JohnB

Moriarty, we have a SH3LOCK here. Have you two met?

bombus, where is that image sourced from?

The funny thing is that we've gone the other way. It used to be that the tar content of each cigarette (in mg) was on the outside of the pack. This appears to be no longer required which makes it difficult for those looking for low tar smokes.

Using cows to explain economic systems; Feudalism: You have two cows. The lord of the manor takes some of the milk. And all the cream. Pure Socialism: You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else's cows. You have to take care of all the cows. The government gives you as much milk as you need. Socialism: You have two cows. The government takes one of your cows and gives it to your neighbor. You're both forced to join a cooperative where you have to teach your neighbor how to take care of his cow. Bureaucratic Socialism: You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else's cows. They are cared for by ex-chicken farmers. You have to take care of the chickens the government took from the chicken farmers. The government gives you as much milk and as many eggs as its regulations say you should need. Fascism: You have two cows. The government takes both, hires you to take care of them, and sells you the milk. Pure Communism: You have two cows. Your neighbors help you take care of them, and you all share the milk. Russian Communism: You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the government takes all the milk. Communism: You have two cows. The government seizes both and provides you with milk. You wait in line for you share of the milk, but it's so long that the milk is sour by the time you get it. Dictatorship: You have two cows. The government takes both and shoots you. Militarism: You have two cows. The government takes both and drafts you. Pure Democracy: You have two cows. Your neighbors decide who gets the milk. Representative Democracy: You have two cows. Your neighbors pick someone to tell you who gets the milk. American Democracy: The government promises to give you two cows if you vote for it. After the election, the president is impeached for speculating in cow futures. The press dubs the affair "Cowgate." The cows are set free. Democracy, Democrat-style: You have two cows. Your neighbor has none. You feel guilty for being so successful. You vote politicians into office who tax your cows, which forces you to sell one to pay the tax. The politicians use the tax money to buy a cow for your neighbor. You feel good. Barbra Streisand sings for you. Democracy, Republican-style: You have two cows. Your neighbor has none. You move to a better neighborhood. Indian Democracy: You have two cows. You worship them. British Democracy: You have two cows. You feed them sheep brains and they go mad. The government gives you compensation for your diseased cows, compensation for your lost income, and a grant not to use your fields for anything else. And tells the public not to worry. Bureaucracy: You have two cows. At first the government regulates what you can feed them and when you can milk them. Then it pays you not to milk them. After that it takes both, shoots one, milks the other, and pours the milk down the drain. Then it requires you to fill out forms accounting for the missing cows. Anarchy: You have two cows. Either you sell the milk at a fair price or your neighbors try to kill you and take the cows. Capitalism: You have two cows. You lay one off, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows. You are surprised when she drops dead. Singaporean Democracy: You have two cows. The government fines you for keeping two unlicensed farm animals in an apartment. Enron Capitalism: You have two cows. You sell three of them to your publicly-listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute an debt/equity swap with associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax deduction for keeping five cows. The milk rights of six cows are transferred via a Panamanian intermediary to a Cayman Isands company secretly owned by the majority shareholder, who sells the rights to all seven cows' milk back to the listed company. The annual report says that the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more. Meanwhile, the two cows have died. Environmentalism: You have two cows. The government bans you from milking or killing them. Totalitarianism: You have two cows. The government takes them and denies they ever existed. Milk is banned. Foreign Policy, American-Style: You have two cows. The government taxes them and uses the money to buy a cow for a poor farmer a country ruled by a dictator. The farmer has no hay to feed the cow and his religion forbids him from eating it. The cow dies. The man dies. The dictator confiscates the dead man's farm and sells it, using the money to purchase US military equipment. The President declares the program a success and announces closer ties with our new ally. Bureaucracy, American-Style: You have two cows but you have to kill one of them because the government will only give you a license for one of them. The license requires you to sell all your milk to the government, which uses it to make cheese. The government pays lots of money to store the cheese in refrigerated warehouses. When the cheese spoils, the government distributes it to the poor. The poor get sick from the cheese, go to the emergency room, and are turned away because they have no health insurance. The President declares the program a success and reminds us that we have the finest health care system in the world. American Corporation: You have two cows. You sell one to a subsidiary company and lease it back to yourself so you can declare it as a tax loss. Your bosses give you a huge bonus. You inject the cows with drugs and they produce four times the normal amount of milk. Your bosses give you a huge bonus. When the drugs cause one of the cows to drop dead you announce to the press that you have down-sized, reducing expenses by 50 percent. The company stock goes up and your bosses give you a huge bonus. You lay off all your workers and move your production facilities to Mexico. You get a huge bonus. You contribute some of your profit to the President's re-election campaign. The President announces tax cuts for corporations in order to stimulate the economy. Japanese Corporation: You have two cows. You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk. You teach the cows to travel on unbelievably crowded trains. Your cows always get higher test scores than cows in the U.S. or Europe, but they drink a lot of sake. German Corporation: You have two cows. You engineer them so they are all blond, drink lots of beer, give excellent milk, and run a hundred miles an hour. Unfortunately they also demand 13 weeks of vacation per year and are very expensive to repair. Russian Corporation: You have two cows. You have some vodka. You count your cows and discover you really have five cows! You have more vodka. You count them again and discover you have 42 cows! You stop counting cows and have some more vodka. The Russian Mafia arrives and takes over all your cows. You have more vodka. Italian Corporation: You have two cows but you can't find them. While searching for them you meet a beautiful woman, take her out to lunch and then make love to her. Life is good. French Corporation: You have two cows. You go on strike because you want another cow, more vacation and shorter work weeks. The French government announces that it will never agree to your demands. You go to lunch and eat fabulous food and drink wonderful wine. While you are at lunch, the airline pilots and flight controllers join your strike, shutting down all air traffic. The truckers block all the roads and the dock workers block all the ports. By dinner time the French government announces it agrees with all your demands. Life is good. Political Correctness: You are associated with (the concept of "ownership" is an outdated symbol of your decadent, warmongering, intolerant past) two differently-aged (but no less valuable to society) bovines of non-specified gender. They get married and adopt a calf. Counterculturalism: Wow, dude, there's like . . . these two cows, man. You have got to have some of this milk. Surrealism: You have two giraffes. The government requires you to take harmonica lessons. Anything else I can help you with?

Interesting point. I'm operating on the basis that the CO2 forcing in "definitive" terms is a function of ppmv. As in the forcing of 500ppmv is the same whether now or 500,000 years ago. The claim ATM is that CO2 forcing is very strong, I'm exploring for times when CO2 forcing might also have been defined as "strong". (Accepting of course that "strong is a relative term.)

Sorry for the delay, I've been away for the weekend. Any of the previous cycles. If CO2 is a strong forcing agent, then what causes the temps to drop in the previous cycles? Something causes the temp to drop, even though CO2 continues to rise. Where is the large negative forcing? See what I'm getting at? If however, CO2 is a weak feedback then in previous cycles it piggybacked on the Malenkovitch cycles. this would mean that when the forcing CO2 was "riding" disappeared the temps drop even though the oceans were still releasing CO2 allowing the amount to rise. (At least I think that's where the CO2 was supposed to come from, sounds reasonable to me.) Good question. The current AGW argument centres around this to a degree. (I think:-)) If CO2 is the primary forcing agent, then it must by definition, be stronger than any current negative forcings. The argument is that since it is a "strong" forcing we need to do something about it. If it were a "weak" forcing, then reducing CO2 would have only minimal effect on temps. By analogy, if 40% of car accidents are caused by drunks and 1% by vehicle defects, then you do something about the drunks as that is the "strong" forcing. Doing something about the defects will have minimal effect on accident rates. It is fascinating. Care should be taken in two areas though. Firstly, notice the shaded "estimate of uncertainty" area which gets huge as you go back in time. Secondly, (and this doesn't actually help my argument:D) I don't think that going back more than maybe 10 million years is a good idea. Even if everything else remains the same, continental drift must come into play by changing the pattern of ocean currents. For example, I'm sure the ocean currents were far different in the Triassic period when the continents were arranged in this fashion. Even at a "mere" 50 million years ago currents would have been different. Notice that North and South America have yet to join and India is still in the middle of the ocean having yet to collide with Asia. So I think going back too far is a mistake. Too many other factors are liable to mess up the picture. As to the more recent past. Royer et al 2001 say; (Emphasis mine) Federov et al 2006 maje the comment in their abstract; (You know, I'm really starting to hate paywalls.) Presumably they include CO2 in their "factors". Crowley and Berner 2001 say; Bottom line, the record appears to show that temp and CO2 are not as closely coupled as we think. The records also appear to show that in the last few million years, CO2 has crossed the 300 ppmv mark without a climate catastrophe occurring. I'm aware of that, however CO2 concentrations and temps can be shown together on a linear graph. The graph is a generalised way of showing that temps can remain high even when CO2 levels drop. (But we should always bear in mind the second point I made to POL above.)

If your friends don't tell you what they think, who will? Of course, as with everything, there are three sides. Your side, their side and the truth.

I think the problem I have with this idea is that the record shows that at no time in the past has CO2 been strong enough to either initiate a warming cycle or continue one. If we look at the ice cores, we see that even when the temp drops, the CO2 is still rising. Just keeping things in the vernacular for a little while. As I understand the idea a Milankovitch cycle starts the process of warming which releases CO2 which takes over as the climate driver. (Or amplifies the original driver as a feedback) If CO2 takes over as the climate driver then for the temp to drop while CO2 is still rising, then there must be an unknown negative driver come into play. Yet there is no evidence of such a strong negative driver or feedback. (At least I've never read of a candidate that fits.) Logically then, CO2 has not been shown in the record to be a strong driver. If it were, we would presumably have some indication as to the nature of the even stronger driver that overcame it's effect in the past. If CO2 was "only" a feedback in previous cycles, then it's effect only held while the original driver was in play. Once the original driver reversed or vanished (Milankovitch cycle switching to "negative" mode.) then CO2 was not strong enough to keep the warming cycle going and temps dropped. I can't see how the record can be seen as consistent with the idea that CO2 is either a "strong" driver or feedback. If it were a "strong" feedback temps would have continued to rise in previous cycles, but they didn't. If it were a strong forcing in it''s own right, it would have initiated warming cycles, yet again, it didn't. One obvious answer as to why this warming period is different is to say "This CO2 rise is caused by man". The "cause" is irrelevent. If the temp is going to increase due to increased CO2 then where it came from makes no difference. The atmosphere cannot distinguish between natural CO2 and that from human emmissions. It's CO2, one carbon and two oxygen and the atmospheric response will be the same regardless of the molecules origin. There may be an argument that there is a difference (that leads to CO2 being a forcing in it's own right) because of the magic 300 ppm. As shown by this graph the only real difference is that in previous cycles we haven't crossed 300ppm during a warm period. On the flip side, it must be noted that previous cycles were warmer than our current one even with lower CO2. As an aside, I haven't seen a really good explanation yet as to why the current interglacial seems strangely constant in temp when compared to the sharp rises and falls of previous ones. It has been put forward that the development of agriculture has had sufficient effect to modify the climate for thousands of years. Should this be correct I can only say "Thank God" because we would otherwise have followed the previous patterns and it would be around 2 degrees colder than it is and we would be on the way to the next ice age. Oh goody. But back to 300 ppm. Is it a "tipping point" that allows CO2 to become a driver in its own right and cause massively increased warming? This graph says maybe not. Even with CO2 in the thousands of ppm we idn't get greatly increased warming. This would tend to reinforce the idea that CO2 is not more than a "weak" feedback at best. A difficulty with the graph above and any others like it is the lack of temporal resolution. I don't know if anything can be done about that but I somehow doubt it. What I do find interesting is the apparent 22 degree "ceiling". No matter how high the CO2 climbs, 22 degrees seems to be the maximum temp. This implies to me that around that temp, some very strong negative forcing must come into play. Anyhoo, the above is pretty much why I remain unconvinced that CO2 is a strong forcing agent. There are a couple of others concerning assumptions that will probably come up in your UHI thread.

I don't normally bump old threads, but as I've just been to the Drs I thought some hard and fast data on how the Aussie system works in practice might be of interest to some. I'm afflicted by skin tags, most are small but occasionally 1 becomes objectionable and gets removed. The one on the back of my neck needed cutting as it had got too big. Roughly 4 cm long and 1 cm wide and high. I decided this last Friday and made an appointment at my local private practice clinic for saturday morning. I had the consult but due to time constraints had to schedule the removal for this morning. Cost of consult to me: $67.00 This morning I went in and after a 15 minute wait (which I think is not excessive) I had the tag and another removed. This took about 30 minutes. Cost of this visit to me: $105.00 With my two receipts I drove a couple of suburbs over (about 10 mins) to the Medicare office where I got my queue number. When I arrived they were serving number 151 and I was number 188. After a 20 minute wait I was served. Again I don't think this wait is excessive as they served some 40 people in that time. I handed over my Medicare card and the two receipts and was then given my rebate of $97.30. It's calculated in this fashion. We have what we call a "Scheduled Fee" for proceedures and the rebate is based on this figure. The scheduled fee for the first visit was $33.55 so that's my rebate. Note that my Dr charged me $67.00. The sceduled fee for the proceedure is $63.75, so that's my rebate for todays visit. Again note the actual charge was $105.00. So 2 Drs visits and a minor proceedure cost me, in total, $74.70. Which is also not unreasonable, and I was home around 1 PM. Again, while my rebate was paid under the universal system, my Drs are fully private practice. Aside from the standard oversight that all healthcare provider busnesses get, they are not answerable to the gov in any way. I think this a good example of how a universal system does not limit the Drs ability to have an income. The scheduled Fee might be $33.55, but he is able to charge $67.00 for his services. The Sceduled Fee limits my rebate, not his income. Of course, if he charges too much then people will go elsewhere, a true free market option. Also by having some out of pocket expense, we reduce the attractiveness of going to the Drs for every tiny little thing, a situation that can overload a "free" universal system. If it's free, people go the Drs for a headache, if it costs them $30.00, they wait a bit and see if it passes before they go. Anyway, I thought that some actual times and costs might be of interest to those still thinking about this topic. I dare say that it will be on the American political scene for some time yet.

Bascule, no offence taken. I think this is a good idea as normally a thread will jump around to so many different things. It's good to concentrate on a single theme. If you don't mind, I'd like to take a little bit of time to get full links and put my concerns into a coherent pattern. A couple of notes. GISS do indeed take UHI into account. Their adjustment seems to be based on "brightness". Literally looking at a night time sat photo and deciding how bright the lights are nearby. Brightness then gives a ranking which is used to adjust for UHI. And I posted this graph about a year ago and am no closer to finding out why the early temps were adjusted down by so much. Which is more than a bit irritating. Anyhoo, I'll dig through my links and papers and see if I can get you more data on how GMST is calculated and exactly where I have some concerns with it. Fair enough?

I do know that. I was drawing attention (in my own unique style:D) to that fact that we were told "Flannery basically wrote-off the IPCC" without any supporting references as to: 1. Who "Flannery" is. 2. What his qualifications are. 3. Where he did this. 4. What proof he provided to back his claim. I gather from "when he published his book" that he is an author. So was Jules Verne. I'll put it another way. Except that I've been quoting studies more recent than the AR4 which show the AR4 scenarios to be too high. Would you care to share some of this "real stuff" from peer review land? JH left science behind some time ago. He is also somewhat famous for thinking that democracy is part of the AGW problem. Things would be sooo much easier for his ilk if the people had no say in their future. Be that as it may. References please. And I would just bet that the members of this "new" branch are all climate catastrophists closely linked to James Hansen. Again, references? Then perhaps you actually read the literature before making unsupported statements.

I generally clock up over 300 klms per week. It's not hard. As to the SUV thing. Personally I think it's bollocks. Unless you regularly drive off road there is nothing that an SUV can do that a station wagon can't. As for pulling a boat or caravan, sedans and station wagons have been doing that for decades. I see points both for and against the Tesla car. The against being mainly that if rear ended, your two "rear facing" kids are going to lose their legs. You want to move 7 people? Get a mini bus. The second is this claim Might be true provided nobody has anything bigger than an overnight bag. Also, who gives a rat if it can do 120 mph? There are no roads in Oz where such speeds are legal. "Yea, I've got a car that does 120. Of course there's nowhere I can drive it at that speed." Bit of a waste of time really. Rather than trying to make an electric that does everything an IC car can do, make one that does what electric does best. Commute. What's wrong with having two cars? An IC for long trips and a cheap electric for commuting? I'd love to be able to buy one that gets 100 klms per charge and charges overnight while it's at home. So long as it has A/C and a radio/CD/MP3 player, I'm happy. I only want it for commuting, I've got the Ford for long trips.

Oh, don't carp at him so.

...and that's why there are so many old winos.

Bascule, the Jones paper would indicate that estimates of UHI increase during the 20th C have been grossly under rated as a model input. Others point to the possibility that cloud feedbacks, rather than being strongly positive could instead be negative. These would have impacts on climate sensitivity to CO2 increase and future model projections, don't you think? POL, Good on him. The funny thing is that in science you prove your case. What Hansen is doing is politics, not science. Who is Flannery? And where is his time machine? He writes off a 2007 report in a book published in 2005. Good trick. That's the funniest thing I think I've ever seen written about the IPCC. Can I quote you on this?

And that position is? What's to be confused about? You can hardly argue with a group of self declared; I must shield my eyes from their brilliance lest I be blinded.

Sorry mate. Slang. One of a variety of epithets used to describe reserve or part time troops. "Weekend Warriors" and "Cut lunch Commandos" are two others. I'm glad you don't take it as anti americanism as it's not meant that way. Our nations have been friends for a long time, and I think we're good enough friends to be honest when things get under our skin. Your ITAR rules often cause sore spots. Note this BBC article from 2006. US ITAR rules nearly scuttled the JSF because the US would not guarantee the UK access to the software that would allow the UK "sovreignity" over the aircraft. If we're spending millions on planes, we expect the computer code so that we can fix the things. We would also hope it would be "back door" free. Remember "Promis"? Writing a backdoor and getting it to your enemies is one thing, selling it to your friends is another. I quite agree. I have nothing but respect for the US troopers. I wonder if things change higher up the chain simply because of numbers. If you have 500 troops and 50 are Aussies (10%), you notice them. But if you have 500,000 troops and 1,000 (.2%) are Aussies, you don't notice them as much. Although national pride forces me to say that you will notice 1,000 Aussie troops, no matter how big your battlefield is. Probably by fiinding out that they got there first, secured the objective, captured the enemy, checked out the local pubs and had a cuppa while they waited for everybody else to catch up. BTW, we don't use your main combat rifle (in general use), we use the f88 Austeyr. Still a 5.56 though. Personally I prefer the old FN FAL SLR with the 7.62x51 round. Look, it's not that we don't trust you at all, it's just that there are enough niggles to stop us trusting you (actually your government) wholeheartedly. I'm sure that every Australian that knows jack about military matters is well aware that if push came to shove and we needed help, then every US serviceman and servicewoman would be just itching to come. We just wonder sometimes if your government would find a way to not let them.

Agreed. Either both are terrorist acts or neither are.

Pangloss, I did oversimplify it. Every nation acts in it's own perceived best interest, I agree with you and have made that very statement before in these fora. Hussein is just one of many. Batista? Noriega? Do these names ring a bell? Check out the Dictator of the Month listing and have a look at how many were supported by the US. TBH, they were supported by "The West" in general, but you guys have more money than us, so your support was more visible. People in these nations probably noticed that while the US was preaching "Freedom and Democracy" on the world stage it was also supplying the weapons and vehicles used to take them to detention camps. This is part of the "trust" thing. The US said one thing and did the exact opposite. Not a way to build trust, I'm sure you agree. Your allies don't really trust you because you don't trust them. The US will not sell first string military hardware to anybody. Ostensibly to prevent it being used against the US. Thanks, you're afraid that if you sell us something good, we'll attack you. Yep, a lot of trust there. US military forces will not serve in an International fashion except under the command of US Generals. IOW, you have to control the game or you'll pick up your ball and go home. This attitude was sensible in WW1 because the pommy generals were so bloody poor, but now? Are you afraid that a foreign General will be careless with US lives? Guess what? We wonder the same about your Generals. And the ROW has quite a bit more experience in exactly how p*ss poor a lot of yours are. The US does not share intel with it's allies, even a theatre of war. How long have Aussie troops fought beside yours in Iraq? It took direct action by then President Bush to order the Pentagon to allow Aussie access to the US military internet in Iraq in 2007. The US will take chocolate soldiers and make them Brigadier Generals in charge of international combat troops. Hate to tell you this, but Abu Ghraib was a surprise only to Americans. It would appear that the US believes that it's part time Generals/Management consultants are better than everybody elses full time experienced Generals, would it not? Is this "arrogance"? Starting to see why there is a lack of trust? * Comments above about the US military are about the leadership only. The US front line soldier is as brave as any other nations. It's a shame that they are sometimes so poorly trained, equipped and led. I have yet to meet the trooper that won't fight beside them without qualm. As an aside. There has been speculation ("on the ground" shall we say) that the US militarys problem is that has so much. In the 1991 Gulf War 1,848 M1 Abrams were deployed by the US. That's a lot of tanks. Your military philosophy has been about getting "more" onto the battlefield. Little militaries like Australia (who only have about 100 tanks in total) have to work out tactics that work with "less".

In our sleep? Nah. Lightly fried with a sweet white wine sauce however........

That's what Spock was trying to do. Use the red matter to destroy the star before it blew.

Bear's Key, since the start of the Cold War the US has had a policy of supporting a tinpot dictator provided he supported the US. And the US government was too arrogant to notice that this action diddn't endear them to the oppressed populations. As to the second sentence it needs no extension. Nobody trusts you. It's that simple. America doesn't trust anybody else, so why should anybody else trust you?

Honey has been found in a few tombs, the earliest discovery was in 1905. The tomb of Yuya and Tjuyu was opened by Theodore Davis. The honey was found to be "nearly liquid" and still retained it's scent. Link here. (KV 46 is unusual as it is a non royal tomb in the Valley of the Kings.) The honey is usually starting to crystalise, but is believed still edible. AFAIK nobody has been game to try. (The honey itself is probably not harmful to your health, but the subsequent lynching by enraged Egyptologists would be.)

Firstly apologies for slow replies. I'm currently shaped to 64k and so d/loading a pdf link to read takes a long time. As does finding research to back my case. iNow, I just love science by press release, don't you? Especially 4 year old press release. (I find it interesting that there seems to be a dearth of recent articles listed on Google scholar when searching for the terms permafrost and methane. Although there are quite a number concerning microbes.) A sinple question. If the permafrost was laid down 11,000 BP and it was warmer 8,000 BP than it is now, why don't we see this massive increase in methane in the record? If it's going to melt now because of the temp, then it would have melted then, wouldn't it? You may be interesed in this though. While less alarming than you news articles, it is at least peer reviewed. I quote; My point with the graph was that bugger all is happening. Slightly positive, slightly negative, take your pick. The bottom line is that statistically, nothing is happening. Like you I do look at the 30 year trend, but unlike you I also consider the shorter periods. The reason for this is simple. Using only the 30 year trends, you will always lag behind what is actually happening. Let's assume that temp increase and decrease were monotonic at a rate of .1 degree/decade and that they followed a 40 year cycle. (I'm not saying they do, this is just to illustrate the point.) So a 40 year increase is followed by a 40 year decrease. Up then down. In year 40, the 30 year trend will show a rise of .1 degree/decade, which is correct. However, by relying only on the 30 year trend you will be 15 years into the cooling phase before the trend line levels out. You will be 30 years into the cooling phase before your 30 year trend line shows the true trend of -.1degree/decade. The reverse is true when you move from a cooling to a warming phase. See the problem? While it is wrong to only consider short periods, it can be equally misleading to only consider long periods. I can't watch the Nova program ATM for the reason given above, however I must ask whether it is more accurate than the blurb accompanying it. Really? IPCC AR4 Chapter 10 Table 10.7 puts the maximum rise under their A1F1 scenario at .59 metres. Less than 2/3 of what the program is saying "experts expect". So far, you've provided two news articles and a TV program. The three papers you linked to. Let me fill in the gap you left in the first; (Emphasis mine.) Also; Shock, horror. They must be wrong, they disagree with the IPCC. Actually I thought this a very interesting paper, I must look for more by these gents. Your second link; What's wrong with "motivating questions? This is a good thing. Their actual conclusions are also worth reading. I'd heard of papers like your third, but hadn't read one. Interesting. The biggest problem I see is in the extrapolation of sea level rise. Comparisons to Heinrich events is just plain dumb. (Unless you have a Laurentide Ice Sheet hiding somewhere?) There just aren't any multi kilometre thick ice sheets to provide the needed water. Don't you find it a bit odd that there is so much mention of only positive feedbacks? Negatives must exist and must be very powerful. If not, then Earth would have become a lifeless hot ball eons ago. It didn't happen when temps were much higher than today and it didn't happen when CO2 was far higher than today. I never said it should. However if you look at table 10.5 of AR4, none of the projections look remotely like reality. Again, how many more years of statistical nothing is needed? Also, do you agree that for UHI purposes all nations were "developing" during the 20th C? As I said, the Spencer paper is in review. Although it is available at his blog by following the link.

That bugged me too. You'd think that saving the Homeworld would be a bit higher in their priorities.