Good to see you distance yourself from that Four.   As Tom has said I don't think you should dismiss what the tree rings show - yes, they have limitations.  This is all just an excuse to dredge up the 'hockey stick' argument again, isn't it?  I think we all understand why, i.e. because it is such a well-known slogan for climate change so if the sceptics/deniers can undermine it they think they can influence opinion about AGW.  Do you play along with that?

As regards "runaway warming", is there a forecast chart that shows this occurring by the second decade of the 21st century?  I'm sure we would all like to see the evidence for your claim Four.  Certainly my understanding was that this not going to occur in the next 50 years at least.

ABCD Mind Control Central transmits instructions to talk about tree rings via WUWT to it's robotic PR Nodes when it's a slow news day.  As usual it's just an ad-hom on climate scientists - in this case Briffa and his co workers. It is intended to prevent casual observers from concluding that the major aspects of the science are settled and to discredit scientists in general.

http://climateaudit.org/2012/05/06/yamal-foi-sheds-new-light-on-flawed-data/#more-15956

In particular, for those unaware of the connection, he says this -

The Yamal chronology is relevant both because, since its introduction in 2000, it has been used in virtually all of the supposedly “independent” IPCC multiproxy studies (see an October 2009 discussion here) and because it is particularly influential in contributing an HS-shape to the studies that do not use bristlecones.

And you believed him and repeated it verbatim. How very sceptical of you.

According to..............S. McIntyre.

I think you may have overlooked the matter of one-sided scepticism.  Or perhaps not.

Interesting read -

http://judithcurry.com/2012/05/20/copenhagen-consensus-2012/

The results of The Copenhagen Consensus 2012 have just been released. Bjørn Lomborg assembled a blue ribbon panel including Nobel Laureate economists. They ranked the top 30 most important humanitarian projects.

.........including climate change of course.

Interesting yes, but an AGW key issue? ...probably not.

Absolutely fine for a bunch of economists to give their opinion about which things they think political effort should be concentrated on. I don't think it's an AGW science issue though.

And I see you contributed a great deal of political commentary to the thread - "Right-wing-politics-and-scepticism-towards-AGW" - and politics isn't science either, but, that too, is greatly involved and indeed, seems to dominate the debate.

Yes I agree polarwind. The topic title is 'AGW - key issues' not 'AGW - key scientific issues' and politics and economics play a huge role in the debate.

Well, it might be instructive to re-read the opening post in this thread by Llamedos:

This thread has been opened primarily as a reference section for the benefit of members who haven't posted in the climate forum before.

I'm fairly certain that the intention was to focus on the science but as with most threads in this Forum we have drifted somewhat.

It doesn't say anything about it just being the science. Why not start a AGW key science issues if you think it's needed?

No need - one was started and it is this one. 

Feel free to keep taking the discussion off topic though....

Ok Gandalf, where does llamedos state this thread is only about key science issues? I think many of the key issues about climate are political, moral and economic. That's assuming we want to do anything about it?

Well it seems perfectly clear to me that the thread was started to draw together contributors' positions in the debate about climate change.   I don't see that it's possible to include political, moral and economic issues in that.  I agree they are relevant but they are about our response to AGW, not about AGW itself.

I have often thought that a thread about the responses to AGW might be useful.   With a starting point that AGW is real and will be a problem at some stage in the future the discussion would then be about responses and not arguments about whether it was happening or not.

Perhaps I'll set one up.

Ok Gandalf, I think we are just looking at it in a different way, you could say that AGW only exists because of political and economic issues?

I see you've set up the other thread so in the interests of your blood pressure I'm happy to post my thoughts on the key political, economic and moral issues of AGW over there

Er, no you couldn't, unless you are alluding to the reason for the burning of fossil fuels.  But that would be to miss the point or distort it to the point of meaninglessness.

Blood pressure normal thanks, as always.

I am used to it pw and it's a thought to cheer up even the darkest of days

The biggest key issue is that three-quarters of the increased forcing energy caused by man's GHGs and aerosols is either literally missing (Residual) or is increased Outgoing radiation from the Earth.

Increased Ocean Heat Content was the last potential area to find the missing energy and this has now been exhausted as it is less than one-third of that needed to meet the projections of the theory.  The energy is not missing; it was never there in the first place.

The theory needs to be re-written now.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/05/ohc-modelobs-comparison-errata/

Erm Bill,

You're a bit too late with that one:

http://climate.nasa.gov/news/index.cfm?FuseAction=ShowNews&NewsID=672

"Our data show that Earth has been accumulating heat in the ocean at a rate of half a watt per square meter (10.8 square feet), with no sign of a decline," Loeb said. "This extra energy will eventually find its way back into the atmosphere and increase temperatures on Earth."

Total direct forcing is +2.0 W/m2/yr (before feedbacks that are to triple that number).

Energy is accumulating around 0.4 W/m2/yr in the Oceans and 0.08 W/m2/yr in ice-melt, land and atmosphere warming.

Leaving a total 1.5 W/m2/yr missing. 

Either the forcing estimates are wrong, the energy is escaping faster than predicted, the feedbacks are negative or the energy is hiding somewhere else.

That is not a valid conparison because the raised temperature increes outgoing IR. The comparison reported in the paper is the comparison between the observed radiative inbalance measured by satellite and the heat storage in the ocean