Looking at your
RealClimate link in another response of yours, I came to this quote:
Your assertion that there's "no significant rise in surface temperature" carries less weight when the experts you're quoting disagree with you. And citing an expert's credentials and quoting him, without admitting that his position is actually contrary to your own, is being less straightforward than you could be.
As to the "small" increase, what those experts are also saying is that a global change in temperature does not need to be a large number on the Celsius scale in order to be a drastic force for change. There's just no reasonable disagreement anymore that an artificial and rapid increase in global temperature, following the trend we're experiencing now, will have Bad Consequences for humanity. I agree that the science can still stand to improve (it always can), and that the pause in the temperature increase clearly tells us there's more to be learned (there always is).
But there's simply no substantive science telling us man-made climate change will work out OK, just minor causes for doubt, which are totally negligible when taken together with the mountain of evidence that it won't. And that in a nutshell is why I take the position it's well past being reasonable for the GOP to go on denying man-made climate change and resisting legislation to ameliorate it.
PS I see you've responded to another post of mine, but I think I've made my point here. After all, if westwall doesn't like any of those quantifications of human-driven climate change, there's thousands of others to rebuke his claim. Besides, I think it
is time I branched out from the Politics sub-forum...