Point 1 of this information sheet commences by stating that "the earth's climate is already adjusting to past greenhouse gas emissions," claiming further that "the climate system must adjust to changing greenhouse gas concentrations in order to keep the global energy budget balanced."  These are strong declarations.  But we agree!  Where we part company with the Information Kit's claims is its unstated assumption that the words "climate" and "climate system" are synonymous with "temperature."

Obviously, some aspect of earth's climate system must change with the addition of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere; but it need not be the temperature of the planet.  As we have noted previously in our comments on Information Sheet 2, cloud cover could change, as could cloud brightness; and these adjustments - which need no initial temperature change to induce them, but can occur solely in response to CO2-induced biological phenomena - could readily "keep the global energy budget balanced."

Most of the remaining points of this information sheet do little to resolve the question of the role of CO2 in the modest 0.3 to 0.6°C global warming of the past 140 years.  The second point does acknowledge that "much of the warming occurred between 1910 and 1940, before the largest rise in greenhouse gases," stating further that "there is clearly more going on than a simple, direct response to emissions."  But the Kit then claims, in Point 4, that the warming of this period "is unlikely to be a chance fluctuation."  This claim is rather strange, especially in light of the fact that Point 2 acknowledges that "the climate is a complicated and chaotic system," plus the lead statement of Point 5 that "climate models omit many sources of variability that could also cause apparent long-term trends."

The last points of Sheet 6 deal primarily with the pattern of temperature change over the globe; and the Kit concludes that "the pattern of change seems to point to some human influence on climate similar to that projected by climate models."  This conclusion, too, seems somewhat strange, coming from a source that admits in Sheet 5 that the regional predictions of the climate models are "much more uncertain" than their global prediction, and which states that "scientists are reluctant to conclude that greenhouse warming has arrived on the evidence of that one number alone."  Apparent translation: scientists are reluctant to state that global warming has arrived on the basis of a global warming prediction, "because so many unknown factors may affect the global average temperature," but they are willing to do so on the basis of regional predictions that "are much more uncertain."  What kind of logic is this?