And most of them tend exacerbate the others, don't they?

Pulling on any thread makes everything else wiggle.

Given the amount of energy flowing through the Earth/climate system it's impossible to deal with just one pathway at a time. And yes, all pathways are locked into a mutual amplification feedback loop. There are very, very few negative feedbacks available, and none I know of with the potential energy flow to counteract the myriad of positive feedbacks.

I'm just an ordinary person who took my last high-school science class 47 years ago. I understand there is urgency to do something about climate change, but not the details.

I just wish that James Burke would produce a new "Connections" program on climate change. The public might respond in a more positive manner.

climate models can't explain the past.
climate models can't predict the future.

first kind I will call the 'physical constants' type.
these guys have no idea how the world works.
their basic equation is
modeled.TT = (MP +- Correction)
today's world ave.temp... equals...
model.prediction...plus or minus... correction
................................
in other words, they toss in a correction to
make up for the fact that their model
is useless.
....................................
second kind of model is what I call a
'difference' type .
futureClimate = ( todayClimate - Difference)
...
which I think is BS but I will explain
in a future post.

You might call them a "correction" but they save computation time because if the planet blows up in your model then it's useless.

Models are confirmed by hindcasting, running the model on past climate and seeing if it fits the gathered data.

The problem is we haven't ever seen climate like we're going to be experiencing so the models are based on a normal cycle, and therefore fail to include feedbacks. When you start putting in high values for feedbacks things start to change. We already learned that clouds are a positive feedback, but somehow the models didn't adjust upward to take this into account, yet.

you can control the presented severity. However in reality, it is the same as garbage in garbage out, GIGO.

It is not just parameters that are corrupting the use of modeling in the IPCC. When someone decides the values for climate sensitivity should be calculated by the Charney method based on lineal computation rather than an exponential computation supported by ice core studies, and erroneous climate sensitivity calculations are used to calculate temperature rise from concentration models, the answer is seriously low balled.

http://www.crisis-forum.org.uk/events/Workshop1/Workshop1_presentations/wasdell_talberg_revised.php

• At the current range, climate sensitivity should provide the same value for halving the concentration of atmospheric CO2 as it does for doubling it.  If we take the pre-industrial level of 280 ppm CO2 and halve it then we have a concentration of 140 ppm, a level which has never been observed in the paleo records.  We do know however (for instance from the glacial/interglacial records of the Vostok ice cores) that a reduction of 100 ppm is equivalent to an equilibrium change of 5ºC in average global temperature.  Treating the relationship as linear, this gives a climate sensitivity of 7ºC for the halving of concentration of atmospheric CO2.  However, the relationship is not linear, but logarithmic.  The lowest 40 ppm has an increasingly sharper gradient than the upper 100 ppm.  The minimum sensitivity should therefore be placed in the range of 7.5 to 8.0 ºC.  This figure should be continuous with the doubling sensitivity applied in calculations of expected climate change, yielding an increase in temperature at least 2½ times that predicted in current models.
• A more accurate indication of climate sensitivity under these conditions may be provided by regression analysis of the correlation between temperature and the atmospheric concentration of CO2 in the Vostok records.  (See Appendices 1, 2, and 3 below).  A fairly simple regression analysis of the maxima and minima in the glacial/interglacial records affords a correlation of 20 ppm of C02 per 1ºC rise in temperature.  That would yield a climate sensitivity for doubling of CO2 of 4.7 times the Charney value, i.e. a rise of 14ºC above the pre-industrial value.  Engelbeen’s more sophisticated analysis yields a correlation of 17.6 ppm CO2 per 1ºC rise in temperature.  His work indicates a value 5.3 times the Charney figure and raises the spectre of an increase in the global average temperature of some 16ºC for a doubling of pre-industrial concentration of atmospheric CO2.  That should be doubled to give an increase of some 32ºC at polar latitudes.
• All of the above figures are based on slow, near-equilibrium, climate change, a situation which is no longer applicable.  They do not take account of the dynamic feedback processes brought into play in current conditions of far-from-equilibrium behaviour.  Anthropogenic release of greenhouse gases has triggered radiative forcing at a rate that is accelerating much faster than the inertial response of the earth system.  This has a different effect on the feedback dynamics.  Responses in the glacial/interglacial record reflect slow, close to equilibrium, bio-physical adjustments to gradual (Milankovitch) variations in insolation of the northern hemisphere.  Today we have the possibility of climate change initiating mass release of CO2 from forest die-back and burn, as well as the methane cascade feedback.  In addition, the phenomenon of second-order feedback comes into play, where the effect of any single feedback mechanism compounds the activity of all other climate-sensitive feedbacks, so accelerating the amplification of the original signal.  The only exemplar material comes from study of the five great extinction events in the geological history of the earth.  The Anthropocene intervention, however, appears to be running some 100 times faster than any previous example (except that of massive asteroidal impact).  We are in unknown territory.

end edit:

So it is obvious no matter how well constructed the model, conclusions are skewed by selection of the methods of computation. Now take the corrupted conclusion and create a totally imaginary pathway for mitigation of future emissions, and you have the epic fail, that is the IPCC.

The problem is bigger than the models and the piecemeal science. It is also the politics and economics that corrupt the ultimate expression of the findings. Each individual scientists might be very accurate in their speciality, but if whoever joins all the parts into a cohesive holistic presentation, are selected by political policy wonks, then results will be skewed by political and economic expediency.

The author of the OP article shows another example of political and economic influence corrupting the present IPCC process. It was not a consensus of scientists who selected a the 'safe', 2*C target for a plateau of global temperature.

        Looking into the facts behind these statements suggests that AMEG's views are at the least grounded in reality. Furthermore, the 2°C target was an arbitrary number picked by politicians, not scientists - and recent research has suggested that at 2°C, climate impacts will be much worse than previously thought. Newer scientific evaluation indicates that the current threshold - the temperature we are at today (or, possibly were at last year or last decade even) - may be the true "safe" limit of warming.