The claim that the Earth may cool in coming decades due to solar variability is incorrect (even in the word 'may'). It has no bearing in any climate science, model projections, or basic physical theory. The forcing from solar variability to the heat content of the Earth system is small relative to the accelerating forcing provided by human CO2 emissions.

CO2 is the most important forcer of long-term trends in the Earth system. The systematic changes that forcing drives are overlain by natural variability. The impact of the two factors (human forcing, and natural variability) over the historical period have been clearly disaggregated by climate science, using a wide range of transparent scientific techniques that are published, accessible, and described in easy-to-understand public-facing resources.

This is completely false, and countered by a wide range of observations (as just one small example, unprecedented cryospheric changes), modeling (which cannot obtain anything resembling present climate state without including the impact of human forcing) and, perhaps most importantly, century-old understanding of the radiative properties of, mostly importantly, CO2.

This has no basis in reality, and is a complete mischaracterization of basic meteorological science. Even by basic physical understanding, a warmer world will be characterized by an intensified hydrological cycle (more evaporation, countered by more precipitation).

Global average sea level is unambiguously rising. Regions where sea level is falling are regions where local sea level signals are large enough to counteract the global trend. For example, in Baffin Bay and parts of Scandinavia, where continued residual land uplift is continuing, associated with the unweighting of the land from loss of last glacial maximum ice sheets.

Use of 'accelerating' is misleading. Even if the rate wasn't accelerating (which it is), the fact of a steady rise would still be important.

This is demonstrably false, and indicates an ignorance of a large body of existing and easy-to-access literature, based on a wide range of independent direct observations and modeling. Both ice sheets (Greenland and Antarctica) are exhibiting mass loss, including collapse of features such as large ice shelves that have been present for millennia. Negative Arctic sea ice trends are clearly emerging from the background of natural variability. Antarctic sea ice, just this year, exhibited an unprecedented decrease, well outside of established recent natural variability windows.

As just one example, is remarkable that the NIPCC authors consider the highly likely inundation of major coastal cities (e.g. Miami) within the next century to be not a harmful outcome to human well-being. Their 'no net harm' algebra thus assumes hugely beneficial outcomes elsewhere, to counterbalance such a catastrophe.

In the natural Earth system, CO2 release acted as a feedback of naturally-forced change (e.g. due to millennial-scale, gradual, changes in the Earth's orbit). Thus, CO2 is clearly established as an important forcer of, for example, ice ages. This demonstrates it's effectiveness as a radiative gas. Now, of course, the situation is flipped because humans are actively emitting CO2. This is why it is now a 'forcer' rather than a 'feedback'. This change in no way impacts our century-old understanding of how CO2 warms the climate.

Exactly as deMenocal states above. Measurements over too-short intervals can be very unrepresentative of long-term trends. An extreme example: if I measured temperature rate of change only in the evening I would very strongly claim that the Earth is always cooling. Conversely, my immediate neighbour could claim that the Earth was obviously always warming over the same period by taking measurements only in the morning. Of course, we disagree only because neither of us is measuring over a long-enough timeframe to capture an underlying temperature trend.

Neglecting feedbacks in this statement is seriously misleading to uninformed readers. Feedbacks have been clearly identified as major amplifiers of the initial CO2-forced change. These feedbacks are explicitly resolved in climate models.

Observational evidence is widely used to understand past climate change, and by consequence make well-constrained projections about future change. This can be done without any recourse to climate models. This is not to discount climate models, which are (like weather models) remarkably useful tools for projecting potential future change.

There is no assumption of a priori conclusions anywhere in the report. It tends to present a unified conclusion on many fronts (namely, a planet undergoing accelerating change due to human forcing) because the facts supporting those conclusions, across many fronts, are very unambiguous.

This is a complete fabrication. It is entirely a scientific body, designed specifically to summarize existing literature. It is not a political report.

This is not true. This statement is based on a selective survey that has been demonstrated to have not actually captured a remotely representative cross section of actively working, publishing climate scientists. For over 100 years, any physical scientist with a basic understanding of radiative physics understands that CO2 (in particular) is a radiatively active gas in the IR spectrum. Thus the more CO2 you emit into the atmosphere, the more the system warms. There is complete agreement between observations, theory, and modeling, and has been for decades.

On the whole, this article is a PR effort for the fossil fuel industry, written by the president of the IER. The IER has been funded by ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Institute, and Koch Industries. It is not an objective critique of climate science but rather an example of corporate-funded climate misinformation.

...which has been truncated by several years of record temperatures increases - on top of previous record warmth. Due to the superposition of a forced trend on top of natural variability. The cherry-picking of time series to prove that the Earth isn't warming due to anthropogenic influence is a classic climate change contrarian tactic.

An example, of course, would be great here! Another climate change contrarian tactic: broad statements with no underlying basis for critical examination by others.

This is a classic 'False dilemma’ fallacy used by climate change contrarians, which claims that you can't deal with climate change AND other issues simultaneously. This is patently wrong.

A reference would be nice, of course, here!

Climate science has for decades been completely aware of the role of natural climate variability in adding uncertainty to short-term climate predictions. To claim we have ignored this is ridiculous.

Judith Curry is unfortunately not a credible climate science source. Unfortunately, Congress continues to rely on poor witnesses, for politically motivated reasons.

The following points by Gore/Hansen et al. refer to the need to begin drawing down global carbon emissions, so to avoid long-term future climate change damage. Not damage in 2016 (although that damage is already beginning to emerge). Thus, the author fundamentally mis-represents the statements of Fore/Hansen/Pachauri.

This borders on the unintelligible. It certainly is offending.

It's unclear what is meant by 'permafrost goes'. Nothing particularly 'goes' anywhere, it just melts (and has been naturally melting due to post-Last Glacial Maximum sea level rise and the resulting thermal flux due to shelf inundation). Consequentially, I would not expect the pressure seen by the underlying hydrates to decrease if the overlying permafrost degrades. In fact in the real world it will probably increase due to anthropogenic sea level rise. So it will necessarily be an anthropogenic temperature pulse, not a pressure pulse that will destabilize methane hydrates under relic permafrost.

Finally, methane molecules in hydrates is not 'in solution' but rather in the hydrate crystalline lattice.

This is a misleading term. Ice caps are technically large -based glaciers, whereas I think 'Arctic icecaps' here mean Arctic sea ice.