“By “ignore the scientific literature completely,” I simply mean that, in the many discussions we’ve had, … you have repeatedly and resolutely refused to cite literature”

Prone to exaggeration are we John? I’ve *never* cited literature? Obviously there is some other cause for your hostility. Whatever it is, your apparent complete dependence on the existing literature puts us in different universes, and your recent tendency to use your bully pulpit means we have nothing further to discuss.

You claim to want to “to beat them about the head and shoulders with a big hammer – one called reality.” In this case, reality involves the actual amount of carbon in the biomass of a forest before it burns, the amount of ash left after, the amount converted to soot, etc. This can be measured, and there is a rich literature created by people who have actually done that – just as they’ve gathered data on the relationship between climate and the Anasazi, on urban heat islands, on the response of plants to enhanced CO2, etc. Willfully ignoring that data, as you have done in this and many other discussions, seems an odd way of bringing your beloved and oft-invoked “reality” to the table.

Don’t get me wrong – in fact it’s too late for that if you believe, as you say, that I “ignore the scientific literature completely.” That’s ludicrous and if I gave you that impression I either mispoke or you are under the spell of the Oil for Food thugs. When did I say it?

However, there are two aspects of studies. One is the facts thereof, the other is the extrapolation or conclusions of the authors. The primary example, of course, is that although CO2 causes an increase in the greenhouse effect, to say therefore most global warming is caused by increased CO2 is fallacious – As I’ve said many times before, just because A causes B doesn’t mean all of B is caused by A, nor that it’s even sensible. It’s like saying if you stick your arm out of a car’s window you increase the wind resistance so the car will theoretically slow, which is the reason your car is slowing down – while ignoring the fact you’ve just run out of gas…

Another example of why I’m sometimes skeptical – or septical if you’re a kiddie:
http://tinyurl.com/phyrj
If I’m not mistaken, the Sahara is hotter than the Amazon, so to say decreased transpiration cools Earth is, to me, questionable.

The science is not settled, as even the High Priest of Alarmism Al Gore admitted:
“They just don’t know”
http://newsbusters.org/node/6231

So I do, and I think everyone should, reserve the right to question dogma.

It is also quite possible that the effect of black carbon is much more potent by mass than that of CO2, so in fact burning forest fires may be a positive feedback, depending on the time period chosen. Gavin could be right

I’m afraid I’m more in tune with reality. My funding doesn’t depend on how alarmed I can get people – not that he and hundreds of others depending on that necessarily do it on purpose – sometimes that’s just where they’re coming from. They’ve focused on that because of their concerns, and have found the penultimate psychosis thereof – the ultimate, of course, being simple religion – of various other “faiths.” So, “simply looking to the scientific literature to the people who have collected actual data” without putting it in context is for simpletons. There is a part of “AGW” that is a blame game – blaming it on previous generations, for example. Also, blaming it on those with, for another example, bigger cars. Longing for the mythical “good old days.”

My belief system lies in the sciences – The art of Geometry; the attempt to understand nature, and to synchronize with it. There is no such thing as “the ideal climate.” That’s why they call it weather. It is not a given that the warmer Earth is the more variable the weather. The warmer the poles, the less the differential between there and the equator. Hurricane intensity seems should increase, but there is not statistically significant evidence thereof, except in the minds of those on the bandwagon scurrying for more funding. New Orleans will be gone by the end of the century one way or another – unless we get some prodigious flood which moves the sediment down there that we’re artificially storing upstream – and then it might just be buried anyway…

Summarizing, I don’t know either. I do know that the claims of alarmists like Gavin are sometimes irrational (as shown here) but that’s their paradigm, and their tribal language shows that wandering into their camp puts a truth seeker in for some heavy ad hoministic gauntlet running (e.g. that wholly juvenile term “septic”).

But, there are those of us who see through the smoke and mirrors and are attempting to beat them about the head and shoulders with a big hammer – one called reality. As I’ve said repeatedly, just because A causes B doesn’t mean all of B is caused by A, or even that it can be sensed because of other variables. That’s a logic lesson sadly missing here.

I didn’t question Gavin because a) his comment was consistent with what I saw in my quick look at the literature, while yours was not b) Gavin’s track record in conversations with me is good, which is to say well-grounded in the actual scientific literature, while yours is not, and c) you’re the one who raised this issue, not Gavin.

You could be labeled irrational for saying it “is” a negative feedback rather than saying it “could be” a negative feedback. Or you could labeled irrational for believing the results of your own idle speculation, thinking you can puzzle through the answer for yourself in some sort of a gedankenexperiment rather than simply looking to the scientific literature to the people who have collected actual data.

It’s more a methodological question. I’ve no idea what the answer is, but in the past I’ve found the scientific literature to be a more fruitful place to find it than your thought experiments.

Thanks to Tony Davis and the AZ Star:

http://www.azstarnet.com/allheadlines/136969.php
Corrections
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 07.08.2006
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● An A1 story Friday inaccurately described a University of Colorado scientist’s views on global warming. Roger Pielke Jr. said he accepts the basic premise that climate change is a serious environmental threat, but he’s seeking a “third way” on the issue between skeptics and alarmists.

I’m curious why you didn’t mention organic carbon (OC)? Per Bond et al. (JGR, 2004) biomass burning emissions of BC in 1996 were 8,035 Gg, but biomass burning emissions of OC were 25,425 Gg.

Per LLNL, the direct negative forcing from biomass burning OC appears ~2-3 times as large as the direct positive forcing from BC:

http://www.llnl.gov/str/April03/Chuang.html

Or do you think that’s wrong?