Welcome back, and I hope you escaped the hurricane without damage.

muirduck,

After nine months or a year you finally got it right!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Damn, I just hope your diagnoses of children illnesses don't take that long.

"during the dawn of civilization as plants/trees from those times are being found in the tracks of now receding glaciers.
Posted by: muirgeo | Sep 19, 2008 12:12:02 PM"

First, it's a physically calculable parameter, then it's a best estimate. Then you go on to describe the feedback effects I've already discussed without contradicting any assertion I've made.

We're discovering happens when the temperature warms now. You don't actually know, and you also don't know how long the current warming trend will last. You think you know, but you don't.

In reality, the theory continually changes to fit the continually changing data. The IPCC's assessment in 1990 predicted a 0.6 deg C rise by 2010. We're nearly there, and it's looking closer to 0.2 or a bit more with measurements leveling off in the last decade. But CO2 concentration has continued rising, even risen a bit faster.

What happens to crop yields when CO2 concentration rises? You don't know that either.

Astronomical influences.

Problems with climate models.

Evidence of 1,500 year climate cycle.