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?
I'm fairly confident about the sign, but not the magnitude of climate change. I'm not sure that greenhouse forcing is the principle component. IPCC estimates seem pretty reasonable since they were scaled down a while back.
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)?
I didn't have much of an opinion at first. I saw that warming was believed by scientists and believed it. Then I saw a bunch of politicization and became somewhat contrarian. I went seeking out information to confirm or disprove my contrarianism and found a whole bunch of uncertainty. I became confident that people who were confident about the area were wrong. I investigated economic analysis of best and worst case scenarios and concluded it wasn't worth paying attention to.
What are some surprising things you learned when reading up about climate change that led you to question your beliefs
Climate sensitivity and public choice issues in climate science. Climate science was my first exposure to a scientific field in disarray with money flowing based on politics rather than truth seeking. This eventually lead me to being more skeptical of claims in lots of other fields as I studied public choice and statistics.
If you read my recent posts linked above, did the posts contain information that was new to you?
No, but this exercise of tracking beliefs was good.
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).