Aren't they supposed to find what was wrong in Al Gore's movie? A lot of people take his movie as gospel, and if it is full of errors, isn't that bad?
Just because they only looked for errors, that does not make them biased, it makes them about accuracy.
Edit:
Lets go through a few of Keith P's arguments:
Keith said:
"Then ask him why the diurnal temperature range -- the difference between day and night temperatures -- has been decreasing for decades."
Here is a presentation by John Christy, Alabama state climatologist, on why nighttime temperature increases do not matter (along with many other things): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WWpH0lmcxA
Keith says:
"In fact, the stratosphere has been on a long-term cooling trend ever since we've been keeping radiosonde balloon records in the 1950's. "
And:
"Ask him why the stratosphere has been cooling for as far back as we have records."
That is exactly the problem: as far back as we have records. 1950's? The stratosphere could have been cooling for the last 250 years, the last 500 years, etc. These seem unlikely, but we just don't know.
Keith says:
"World surface temperatures are getting warmer, and this trend has accelerated since the mid 1970's. Almost no scientist in the 21st century has disputed this basic fact, even among the most diehard GW skeptics."
No one does disputes that. However, whether or not averaged global surface temperatures are an accurate metric of *global* warming is up for debate. Most would say they're not. How about SSTs? Or the troposphere? Yeah they're all warming, but the SSTs seem to be doing there own thing and could easily be echoing a climatic disturbance that occurred 1000s of years ago--we don't know much about oceanic currents.
And the troposphere is warming as fast as or slower than the surface. That is a big hitch in the AGW theory, which dictates that the troposphere should be warming much faster than the surface.
Keith says:
"If the Sun is causing the current warmth, then we're getting more energy, and the whole atmosphere should be getting warmer. If it's greenhouse, then we're getting the same amount of energy, but it's being distributed differently: more heat is trapped at the surface, and less heat is escaping to the stratosphere. So if it's the Sun, the stratosphere should be warming, but if it's greenhouse, the stratosphere should be cooling."
This is an inaccurate description of greenhouse theory: more heat is supposedly trapped in the troposphere, not the surface. Anyhow, whether or not the stratosphere is cooling doesn't necessarily refute the role of the sun, and it goes like this:
1. The sun's TSI increases (which it did until roughly half through the last century to the highest levels it has been for the last 10,000 years) 2. This warms the earth, though with a lag 3. This invokes a water vapor feedback (a constant with both greenhouse theory and solar influence) 4. The TSI reaches a plateau (which it did) 5. The oceans take time to reach equilibrium (think of a pot of water and a heat source) 6. Meanwhile, the thermal inertia of the oceans causes further warming and more water vapor to enter the atmosphere warming the troposphere 7. The stratosphere already entered equilibrium after the TSI plateaued, and the extra water vapor absorbs more IR before it enters the stratosphere, causing it to cool.
Keith says:
"If it's the Sun, we're getting more energy during the day, and daytime temperatures should be rising fastest. But if it's greenhouse, we're losing less heat at night, and nighttime temperatures should be rising fastest. So if it's the sun, the difference between day and night temperatures should be increasing, but if it's greenhouse, the day-night difference should be decreasing."
Again, nighttime temperature trends (and winter temperature trends) are not of much relevance, but even if it was, the increase in nighttime temperatures would mostly be due to increased water vapor and land use changes.
One of your sources also says:
"Change in circulation is also a possibility, but it will be difficult to isolate since the patterns of the decreased diurnal temperature range have high field significance throughout much of the year, relatively low spatial coherence, and occur at many stations where individual trends in the maximum and minimum temperature are not statistically significant."
Keith says:
"Total solar irradiance has been measured by satellite since 1978, and during that time it has shown the normal 11-year cycle, but no long-term trend. Here's the data:"
TSI is not the only influence on climate that the sun can have: trends in solar tides and solar winds provide a nice fit (among other things) to global temperature trends.
Keith says:
"Scientists have looked closely at the solar hypothesis and have strongly refuted it. "
Your sources hardly refute it. Meanwhile, evidence for the cosmic ray theory (related to solar influence) continues to pile on:
http://arxiv.org/pdf/physics/0409123
Shaviv's rebuttal to Sloan and Wolfendale paper:
http://www.sciencebits.com/SloanAndWolfendale
Lubo Motl adds in:
http://motls.blogspot.com/search?q=Shaviv
Cloud decrease in U.K. (just an example of how to correctly measure a drop in LLC):
http://journals.royalsociety.org/content/77543w3q4mq86417/
Two new studies that came out at the same time the S&W paper did (guess which one the media and warmers picked up):
http://aps.arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0803/0803.2765.pdf
http://aps.arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0803/0803.2766.pdf
Henrik Svensmark's work:
1998 paper:
http://www.dsri.dk/~hsv/prlresup2.pdf
Reply to Lockwood and Frohlich:
http://www.spacecenter.dk/publications/scientific-report-series/Scient_No._3.pdf/view
2003 paper:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/q0x72u303vv6713x/
2007 papers:
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1468-4004.2007.48118.x?journalCode=aag
http://journals.royalsociety.org/content/3163g817166673g7/fulltext.pdf
Some more:
https://utd.edu/nsm/physics/pdf/Atmos_060302.pdf
http://www.atmos-chem-phys.org/4/2273/2004/acp-4-2273-2004.html
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2002/2001JA000248.shtml
http://www.gsajournals.org/archive/1052-5173/13/7/pdf/i1052-5173-13-7-4.pdf
http://www.utdallas.edu/physics/pdf/tin_atmtrans.pdf
http://solar.njit.edu/preprints/palle1264.pdf
Looks pretty good, eh?
Keith:
"CO2 levels in the air were stable for 10,000 years prior to the industrial revolution, at about 280 parts per million by volume (ppmv). Since 1800, CO2 levels have risen 38%, to 384 ppmv, with no end in sight. Here's the modern data..."
Maybe. Some are starting to think that the CO2 in the ice cores leach and react with air above the ice (being that it is not a closed system) creating an artificial stability in CO2 concentrations.
Keith:
"We know that the excess CO2 in the air is caused by burning of fossil fuels, for two reasons. First, because the sharp rise in atmospheric CO2 started exactly when humans began burning coal in large quantities (see the graph linked above); and second, because when we do isotopic analysis of the CO2 we find increasing amounts of "old" carbon combined with "young" oxygen."
It is not so simple--d13C is supposed to decrease because fossil CO2 - from oil, coal, natural gas - are depleted of C13 (d13C=-26/1000) compared to natural CO2 (-7/1000). So by measuring d13C, one *should* be able to know what percentage fossil CO2 accounts for the concentration increase.
Then using a simple mixing law, if you suppose concentration increase is due integrally to human emission (ie fossil CO2), you should observe a d13C = -13.3/1000. The problem, a big one, is that the real value you find is just -9/1000 that is just 30% of the target from the hypothesis & theory above.
Keith:
"So what's left to prove?"
You tell me.