Note: Please see this post of mine for more on the project, my sources, and potential sources for bias.
I have written a couple of blog posts on my understanding of climate forecasting, climate change, and the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) hypothesis (here and here). I also laid down the sources I was using to inform myself here.
I think one question that a number of readers may have had is: given my lack of knowledge (and unwillingness to undertake extensive study) of the subject, why am I investigating it at all, rather than relying on the expert consensus, as documented by the IPCC that, even if we're not sure is correct, is still the best bet humanity has for getting things right? I intend to elaborate on the reasons for taking a closer look at the matter, while still refraining from making the study of atmospheric science a full-time goal, in a future post.
Right now, I'm curious to hear how you formed your views on climate change. In particular, I'm interested in answers to questions such as these (not necessarily answers to all of them, or even to only these questions).
- What are your current beliefs on climate change? Specifically, would you defer to the view that greenhouse gas forcing is the main source of long-term climate change? How long-term? Would you defer to the IPCC range for climate sensitivity estimates?
- What were your beliefs on climate change when you first came across the subject, and how did your views evolve (if at all) on further reading (if you did any)? (Obviously, your initial views wouldn't have included beliefs about terms like "greenhouse gas forcing" or "climate sensitivity").
- What are some surprising things you learned when reading up about climate change that led you to question your beliefs (regardless of whether you changed them)? For instance, perhaps reading about Climategate caused you to critically examine your deference to expert consensus on the issue, but you eventually concluded that the expert consensus was still right.
- If you read my recent posts linked above, did the posts contain information that was new to you? Did any of this information surprise you? Do you think it's valuable to carry out this sort of exercise in order to better understand the climate change debate?
What you call "conclusion" is probably a forecast, since we're talking about the future, right?
Recent ice ages have advanced and retreated very quickly on the evolutionary time scale. Earth's various ecologies survived, for example, the last ice age just fine and the glaciation looks to me to have been MUCH more disruptive for temperate zones than a couple of degrees of warming are likely to be.
I agree that we're in the middle of an anthropogenic mass extinction, the only thing is that it has nothing to do with climate change. It's just man taking over the planet. This mass extinction started thousands of years ago, goes on now, and will likely continue in the future.
I think that whatever extinctions global warming may cause, they will be insignificant and indistinguishable from noise given the ongoing (non-climate) human impact.
In some cases, yes, in other cases, it's already observable as an ongoing process (I brought up reef ecosystems before because they're a particularly visible example of this.)
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