Quoting from your nice post:
The reason the historical temperature measurements indicated a lower climate sensitivity than models or paleoclimate data is because the Earth has a fast and a slow response to increases in carbon emissions, Proistosescu said.
I am pleased to see the often overlooked slow and fast response mentioned in the quote above from your post. There is a large body of evidence now supporting the finding of the slow and fast cycle, and I have commented on it previously in these forums, perhaps it was even in this thread. What I want to point out here is that the phase shift studies offer clear evidence that the fast response is driven by short term temperature fluctuation which rides on top of longer term CO2 variation driven by slower temperature variation buffered by the huge heat capacity of the oceans. Thus I hasten to point out that our Harvard friends have the relationship quite backwards, as first pointed out by Murry Salby a number of years ago. Temperature is the independent variable and CO2 the dependent, not the other way round. The phase studies in the peer reviewed literature make this very clear.
Unfortunately, while 100% of the models "predict" the past with outstanding accuracy, none yet have been shown to predict the future within the required accuracy. Another reality is that all the models predicting future warming as a result of rising CO2 must incorporate positive feedback, because, by itself, CO2's effect on temperature, without positive feedback, is negligible. However atmospheric methane can be increased by rising temperature, and the sum total effect of minor greenhouse gases, CO2, methane, freons, etc., without positive feedback, is non-negligible but small. Fortunately, although CO2 is of critical importance in maintaining our atmosphere via its metabolism in plants, its small contribution as a greenhouse gas is largely countered by its cooling effect in the outer troposphere.
The Earths major greenhouse gas is water vapor. Water's effect as a greenhouse gas, however, is countered overall by its presence in its other two physical phases, liquid and solid. The net effect of water's three phases, when coupled with very effective, vertical, convective cooling provides a negative, not positive, feedback to rising temperature. Added to this is the effect of rising CO2 on plant metabolism which provides a delayed, further contribution to negative feedback. If our planet is so unlucky as to ever reach a tipping point, where the net feedback to rising CO2 becomes positive, we will all be doomed.
The early models ignored vertical convective cooling, a major contributor to the Earth's cooling mechanism. Even today's models assume plant, CO2 metabolism makes a negligible contribution. The early models also failed to correctly model clouds. (Essentially the earliest models ignored clouds or any other contributing phenomenon which at that time no one had learned how to model.) Even some of today's models assume an incorrect half-life for CO2 that is in error by more than 100%; this despite the correct half life having been determined a decade ago.
The dire predictions stemming from these early models had us all in great trouble well before now. Needless to say, the predictions of those models, while making eye popping press coverage, turned out to be ridiculous. Sadly, today's models are only somewhat better. Still, they require incorporation of positive feedback to show any significant contribution of rising CO2 to warming.
There is a growing body of scientific evidence, however, showing that the feedback is negative; not positive. That's why any model that incorporates positive feedback must be dismissed as doubtful. One of the more interesting developments of recent years was Ferenc Miscolczi's -- the former GISS physicist-- paper concluding that feedback must be negative to maintain energy balance. This paper, although not yet fully vetted, represents a radical departure from previous efforts to understand the mechanism by which our Earth maintains its atmosphere. It is, however, by no means the only science indicating that net feedback is negative; it's just the most elegant.
Any prediction based on current models must be accepted with caution. Actual temperature data, for which sampling has been greatly improved, must be shown to be accurately predicted over time by a model as a necessary condition before that model's prediction of future temperature can be regarded as reliable. We are not there yet! Unfortunately for us, the only connector between CO2 concentration and our temperature observations (which are is still not accepted as reliable by all experts) are the models, and these remain universally defective in one way or another.
We are looking for net long term temperature changes on the order of ten to the minus one against a background of 24 hour temperature changes on the order of ten to the first power. We may liken this to the search for a needle in a haystack. It's an absurd media conceit, and immaterial to the question, to claim that some high percentage of scientists believe that increasing CO2 is going to result in damaging temperature increase. It is equally absurd and immaterial to think that one can prove a conjecture about a complex chaotic system using anecdotal, easily observed and correlated phenomena such as melting of the arctic ice sheet. What matters is whether the science is correct.
Presently, meteorologists and atmospheric physicists, and so-called climatologists, researching and publishing in the area of climate change are divided on the specific question of whether man's contribution to atmospheric CO2 is causing, or going to cause, damaging or run away temperature increase. We had better stop listening to the media, politicians and bloggers and start listening to the experts. (see reference 3 below)
What's happened to the issue of potential harm from anthropomorphically driven atmospheric CO2 increase is a fine example of how not to do science. James Hansen should be drawn and quartered for turning a conjecture, an important one at that, into a media circus long before there were reliable answers, and in the face of a growing body of countering science. What a mess he's created! It's the Lysenko affair all over again. Or as Yogi would say, were he still with us, "It's Déjà vu all over again"
Our U.S. President has seemingly accomplished the impossible by making the fallout from the hopelessly muddled, climate change issue even worse by pulling the U.S. out of the Paris Accord. The goals of the accord, if reached, will be beneficial to all participating nations regardless of the CO2 issue. The U.S. made a mistake to withdraw. Perhaps there will soon enough be a remedy for this mistake. Let's hope so!
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references:
1.Blowin’ in the Wind: Short-Term Weather and Belief in Anthropogenic Climate Change
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/WCAS-D-12-00048.1
2. Conflict about Climate Change at the American Meteorological Society: Meteorologists’ Views on a Scientific and Organizational Controversy
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/BAMS-D-15-00265.1
3. Meteorologists' Views About Global Warming: A Survey of American Meteorological Society Professional Members
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/10.1175/BAMS-D-13-00091.1
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