Try 386 ppm - ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/trends/co2_annmean_mlo.txt

The rest of your post is true diversion and/or bunk. Fairly tales that comfort you. Do you honestly think climate scientists don't take methane into account? In fact, scientists have recently found increases in ocean methane flux due not to volcanoes but due to warming clathrate deposits (see my sig link).

So, the peer-reviewed research isn't good enough for you, but some guy in a bar is an impeccable source? Come on!

@Yminale- even grade schoolers know that when you want to throw out outliers "just because", you're trying to game the numbers. Outliers should be discarded from an analysis only when you know why they are not relevant for the analysis at hand, or are not accurate data.

Arctic temperatures are accurate and relevant!

I maintain that [climate science] is not a socialist ideological ploy.

I'm not lying, though I may be crazy.

I have read the research from Arrhenius and Tyndall to Murphy and Trenberth. It's really pretty simple:

- CO2 levels have increased over 100ppm due to human activity (and we're still going). Ironclad science.

- Though it's only a trace gas, CO2 has significant capacity to trap infrared radition. Ironclad.

- There are lots of natural causes of temperature fluctuations. No one disagrees about this. None of these preclude CO2 forcing, and you can't explain the temperature record without recent CO2 forcing.

- In response to this extra heat, lots of other stuff (feedbacks) happen. This is the area where all the uncertainty is.

- Bottom line: Doubling CO2 will induce a temp. rise of 2 to 4.5 degrees. This is the range you get when looking at recent data, paleo data, what happens in response to volcano models, climate models, etc.

Putting Phil Jones's et al. heads on a pike doesn't change any of this; it's all soap opera now.

[@Yminale- your argument falls apart if you use any year other than 1998 as your baseline. The 2000's are the hottest decade on record globally, full stop.]

But I really don't buy into this gloom and doom stuff. The reality is, shipping stuff on a container ship isn't particularly energy-intensive, relative to the energy used in production and over-land transport.

.. that the really creative, ambitious, geniuses in our culture are also completely batshit insane?

I have to admit, on some deranged level, Beck is a genius. Completely insane, mostly bad for the country, but I have to hand it to him.

This little soap opera is all about politics, personalities, and ideologies. It's not really that much about the underlying science.

The bottom line, for me, is that the climate sensitivity to a doubling of CO2 has been estimated every which way from Sunday to be in the range from 2 to 4.5 deg C. See e.g. Knutti et al 2008 (see my sig link for a PDF of that paper). This is true using recent observations, paleo observations, climate models, current climate mean state, etc. etc.

Until someone shows me that the actual sensitivity is way toward the low end of that range, with a high degree of confidence, the prudent thing to do is be cautious and get on a lower carbon trajectory. There's a lot that can be done without great cost or risk.

is not universal.

It's more relevant when operating costs are high relative to capital costs, and there's a lot of demand elasticity.

It is less relevant when operating costs are pretty low and demand elasticity is low.

For example: If I use a washing machine that uses half the energy and half the water, I'm not going to double my washing volume. I may increase a little, but my volume of dirty clothes is pretty fixed. Similarly, it's not operating costs that are keeping poor people from owning & using washing machines- it's the cost of the machine (and the availability of, say, electricity).

The Jevons Paradox is an interesting effect, but those who point to it as a reason to not bother with efficiency don't fully understand it.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

If someone- a politician, an inventor, a scientist, anyone- make a really unexpected claim, the right thing to do is match your skepticism to the scale of the claim.

It's a simple rule of thumb that's very useful.

Too bad I'm not close to DC- I'd love to see him live.

Another more recent entry in the inspiring, sustainable-development African department: William Kamkwamba

http://www.ted.com/talks/william_kamkwamba_on_building_a_windmill.html

When Genius Failed, p102:

"You're picking up nickels in front of bulldozers"

I don't see anything about a superior DRM (i.e. no DRM) model on the Nook site, so I assume it's there.

No thanks. I never bought DRM'd music (OK, 2 tracks); I'll never buy DRM'd books.

I do believe that increasing atmospheric CO2 levels by 50% (and doubling soon enough) is a problem. But the warming-hurricane link is not a slam dunk, at all. All else equal, warm waters can provide more energy to storms, but warming may affect things like wind shear in a way that can impede storms.

And proving that a specific event is due to global warming? Not going to happen; it doesn't make sense. It's a probabilistic relationship.

The plaintiffs will lose if this goes to court; skeptics will trumpet it as "proof" that global warming doesn't exist, and we'll all be worse off.

Pity I can't type.

Is a good science writer, both in blog and book form- I recommend Newton and the Counterfeiter.

His obsession with McArdle is bordering on unhealthy, but he's absolutely right.

McArdle is in the business of adding noise to the system (as opposed to Levenson's signal). It's much easier and profitable to make stuff up (especially if it supports big Pharma) than to actually construct reasoned, defensible arguments.