What the hell…?

That was the United Kingdom and France, not the USA.

The only “colony” that America has ever had was the Filipino island chain (which we released willingly some years after liberating it from the Japanese), and I don’t recall any of its citizens flying airliners into our buildings.

Does Obama even realize that?

That would be the same thought process that caused Obama to infamously suggest that the U.S. in someway brought 9/11 upon itself because of its history of colonialism in the Mideast.

???

We are so screwed.

These lefties are getting beyond creepy.

http://www.climateaudit.org/

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/p-j-gladnick/2009/06/28/polar-bear-testimony-suppressed-due-inconvenient-truths

(1) The amount of water vapor is not changing significantly; CO2 is. See Radiative Forcing.

I’m familiar with radiative forcing, but note the qualifier above –significantly. Even a trivial variation in water vapor partial pressure swamps the warming contribution from CO2, since there is ca. 100 X more water vapor than CO2 (from all sources) in the atmosphere, and almost 1000 X times more water vapor than all anthropenic CO2.

So a 0.1% variation in the partial pressure of water vapor would equal the partial pressure of all anthropogenic CO2.

Further to that, the IR spectrum of water consists of two whacking great potatoes at around 3000 and 1600 cm-1, leading to a massive oscillator strength (absorption per mole integrated over frequency). That of CO2 consists of two narrow spikes at around 2300 and 1500 cm-1 (IIRC). If you run an IR spectrometer in single beam mode (i.e., so you see the atmospheric absorption), with the attentuation set to keep the water absorption onscale, that of CO2 is a merest blip. Hard to believe that that blip is changing the earth.

(2) Practically speaking, in the absence of strong counter-examples, consensus has a great deal to do with how science works.

Science is a social enterprise, as leftists never tire of telling us, so yes, social factors come into it. The point is that people agreeing with each other that something is true doesn’t have the slightest effect on is actually true.

For a recent example (there are loads of historical ones – see Lord Kelvin’s estimate of the earth’s age, on the possibility of radio communication and heavier than air flight), Google Helicobacter pylorii, for example. Scientific consensus ridiculed Robin Warren and Barry Marshall for asserting that peptic ulcers resulted from bacterial infection. Two MDs from Australia? Please. A couple of cranks. The science was “settled” – peptic ulcers were caused by sstress. Everyone knew that. The experts shook their heads in amusement. Where did these bumpkins come off, anyway?

Warren and Marshall won the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology in 2005.

Oops. Warren and Marshall isolated H. pylorii from peptic ulcers and established its role in causing them by generating dispositive data. No computer models, or any of that crap. Their falsifiable hypothesis was borne out by hard experimental results. Now scientific consensus supports H. pylorii as a cause of peptic ulcers. No more milk, antacids, and stress-reduction. Anti-bacterial drugs are the treatment of the day.

That’s where AGW falls down. No dispositive data, no falsifiable hypotheses, just clapped-up secret computer models. (Jurassic Park was made through us of computer models, after all; the output of a computer model depends on the input. Significantly, Hansen & Co. have refused to publish the details of their model. Too busy giving press conferences.) This is not how science works.

Been there, done that. They arenrt known for being debate freindly. Try Climateaudit.com instead. Where they not only welcome debate, they link back to “Real Climate” while RC will not even mention the name Climate Audit nor Steve McIntyre.