Are we really suppose to take global warming cultists seriously?

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Originally Posted by econ21

I think when people ask for a scientist who is sceptical of climate change, they are asking for someone in the natural sciences who is near the top of their discipline.

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On request, I just gave a couple of hundred names of skeptical scientists. Now their scientific credentials are being belittled because they hold views that are, well, skeptical. At least the debate over 'global cooling' thirty years ago was an open one, without too much alarmism and without so many closed minds and uncritical media attention.

These days when it comes to man-made global warming, too many people would note the splinter in this or that skeptical eye rather than the beam in the eyes of the believers.

Wakey wakey. The issue is wide open, there is no consensus. :balloon2:

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Originally Posted by Adrian II

On request, I just gave a couple of hundred names of skeptical scientists.

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Not on request, but I have pointed why their argument is false. ~;)

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Originally Posted by Cheetah

Not on request, but I have pointed why their argument is false. ~;)

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"Their argument"?

Are you seriously suggesting that all of those 400-500 scientists have put forward one and the same argument about global temperatures?

Among them is a hurricane specialist (Christopher Landsea) who argues that we are not entering a period of increased hurricane activity and that increasing hurricane damage over the past 100 years is due to societal trends. Another (Stephen Schwartz from Brookhaven National Lab) argues that the earth's climate is only about one-third as sensitive to CO2 as the IPCC has hitherto assumed. Etcetera etcetera. Entirely different approaches to different and in a sense entirely unrelated scientific and policy issues.

Interestingly, more and more criticism of the IPCC is coming from people who have previously participated in it.

There is Aynsley Kellow, Head of the School of Government, University of Tasmania, who contributed to the latest IPCC report yet is of the opinion that the IPCC's future global industrial growth estimates are wrong. Another is John Christy, a Professor of Atmospheric Science from University of Alabama and until recently a Lead Author of the IPCC, who wrote, among other things, the following about the IPCC process:

While most participants are scientists and bring the aura of objectivity, there are two things to note:

• this is a political process to some extent (anytime governments are involved it ends up that way)
• scientists are mere mortals casting their gaze on a system so complex we cannot precisely predict its future state even five days ahead

The political process begins with the selection of the Lead Authors because they are nominated by their own governments.

Thus at the outset, the political apparatus of the member nations has a role in pre-selecting the main participants.

But, it may go further.

At an IPCC Lead Authors' meeting in New Zealand, I well remember a conversation over lunch with three Europeans, unknown to me but who served as authors on other chapters. I sat at their table because it was convenient.

After introducing myself, I sat in silence as their discussion continued, which boiled down to this: "We must write this report so strongly that it will convince the US to sign the Kyoto Protocol."
Politics, at least for a few of the Lead Authors, was very much part and parcel of the process.

And, while the 2001 report was being written, Dr Robert Watson, IPCC Chair at the time, testified to the US Senate in 2000 adamantly advocating on behalf of the Kyoto Protocol, which even the journal Nature now reports is a failure.

The tendency to succumb to group-think and the herd-instinct (now formally called the "informational cascade") is perhaps as tempting among scientists as any group because we, by definition, must be the "ones who know" (from the Latin sciere, to know).

linky

You got me. They had no arguments. :bow:

This did not prevent them to make a proposition though:

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Attempts to prevent global climate change from occurring are ultimately futile, and constitute a tragic misallocation of resources that would be better spent on humanity's real and pressing problems.

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Please tell me then what on is this proposition based if not on arguments?

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Originally Posted by Adrian II

"Their argument"?

Are you seriously suggesting that all of those 400-500 scientists have put forward one and the same argument about global temperatures?

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Forget it, you're talking to the cultists. Can you not see the gimlet gleam of messianic conviction in their eyes, they are too far gone. :idea2:

Sun and global warming: A cosmic connection?

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And Giles Harrison believes climate sceptics need to apply the same scepticism to the cosmic ray theory as they do to greenhouse warming - particularly those who say there are too many holes in our understanding of how clouds behave in the man-made greenhouse.

"There is some double-speak going on, as uncertainties apply to many aspects of clouds," he says.

"If clouds have to be understood better to understand greenhouse warming, then, as we have only an emerging understanding of the electrical aspects of aerosols and non-thunderstorm clouds, that is probably also true of any effect of cosmic rays on clouds."

Dr Svensmark agrees it would be wrong for anyone to claim the case has been proved.

"If anyone said that there is proof that the Sun or greenhouse gases alone are responsible for the present-day warming, then that would be a wrong statement because we don't really have proofs as such in the natural sciences," he says.

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The scepticism is selective; you cannot say the fears are exaggerated because we don't know enough yet: it is a blatant paradox.

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Another (Stephen Schwartz from Brookhaven National Lab) argues that the earth's climate is only about one-third as sensitive to CO2 as the IPCC has hitherto assumed. Etcetera etcetera. Entirely different approaches to different and in a sense entirely unrelated scientific and policy issues.

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He argue, they argue. You pick this guy because his science leans toward your own personal opinion.

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Originally Posted by Viking

You pick this guy because his science leans toward your own personal opinion.

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I "picked" several hundred guys because I was asked to by English Assassin. I was asked produce the names and academic titles of skeptics, so I gave them.

And I elaborated on some of them in order to demonstrate that they have all sorts of different scientific reasons to doubt the so-called consensus, not just one overriding reason.

The enormity of some posts is baffling. I was asked to produce names of skeptics. Now that I have produced them, I am told I merely picked hem because they are skeptics. What was it again that Einstein said about stupidity and the universe? :rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by Adrian II

What was it again that Einstein said about stupidity and the universe? :rolleyes:

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:laugh4: He's only positive that one is infinite :laugh4:

But seriously, I agree completely. You were asked to come up with a list and then you are told that your list doesn't count. :wall: I suppose only a list that fits his politics is acceptable.
Just a thought, anyone remember the millenium bug that a lot of scientists said was going to kill us all (while giving them valuable grants?). Like I said, just a thought.

I had a question.

I think we are warming the globe.

BUT
a) To what degree (pun intended) compared with nature (volcano's, el nino, solar radiation etc).
b) Is warming it a bad thing? Surely the time of the dinosaurs had more flora and fauna to support such massive beasts... maybe we can get greater crop yields like in Indonesia which has areas that has 4 crops per annum out of a field.

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Originally Posted by Papewaio

I think we are warming the globe.

BUT
a) To what degree (pun intended) compared with nature (volcano's, el nino, solar radiation etc).
b) Is warming it a bad thing? Surely the time of the dinosaurs had more flora and fauna to support such massive beasts... maybe we can get greater crop yields like in Indonesia which has areas that has 4 crops per annum out of a field.

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The problem with b) is that such things takes time, the soil quality for example, will take longer to change than the estimated temperature change.

So if it stabilise on a higher temperature it will benefical in the long term, but have severe repercussions for a few generations before that.

The marine life do prefer colder regions actually, due to better circulation of nutrients at 4 degree C water, but I don't think those regions will disappear even in the 6 degree increase scenario (basically the worst case scenario by the IPCC), although they wil shrink and probably won't be around the entire year in the Artica region.

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Originally Posted by Adrian II

The enormity of some posts is baffling. I was asked to produce names of skeptics. Now that I have produced them, I am told I merely picked hem because they are skeptics. What was it again that Einstein said about stupidity and the universe? :rolleyes:

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That's the way it works in these "debates". Scientific arguments are dismissed because there is a "consensus" among scientists. If you list some of the many, many scientists who don't agree, they're dismissed as outliers who are unqualified or bought off. At this point, you're back to the beginning again- wash, rinse, repeat.

The fact is, I think they'd be hard pressed to come up with serious scientists that will actually sign off on all of the IPCC "consensus" statements. Most, at the very least, would say parts are over-stated or still poorly understood. The consensus is more a consensus among activists than real scientists, imo.

Even the French get in on the Act

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Allegre doesn't deny that the climate has changed or that extreme weather has become more common. He instead emphasizes the local character of these phenomena.

While the icecap of the North Pole is shrinking, the one covering Antarctica -- or 92 percent of the Earth's ice -- is not, he says. Nor have Scandinavian glaciers receded, he says. To play down these differences by basing forecasts on a global average makes no sense to Allegre.

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The motto of his book comes from Marcel Proust: ``Facts don't enter a world dominated by our beliefs.''

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Originally Posted by Adrian II

I "picked" several hundred guys because I was asked to by English Assassin. I was asked produce the names and academic titles of skeptics, so I gave them.

And I elaborated on some of them in order to demonstrate that they have all sorts of different scientific reasons to doubt the so-called consensus, not just one overriding reason.

The enormity of some posts is baffling. I was asked to produce names of skeptics. Now that I have produced them, I am told I merely picked hem because they are skeptics. What was it again that Einstein said about stupidity and the universe? :rolleyes:

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You fail to put it in context; what makes a small bunch of scientists not related to each other, more reliable than thorough scientific reports from instutions trusted when it comes to anything else? ~:rolleyes:

Institutions with a vested interest? :inquisitive:

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Originally Posted by Slug For A Butt

Institutions with a vested interest? :inquisitive:

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Indeed. Why should you trust a bunch of non-affiliated, independent scientists over an agenda driven political organization like the IPCC? Why wouldn't you?

This whole agenda thing is getting ridiculous. The science is there: ignore it at your own risk. :saint:

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Originally Posted by Viking

This whole agenda thing is getting ridiculous. The science is there: ignore it at your own risk. :saint:

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Have you read it? The science, that is, not the "summarizations" thereof.

All I can find is an endless parade of summaries from someone and not the study (ies) itself.

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Originally Posted by Seamus Fermanagh

Have you read it? The science, that is, not the "summarizations" thereof.

All I can find is an endless parade of summaries from someone and not the study (ies) itself.

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Here it is, the 2007 assessment containing the reports of all three working groups.

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Originally Posted by Viking

This whole agenda thing is getting ridiculous. The science is there: ignore it at your own risk. :saint:

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In this much, I think we can agree. :yes:

Thanks Adrian, though its a long read.

Got through the first chapter -- more to follow, its on my favorites list for the present.

One point of note:

They seem to be using a .1 significance level throughout as opposed to the more widely used .05 (or for medical testing .001). I was taught that .1 significance was a fair indicator, but that other factors were likely to be equally explanative. Causality claims get trickier the further you deviate from the .05 level.

Still, its good to see the model being followed and I have far more to review and evaluate.

Thanks again.

Protagonists from both sides might enjoy this gem from Jeremy Clarkson.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Unhand my patio heater, archbishop

Jeremy Clarkson

The Archbishop of Canterbury told the faithful on Christmas Day that unless human beings abandon our greed, we will be responsible for the death of the planet.

Hmm. I’m not sure that I can take a lecture on greed from a man who heads one of the western world’s richest institutions. As we huddle under a patio heater to stay warm while having a cigarette in the rain, his bishops are living in palatial splendour with banqueting halls, wondering where to invest the next billion.

And are the churches open at night as shelter for the homeless and the weak? No, they are locked lest someone should decide to redress the inequalities of western society by half-inching a candelabra and fencing it to buy Christmas presents for his kiddies.

Then we must ask how much old Rowan really understands about the implications and causes of global warming. He thinks that taking a holiday in Florida and driving a Range Rover caused the flooding in Tewkesbury this summer. But then he also believes it’s possible for a man to walk on water and feed a crowd of 5,000 with nothing more than a couple of sardines.

Hmm. Well here are some facts that Rowan might like to chew on over his fair-trade breakfast cereal. The Alps are enjoying good snowfalls this year, in much the same way that the Alps in New South Wales enjoyed healthy snowfalls last summer.

The hurricane season finished a couple of weeks ago and, contrary to all the scaremongering from Al Gore’s mates, the number of severe storms, for the second year in a row, was slightly below average.

Closer to home, Britain did not, as was predicted by the BBC’s hysterical internet news site, bake this summer under record-breaking temperatures. It was wet and soggy, much like in all the summers of my youth. And the only reason Tewkesbury flooded is because we’ve all paved our drives and built houses on the flood plains so the rainwater had nowhere else to go apart from Mrs Miggins’s front room.

In the light of all this, I would like Rowan Williams to come out from behind his eyebrows and tell us how many people have been killed by greed-induced global warming. Because even the most swivel-eyed lunatic would be hard pressed to claim it’s more than a few dozen.

Meanwhile, I reckon the number of people killed over the years by religious wars is around 809m. I tell you this, beardie. Many, many more people have died in the name of God than were killed in the name of Hitler.

Between 1096 and 1270, the Crusades killed about 1.5m. Way more than have been killed by patio heaters and Range Rovers combined. Then there was the 30 years’ war, which reduced Europe’s population by about 7.5m. And the slaughter is still going on today in Iraq and Afghanistan and Palestine and Pakistan. Benazir Bhutto was killed by a religious nut, not a homeless polar bear.

We have been told by those of a communist disposition that if we return to a life of sackcloth and potato soup (bishops excepted) and if we meet all the targets laid down by the great scientist John Prescott at Kyoto, then Britain will be a shining beacon to the world. Others will see what we have done and immediately lay down their 4x4s.

Rubbish. America and China and India will ignore our lunacy and our economic suicide and continue to embody the human spirit for self-improvement (or greed, as Rowan calls it).

No matter. Old Rowan will doubtless applaud the move. This is a man who was arrested in the antinuclear protests of the 1980s. Who refused to call the 9/11 terrorists evil and said they had serious moral goals. Who thinks that every single thing bought and sold is “an act of aggression” on the developing world. Who campaigns for gay rights but wouldn’t actually appoint a homosexual as a bishop. And who recently said in an interview that America was the bad guy and that Muslims in Britain were like the good Samaritans.

In other words, he’s a full-on, five-star, paid-up member of the loony left, so anything that prevents the middle classes from having a Range Rover and a patio heater is bound to get his vote.

If, however, he really wants to bring peace and stability to the world, if he really believes Britain can be a force for good and a shining beacon in troubled times, then I urge him to close the Church of England.

If we can demonstrate that we can survive without a church - and when you note 750,000 more people went online shopping on Christmas Day than went to church, you could argue we already do - then, who knows, maybe the mullahs and the left-footers will follow suit.

Daft? Not as daft as expecting the government in Beijing to renounce electricity because everyone in Britain has swapped their Range Rover for a mangle.

But better? Well yes. I genuinely believe we are born with a moral compass and we don’t need it reset every Sunday morning by some weird-beard communist in a dress. I am, as you may have gathered, completely unreligious, but it doesn’t stop me trying to be kind to others, and I’m never completely overwhelmed with a need to murder madmen in pulpits. Slightly overwhelmed sometimes, but never completely.

Morally, the world would be no worse if religion were abolished. Practically, it would be much, much better. And so, given the choice of which we should give up, God or the patio heater, the choice is simple.

:beam:

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Originally Posted by Seamus Fermanagh

They seem to be using a .1 significance level throughout as opposed to the more widely used .05 (or for medical testing .001). I was taught that .1 significance was a fair indicator, but that other factors were likely to be equally explanative. Causality claims get trickier the further you deviate from the .05 level.

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Through factor analysis, you can actually factor out certain relations, i.e. exclude them as possible causes. That much I understand (I did some factor analysis way back when I was a student). However, an old school friend of mine is now a professor of mathematics and probability calculus at Wageningen University, and some of the things he mentions to me might as well be in Chinese or Swahili. I don't even understand the mathematical problems he deals with, let alone the proposed solutions. Basically, he is working on uncertainty to the umptieth degree, and on the question how we, humans, should approach such uncertainty and how we should use the array of mutually influential choices or options that we have in the face of it. He says it is a good approach to climate issues as well, because there are many uncertainties involved whereas the consequences of ignoring certain probabilities can be hugely damaging.

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Originally Posted by Banquo's Ghost

Protagonists from both sides might enjoy this gem from Jeremy Clarkson.

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:grin:

I wonder why the global warming deniers on their "list of scientists sceptical to global warming" include so many scientists who are in fact not sceptical to global warming but have merely happened to publish papers that describe non-human factors which cause climate change. I also wonder how global warming deniers can repeatedly deny the other problems that come with eutrophication, deforestation and overpopulation, arguing that these should not be solved. The argument "this money could be spent on other things" fails to recognize that poverty and global warming share many common causes, including these very problems: deforestation, overpopulation and eutrophication. You can't send money to some average poor third world family which just lost their farming soil due to deforestation and erosion, and think you'll save the world that way. You need to avoid erosion problems in the first place. Similarly you can't just keep sending bottled water to places which due to eutrophication and erosion caused by overpopulation and deforestation can't get hold of clean drinking water, and think you will stand a chance of helping much. You need to avoid these problems in the first place.

There's a very simple answer: you don't get away from the fact that mankind is causing more and more environment problems by our modern lives: we have created one new environment problem after another in the decades since 1900, and solved most of them or died (various deforestation and desertification disasters during antiquity, ozone layer disaster, heavy metal poisioning, acidification, DDT pollution, etc). Now some people are suddenly arguing that across the entire spectrum of dangerous enviroment problems we should suddenly not try to solve any of them at all? To stop using the strategy that has made sure that from each historical enviromental problem at least some humans have survived and made the species continue to exist. Claiming that the money should be spent on the symptoms of fundamental problems, rather than on their causes... If you have tuberculosis, should you take penicilline or a painkiller? :dizzy:

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Originally Posted by Rodion Romanovich

I wonder why the global warming deniers on their "list of scientists sceptical to global warming" include so many scientists who are in fact not sceptical to global warming but have merely happened to publish papers that describe non-human factors which cause climate change. I also wonder how global warming deniers can repeatedly deny the other problems that come with eutrophication, deforestation and overpopulation, arguing that these should not be solved. The argument "this money could be spent on other things" fails to recognize that poverty and global warming share many common causes, including these very problems: deforestation, overpopulation and eutrophication. You can't send money to some average poor third world family which just lost their farming soil due to deforestation and erosion, and think you'll save the world that way. You need to avoid erosion problems in the first place. Similarly you can't just keep sending bottled water to places which due to eutrophication and erosion caused by overpopulation and deforestation can't get hold of clean drinking water, and think you will stand a chance of helping much. You need to avoid these problems in the first place.

There's a very simple answer: you don't get away from the fact that mankind is causing more and more environment problems by our modern lives: we have created one new environment problem after another in the decades since 1900, and solved most of them or died (various deforestation and desertification disasters during antiquity, ozone layer disaster, heavy metal poisioning, acidification, DDT pollution, etc). Now some people are suddenly arguing that across the entire spectrum of dangerous enviroment problems we should suddenly not try to solve any of them at all? To stop using the strategy that has made sure that from each historical enviromental problem at least some humans have survived and made the species continue to exist. Claiming that the money should be spent on the symptoms of fundamental problems, rather than on their causes... If you have tuberculosis, should you take penicilline or a painkiller? :dizzy:

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The question you pose in the first sentence is neatly answered by the non sequitur of your second paragraph.

There are very few people who are "global warming deniers". The debate is rather about the extent to which human activity is causing that to happen and if so, whether the resulting climate change will cause enough adverse impacts to warrant the enormous economic costs envisaged.

You automatically class the observable global warming as human-induced. There are many scientists who agree with you, and many who are skeptical. All scientific theories require skepticism to test them.

To maintain your metaphor, medical opinion is divided on whether you have a cough, tuberculosis or AIDS. The treatment for one might be inappropriate if you actually have the other.

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Originally Posted by Banquo's Ghost

You automatically class the observable global warming as human-induced. There are many scientists who agree with you, and many who are skeptical. All scientific theories require skepticism to test them.

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I've yet to hear an argument against global warming that hasn't already been accepted by all scientists who agree with the global warming theory:

- sun spots - shown to have a large impact, but the latest current changes can't be explained by it, since in fact in the most recent 2 decades we've seen solar activity that would, according to the solar activity models, in fact DECREASE temperature

- C02 increase curve lies slightly after temperature curve - yes, because when it gets hotter, oceans etc can't bind as much C02. CO2 and CH4 causes increase in temperature, then the temperature causes release of some more C02 before a new balance is achieved. A fluid can bind less amount of gas in higher temperatures.

- God has made it hotter - yes, but if God made it hotter, maybe he's trying to teach us something :idea2:

- Nostradamus/other astrologer said it was going to get hotter anyway - yeah, but he/she hasn't argued why he/she thinks so

- western world will make more money out of not fixing the problem - no, if we don't want to help fixing it, then China and India won't either. This is likely to push us all to a point where bloodshed is needed to secure the survival of any members of the species at all, in 30-50 years from now. This bloodshed between the western world and China, India and others, whatever the factions will be, is not likely to leave us all feeling very nice, or being very rich either for that matter

- we can't fix it, or industry will die - then how come we fixed it the last 5-10 times we actually tried to solve the political part of an enviroment problem? All environmental problems we've solved so far have involved bans and/or legal regulations for maximum allowed environmental destruction allowed per product. We need exactly the same to solve global warming. Western industry has done this many times. Just look at any battery you put in a modern electronic product, and the circuit boards, and the car engines, and so on and so forth. Hardly a single product you can buy these days HASN'T already gone through changes because of environmental regulations. Second point is that if all other countries fix it as well, then your industry won't be at a disadvantage. In fact, western countries are likely to have the EASIEST transition to more environmental friendly industry. If we can make other countries accept fairly distributed decrease in pollution per capita or per GDP, we're the greatest winners.

- but my grandma in X says it was cold today - yes, but global warming is about average temperatures, not about finding single extreme instances. The average is increasing.

- but the average measurements are unreliable - there are many different measurements, some of them are excluding cities, others not, some include ice cores, some only include thermometers. Some have used the same measurement techniques since 1900 up till now. Neither of these measurements disagree with the fact that it's getting hotter, and that the increase in temperature is going faster than ever before, and that it is strongly correlated to pollution with a small time delay. The reliability of these measurements is certainly higher than that of your grandma's measurements.

- but this cool blogger that I like says global warming is a scam - check his sources and see if he's understood them correctly. If he has any strong argument, spread it exactly as it is, with accompanying relevant data, rather than just saying "X says global warming is a scam because he read it", because that won't bring any discussion forward.

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- C02 increase curve lies slightly after temperature curve - yes, because when it gets hotter, oceans etc can't bind as much C02. CO2 and CH4 causes increase in temperature, then the temperature causes release of some more C02 before a new balance is achieved. A fluid can bind less amount of gas in higher temperatures.

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That begs two questions: First, obviously CO2 isn't the initiator of climate change. What is? Second, if CO2 lags behind, but amplifies global warming, what stops it? By that line of reasoning, a small increase in temperatures would cause an increase in CO2, which would cause further increases in temperature, causing more CO2 release and so on ad nauseum. What could possibly break this cycle and cause such a cooling effect to override this vicious circle? Or is the warming effect of CO2 being overstated?

Just like when CO2 increases lag behind temperature increases, CO2 decreases have also lagged behind temperature decreases by hundreds of years. How can this be if CO2 is the major cause of climate change?

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Originally Posted by Xiahou

That begs two questions: First, obviously CO2 isn't the initiator of climate change. What is? Second, if CO2 lags behind, but amplifies global warming, what stops it?

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Welcome to the world of multiple chemical equilibrium systems. You may think it's a paradox, but CO2 too helps increasing temperature. The reason why an infinite CO2 release -> temperature increase -> CO2 release cycle doesn't occur because of it, is because there are factors acting in the opposite direction. When CO2 increases in the atmosphere, the amount bound to plants per time unit increases. Because there are forces acting in different directions, sufficiently long after a change (transient) has taken place, eventually an equilibrium occurs (steady-state), where the changes in both directions are equal, i.e. the net change is zero.

Here's an introduction on the principles of chemical equilibrium:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_equilibrium
Nature is a system of multiple equilibria, with some dozen reactions (including many forms of natural CO2 binding and release, solar cycles, temperature-based gas release, cloud formation etc) being relevant to climate change.

The problem is that equilibria can be pushed into either direction by affecting other reactions upon which the particular reaction depends. A lot of release of greenhouse gases pushes the equilibrium to a higher temperature, because, among other things, of the problematic time delay between release of CO2, and binding of it again. This problem gets worse with deforestation and undermining of the soil quality so that very few things can grow and bind the CO2 again. The problem isn't that we pollute something that can't be bound again, but that it is polluted faster than it can be bound again, and that pushes the equilibrium to a much higher temperature.

Release of CH4 has more dramatic consequences than release of CO2, as you have probably heard. One of the reasons for this is that the system that takes care of and binds CH4 isn't as fast as that which binds CO2. So it goes like this: CH4 increase -> temperature increase -> CO2 release -> temperature increase. The forces acting in the opposite direction then have a much stronger "opposition" and so the equilibrium gets pushed towards the direction of higher temperature.

"Chemical equilibrium" doesn't answer my questions. Again, if CO2 causes warming and warming causes more CO2, how does the planet ever cool? Not only does ice core data show that CO2 increases lag behind temperature increases, but CO2 decreases also lag behind temperature decreases.

If CO2 is the major cause of climate change, how does the planet warm when CO2 levels are relatively low (before CO2 concentration begins to increase) and how does the planet cool when CO2 levels are high (before they begin to fall)?

Looking at ice core data, it seems to me that CO2 looks more like a symptom of warming than a primary contributor, as it generally tracks with the temperature but lags behind by hundreds of years in both increases and decreases.

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Originally Posted by Xiahou

"Chemical equilibrium" doesn't answer my questions. Again, if CO2 causes warming and warming causes more CO2, how does the planet ever cool?

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I explained this above. Simply because higher CO2 concentrations cause more binding of CO2 to plants under normal circumstances. So when the positive feedback system CO2->temp increase->CO2 brings CO2 higher, the amount that is bound back into plants per time unit increases. But this binding takes time because the plants have to grow. Thus there will be a delay, which means the equilibrium is moved towards higher temperature.

The rest of your post should be answered by this.

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Originally Posted by Xiahou

Looking at ice core data, it seems to me that CO2 looks more like a symptom of warming than a primary contributor

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It is both - a major symptom, and a lesser cause. CH4 and others are worse per concentration polluted, for example, but CO2 is polluted in so high quantities that it is still not completely harmless. The big problem with CO2 isn't CO2 pollution though, but more how we undermine nature's ability to bind CO2 back. This damage is done by means of deforestation, desertification, erosion and human interventions of different other kinds that prevent better growth of plants to be fast enough to compensate quickly enough to keep the equilibrium at low enough temperature. As it is in some places, the delay is made longer or even infinite, which pushes the equilibrium towards far hotter temperatures.

Major sources of CH4 pollution include meat production and fossile fuels, major sources of CO2 pollution include almost any factory as well as fossile fuels. Major sources of preventing CO2 binding include food production in many overpopulated regions near the equator, slash and burn farming that destroys rain forests, and too high demand for rain forest wood, among other things. The big issue with the global warming (and most of the other environmental problems today), is purely political. We're starting to reach a point which is likely to cause a Malthusian disaster (including high risk of war and genocide) due to overpopulation, because our technology can't keep up with the population increase. We may also be on our way to something unique so far in history: a point where technology can't be improved too much more to be able to support a larger world population - a final, massive Malthusian disaster unlike any we've seen before. Two things need to be achieved in order to solve the problem before war and genocide happens:
1. limit population growth in overpopulated areas
2. solve industrial pollution problems.

No. 2 is comparatively easy. There are only a few major industrial countries that pollute, so for the coming 1-2 decades we really only need to bother about the following countries: China, Japan, India, Korea, Russia, EU countries, Norway, Turkey, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zeeland.

No. 1 is trickier. We need to intervene in third world country affairs to make sure they 1. manage to solve the overpopulation and population growth problems, 2. switch to more sustainable forms of farming.

The first is difficult to achieve, but we can do two things. One is more earmarked aid programs. Another is military force. For military actions, we can gain a casus belli and legitimacy in many ways. By the treaty (no. 2 above), we gain legitimacy since we have then done our part and can require others who stand in the way of safety of mankind to do their share. By providing aid to minority tribes that are being killed because they didn't want to overpopulate like the more numerous and violent tribes, we can also gain a casus belli. For instance, the smallest of the tribes that are threatened in Congo could receive military support against some of the more genocidally inclined tribes. By coordination with aid programs and programs to improve the sustainability of the agriculture of carefully chosen African countries that wish to cooperate to solve the problems in exchange for our military aid, we could achieve a lot. In short, we should realize that our moral position is incredibly strong if we form a treaty such as the one above, and that we can then force third world countries to help solving the problem even if they at first refuse. But hopefully none will refuse, if they realize the danger these environmental problem pose towards entire mankind, and especially those who live close to the equator.

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The more I look at it, the more obvious it seems that global warming is a purely political problem. Environment research has very little to do with it at the stage we've reached now. The scientists have given accurate reports and models, and suggested plenty of alternative ways of solving the problem. Now it's up to the politicians to solve it and save us all, or be more worried about their own status, power and succeeding in their corruption affairs. Too bad our current "democracies" prevent any people with the required organizational skills from starting parties or coming to power, because of surveillance, too many assassinations of politicians, and systems which require you to be born rich to be able to at all take part in national politics or starting a party. While the world is marching towards a disaster, futile little details like these suddenly stand in mankind's way to a rescue which looks so ridiculously easy in theory, but is so difficult to reach in practise. And there's nothing we can do about it, except praying that the current politicians actually get their butts moving and do something... What is left to do now lies beyond the reach of average civilians.