Global warming on Free Republic
Posted on 03/18/2008 10:00:12 AM PDT by ventanax5
Our planet has been slowly warming since last emerging from the "Little Ice Age" of the 17th century, often associated with the Maunder Minimum. Before that came the "Medieval Warm Period", in which temperatures were about the same as they are today. Both of these climate phenomena are known to have occurred in the Northern Hemisphere, but several hundred years prior to the present, the majority of the Southern Hemisphere was primarily populated by indigenous peoples, where science and scientific observation was limited to non-existent. Thus we can not say that these periods were necessarily "global". However, "Global Warming" in recent historical times has been an undisputable fact, and no one can reasonably deny that.
But we're hearing far too often that the "science" is "settled", and that it is mankind's contribution to the natural CO2 in the atmosphere has been the principal cause of an increasing "Greenhouse Effect", which is the root "cause" of global warming. We're also hearing that "all the world's scientists now agree on this settled science", and it is now time to quickly and most radically alter our culture, and prevent a looming global catastrophe. And last, but not least, we're seeing a sort of mass hysteria sweeping our culture which is really quite disturbing. Historians ponder how the entire nation of Germany could possibly have goose-stepped into place in such a short time, and we have similar unrest. Have we become a nation of overnight loonies?
(Excerpt) Read more at middlebury.net ...
Nice find.
Global warming on Free Republic
Not from a planet that is 3/4 water?
Go figure.
It’s true carbon dioxide is more efficient as a greenhouse gas than water vapor .. but that’s like saying Taiwan’s military is more effective than China’s.
The global warming hype shall pass... we have been protecting a meadow mouse here in Colorado and Wyoming for over 30 years to the tune of 10s of millions of dollars in taxpayers money and private landowners money to maintain a habitat, to come to find out that DNA evidence shows its just another meadow mouse. DEEP SIGH........
“the major greenhouse gases are water vapor, which causes about 36–70% of the greenhouse effect (not including clouds); carbon dioxide (CO2), which causes 9–26%; methane (CH4), which causes 4–9%; and ozone, which causes 3–7%.[25][26]
Molecule for molecule, methane is a more effective greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, but its concentration is much smaller so that its total radiative forcing is only about a fourth of that from carbon dioxide."
Good luck finding the paper that actually did the study on radiative forcing.
>”Good luck finding the paper that actually did the study on radiative forcing.”<
that’s what I thought; So it’s mostly guess and by gosh?
-My understanding is that CO2 is a relatively weak greenhouse gas.
Man-made CO2 doesn't appear physically capable of absorbing much more than two-thousandths of the radiated heat (IR) passing upward through the atmosphere. And, if all of the available heat in that spectrum is indeed being captured by the current CO2 levels before leaving the atmosphere, then adding more CO2 to the atmosphere won't matter a bit.
In short, the laws of physics don't seem to allow CO2 it's currently assumed place as a significant "greenhouse gas" based on present concentrations. And, since the other components of the atmosphere (oxygen, nitrogen, and water vapor) aren't materially affected by human activity, the "greenhouse effect" is essentially a totally natural phenomenon, unaffected by human activity. We could repeat the spectral analysis and calculations for Oxygen, or O2 ( The percentage of oxygen in the atmosphere remains exactly the same at all heights up to about 85 km, and is about 20.9% by volume ) and Nitrogen (N2) which is the whopper at 78.1% - but we won't. We'll leave that as your homework problem now that you know how to do it. Just look up the atomic absorption spectra for both, and do the math. You'll discover that they don't do very much either, leaving the principal greenhouse gas... you guessed it.... Water Vapor. Dr. Roy W. Spencer has one of the best comments we've read on this subject:
"Al Gore likes to say that mankind puts 70 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every day. What he probably doesn't know is that mother nature puts 24,000 times that amount of our main greenhouse gas -- water vapor -- into the atmosphere every day, and removes about the same amount every day. While this does not 'prove' that global warming is not manmade, it shows that weather systems have by far the greatest control over the Earth's greenhouse effect, which is dominated by water vapor and clouds."
We can safely ballpark water vapor as being responsible for more than 95% of all the greenhouse effect, with oxygen and nitrogen playing a minor role and carbon dioxide being relatively insignificant... particularly the even smaller human-produced part.
Summary - Exactly what have we learned here?
1. The "Greenhouse Effect" is a natural and valuable phenomenon, without which, the planet would be uninhabitable.
2. Global Warming, at least in recent times, is real.
3. CO2 is not a significant greenhouse gas; 95% of the contribution is due to Water Vapor.
4. Man's contribution to Greenhouse Gasses is relatively insignificant. We didn't cause the recent Global Warming and we cannot stop it.
5. Solar Activity appears to be the principal driver for Climate Change.
6. CO2 is a useful trace gas in the atmosphere, and the planet would actually benefit by having more, not less of it, because it is not a driver for Global Warming and would enrich our vegetation, yielding better crops to feed the expanding population.
7. CO2 is not causing global warming, in fact, CO2 is lagging temperature change in all reliable datasets. The cart is not pulling the donkey.
^
I like ths comment:
“Al Gore likes to say that mankind puts 70 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every day. What he probably doesn’t know is that mother nature puts 24,000 times that amount of our main greenhouse gas — water vapor — into the atmosphere every day, and removes about the same amount every day.”
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