I think I've said before that I don't intend to get into long drawn out arguments with you rich. I admire the tenacity, but if you want these questions answered properly - don't ask me. My only, limited, expertise lies with an interest in the public perception of the science and attempts to mislead about the science. Also, the easy 'gotchas', which are not easy and not gotchas.
I'll answer what I can.
1. A cite for the claim that there was an unknown warming factor prior to 1955?
2. Misleading. 1998 was an anomalous year due to a strong El Nino. The trend since then is somewhat up, some sources claim 2005 exceeded 1998. A spike 10 years ago does not prove that warming has stopped, only that there was a spike 10 years ago, an anomaly.
4. Quote from a couple of posts up - "it's a fallacy to assume that because general phenomena has happened before because of specific cause X it is absolutely the fact that specific cause X is causing it this time. Especially when the general position of climatologists is that the known specific causes have been investigated and found wanting as the specific cause this time around."
Milankovitch or other factors may start a forcing, which causes a rise in C02 which itself is a forcing factor. Co2 in and of itself has the potential to be a pimary forcing factor, the fact that it may not have necessarily been one does not disprove this.
7. Water vapour is not this 90 something % that is claimed. There is no authoritative source for this claim that I have seen. Wiki uses figures I have seen elsewhere:
The most important greenhouse gases are:
water vapor, which causes about 3670% of the greenhouse effect on Earth. (Note clouds typically affect climate differently from other forms of atmospheric water.)
carbon dioxide, which causes 926%
methane, which causes 49%
ozone, which causes 37% -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas#The_greenhouse_effectClimate models account for water vapour and clouds, I bolded something about that in the Weart quote earlier. I'm in no position to argue specifics, go find those guys and argue with them as I've suggested you should do before. If you have concerns about the validity of the models and the data used and generated highlight those claims, don't moan about it on the internet. Same for the rest of those questions. I'm not claiming to be the expert here, far from it, I'm casting doubt on dubious claims to expertise such as the guy in the article in the OP, or some paragraph written by some random guy on the internet that 'proves' all this is a hoax.
On that subject - your questions are more indepth clearly - but are you confident they have not been addressed? Reading Prothero on evolution highlighted for me the way that creationists quote and selectively use older quotes and ignore certain data and so on. The internet is rife with this, websites are out there making the 1998 claim, continuing to cite a recent error-strewn article about sea ice (the author has admitted total error). I'm obviously just as vulnerable to this, but I'm reading books too and trying to get to the bottom of what I can - are you reading papers that specifically cover the subjects of your questions? Because if you're not, you're wasting time asking me. Like Mann et al's recent return to the hockey stick for instance? Your questions are so specific that you really should be reading primary source material, the research itself, not interpretations of the research.
Anyway - you went quiet for a while there, hope all is well with you.
Sorry for the quiet period - I was diagnosed with pulmunary hypertension and congestive heart failure. The medicos still don't know whats "causing" it, but it is responding to treatment so far, so I may around yet a while to tilt at windmills, (no pun intended).
I guess the gist of my argument is as follows:
1. Proxies for temperature in the past,.. actually aren't. So we have only a very rough approximation of what the "climate" was doing before humans started keeping records, a (very) little better after we started recording thermometer readings. The "signal to noise" ratio of the proxies is too poor to be useful to see if mankind is altering the climate, based on that data. This is before the problem of divergence is accounted for.
2. About the ONLY credible temperature estimates for the earth come from satelite observations - so we've got maybe 20 to 25 years of (almost) good data. Now, above, you said, "Misleading. 1998 was an anomalous year due to a strong El Nino. The trend since then is somewhat up, some sources claim 2005 exceeded 1998. A spike 10 years ago does not prove that warming has stopped, only that there was a spike 10 years ago, an anomaly." I submit that 20 years of data is also not enough to plot a climate trend. If picking an anomolous year (1998) to claim warming has ended is wrong, then it is just as wrong to claim that Earth's Little Ice Age, (well documented, BTW), is the "baseline", and that the warming since then is "Global Warming" - when we have yet to reach temperatures observed in the Midieval Climatet Optimum, and indicated by proxies 4000 years ago, and 6000 years ago.
3. Even if true, and even if we are causing it, its not necessarily a BAD thing - crop yields will soar, and desertification may be reversed.