Re: Climate change is here and action needed now, new White House report says
It's not a secret: climate scientists agree that climate-warming trends over the past century are very likely due to human activities,1and most of the leading scientific organizations worldwide have issued public statements endorsing this position. The following is a partial list of these organizations, along with links to their published statements and a selection of related resources.
Climate Change: Consensus
let's break down this consensus you speak of.
climate scientists agree that climate-warming trends over the past century are very likely due to human activities,
This is the only part of what you said that has value in measuring any type of consensus,
because organizations, do not count as individuals.
"agree that climate-warming trends over the past century are very likely due to human activities"
What are they agreeing to?
Are they agreeing to the full range of catastrophic predictions by the IPCC?
We do not know, because they did not ask that question!
Are they maybe agreeing to the idea that feedback from CO2's direct response,
will cause catastrophic warming?
We do not know, because they did not ask that question!
Ah, Maybe they are agreeing CO2 is a greenhouse gas and has a warming curve,
that is accepted by Physics?
But that could not be it, that amount of warming is not alarming.
I actually agree that some of the warming over the past century
is very likely due to human activity.
So the consensus, is quite vague, vague enough to include
anyone who understands Science, including myself.
So how can I be skeptical of the catastrophic predictions, and yet be part of the consensus?
This drives home, something I have discussed before,
There are two separate concepts within the idea known as AGW.
The first is that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and likely causes some warming.
The second concept, is that combinations of feedbacks, will cause catastrophic warming,
beyond the accepted direct response of CO2.
The consensus idea, would lead one to believe, anyone who accepts the first part,
automatically accepts the second, but they are completely different.
The direct response was known and measured, before we had Quantum to understand what was going on.
The second part has never been quantified, and may not even exists.
The instrument record reflects what I am saying.
If you accept the IPCC's number for the direct response of CO2 (1.2 C for each doubling),
then there is only .2 C of the .8 C in the last 133 years that could be attributed to
all other effects known and unknown.