Interesting, I have said virtually the same thing re: evolutionary theory (ies). Only I stated it as follows (here’s where it gets relevant):

It’s like Wile E Coyote staring down the RoadRunner. As the dust clears we see that the Coyote is standing on a rock suspended in mid air above a canyon. Coyote starts to run toward the Road Runner, only to find that each step is just on another rock, one that is just about to feel the influence of gravity.

You asked for comments: your point on sea ice in terms of sea level rise is good, but the effect of losing the ice’s albedo is not addressed (and yes, it is partially, though not totally, offset by the growth of Antarctic sea ice).

Small issue, but if when you do the next version you might want to include it. (I also concur with Ralf’s point – while somewhat complex, it is visually easy to present, and it reinforces the problems with the models.)

The glacier point is really well done!

Great job, though!

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/28/new-paper-in-nature-on-co2-amplification-its-less-than-we-thought/
“In this week’s Nature, David Frank and colleagues extend this empirical approach by comparing nine global-scale temperature reconstructions with CO2 data from three Antarctic ice cores over the period ad 1050-1800. The authors derive a likely range for the feedback strength of 1.7-21.4 p.p.m.v. CO2 per degree Celsius, with a median value of 7.7. The researchers conclude that the recent estimates of 40 p.p.m.v. CO2 per degree Celsius can be excluded with 95% confidence, suggesting significantly less amplification of current warming.”

There is a small predicted CO2 feedback. Somewhere between 5 and 50% of what IPCC thought….and surely no where near what Al Gore was trying to demonstrate.

What brother Al and others are guilty of is picking the worst case scenario’s from a number of poorly understood climate forcings and adding them all together. Pretty much anyone can create a disaster doing that.

You might try looking up the same material in his movie-based book. I haven’t looked at it, but the phrasing may be more informative when trying to explain without the moving pictures.

Great video and I have a critique or two. (Being a critic is easy, you’ve really done a great job)

1. At one point you tell us that the Argo buoys haven’t shown any warming in the ocean, and somewhere else you tell us that historic sea level rise is due mainly to warming oceans. So are the oceans warming or not?

2. I do love your points about the Medieval Warm Period being a boon to European civilization and I think it ought to be stressed more. Indeed, it ought to be stressed that a warmer world would be a better world. Less ice and snow, longer growing seasons, more rain, more CO2 to enhance agriculture etc. Pro vs. con warmer is better, and you dealt with most negatives claimed for Global Warming already.

But what’s going to happen is world temperatures are going to go up again. I’d bet the farm on it, and when it does, you can take all your charts, graphs, analogies, smart remarks and take ‘em out with last week’s rubbish, and Al Gore will be in the driver’s seat once again.

But the argument that a warmer world be a good thing will not be rubbish. Should public opinion regard a warmer world as a better world, all of Al Gore’s scare stories and hobgoblins won’t mean a thing and you won’t have to break a sweat updating your presentation.

Let me ask you this; where do most people go on vacation? Someplace warm or someplace cold?

And for those who tell you in response to the “warmer is better” argument that the tropics will burn up, remind them that the IPCC tells us that most of the warming will be in the winter time, night time and in the Arctic. Summer time, day time and in the tropics, not so much.

Thanks for reading

Steve Case
Brown Deer, WI

Assuming worst case sensitivity – derived from IPCC 2007 – temperature change due to CO2 would be

5.7 * ln(280/180) = 2.5C

So we can only assume that the remaining temperature change of 7.5C is unrelated to CO2. Or alternatively CO2 was at most responsible for 25% of the temperature change during ice-age transitions – and then with a lag of 800 or so years.

The warmist counter argument on CO2 lag is that it acts as an amplifier. But by the IPCC modeling it can only have amplified at most by 25%. And the IPCC modeling already includes a multiplier factor for CO2 of about 3.25 – presumably via changes in water vapor etc.

Based on the optical physics of CO2 alone, the ice-age CO2 contribution would be 2.5C / 3.25 = 0.76C or 7.6% of the observed change.

Recent US politics gives a number of brazen examples: the TARP boondoggle, the “Stimulus” and socializing health care are all topical debates in which the same, or similar, techniques have been used ad nauseum.

In fact, the presence of this precise tactic is one of my leading litmus tests for sniffing out a hidden agenda in an argument, and for this reason I was an AGW skeptic long before I familiarized myself with some of the science. Many of the arguments either way are beyond my ken (I can follow the logic, but cannot judge whether factual relationships are necessarily as presented), but there is a clear pattern of slippery argumentation on the side of the AGW proponents that I have not been able to detect on the part of AGW opponents.