This entry at the bottom of all the links might be a good thing to look at first:
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General summaries of the potential variables involved in Earth’s climate system;
http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/7y.html
http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/education/pd/climate/factsheets/whatfactors.pdf
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Text from the PDF preceding Figure above:
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| CHAPTER 7: Introduction to the Atmosphere |
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Though not as thorough as you, I have followed this with some interest for several years, also. What amazes me the most is the sheer volume of people who buy into the “man made” hype only to be led by scam artists, charlatans and people who have no genuine concern for earth’s environment or inhabitants.
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I am in the process of wading through a tome on Paleoclimatology. Climatology is very complex and should not be confused or equated with Meteorology which is already complex enough.
Nice...bookmark!
You will never see / read it in the main stream media - but - I seriously doubt there is a single real scientists who believes AGW. The few who do believe all seem to have taken the Kool-Aid (Hansen, et al).
The most fervent believers / pundits, such as the non-profits, all have a huge profit motive to keep the slush funding flow intact. I’ve researched a few of the more prominent public players (WWF, Sierra Club, Environment-this&that, etc.) and not one have anyone on staff or fund actual research projects where there is any relevant scientific literacy involved. Where they do have a smidgen of scientific literacy it is almost always in “environmental studies” (meaning: “I worry about the environment”)
A factor that is some thirty to a hundred times as important as carbon dioxide to immediate climate change, is water vapor. Water vapor has that curious capability of existing as a solid, a liquid and a gas all at the same time, as it has a “triple point” right at the point where it turns from a solid (ice) to a liquid, and as a gas water vapor can also exist at that point, or even lower. Below the freezing point, ice sublimates directly to water vapor, which prevents the relative humidity from falling to zero during winter months.
For one thing, water vapor is much lighter than carbon dioxide, whice is about one and a half times as heavy as the common mixture of nitrogen and oxygen that makes up most of the atmosphere, and tends not to rise except by force of air currents, and even at that, there is so little CO2 at high levels, only the most stunted of plant life survives. Water vapor, on the other hand, rises readily in the atmosphere, being scarcely more than half the weight of the oxygen-nitrogen mixture, and forms clouds at extreme heights, only condensing and falling again as ice crystals, which melt and either re-evaporate, or fall to earth as rain.
The phase changes of water vapor to a liquid and then a solid, means it has to GIVE UP a great deal of heat, which at high altitudes radiates off to space. Upon falling through the atmosphere, these same molecules of water ABSORB a huge amount of heat, as the ice crystals become liquid, then vapor again. Carbon dioxide has none of the abilities to absorb and discharge heat energy, as it does not have a “triple point” under the normal atmospheric conditions of earth. Under much greater pressure, and at a much lower temperature, there is such an equilibrium point, but these would be conditions under which no human being could live.
Instead, carbon dioxide readily combines with water, and uses that physical (and somewhat chemical) combination to transfer whatever heat it may have absorbed to water. In fact, much of the CO2 in the atmosphere is absorbed and held in the cooler waters of the planet, where as the carbonate ion, it combines with various alkali and alkaline ions, to form either a solution of carbonate, or a solid precipitate that removes the carbonate altogether as a solid (limestone).
Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a sort of indicator of warming conditions, as warmer oceans tend to give up CO2 to the air, but because of the voracious demand of living plant growth for carbon dioxide, this “excess” is quickly taken up. As a result, most plant life is in a precarious balance between having enough CO2 to grow well, and a near starvation for that vital compound.
And without the continuous conversion of CO2 to carbohydrates and free oxygen, almost all forms of life, and assuredly higher animal life, would quickly disappear from this planet.
We NEED the CO2.
Article on the new discoveries and theories regarding the electro-magnetic relationship of the earth to the sun (and other celestial bodies)
Planetary Alignments and the Solar Capacitor - Things are heatin’ up!
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/228510-Evidence-That-Cosmic-Rays-Seed-Clouds
Evidence That Cosmic Rays Seed Clouds
Clouds and sunlight over the Indian Ocean.
By firing a particle beam into a cloud chamber, physicists in Denmark and the UK have shown how cosmic rays could stimulate the formation of water droplets in the Earth’s atmosphere. The researchers say this is the best experimental evidence yet that the Sun influences the climate by altering the intensity of the cosmic-ray flux reaching the Earth’s surface.
The now conventional view on global warming, as stated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is that most of the warming recorded in the past 50 years has been caused by emissions of manmade greenhouse gases. But some scientists argue that the Sun might have a significant influence on changes to the Earth’s climate, pointing out that in centuries past there has been a close correlation between global temperatures and solar activity.
However, changes to the Sun’s brightness are believed to have altered temperatures on Earth by no more than a few hundredths of a degree in the last 150 years. Researchers have therefore been investigating ways that the Sun could indirectly modify the Earth’s climate, and one hypothesis, put forward by Henrik Svensmark of the National Space Institute in Copenhagen, posits a link between solar activity and cosmic-ray flux.
According to Svensmark, cosmic rays seed low-lying clouds that reflect some of the Sun’s radiation back into space, and the number of cosmic rays reaching the Earth is dependent on the strength of the solar magnetic field. When this magnetic field is stronger (as evidenced by larger numbers of sunspots), more of the rays are deflected, fewer clouds are formed and so the Earth heats up; whereas when the field is weaker, the Earth cools down.
Building clouds
The latest experiment provides evidence for a major component of this theory - how ionization enhances cloud formation. To be converted into droplets and form clouds, water vapour in the Earth’s atmosphere needs some kind of surface on which to condense, and this is usually provided by tiny solid or liquid particles already present in the atmosphere, including aircraft emissions. Svensmark’s theory suggests that cosmic rays can enhance this process by ionizing molecules in the atmosphere that then draw molecules of water vapour to them until the aggregate is large enough to act as a condensing surface.
To reproduce this process in the lab, Svensmark and his colleagues filled a 0.05m3 stainless-steel vessel with a mixture of gases representing an idealized atmosphere - oxygen and nitrogen plus trace amounts of water vapour, sulphur dioxide and ozone. They then shone ultraviolet light into the vessel in order to generate the sulphuric-acid molecules around which water molecules could aggregate, and irradiated the mixture with a beam of 580 MeV electrons supplied by the University of Aarhus’s ASTRID storage ring.
By removing samples from the vessel and counting the number of gas clusters that measured at least 3nm across, the researchers found that the beam led to a significant increase in the rate at which clusters were produced. They say that the electrons, like cosmic rays in the real atmosphere, are ionizing molecules in the air and so cause water molecules to stick together. Furthermore, the researchers found that this effect also took place when they used a radioactive sodium source, which produces gamma rays, and as such claim that similar measurements in the future will not require expensive accelerators.
Team member Jens Olaf Pepke Pedersen of the National Space Institute at the Danish Technical University explains that to prove the link between cosmic rays and cloud formation, the experiment will need to be carried out for longer in a bigger vessel. This would determine whether the clusters grow to about 100nm, at which point they would be large enough to act as cloud-condensing nuclei. He says that the chamber being used in the CLOUD experiment at CERN, which has a volume of some 26m3, might be large enough.
Clouded science
According to Pedersen, if it can be shown that the clusters reach the scale of micrometres, Svensmark’s hypothesis will have been proven. Then, he explains, it would be a question of finding out the significance of the effect. “There is so much that is not known about cloud formation, so it is possible that it could be an important component of global warming,” he says.
However, there are problems with the cosmic-ray hypothesis. One is that although there was a clear correlation between global temperatures and the intensity of cosmic rays reaching the Earth’s surface (as measured by neutron counters) prior to 1970, that correlation has broken down over the last 40 years. Another problem is that a claimed correlation between cosmic rays and global low cloud cover - as revealed in satellite observations - that was put forward by Svensmark to support his theory has been questioned by a number of researchers, who have found that the correlation only holds over specific regions of time and space.
Indeed, Chris Folland, a climate researcher at the UK’s Met Office, says it is not clear to what extent cosmic rays could really enhance cloud formation, given the vast numbers of naturally occurring particulates within the atmosphere that could act as cloud-condensing nuclei. He also says that even if there is a noticeable effect on cloudiness, this effect could be either positive or negative, arguing that cosmic rays might be expected to have a larger affect on higher-altitude clouds, which tend to warm the planet by preventing radiation from escaping into space. “Low-level clouds generally cool the surface climate, but it’s not clear why they should be preferentially affected by cosmic rays,” he adds, “given that there is some effect on overall cloudiness.”
The research has been published in Geophysical Research Letters.
For example if we took a snap shot of the influences today the solar output would account for over 90% of the climate we see today (I am not sure exactly how much).