians, so it doesn't even matter what you privately believe. You really should stop being such a condescending dick about it, though.

[pbrower2a]

CO₂ content of the atmosphere is only part of the story. The most important greenhouse gas is H₂0 (water vapor). Greater warming of the atmosphere goes in part into the evaporation of water from bodies of water, and accelerates the warming because water vapor is an even more potent greenhouse gas than is carbon dioxide.  More water vapor in the air implies a higher floor for night-time cooling (which explains autumn fogs).

It is the dryness of polar air that creates the cold temperatures of polar areas and of cold waves that emanate from those areas. 

It would not take much for the arctic sea ice to melt. As it is, the minimum level of ice in the Arctic is typically in September, when incoming solar radiation is slight. But if the ice should be gone in June or July, the heating of Arctic waters could be very intense, with a sharp warm season in the upper latitudes of the northern hemisphere. Sunlight in the Arctic around the summer solstice is as intense as that in tropical areas. We would probably see forests appearing around the shores of the arctic regions, and forests are some of the darkest land surfaces possible. That would intensify global warming in itself.

Winters would be shorter in the Arctic, and winter cold waves would reach not so far south. Such could move the northern edge of the tropical zone northward in North America to the latitude of Jacksonville or even Savannah. Palm trees could appear in places like Dallas, Atlanta, and Baltimore. (As it is, Dallas looks temperate even though summer temperatures say "Hell"... but it gets some sharp winter cold waves and severe frosts).