I'm not "everybody". Never have been. Some things are pretty certain in climate science. Other things aren't. One of the things that is settled is that mankind's activities are having an effect on climate. One of the main reasons is increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations. You may not believe that; please keep reading before responding to this.
What Dyson said was that he didn't know what the CURRENT STATE of the field was. You chose to ignore the fact that Dyson HAD done work in global climate modelling. His statment was that is in depth knowledge of the current SOTA is stale, not that he "didn't know much about it".
"I was involved in climate studies seriously about 30 years ago."
What kind of computers were they running climate models on 30 years ago?
Nice weasel-word..."quantitatively". Perhaps not, but we can certainly know it qualitativly from the historical record, both archealogical and written.
Not weaseling, just being accurate. Qualitatively, all that can be said about the MWP is that was warmer during that period (~900 AD to ~1300 AD) than during a few centuries before then and especially a few centuries after. You can't compare to the 20th century and say "it was warmer". All you can say is "it was warm then, and it's warm now".
So what?? The question is not whether the globe is warmer than 1880, it is whether it has been warmer in recent history, and the answer is yes. See above-referenced Medieval Warm periods.
It's warmer now than any time in the instrumental record -- mankind had a part in causing that. Mankind had a very minimal part in causing the MWP (maybe a small contribution from land-use change, and that's debatable). The issue on the table is what should be done about what's causing the warming now.
Special relativity is not what I meant by a predictive science. I meant a science that is partly in the business of making forecasts. So maybe I should have said a forecasting science.
When you've done science as long as I have, you begin to recognize the symptoms of people who don't have a case, and global warming fits the bill completely. The constantly-escalating doomsday scenarios from models, one ever higher than the next, is a tactic of desperation, and reeks of propaganda.
Or better models. ;-)
Would you mind, just for my own understanding, placing yourself on this five-point scale?
1. The world is not currently warming and will not in the future due to increasing concentrations of atmospheric CO2.
2. The current warming is not caused at all by increasing atmospheric CO2 and related positive feedbacks.
3. The current warming is partly caused by increasing atmospheric CO2 and related positive feedbacks.
4. The current warming is mostly caused by increasing concentrations of atmospheric CO2 and related positive feedbacks, but it won't be a problem for humanity during this century.
5. The current warming is mostly caused by increasing concentrations of atmospheric CO2 and related positive feedbacks, and it could begin causing significant problems for humanity during the 21st century.
(I know you're not a 5, but I had to define the full scale.)
You're incorrect.
HERE is the best synopsis of the Climategate scandal that I have read (and I have read most of them), especially with regard to the fraudulent "science" of it all.
"What you do, if you are a serious scientist operating according to the established method, is attempt to falsify your hypothesis. Test it to destruction; carry out serious attacks on its weakest points to see if they hold up. If they do... then you have a theory that can be published, and tested, and verified by other scientists. If you don't, you throw it out.
The "scientists" who perpetrated the "global warming" fraud approached their "science" in exactly the opposite manner as the approach described above. They formulated a theory and then did whatever they had to do with their data to "prove" it.
What the world has now seen with the expose of the "global warming" scam is a new spin on an old saying: "Figures can lie and liars can figure." The discipline of science itself has taken a massive hit over the past two weeks and it could take years for science to regain credibility with the public. A lot of that burden must fall on honest scientists, and the first and most important thing they must do is scream for the heads of Michael Mann, Phil Jones, and the rest of the fraudsters. I guess we'll see if they have the integrity to do it....
Are you a scientist?
Sorry, no. And that is precisely the point. There are far too many factors in WARMING involved to draw any such conclusion
That CO2 causes some fraction of increase in heat deposition to the planet is obviously incontrovertible physics, but whether that increased heating will result in actual temperature increases is totally unknown.
"Special relativity is not what I meant by a predictive science. I meant a science that is partly in the business of making forecasts. So maybe I should have said a forecasting science."
This quote says you don't know ANYTHING about science. ALL science is about making predictions, special relativity no less than atmospheric physics.
And right now, the evidence is that the solar physicists are doing a better job of predicting what climate will do than the AGW climatologists.
The physicist's models have predicted cooling. Cooling is currently happening. The climatologists have predicted warming, and warming is NOT happening.
And even the CRU fakers admit as much.
"What kind of computers were they running climate models on 30 years ago?"
Mainframes.
"Qualitatively, all that can be said about the MWP is that was warmer during that period (~900 AD to ~1300 AD) than during a few centuries before then and especially a few centuries after."
Sorry, but my interpretation/understanding of the archeological and historical record says that it was warmer then than at present. And there ARE "quantitative" models that show it to have been so. Many of those ARE older, including that developed by the guy who started the CRU in the first place, but, as proven by the CRU fiasco, modern models tending to show the effect have been suppressed by political manuverings.
"Would you mind, just for my own understanding, placing yourself on this five-point scale?"
Would you mind, just for my own understanding, lay out precisely what your academic background is in science.
"1. The world is not currently warming and will not in the future due to increasing concentrations of atmospheric CO2."
See above about "solar physicist's models" as to why. That there was warming up until recently is correct. That for the last few years the warming has stopped, is also correct. And until we get much better models, we simply cannot presently predict what is going to happen. The current models are incapable of doing so, again, as has been admitted even by the most rabid of the "CRU crew".