So Chris Colose says a few week ago that University of Albany’s professor and senior researcher Dr. Chris Walcek is to give a talk on global warming entitled “More Inconvenient and Convenient Aspects of Global Warming.” All went well, no one threw anything at Chris Walcek, although one irate chap did stand up in the Q&A and yell about the disservice he gave to the audience. That guy was a little strange, but what about Chris Walcek’s presentation??
I want to give justice to his points, so I can open up discussion to everyone. I also want to just bring up a lot of science so that even people who did not attend can discuss freely. According to Dr. Walcek, the “AGW consensus” vs. “skeptic” summary can be said as follows:
On Warming
Consensus– Yes it is
Skeptics– Yes, but trends very small compared to natural fluctuations
Causation
Consensus– Mostly anthropogenic (human-induced) factors in recent times
Skeptics– Possibly some anthropogenic, more solar variation, very low confidence for attribution
Is it bad ?
Consensus– Is bad
Skeptics– Maybe some bad, maybe some good
Can we slow it down?
Consensus– Can slow
Skeptics– Can’t stop global warming in any significant way
Additional points raised by Chris Walcek include– Sea level variability is not significant, cooling and ice accumulation in Antarctica interior, CO2 lagged (not led) temperature over the glacial-interglacial cycles, solar correlation to temperature is high over the 20th century, globe is warming but not outside the range of natural variation and within our understanding of the climate system, models not yet sufficient.
Climate Change 
