I like to point people to, to show that the mid-century stall is not a failure of the theory but a confirmation:

http://www.grida.no/publications/other/ipcc_tar/?src=/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/figspm-4.htm

It's from the 3rd IPCC report: I'm not sure if they reproduced it in the 4th report or not.

It shows the expected results assuming a) Only natural forcings; b) only anthropogenic forcings; and c) with both. Graph c) has a much better match to the observations than the other two.

Dana, this is entirely a judgement call but I've done two blog posts pertaining to mid-century cooling. Whether you want to include these depends on whether you think they add to the narrative or distract from it.

Firstly, the intriguing finding that nighttime temperatures actually rose during mid-century cooling, showing that "greenhouse warming was percolating away while we slept". Very telling study by Wild:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/What-happened-to-greenhouse-warming-during-mid-century-cooling.html

Secondly, the finding that ocean temperatures were slightly overestimated in the 1940s, exacerbating the subsequent cooling trend:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/A-new-twist-on-mid-century-cooling.html

I'd say the second bit of info is less important - regardless whether the cooling was partly a measurement artifact, the fact is, it was still a real phenomenon and global dimming was measured over this time. But the first result, warming nighttime, is a fascinating result (read the comments to that blog post).

There's a good old article on scattering by sulfate aerosol that might be of interest. I'm not sure it can be of any use to come up with a simplified enough treatment of scattering but ... you have choosen such an intricate topic ...  ;)

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1034/j.1600-0870.1991.00013.x/pdf

- Figure 2 is a bit fuzzy: Can you find a crisper version?

- caption for Figure 2: "aerosols radiative mechanisms"

=> "aerosols' radiative mechanisms" [add apostrophe]

- "the total (direct + indirect) anthropogenic aerosol radiative forcing"

=> "the total (direct + indirect) anthropogenic radiative forcing due to aerosols" [too many adjectives strung along without a break]

- "Where F_R is reflected solar flux,"

=> "where F_R is reflected solar flux,"

- "∂ is the optical thickness"

=> "δ is the optical thickness" [you can get Greek letters using Insert/Symbol in MS Word]

- "F_R is approximately 32 times the optical thickness ∂."

a) First, the units are wrong: F_R has the units Watts/m2, whereas optical thickness is dimensionless. What do you really mean?

b) Secondly, "∂" => "δ"

- "Despite this uncertainty, they remain the likely dominant cause of slight the mid-20th century cooling."

=> "Despite this uncertainty, they remain the likely dominant cause of the slight mid-20th century cooling."

dana1981: It occurs to me that the language in the "Empirically observed fingerprints of anthropogenic global warming" could be altered to emphasize that the warming in the night persisted through the cooling period of the mid-century. (Try explaining that with cosmic rays!)

Thanks neal, good comments, which I incorporated.

Unfortunately I can't make Figure 2 any clearer.  It's a very wide image, and we're supposed to keep it down to 500 pixels in width.  I took it straight out of the referenced IPCC report though, so people could click the link if they want to see a clearer version.  Maybe JC can work his magic and see if he can improve it.

As for F_R, the '32' isn't unitless.  That's just the approximate value that comes out when inputting the empirical numbers for the other variables in the formula.  I could say "32 W/m² times the optical thickness," but that seems more confusing to me than just leaving it as '32'.

Good point on the empirical evidence cross-reference.  I'll go back and add that point when I get a chance.

John, I'm happy with it at this point whenever you want to blog it.

Haha, thanks John.  This was a tough one but turned out pretty good.  So far the only negative comments are that I didn't talk about PDO, which I expected (skeptics are obsessed with 'natural cycles').  I just can't cover everything in one rebuttal, and PDO is pretty minor.  The title you gave the blog post was helpful since it did focus on aerosols.

Next up, Hansen '88, which should be pretty interesting too.

By the way, how do you decide which blog posts get onto Facebook?

"This was a tough one but turned out pretty good."

I agree. And once more quoting your own words :)