this is not merely the question of just what other dynamic is demonstrably driving global warming than our GHGs,

it is also the need for the deniers to identify just what strange force prevents our GHG outputs

from having precisely the warming effect that we now record,

as science has been predicting they would for more than a generation.

Regards,

Billhook

MIT professor Donald Schon in the 1960s proposed the "Law of Dynamic Conservatism" which describes any tendency towards change is automatically met with an increased effectiveness of the factors that resist change. This plays out in stages in corporations and other social institution as a vigorous attempt to remain stable. The resistance to accepting the valid, empirical data and modeling of the past 40 years by independent scientists can be explained in part by dynamic conservatism. But it is also a concerted effort to protect constituents, economies and lifestyles.

Step 1: Observe – The reported global temperatures have been generally increasing since 1850.

Step 2: Hypothesize – It seems as if the percent of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has been increasing since 1850.  Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that may cause an increase in earth’s temperature.  One hypothesis  (an unproven proposal intended to explain an observation) is that the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is causing global temperatures to rise.

Step 3: Predict – If the percent of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increases, Earth’s temperature will increase as a result.

Step 4: Test
Test A: examine ice core data that correlates temperature with atmospheric carbon dioxide content.  The prediction does not hold because the increase in atmospheric carbon precedes the increase in earth temperature by 500-800 years; therefore, atmospheric carbon dioxide cannot be driving up temperatures.
Test B: correlate current atmospheric carbon levels with global temperature.  The prediction does not hold because we now have a significant period of time (10 years) during which atmospheric carbon dioxide has continued to increase while global temperature has remained steady or fallen slightly.

Step 5: Theorize – Because the tests have demonstrated that the hypothesis is incorrect, there can be no theory that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide causes global warming.  In fact, Test A suggests that increased earth temperature results in higher levels of carbon dioxide.

If you can conclude from the available data that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide causes global warming, you can also conclude that lung cancer causes smoking.

The world is full of people who believe that increased atmospheric CO2 results in higher global temperature, that human activities are responsible for the CO2 increase, and that something  (like the Waxman-Markey fiasco) must be done about it.

I can understand that many people lack the scientific background to evaluate the available data, but the perpetrators of the anthropogenic global warming hoax generally do understand the science, so their agenda must be something other than altruistic climate improvement.   

As an engineer you know that causality is darn near impossible to prove among scientists, who are always trying to be objective. The world is full of independent scientists who have looked at hundreds of thousands of years of ice core data, and conservative climate modeling, the present rapid ice melting, and the thermodynamics of ice and water (ice absorbs heat without increasing temperature above freezing, while water absorbs heat and increases temperature) to see that once the ice is gone, we will experience runaway climate change. That seems more rational that the thousand and one mythologies of every skeptic who has personal theories that don't always measure up to the same integrity of NOAA, NASA, AAAS and NAS.

The geologic record indcates that there is a correlation between atmospheric CO2 concentration and temperature.  Al Gore showed it very clearly in "An Inconvenient Truth".  But Gore said that CO2 drove temperature (meaning that when CO2 increases - or decreases - temperature follows).  That is not correct.  CO2 follows temperature by 500-800 years, meaning that temperature change results in CO2 change, not vice versa.

I'm not sure what you mean by "runaway climate change", but about 80% of the earth's 4.5 billion years have been spent without polar ice caps, so I guess having no ice is more normal than having ice caps.

Regarding "integrity", consider this.  IPCC scientist Richard Courtney said on or about July 15, 2009:

"The Earth has now been experiencing global cooling for a decade. The Southern Hemisphere started to cool about 20 years ago and this cooling spread to include the Northern Hemisphere about 10 years ago.

And there is no clear evidence in the data of recent decades for the existence of anthropogenic (that is, man-made) global warming (AGW) induced by increases to atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations or anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide. The emissions and the concentrations of carbon dioxide have increased (the atmospheric concentration has increased by ~5%) over the last decade while the global temperature has fallen.

The recent global cooling has now been happening for so long that the cooling is even admitted by the pro-AGW-propoganda web site which calls itself RealClimate.org."

When the "consensus" scientists start to change their minds based on the data, what integrity do the "naturally-caused climate change deniers" have?