Comments 1 to 12:

1. chriskoz at 13:42 PM on 23 July, 2012
   I'm annoyed by the vulgarity of the crude text-box to enter the comments. It's inconvenient to type those "a" "i" "blockquote" "img" tags, needless to say I never remember the syntax and i.e. often produce bad links. Preview button + hyperlink help is not enough. Is there any WYSIWYG editor that would do it for me? If not possible to link WYSIWYG editor to this Comment box, can anyone recommend a simple & easy external editor for that?
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2. Alexandre at 21:36 PM on 23 July, 2012
   About geoengineering: I resist to admit the need of that kind of half solution, but yes, SkS should discuss those possibilities as well. It would even help people know their limitations, and it would help putting the low-carbon alternatives in better perspective as well.
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3. KBow at 23:28 PM on 23 July, 2012
   The potential for geo-engineering is likely the next big argument to further delay action in favor of fossil fuel burning. Understanding the hurdles and risks will be important in developing opinion in whether we should delay action because we have a "cure" or if we should take an ounce of prevention. I would like this information explained to see if it would be reasonable to add this as part of the long-term solution.
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4. anchr at 23:56 PM on 23 July, 2012
   Re geoengineering: yes. Once the realities of global warming is obvious, even for those who don't even want to look for it, geoengineering is likely to be the next line of defense. Partly as an argument for continued inaction, like KBow point out, but also partly because there will be a lot of money in this, that that will attract the same companies that makes a lot of money from oil extraction today. Although inaction on GW has made a lot of damage, getting geoenineering wrong might totally overshadow any damage we've seen so far. Besides, in that context they might be as opportunistically optimistic about the climate models as they are critically dismissive of them today. Thus, I think it is very important for this site to counter 'bad geoengineering'.
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5. Alexandre at 00:23 AM on 24 July, 2012
   By the way, Beth Gardiner's article linked on this post is so good it deserved a post of its own!
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6. ajki at 23:29 PM on 24 July, 2012
   @1: Some browser plugins exist for different browsers to assist input into a html textbox. For an example see Text Formatting Toolbar [mozilla.org] for Firefox (no recommendation intended). There will be a learning curve using such tools. Not all html tags supported by those tools are usable within all textboxes or on SkS. The site owner could integrate a WYSIWIG-Editor into the codebase of this server (CKEditor clones, TinyMCE or the like). This would lead to some additional server load and questionable benefit for most users.
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7. Flakmeister at 08:04 AM on 26 July, 2012
   Not sure where this should go but your Braganza et al 2004 link is dead in http://www.skepticalscience.com/Empirically-observed-fingerprints-of-anthropogenic-global-warming.html replace it with http://150.229.66.66/staff/jma/2004GL019998.pdf
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8. Tristan at 17:48 PM on 27 July, 2012
   Seems as good a place as any to put it, it's a week old so you may have seen it already but Rolling Stone published a pretty big piece on Climate Change.
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9. Tristan at 18:47 PM on 29 July, 2012
   A humble request for what I'd find to be a useful page, having spent a lot of time in the skeptosphere. What is the observed contribution of GHGs to warming from the 1850-1890 (which I dub 'then') period till now? The page would need The size of the anomaly due to TSI for then vs now The size of the anomaly due to AOD for then vs now And an explanation of: GHG anomaly = total anomaly - AOD anomaly - TSI anomaly And why we're fairly sure that those 3 factors make up almost all the observable temperature differences. It would really put the low sensitivity claims to the sword. It'd make it pretty hard to argue for an ECS of 1.2C if we had a clear link explaining that we've already experienced around that much warming due to GHGs.
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10. Tom Curtis at 19:36 PM on 29 July, 2012
    Tristan @9, GHG are not the anthropogenic forcings. Over time, aerosols have increased albedo, and changed the properties of clouds which have also affected the global energy balance. Likewise, changes in land use (LUC) have changed the surface albedo, also affecting the energy balance. Importantly, these additional effects are cooling effects and combined, are quite large compared to the GHG forcing, currently almost halving the positive forcing from GHG. They following is Figure 1 C from Skeie et al, 2011 - a recent attempt to quantify all anthropogenic forcings: Please note the dashed red line, ie, the net effect of anthropogenic forcings. There are two primary natural forcings, solar and volcanic aerosol emissions. These are shown in the following graph by the IPCC as brown (solar) and dark blue (volcanic): Unfortunately the figure does not carry through to 2010. In the intervening period, however, solar irradiance has declined. I am uncertain about the volcanic aerosol forcing, but it cannot be very large due to the absence of recent large volcanoes near the equator.
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11. Rob Painting at 20:33 PM on 29 July, 2012
    Tom, see: Major influence of tropical volcanic eruptions on the stratospheric aerosol layer during the last decade - Vernier (2011)
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12. Tristan at 12:32 PM on 30 July, 2012
    Thank you very much Tom!
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