I will let you have the final statement on this particular subject.
"It's impossible to reproduce 20th century temperatures (modeling, of course) with only natural forcings. By natural, that means volcanic and aerosols."
We don't BEGIN to know what all the "natural forcings" ARE, much less their effects quantitatively.
Start with the major ones and work down the list.
"I would be FLOORED if said models didn't include water vapor feedback."
Correction. What I meant was the effect of water, not necessarily water VAPOR. Specifically cloud cover. Again, we simply do not know what the effects are sufficiently well enough to model them.
Good, had me scared there. I'd say one approach might be an ensemble of models using different cloud parameterizations, and look at the range of outputs. (Scientists rarely give up and say, "Too hard! Let's just give up.")
"And if you think that this means CO2 absorption will saturate in the atmosphere, then I have a few links I can provide that explain why it doesn't, because you also have to account for changing atmospheric dynamics."
Yes, I do think precisely that. And as a spectroscopist, I'm also well aware of the effects of particulate scattering and other parameters.
No soup for you.
"So, if a skeptical friend hits you with the "saturation argument" against global warming, here’s all you need to say: (a) You’d still get an increase in greenhouse warming even if the atmosphere were saturated, because it’s the absorption in the thin upper atmosphere (which is unsaturated) that counts (b) It’s not even true that the atmosphere is actually saturated with respect to absorption by CO2, (c) Water vapor doesn’t overwhelm the effects of CO2 because there’s little water vapor in the high, cold regions from which infrared escapes, and at the low pressures there water vapor absorption is like a leaky sieve, which would let a lot more radiation through were it not for CO2, and (d) These issues were satisfactorily addressed by physicists 50 years ago, and the necessary physics is included in all climate models."
More:
Debunking the 'Skeptics Handbook': More CO2 Does Worsen Climate Change
"So, arguments from authority are the only ones that pass muster, huh? If a National Academy of Sciences Fellow makes the same arguments as I do, then you would listen to him, but not to me? If he references a paper in Science, then he knows what he's doing, and I don't? Just because you have a Ph.D. doesn't automatically confer greater knowledge and understanding, and not having one doesn't mean you can't have a decent grasp of a subject.
ROFLMAO. And you don't see that you are using precisely the argument that your fellow warmers have used to beat down virtually all the skeptics.
Really? Didn't see that. If the science community is excluding good research by non-Ph.D.'s, that's a problem. What I see more often is bad science being presented by scientists with Ph.D.'s.
But if a NAS Fellow made the same arguments you did, I wouldn't believe him either, until I had checked to see if he was full of shit. I've worked with NAS Fellows on occasion, and one Nobel Laureate. And they can be mistaken too. What matters is HONEST science, because the truth WILL eventually be known. And at this point, "climate science" doesn't fit in that category.
Blink blink blink blink blink... fine.
"The data from the WMO shows that for large parts of southern Asia and central Africa, it will have been the warmest year on record. But north America experienced conditions that were cooler than normal - although Canadian cities Vancouver and Victoria saw new record temperatures set and Alaska had the second-warmest July on record."
Your pretty graphic from the last post indicates to me what is probably going on. Simply put, the "warmers" in control of the "corrections" are "cooking the books" to show increased warming in areas in which data are not readily available for fact-checking by skeptics.
Which pretty graphic are you referring to? Is the Australian Meteorological Organization a sector of the global conspiracy?
Explain to me in simple language how an Arctic that is up to 5 degrees warmer than normal can provide air masses to drive Canadian and US weather that is 5 degrees cooler than normal. This seems to be just "slightly" counterintuitive.
You should really ask a meteorologist, because my meteorological expertise is minimal. My guess is that unusual circulation patterns are transporting cold air very efficiently into North America from cold climes, even if it is warmer there than previous decades. I.e., I'd finger an unusual circulation pattern, like a deeply-dipping jet stream.
What makes you think we even have the full "list"?? I don't think we even know what all the SOURCES of warming are.
Here's some science: 1)the sun's magnetic field has doubled in the time humankind has been able to make measurements, 2) the earth moves around the sun within said field, 3)many systems on earth are conductors (oceans, magma, etc.), 4)a conductor moving in a magnetic field generates an electric current.
Where, in the models, is the energy that enters the earth's energy balance from the above mechanism accounted for?? Physics says energy has to be generated, and it has to go somewhere. How much, and where??
This is a source of energy that has precisely nothing to do with what happens to the photons from the sun that happen to intersect the earth.
"Which pretty graphic are you referring to? Is the Australian Meteorological Organization a sector of the global conspiracy?"
Post 95 "National Climate Dataa Center/NESDS/NOAA" ain't the "Australian meteoroligical Organization", but it seems to me that the Aussies and New Zeland climate "scientists" are having problems of their own, with "adjusted" data. So the answer is probably yes, anyway.