This is an open thread that will be all I have to offer until the end of July. Feel free to comment here.

Where I’m going, I cannot access WordPress, so I won’t be able to post. However, I will have access to my email account and WordPress sends me your comments and gives me limited administrative capabilities via email.

So, although I will not be able to access 90% of the blogosphere, you can help me defeat censorship (well, not the kind practiced at Real Climate or Planet 3) by giving me news of the day in the comments section here. I will even be able to reply via email, so there’s the possibility of continuing the dialogue.

I would be deeply appreciative if every now and then you would let me know what’s going on and say hi.

Have fun and play nice–the person you disagree with does not consider himself or herself a villain–and probably with good reason. People commenting about climate change care about the environment, sustainable corporate and government practices and almost all of you want a better planet. That’s more important than the disagreements we have on how to get there.

Xie-xie. Zai jian. At least until the end of July.

(The short answer is that we believe global warming to be real and potentially quite serious, but that ‘when offered an over/under bet on 3C sensitivity, we’ll take the under’–Steve Mosher)

The theory of global warming is solid, staid and uncontroversial. All things considered, if we double the concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere, temperatures should increase by 1.1C over what they otherwise would have been.

The theory of atmospheric sensitivity is a different story. The political controversy that has raged since 1988 centers on the idea that our atmosphere is sensitive to changes and that changes produced by humanity–in particular our emissions of greenhouse gases–will cause more warming than just the 1.1C from the emissions themselves.

Everybody’s tired of the climate wars.

But not tired enough to quit fighting. This weblog is an attempt to differentiate some of us involved in the discussion from people at the extremes, those who hold either unwarrantedly skeptical views of what really is basic science or those who have let their imaginations run wild with apocalyptic visions of a future that the science does not predict.

We are Lukewarmers. We’re not organized. There is no motto, no creed, no manifesto. We don’t meet, we converse infrequently and we don’t have a secret handshake.

What we seem (so far) to have in common is an understanding that the basic underpinnings of climate science are understandable, well-grounded and not controversial, plus the growing realization that one of the key components of an extended theory of climate change has been pushed too far.

That component is the sensitivity of our atmosphere to a doubling of the concentrations of CO2. The activists who have tried to dominate the discussion of climate change for more than twenty years have insisted that this sensitivity is high, and will amplify the warming caused by CO2 by 3, 4 or even 10 times the 1C of warming provided by a doubling of CO2 alone.

Lukwarmers, for  a variety of reasons, think it’s lower.

We don’t know what sensitivity is. In fact, there is more than one type of sensitivity and more than one definition. That doesn’t help matters.

Matt Ridley, author of The Rational Optimist, highlighted recent work by Nic Lewis, who used observational data to postulate that a doubling of CO2 will lead to a warming of 1.6°-1.7°C (2.9°-3.1°F). Ridley’s piece was also published in the Wall Street Journal. The articles (and a vehement, if knee-jerk, response by Joe Romm, was discussed at Bishop Hill’s blog here, here, here and elsewhere.

My own contribution to the debate, published in my other weblog here, is based on decidedly lower math. I noted that during the recent (hotly debated) plateau in temperatures, humankind has managed to emit one third of all the greenhouse gases they have ever spit into the atmosphere–without any tangible effects on temperatures. Now, climate science allows for uneven steps in temperature change, and I am perfectly comfortable with that. The current warming period is certainly characterized as a sawtooth form imposed on a rising trend. It is conceivable that this is just another pause that will be followed by another period of temperature rises.

But this pause in the temperature rises has lasted longer than previous pauses. Since 1998 there has been little if any net rise in temperatures. Should this pause continue for just a few more years it will mathematically invalidate many of the climate models’ predictions.

And it almost beggars belief that the sheer quantity of emissions since 1998 can have so little effect–if sensitivity is high. On the other hand, if sensitivity is as low as Nic Lewis postulates (as have others before him), it would make more sense that a massive outgassing of CO2 in a short timeframe could still have a small effect.

What we’re left with is the realization that this period will be the proving ground for the various theories of sensitivity. Global emissions are hardly likely to go down–indeed, they will probably continue to increase, as developing countries continue to burn incredible quantities of coal in their race to provide modern lifestyles to their citizens. By the end of the decade humanity will have emitted one half of their historical total of greenhouse gases since 1998.

The results will be interesting. If the current temperature plateau holds, the climate activists will have to maintain that the lag between emission and response is so great that previous temperature rises were quite possible linked to other phenomena than human CO2–or else revise their sensitivity figures.

If, on the other hand, temperatures begin once again to rise quickly, many skeptics will have to acknowledge many uncomfortable conclusions of the climate scientists they have been fighting so bitterly.

In either case, this decade will provide something the debate has sorely needed for 25 years–answers.

I’ve said it often enough, but I’ll repeat what I think we should do while waiting for clarity regarding sensitivity and other unresolved issues with the science:

1. Tax CO2 at a starting rate of $12/ton and revisit the rate every 10 years, adjusting the rate to reflect changes in CO2 concentrations and a pre-agreed metric for climate change that has occurred in the interim.
2. Spend a global total of $100 billion for the transfer of technology to the developing world for the purpose of reducing the impact of development technologies, in hopes that they can leapfrog one or two generations of energy development.
3. Commit to spending over the course of this century on moving roads inland, removing permission for construction on threatened coasts and flood plains. The EPA found that this would cost about $400 billion for the United States about 20 years ago–adjust for inflation. But that’s a one-time cost.
4. Continue Steven Chu’s investment strategy for reducing costs in renewable energy, storage and transmission. Continue with ARPA-E at full funding. We may have another Solyndra–probably will, in fact. But we may also have another Tesla, which didn’t technically come from that program, but serves as an inspiration.
5. Encourage the U.S. EPA to regulate CO2 emissions from large emitters.
6. Accelerate permitting for new nuclear power plants to maintain nuclear power’s percentage of electricity at 20% in the U.S.
7. Uprate existing hydroelectric plants to take advantage of advances in turbine technology.
8. Mandate uptake of GPS within the air traffic control infrastructure and controlled and one-step descent on landing.
9. Homogenize permitting and regulation for installation of solar and wind power. Maintain current levels of subsidies and RPS.
10. Increase utilization of Combined Heat and Power facilities from its current 7% of primary energy production to the world average of 9% and then by steps in northern regions to benchmark levels found in Denmark, Holland and other northern European countries.
11. Support introduction of charging stations for electric vehicles.
12. Force existing coal power plants to meet best available technology standards or close.

Okay–last post for three months on Wednesday…

This is for Willard:

There is more or less a constant state of consternation  among the climate concerned on why their ideas about climate don’t spread like wildfire or take deeper root.

This is despite the fact that majorities in almost every country acknowledge human-caused climate change, with percentages fluctuating around a solid mean only when dramatic stories emerge.

I doubt if any of them will consider this seriously, but I firmly believe it is because their ideas, messaging, themes and marketing pillars never–never–pass through the hot fire of open debate.

Confronting the opposition sharpens the wit as well as the message, and this never happens with the climate concerned. They’ve listened too well to folk like Naomi Oreskes, who warned against the legitimizing power of debate to minority viewpoints and hence very rarely engage with skeptics or lukewarmers in public.

They resort to cheap gamesmanship online, mostly refusing to engage at contrarian venues and censoring the opposition at their own.

Too many climate-oriented websites end up just preaching to the converted, commiserating about their lack of resonance and blaming the opposition with whom they refuse to converse.

So, if you think that the case made for climate concern is muddy, weak and diffuse, it’s because the case has never really been through the trial by fire that produces a winning argument.

Once again this subject is being discussed, this time over at Planet 3. The discussion references recent conversations here at this blog. It’s a discussion in which I normally would enjoy participating. But because the administrators of the blog censor the opposition, they will not get to test their tropes with me.  But feel free to go over there, put your two cents’ worth in, hit submit and get the sign that your comment is in moderation. And then wait a day or so to see if it gets posted or not.

That’s the way to get both sides of an issue.

This post isn’t about that paper or any of the others that followed it. Many of the papers and stories have been responded to and as readers well know, my assessment (although I am not a scientist) is that extreme weather, which is to be expected about 5% of the time, has not increased at all, let alone been affected by the 0.8C of warming we’ve experienced in the last century. Bluntly put, I don’t think we are experiencing more storms, floods or droughts and I don’t think the storms, floods and droughts we are experiencing are any stronger than those of the past.

But this post is about that curious period between 1998 and 2005. Maybe even 1988 and 2005. With temperatures rising quickly to 1998 and staying at that level until 2005, why didn’t anybody notice the Xtreme Weather that is now everybody’s huge concern? Now, I know some tried to blame Katrina on global warming, but not anybody with an IQ in triple digits.

So, when did Xtreme Weather start and why didn’t we notice it until now?

Because I spent a year of my life over at my companion blog 3000 Quads demonstrating that it is quite likely that we will be using six times as much energy in 2075 as we do today, I am very much prepared to believe that we can and probably will change the weather–in part from our increased CO2 emissions, in part from the changes in land use that accompany the growth and development of human population.

So if you tell me that some time after 2040 we will have to cope with changing patterns of rainfall, increased precipitation (about 5% worth) globally, droughty areas getting droughtier and rainy areas getting rainier, like the IPCC I will agree. This will most likely occur even if we don’t measure dramatic temperature changes, although I believe we will see notable rises in temperature after 2025.

But if you tell me that those changes are happening now, you are either crazy, ignorant or evil. Current climate and notable weather events are not the result of the 0.8C rise in temperatures experienced over the past century. That’s not my opinion. It is the opinion of the IPCC and the scientists who provide the results of their studies to them. It is the opinion of scientists who do not work for them.

Now there are some notable scientists who disagree with the IPCC and my own illustrious self, Kevin Trenberth and James Hansen among them. But they never dispute what mainstream science says–they just assert that global warming is influencing current weather. Bloggers like those at Planet 3 go along for the ride, and propagandists like Joe Romm re-trumpet their assertions. (Is that like re-tweeting, but way older?)

But as more and more people look around them and notice that current weather looks very much like past weather, claims regarding all potential impacts of global warming lose their force and credibility. And the number of people in the general public and in power turn away from concerns about the energy we use and where it comes from. The panic-mongers, agenda-pursuers and their sheep have lulled us to sleep.

As I’ve said many times, here and at 3000 Quads, this leaves us in the position of sleepwalking into the future. And I just want to repeat once more that sleepwalking along a path we share with wolves is not likely to end happily.

On July 7, 2005 I was traveling by tube from my home in Kensington to my work in downtown London. Two trains ahead of ours, a bomb went off. Everybody got out of the trains, walked to a station and up the stairs to sunlight.

Fifty-two people were killed that day in four separate bombing attacks. And although London mourned their loss, they gave a collective two fingers to those who had perpetrated the attacks and went on about their business.

Although they stopped the Metro, people walked to work–not home. And at the end of the day they walked home. And the next day they walked to work.

I can’t do a marathon–too old. But I’m going for a jog for Beantown.

Time for a Sunday evening jog through the blogosphere, then.

As I have come back to the climate change blogosphere, it seems I have happened upon a week where everyone is busy drilling into their own niche. That’s a good thing–people are blogging on what has always interested/obsessed them and there is real feeling in what they are writing. Well, in most cases.

Judith Curry, Lioness of Georgia, has 4 posts up this week, but two are guest posts by Tony Brown and Nic Lewis and one is an open thread. Misters Brown and Lewis are interesting reads and the open thread is what it is, but Judith today wrote on efforts to actually show when correlation actually does mean causation, which could take on the aspect of the Holy Grail for many in environmental academia. Her post is inspired by a paper by George Sugihara of Scripps Institution of Oceanography which grabbed Judith’s fancy and would mine as well, if I had just a little more time. Given my availability and low energy level, I must be honest and say that Tony Brown’s guester was the only one I read thoroughly. And I liked it.

The Miserable Mustelid, William Connolley of Stoat, continues to rampage through the blogosphere, commenting wherever he’s permitted on the premises and usually leaving blog owners regretting their hospitable nature. At his own place of business this week, he manages to be right without being agreeable, railing against the ETS systems that are failing left and right and logically settling on a carbon tax as the only practical means of pricing the negative externalities of CO2. Of course, he stole the logic from Tim Worstall and still manages to set everyone’s teeth on edge. Sometimes being right isn’t enough. And Connolley can’t seem to get away from writing about Wikipedia, worrying at the old scab that his censorious days as an editor there must have left on his shoulder, looking scarily like a chip. Hey, William–you’re always welcome here.

Donna LaFramboise is quickly gaining traction due to her frequent posting–I don’t know where she finds the energy. As usual, she takes the hard but high road of afflicting the comfortable, highlighting hypocrisy and comparing green fantasies to hard truths on the ground.

Real Climate has turned to movie critiquing, which is probably less stressful than McBanging and McBitching. This week’s Thumbs Up goes to Thin Ice, “which tells the story of CO2 and climate from the standpoint of the climate scientists who are out there in the trenches trying to figure out what is going on.”  Feeling a bit suspicious, I clicked through to the opening segment–and it was really, really good. As a movie–I want to watch the rest of it.

Real Climate wasn’t as kind to Switch, another movie they recently reviewed. I haven’t had a chance to check the film out–but I’m glad they’re on the job and I assume it all means there are no fights going on over at their (heavily censored) website, as they must be wondering what to do with all that saved-up popcorn. Yep–head to the theater!

And in another case of symbolic sloth, Tim Lambert’s Deltoid shows the following activity: April 2013 Open Thread; March 2013 Open Thread; February 2013 Open Thread. I sincerely admire someone who, when he doesn’t have anything to say, doesn’t say it. Well done, Tim!

That’s all for this week–feel free to highlight other gems in the comments.

I was working as associate producer for a video production company in the early 90s when we were approached by a young woman who wanted us to do a documentary. After a long period of intense psychoanalysis she had come to believe that long-repressed memories of ritual child abuse had resurfaced, were true and were horrible. Her recovered memories were detailed and intense. They contained narratives of horrific crimes committed by satanic child abusers.

Before we took the commission, my boss asked me to investigate. Certainly there were plenty of media stories about this type of incident–there had been accusations, trials and even one or two convictions. So I clipped newspaper articles and talked with a couple of reporters. One of them named an FBI agent who had been assigned to look at the broad phenomenon–he went from case to case, trying to build a picture of what was really going on. I got his details, called him and he volunteered to come out and meet with our team.

And what he said was as horrifying as the stories that the young woman had told. “I’ve investigated hundreds of these cases–done forensics at scenes where these children were supposedly held, ceremonial sites where other children were supposedly sacrificed. I’ve looked for blood, fingerprints, clothing, fibers. I’ve spent years on this. And I’ve never found one piece of evidence that any of this has occurred. I believe this is the largest case of mass hysteria this country has ever experienced. People who are deeply dissatisfied with elements of their lives look for some root cause to hold responsible–and being a victim of satanic child abuse that was so horrible that you repressed all memory of it relieves you of the responsibility for parts of your life you cannot accept.”

And it turned out he was right. There are worshippers of Satan. There are child abusers. They are not the same and what these people thought were repressed memories were dark fantasies.

Fast forward a bit. There have been a number of instances in the past twenty years where phenomenon have emerged that required a validated and logical explanation. Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy–a disease of cows that damaged brain activity, then physical control and led to death. Most prevalent in England, press reports speculated that hundreds of thousands of English folk would perish from it. And the press and the politicians claimed scientific support for this. It created a public furor that led to the massacre of millions of cows and a reorganization of the entire agricultural sector in the UK.

As we all know, BSE was a terrible scourge for those afflicted, but it was about 157 people in total who actually suffered from it over a 20-year period. And it turned out that the politicians and the press hijacked the agenda away from more conservative scientists, used their own shoddy math to overrule scientific conclusions and come up with mystery projections of mass infection, deterioration and death.

And so it has been ever since. From the safety of vaccinations and genetically modified organisms to the menace of pesticides and fertilizers, Western Civilization has bounced from scare story to scare story, with each one first seized upon by politicians and the press, then pushed out at the general public as the results of scientific inquiry–and then revealed as hopelessly exaggerated or made up out of whole cloth. Power lines. Cellular telephones. DDT.

These all were new phenomenon that sometimes actually posed a threat to small numbers of people, but were clearly less dangerous than the heart disease, stroke and cancer that actually claim most of us at the end of the day. But their newness counted for more than the small number of victims affected and those who profit from a state of perpetual fear rode that horse as far as they could. Some of them were deft enough to change horses in mid-stream, moving from one alarm to another.

And so what of global warming? Is it in fact another new scare? It has elements of it, surely. There are politicians, preachers and pundits who have sounded the alarm without understanding the issue. There are many who have exaggerated the findings of sober scientists and a few scientists who have been less than sober themselves.

And these…villains… for want of a more incendiary term, these villains have adopted the tactics and strategies that were effective in promoting previous scares. Many resorted to hiding the defects of the science instead of promoting honest exploration. Where the scientists predicted modest sea level rise, the hysterics inflated it to drastic floods and where the scientists said that they couldn’t say what would happen at a regional level, hysterics in each region of the world said that theirs would be hardest hit.

But global warming isn’t like the other scares. First, because the globe actually warmed rapidly for a 25-year period. Not at an unprecedented rate, but at an unusual one. There was a real phenomenon. Second, because those who sought to ride the global warming horse to glory were opposed almost immediately, first by those with vested interests at stake, but later by a large number of very diverse people who reacted against the tone and the hyperbole and decided to check the numbers. So although the European Union and California put in stringent emission limits, the world as a whole did not. And although green energy received billions of dollars in subsidies, they proved additive in nature to the energy mix rather than substitutes for more proven fuels.

And now, decades later, we see that those most invested in climate alarmism have resorted to calling current weather the result of climate change, insulting the scientists who clearly say otherwise and anyone old enough to remember or read of similar events in the past. And the warming has stalled–no warming for 16 years, we’re told, during a period where humans have emitted one-third of all emissions in recorded history. And the line in the sand is drawn.

Without disputing the science behind the theory of global warming, without objecting to the temperature record or the declining ice in the Arctic, it is finally safe to say, as James Hansen did before resigning from NASA, that temperatures have stalled. Or as James Annan has said, speaking safely from Japan, that higher estimates of atmospheric sensitivity will probably be dropped from consideration. The Economist, after a decade of lining up with the most pessimistic of public affairs officers, has written clearly and accurately that climate change needs to be re-evaluated in softer terms. And one now can be a skeptic or a lukewarmer and laugh at those still shrilly hurling insults at those who don’t fall in line with their dogma.

There is apparently a time limit–a half life–for public scare stories. Eventually, like Wakefield’s lies about vaccines and autism or the phony claims about GMOs, things like the Hockey Stick Chart, Gleick’s theft and forgery of opposition documents and the bland overconsumption of energy by those championing its restriction undermine the scare stories and leave the public numb.

The job now is to preserve the scientific narrative that was obscured by the alarmists. The recent period of global warming was not imaginary. We are moving into a future that will see us emitting far more CO2 than we are now. Temperatures may have stalled–but they have not fallen, despite the movement of several phenomenon into phases that push temperatures lower. We’re not out of the woods yet.

But if we can keep the alarmists off the stage and out of the newspapers, perhaps a more realistic dialogue can address the real phenomenon instead of the nightmares.

I think I should update you on some changes to my life that will impact my efforts on this blog.

Barring radical developments I will be taking up a permanent position located in Shanghai, China. And, although I’m greatly excited about this, it will of course have serious impacts on this labor of love here.

First, I cannot access WordPress from China. Sad, but true. I won’t be able to post from there. I won’t even be able to comment on other weblogs, which will at least please Michael Tobis, as he won’t have to agonize about censoring my comments on his weblog before heroically deciding to spare his readers from my nefarious and insurrectionist thoughts. Second, this position will require a bit more of my time than it should–I won’t have time to really research what I write and I don’t want to see a drop-off in quality–although folks like William Connelly might argue it wouldn’t be noticeable. And finally, I have been advised that lowering my public profile would be ‘a good thing’, for a variety of reasons…

So, after retiring from Examiner.com a couple of years ago, I think I will soon be retiring from this weblog (and the companion weblog at 3000 Quads) at the end of this month. I still have a few thoughts I want to express, so this isn’t the final post.

I am writing this now because I wanted to offer the possibility of transferring this blog to some interested person or a team. If someone (well, maybe not Stoat or Tobis) who has posted here frequently enough to have a track record would like to assume the glorious position, he or she might well be able to continue this and show the world how I could have done better.

If not, my final post will be an open thread that you are all invited to keep using ad infinitum. I will still be able to comment on this blog via a tunnel email connection, so I’ll at least be able to say hi. And before that happens I will be reposting the major Lukewarmer arguments so they’ll appear at the top of the thread.

It’s nice to be back in San Francisco–even if I’m a bit too jet-lagged to really appreciate it. But this is a move I have been preparing for for several years and I’m really jazzed about it.

So watch this space and I’ll keep you up to date–and like I said, I still have a few things I want to say.

Greetings from Ho Chi Minh City, which had a different name the last time I visited. It’s been a while. They don’t have 9 million bicycles here, either. But it seems as though they have at least that many motorcycles. Moving seemingly at random. To cross the street just look down at your feet and trust their keen eyes and reflexes. It works just fine–most of the time.

It’s warm outside as I write this in an air conditioned room in a holdover French hotel. At 10:00 this morning it was 93 degrees Fahrenheit, or 34C, if you prefer. That’s 4C lower than the average temperature for April, so I suppose I should feel relieved.

There are 6.65 million people living here. As temperatures have warmed over the past 30 years, how has it affected the Vietnamese here in the city formerly known as Saigon?

Their life expectancy has increased from 42 to 79 years of age. Average income has climbed from $100 per person per year to $1,130 between 1986 and 2010. Poverty has decreased from 58% in 1993 to 29% in 2002.

Aside from the statistics, what anyone can see in a taxi ride from the airport to the hotel is people living a very normal, if very different life. Whatever problems they face, and they face a myriad, climate and climate change is not very high on the list. They look animated, healthy, vibrant and completely engaged in life.

Perhaps if temperatures once again start climbing after a 16-year break, our great-grandchildren might end up living like the Vietnamese. At the risk of once again uttering heretical statements, on a Saturday afternoon it looks to this observer as if it might end up an improvement.