97% of Climate Scientists agree the sky is blue...

I think the only positive feedback loop that 97% of climate scientists have found is that when they all agree that AGW is true they get more money to study it.

Funny how the results always yield more cash for them and less for everyone else.  Too good to be true maybe.

But hey I'm a cynic.

My only issue with this is the black/white component of it.  Is man the ONLY reason for AGW?  I'm of the opinion that this isn't a simple issue.  While I agree completely that man is a significant contributor, I'm not entirely convinced that we are the only contributor.

Of course, what to do about is a whole other question.

probably my two biggest "skepticism" points are

1. the fact that there's so much money and politics flowing into the debate that the true Science gets a little cloudy.  I'm mostly in the camp of I don't necessarily trust what the Science is telling me because I feel the money and politics of it has potentially influenced the data.

2. The other question I have is: who is to say the earth is at the optimal temperature right now?  I read somewhere (probably 10 years ago) that said if the earth were warmer we could produce a lot more food and there would be a lot more livable land due to the northern land masses having a lot more land than the central land masses.  This could be a bogus argument, but as a non scientist I just wonder if its good or bad to have the earth a little warmer. This thought pattern also leads me to discount the doom/gloom prophesies of the more extreme global warming crowd.

So, all in all I am still in the needing to be convinced its real category and then there's the whole other debate about how to fix it.

**edit**

btw, I am still very open minded on this topic so I'm not an entrenched anti global warming guy by any means.  I just simply don't know if its happening and if its man made or a combination of other factors.

I believe that the earth has been through climate changes before, adapted, and survived.  It will survive us, and will evolve with or without us.  I am not sure there is a way to "fix" the situation.  

Who is to say that the earth isn't going through a natural process.  Perhaps we have sped up that process, who knows.  I agree that there are changes coming, but to what extent human kind is responsible for it, I am not sure we will ever know with absolute certainty.  

1) The science and data itself are sound.  You can be sure that every piece of data and every study published is gone over with a fine toothed comb by the so-called skeptics and so far they haven't found any major flaws.  In fact, a recent reanalysis by a prominent skeptic came to the exact same conclusions (which the rest of the skeptics bashed him for).  The money 'flowing' into climate research is no where near the levels of other sciences, such as say, cancer research, yet no one is questioning their motives.   I think the problem is that there are lots of people - on both sides - who are eager to take robust scientific findings and data and twist and misinterpret them to back up whatever their point of view is, and people misinterpret this twisting of the facts as flaws with the data or with those who produced it.

2) There's no such thing as an optimal temperature, but what you mention is a very valid controversy and is currently where most of the research is happening.  It's not bogus.  The argument now from the prominent skeptics who actually work in the field has moved from 'we're not causing it' to 'yeah we're causing it, but it won't be that bad'.  So far most of their estimates of lower amounts of warming have had some major flaws, but the fact is that there WILL be areas of the globe that benefit.  For example, agricultural areas are expected to expand northward, which would increase the amount of crops in Canada.  But there will also be losses of cropland as some places that were previously farmable turn to desert and the net gain/loss is uncertain.  It's also be estimated that the extra CO2 we're putting in the air would act as a fertilizer and increase crop yields, however, this is very uncertain as well since along with the increased CO2 comes increased pollution (such as ozone), drought and heat which are likely to wipe out any gains due to increased CO2.  Doesn't matter how much extra CO2 you have if there's no water or it's too hot.  Overall, the consensus is that the benefits will be outweighed (likely by quite a bit) by the negatives, but like I said, there is still quite a bit of uncertainty, especially when trying to look at the local or regional scale. Recent observations though have been towards the warmer and faster side of things though, which is a bit alarming.

I think a big concern is that that climate change is going to hit the people least responsible for it the hardest.  Wealthy countries such as ours may be able to adapt.  It may take trillions of dollars but we have the means to mitigate many of the consequences.  Its the 3rd world countries that can barely feed and shelter their populations as it is right now that will take the brunt of it, and they are the ones with the least responsibility for the problem as they emit hardly any GHG's compared to wealthy countries like ours.

Anyways, don't know if that does anything for you, but that's my take on your skepticism points.

Interesting side note. Radiolab had a fascinating podcast on the topic of the color blue (no, really, it was quite surprising - play it from the link. Seriously!)

Basically, before we could create blue pigments, we had no word for the concept of blue. Only the egyptians in ancient times had blue pigments. One of the people who studied this tested the idea that people don't notice the sky is blue by teaching his kid the names of the colors (including blue), but never pointing to the sky or mentioning that the sky is blue. Then when the kid was a little older, he asked her "what color is that?" while pointing to the sky. The kid had no idea what he was pointing to, or what he was referring to. After a couple of months, she would tell him it is white. Then she would start to go back and forth between blue and white for a while.

The other odd thing (especially given the alleged sponsorship of the color green), is that in languages that still have no word for blue, green is used interchangeably. Also that in langauges, the concept of black is the first color to be identified, followed by white. Later red is the first "color", and blue is always last. Yellow and green are somewhat interchangeable in the order of appearance in a language.

Also, our color perceptions are based on the 3 color receiving rods in our eyes. There are a few tetrachromatic people (women for complex reasons), some of whom have additional color perceptions. Meanwhile, dogs have 2 rods (for blue and yellow), but the champs as far as color perception are mantis shrimp, who have 27(!!) different types of rods to distinguish different colors. Like they need to perceive even more colors than this - 

I know others have already commented, but I have two small things to add.

For point 1:

And for point 2 - "optimal temperature" for who, is what you really should be asking. All the hoopla about "saving the planet" is actually nonsense. The planet will be fine. It will continue to circle the sun, and continue to have tectonic activity and magma underneath. The REAL issue is saving the planet in a way that is optimal for US. The humans. It is not probably the optimal environment for dinosaurs, for example. And given that GW results in more temperature extremes, and more weather-related problems, it may not be optimal to be pushed up a few more degrees. Although I suppose our successors as the dominant life form will be perfectly adapted to survive the new environment. Because THAT'S how evolution is supposed to work.

i don't really understand the debate i guess.  one side says its getting warmer, the other side says no.  then on the side that says it is getting warmer you have those who say it is natural and those who say it is caused by pollution/human actions.  am i right?

so now there is a side which says we should curb pollution and green house gas emissions and look into new technologies for cleaner sustainable fuels for the future. this is the part i don't understand. what about that is bad? shouldn't we be doing this anyway regardless?  who cares if the warming is natural or artificial, taking the actions stated are beneficial either way.  why would anyone not want clean air, land, and water?

people seem to forget that oil is a fossil fuel and not a replenishing natural resource ; except some russians.  so what if we find more reserves; that just pushes the date back for when we run out.  the time to develop new technologies isn't when it runs dry, it will be too late then. 

i mean, how dare we do something good in advance, lets it get as craptastic as possible first.

Thanks for the detailed response.  I agree as a regular guy its hard to discern the real science from the manipulation that occurs with the data. 

It isn't oil, it's energy. I'm no fan of pollution. I don't want NOx, SOx, acid rain, particualte pollution, or heavy metals. I have no problem cleaning all that up. It can and should be done.... claiming CO2 as a pollutuant is another story entirely. There is a natural carbon cycle on this planet. Nature itself produces HUGE amounts of it, and it sequesters HUGE amounts of it.... the question is what is man's contribution, and is it producing more than the cycle can absorb?

We have 300-400 years worth of coal. We can clean coal up. So if we take out the actuall polutants except CO2... then why in the world should we stop using such a cheap plentiful source of energy??? We keep finding oil.... and we keep finding more and more natural gas. So again, take out acids, heavy metals, and particulates.... why again are we scrapping our entire power industry???

People will switch when there is an eccomomic signal that doing so makes sense. Until then, you are not doing anything great, you are just wasting money... something most companies can't afford these days.

Cute flow charts.

In the flow chart for item one, you forgot the box where they set up a global carbon exchange and then start skimming massive amounts of money out of worlds economy.  The giant stacks of money there would be akin to the giant stacks of evil dollars in the flow chart for item two.  Just saying.  Its all about the power and money.

Always bet against the chicken little hypothesis being true.  Especially when the proposed solution is a giant wealth transfer engine.

An excellent site is Realclimate.  It can be a bit over-your-head but it's a great site for summarizing what the people actually studying the subject are finding out before their findings get taken and spun.  It's also free of the 'what do we do about' it dramas because it focuses on the science, not so much the policy, which is where it all gets really politicized.

"the addition of any substance (solid, liquid, or gas) or any form of energy (such as heat, sound, or radioactivity) to the environment at a rate faster than it can be dispersed, diluted, decomposed, recycled, or stored in some harmless form."

And CO2 absolutely falls into this definition because of additions we are making to the atmosphere.  The fact is we ARE making a significant contribution and it IS more than the environment can currently process, hence the reason it's accumulating in the atmosphere.  If the environment could process the extra we are adding, the levels wouldn't be rising as they are.

The whole carbon capture and economic incentives thing is a whole other ball of wax though

now that made me laugh.  

On the upside, hot air is less dense, so you might be able to get one out of the infield

Yes, but then look at all the other carbon sources man is adding, farts, soft drinks, exhaling.... so if we train more and add use more air should we be taxed more than sedintary people?

Also, the absorbtion rate has increased as well... just not fast enough. So should we tax carbon, or just the amount over the absorbtion rate... do we have to cut all carbon emissions to meet some arbitray CO2 level... or do we just cut enough to allow absorbtion to increase too so an excess is not occuring?

then we do tAlk about ecconomics.... which is more reasonable... to sink a bunch of money into soultions we are not sure their impact it will have... or sink a bunch of money into CCS? Carbon capture is actually quite easy... sequestration is another ball game. but if we do come up with a way to eccomomically sequester carbon... then what is the complaint?

When you burn fossils fuels though, you ARE adding CO2 and almost all of the increase in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is coming from the burning of fossil fuels (adding C that was previously stored underground) or changes in land use (primarily deforestation - reducing the amouont of C that is removed from the atmosphere by plants).

You are right that mother nature has been absorbing much of the extra CO2 (we've added enough CO2 to increase the concentration from ~280 ppb in pre-industrial times to just about 400 ppb now.  If all the CO2 we've emitted stayed in the atmopshere though the level would be ~500 ppb) but almost all of the additional absorption is being done by the oceans.  What is your source that says absorption is increasing?  Studies I've seen show that at some point the oceans will actually become saturated and their ability to absorb our excess CO2 will drop.  But besides that, using the oceans as a sink for the CO2 we're emitting is causing them to become acidified and has the potential for some pretty severe effects on its own.

If there was a way to ecnomically sequester carbon, I don't think there would be any complaint at all, in fact you'd hear people from everywhere calling for more fossil fuels.  But this belief that we have time to just twiddle our thumbs while we keep doing what we're doing is just extremely poor risk management in an area where the consequences for being wrong could be really severe.  A lot of the research coming in is showing that if anything ,we've been underestimating both the scale of the effects and the quickness with which they can occur and I really am starting to have serious concerns for the world I'm leaving my kids and my kids kids.  I'm not a doomsayer, it won't be the end of the human race or anything, but I think they're going to live in a world that is very different from the one we live in now, and the sad thing is, it's not like we don't know what we're doing.