OH NO! Another scientist says the science is NOT settled. Worse, this guy was undersecretary for science in the Energy Dept. during Obamas first term. Guess he won't be getting the invite to the after party at the U.N. http://online.wsj.com/articles/climate-science-is-not-settled-1411143565?KEYWORDS=climate+change
Great article. Just get a few dummies around here to accept his statement to this point: "Nor is the crucial question whether humans are influencing the climate. That is no hoax: There is little doubt in the scientific community that continually growing amounts of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, due largely to carbon-dioxide emissions from the conventional use of fossil fuels, are influencing the climate. There is also little doubt that the carbon dioxide will persist in the atmosphere for several centuries. The impact today of human activity appears to be comparable to the intrinsic, natural variability of the climate system itself."
the problem with this hansen hypothesis type statement is that recent data including the bomb test curve data shows that co2 cycles through in about a 10 th of the time the nutters presume it does. That centuries thing was a big issue for Piezoe on a thread lately. You really need to understand that the entire nutter case rests on very dubious assumptions made by the Bern model. If you care about the contrary data... you can read it here in a guest essay... http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/...or-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide-residency-time/
So Koonin's overall argument, that the science is not settled, is true, but his caveat, as above, regarding the certainty of Man's influence and its magnitude, is false?
you seem to have it right... ricter. imo, the the bomb test curve data...shows that co2 gets relaxed far more quickly... see "d" below.... Paper 1 in the trilogy clarifies that a. The bombtest curve provides an empirical record of more than 95% of the relaxation of airborne C14-carbon dioxide. Since kinetic carbon isotope effects are small, the bombtest curve can be taken to be representative for the relaxation of emission pulses of carbon dioxide in general. b. The relaxation process conforms to a monoexponential relationship (red curve in Fig. 2) and hence can be described in terms of a single relaxation time (turnover time). There is no kinetically valid reason to disregard reported experimental estimates (5–14 years) of this relaxation time. c. The exponential character of the relaxation implies that the rate of removal of C14 has been proportional to the amount of C14. This means that the observed 95% of the relaxation process have been governed by the atmospheric concentration of C14-carbon dioxide according to the law of mass action, without any detectable contributions from slow oceanic events. d. The Bern model prescriptions (blue curve in Fig. 2) are inconsistent with the observations that have been made, and gravely underestimate both the rate and the extent of removal of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions. On basis of the Bern model predictions, the IPCC states that it takes a few hundreds of years before the first 80% of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions are removed from the air. The bombtest curve shows that it takes less than 25 years. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/...or-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide-residency-time/
I know! You pick the parts out of any scientist's report that you agree with, ignore the rest, and cobble what you have together into your desired conclusion.
We can all pick out the parts of the article that suits us, but the main thrust is this part. "We are very far from the knowledge needed to make good climate policy" So before we go off in some wild eyed direction lets let the real scientists continue their studies while we ignore the hacks like Gore.