I’ll check em out…and thanks for the links.
Just to clarify my first point (i.e., ‘That’s true, but (and correct me if I’m wrong here), CO2 is not among the most potent of the GHG’s…in fact, it’s far down the list. No?’), I’m not saying CO2 isn’t a GHG…I’m saying that there are much more potent GHG out there, and, unless I’m mistaken, CO2 isn’t one of the more powerful GHG. Is this not true (I really don’t know)?
-XT
The word you need to check, before going further, is feedback:
Water vapour is believed to account for the bulk of the greenhouse effect, however CO2 accumulates more readily.
CO2 affects not only the troposphere where water vapor is located:
Well, that’s why I wanted to be corrected if I was wrong. I thought methane, water vapor, NO and a few others were more powerful GHG than CO2. Thanks again for the links.
-XT
Umm… no. All that does is show a correlation. And it does not show that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are causing the warming we have seen.
True enough. Feathers, aqueous habitat, and a curiously humorous honking vocalization may suggest “duck”, but…
Ummm … no. That’s a direct measurement of the energy being absorbed by CO2.
See this part:
There are quite literally, no major atmospheric components that absorb at those wavelengths besides CO2.
What are the alternative mechanisms? I’ve seen several proposed (solar radiation, etc.) but each of them (except for anthropogenic CO2 emissions) has been shown not to be the cause.
What else is left?
You know, if I were a climatology researcher, and I came across proof that AGW didn’t exist… I’d go to, say, Exxon with that proof.
And then retire to someplace like the French Riviera, 'cause I’d suddenly find myself a *lot *richer than your average climatology researcher.
Strange that all of those climate scientists who are burying the proof against AGW haven’t thought of doing this, huh?
The funny thing is – if funny is the right word – is that the fundamentals are fairly, well, fundamental. That’s why it’s kind of easy to distinguish between political denial and an earnest lack of knowledge (the most important kind).
We’re talking fifth grade basic (isn’t there a game or reality show about that?), not requiring anything beyond an elementary school science fair. Take a jar of CO2. Measure its temperature. Pass a bunch of light through it. Measure its temperature. Pass a bunch of infrared radiation (heat) through it. Measure its temperature. Graph it on posterboard and be sure to use lots of colored pencils and glitter. Make sure to spell “Greenhouse Effect” correctly.
The next step is for the advanced fifth graders, average sixth graders, and maybe the slower seventh graders. Go look up complex systems. Learn about identifying key variables. Look what happens when you change a key variable. Easy to predict? Nope. Well, there’s one thing that can be predicted. If you correctly identified a key variable, and you’ve changed it by a non-trivial amount, the model – generally the entire model – is different from the original.
We’ve non-trivially changed the composition of the atmosphere. We’re continuing to do so. As the developing world industrializes in a business as usual path, we’re going dwarf current changes to the atmosphere. The additional CO2 (and other GHGs) is adding energy to the climate. The climate is a complex system. That energy is having/going to have repercussions.
There’s a lot of debate about what those changes will be. Will it be by X or Y degrees overall? Will it lead to this or that effect (and what will those effects lead to)? But to deny all the basic science, or to deny that if China and India develop along western pathways (that’s a lot of cars and a lot of energy use) the added energy into the system won’t lead to a sharper change, is merely disingenuous political poppycock.
The same one that is causing us to recover from 1 mile thick glaciers that covered much of North America 100,000 yrs ago?
You mean the one that happened over the course of 100,000 years, instead of as quickly as it appears to be happening now?
You don’t really need a mechanism for warming, what you need is a mechanism for not warming. Where is the energy that CO2 absorbs going, if not to heat?
The point has been that the current warming we are experiencing can not be explained by that orbital forcing.
I am glad that we achieved the current scientific consensus through huge corporate grants to compliant outsiders, hypocritically impugning the motives of the establishment, piously invoking galileo, and pointing out several key incorrect pieces of data out of several billion correct ones that caused the entire denialist structure to come crashing down. After all, if it hadn’t been for that spectacular use of the scientific method, we wouldn’t currently have a one world socialist in the white house, right? There is no better way to scientifically prove a theory than political games, after all.
So you think the melting of mile thick glaciers over much of North America is of the same magnitude as retreat of the glaciers today? And I was wrong about the timeline, the last glacial period ended only 18,000 years ago.
Despite my postings, I think AGW is likely occurring. I just don’t like how it has been popularized. The truth is that the earth has gone through a number of cycles and we are still recovering from the Little Ice Age. Even without the increased CO2 levels we would be in a warming period now. The change in orbit and tilt were not recent enough to account for the Little Ice Age and the current recovery. I also think it is highly politicized, with the anti-business crowd gleeful that they have a scientific rational to cut back on what they see as rampant consumerism. Personally I think the economic crisis is more important to conquer than CO2 reduction, because until we have a stable economy we will not have the resources to address the problem.
I think the right tack is to make an argument like this: we think the preponderance of the evidence is that increased CO2 production is exacerbating climate change. Many of the changes we need to make, like solar, wind, and nuclear power coupled with conservation of our energy use are consistent with our selfish motives to reduce the amount of money we send overseas to people that wish us harm. Also, the United States, with a relatively low population density is in a better position than most countries to make use of solar and wind power. Spending money to accelerate our development of new technology now will pay back in the long term so it is a wise investment that will help address our balance of trade and deficit problems while creating new jobs right now.
So, in addition to helping address global warming an investment now in alternative energy sources is in the interest of our national security, economy, and quality of life.
The glee that many on the left show for cutting back on consumption is tainting the debate, making it a cultural clash between liberals and conservatives. Instead of scaring people that we will take their pickup trucks away and replace them with midget cars, we should leverage conservatives fear of the outside world and the economic collapse.
Missed by that much again:
Other forcings were responsible for that, unfortunately they also are not showing as the main forcing leading the warming of today.
Most ducks I’ve seen quack. Gooses honk.
But don’t worry, I’m sure just because you turned your own analogy against your position without realizing it doesn’t damage your position in anyway. 
Sure, there are lots of gases that are more powerful GHGs than CO2. But we aren’t dumping nearly as much of those into the atmosphere. Plus, it’s a lot easier to prevent methane and NO emissions than CO2 emissions.
Methane and NO are byproducts of some industrial and/or agricultural practices, but when you burn fossil fuels CO2 is an inevitable end product. You can tweak rice paddy farming or a cattle feedlot to produce less methane, but you can’t tweak a coal plant to produce less coal except by burning less coal.
But the trouble is that there is very little prospect for burning less coal. And even if there was, we’ve already dumped a lot of CO2 into the atmosphere, so stopping emissions entirely would be great, but wouldn’t prevent the already dumped CO2 from increasing warming.
What I don’t understand it the “We’re warming, but only a portion of that warming is due to human activity” argument. I suppose it’s supposed to be an rebuttal against the “repent sinners!” argument. “Humans are bad, therefore we should destroy all industry so we suffer, because we deserve it.” But since there’s no chance of that sort of thing happening, because we aren’t going to return to a pre-industrial state, there’s no point in arguing against doing so.
Thing is, many of the things we can do to reduce CO2 emissions are good things to do even if they had no climate effects. Like, reducing waste. Reducing pollution. Insulation on homes, less reliance on foreign oil sources, more efficient cars, more efficient appliances, more efficient lighting, more efficient everything. It used to be assumed that there was a direct correspondence between increased energy use and increased economic output. But that hasn’t been the case. In the US, energy use hasn’t increased much in the last decades, yet our GDP has continued to rise.
And of course, only modest reductions in CO2 emissions are going to occur. And modest reductions in emissions won’t prevent the expected warming, just make it slightly less intense. So we’re going to have warming no matter what we do, and we’re going to have to learn to live with it.
I’m all for reducing CO2…that’s why I’m a big nuclear power advocate. My own curiosity concerns some of the people who are saying the most dire things about CO2, and yet are rabid anti-nuclear types, or at least they seemingly don’t want to factor in nuclear to any great extent. For my part, if there was a program to begin building up the US’s nuclear power industry, I’d be all for it. I’d be all for building extra nuclear plants for electric or fuel cell vehicles too, and even incentives to make developing (and buying) those vehicles more attractive…and all this, whether AGW pans out or not.
I don’t see that happening, and I don’t see the magic pony technologies being ready for prime time any time soon (not on the scales we are talking about to replace coal or oil), so I think we are going to have to live with whatever effects happen.
-XT