Part I

Okay, I'll bite. I'll type quickly, so there will be some rough edges. But the basics are really simple and will be clear enough.

Here I bring good news: Warm up the barbie, feel no guilt, and enjoy the picnic.

I can bite because there is, within what can be said with any seriousness, a very easy and, for what can be said, relatively good answer.

No, the answer is as science really bad, but so far likely and apparently there's nothing better. So, it's what we are stuck with. Sorry 'bout that.

First off, the NASA site is total, cooked-up, Saint Laureate Al Guru, please send more money, the sky is falling, crack-pot, rip-off, flim-flam, fraud, scam, dirty politics BS, and I will so explain.

But first the simple answer. There are just two parts.

The first part is from the PDF

Committee on Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years, National Research Council, 'Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years', ISBN 0-309-66264-8, 196 pages, National Academies Press, 2006,

long and still available at

http://www.nap.edu/catalog/11676.html

There we go to the graph on page 2. It's a crude graph, but it's likely and apparently about the best data available.

So, here's what we see: As of year 2006, the date of the study, as far as we can tell, the temperature of the Earth in year 2006 was exactly the same as in year 1000, and the increase in temperature over the last 100 years is exactly the same as the increase from year 900 to year 1000. As far as we can tell. The list of authors includes some of the most respected scientists on the planet, e.g., in time series, Brillinger at Berkeley.

And we don't believe that CO2 from humans or anything else was responsible for the temperature from year 900 to year 1000.

And, since year 1000, we fell into The Little Ice Age, for whatever reasons, solar activity, the orbit of the earth, volcanoes, whatever, and since then have been pulling out of The Little Ice Age. As we have pulled out of The Little Ice Age, the planet has warmed. Semi-, pseudo-, quasi-amazing.

We don't want to go back to The Little Ice Age.

So, as far as we can tell, the increase in CO2 from the industrial revolution has had exactly zip, zilch, zero effect on the temperature of the earth.

Here's a short Q&A:

Is CO2 a greenhouse gas? Sure, that's Physics 101. But CO2 is not a very effective greenhouse gas since it absorbs only in three quite narrow frequency bands in the infrared, one band for each of bending, twisting, and stretching of the molecule.

Then the 'greenhouse' effect is sunlight hitting the surface, warming the surface, the surface radiating in the infrared as a Planck black (or 'gray') body, CO2 absorbing the radiation and warming. But the amount of such radiation is limited by what comes from the sun and in the context essentially fixed so that once absorb that amount, more CO2 won't absorb more. Moreover, even if CO2 doesn't absorb some of that radiation now, water vapor, methane, etc. may. So, the warming effect of more CO2 is not so clear.

Has the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere increased due to human activity? Sure.

Is CO2 the main greenhouse gas? Likely not. No doubt the main greenhouse gas is water vapor, but due to clouds, atmospheric circulations, thunderstorms, little things like the oceans, etc., the effect of water vapor is complicated beyond belief. Methane may also compete.

But that CO2 is a greenhouse gas is crucial? Not necessarily. A simple diffusion model can as good science show a significant warming effect from CO2, but that model is laughably simple compared with the real planet.

Does CO2 warm the planet? Likely yes, and so does lighting a match. The issue is, is the warming significant? So far the answer is, in the present context, not on Venus, apparently not.

But climate science has shown ...? For CO2 from humans causing significant warming of the planet, there's no 'science' in 'climate science'. In particular, the 'radiative forcing' of the IPCC and Ramaswamy is just catchy terminology for some simplistic model building and essentially just nonsense for serious science for the main issue of CO2 from humans causing significant warming.

Maybe there would, could, and should be a real climate science able to address this issue of 'warming', but for now the issue is far too difficult for solid science. Sorry 'bout that.

But just because the real issue is too difficult for solid science does not mean that we should shoot ourselves in the gut from crack pot 'science'.

The second part is from

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020364600457721...

In simple terms, the recent predictions of warming just didn't happen, didn't come even close to happening, were way, way off, were a really bad joke.

Lesson: We can't take the predictions from the 'climate science' community of significant and harmful global warming seriously.

Where does that leave us? The planet is doing fine, and there's no good reason to worry for now. As I said, warm up the barbie.