Unfortunately you appear to be repeating opinions from others that are wrong.
A few basic facts. Water vapour is 25-100 times the level of CO2 at sea level. But its relative concentration drops of rapidly with altitude. By the time you reach the stratosphere CO2 is still the same percentage of the atmosphere - 390 parts per million - but H2O has dropped to 5-10 parts per million. Averaged over the entire atmosphere H2O is around 10 times the level of CO2. But the 'radiative forcing', the effect that a GH gas has on the planets energy balance is roughly logarithmic - for each doubling in the concentration of a GH gas it increases by around the same amount. So on that basis a back-of-the-envelope calculation says that H2O is maybe 3 and a bit times the impact of CO2.
A more detailed recent study looking at this, Schmidt et al 2011, puts the % contribution at H2O 50%, Clouds 25%, CO2 20%, other GH Gases 5%
Or you could look at this site at the University of Chicago. http://forecast.uchicago.edu/Projects/modtran.html
This uses the commercially available program ModTran to allow you to calculate the outgoing Infr-Red Spectrum of the Earth for differing conditions. And the area under the curve is the total flux of IR in Watts/M^2. Run it with the default settings - the site is a bit old so it uses CO2 at 375 ppm. Notice the large notch in the center of the spectrum between wavenumbers of 600 & 800 due to CO2. Then run it again setting CO2 to 0 and look at the difference.Not really just a few percent is it?
ModTran is developed under licence to the US DoD, The Air Force GeoPhysical Laboratory to be exact, who own many of the patents for it. And the results from this and many other academic versions of these 'radiative transfer' calculation codes give an incredibly good fit to what is actually observed from space. The incredible match between calculation and observation of this is the principal evidence that we understand the GH Effect.
People often think that the GH Effect is just about the absorption of IR by the GH gases near the surface. But an even more important aspect is how eventual radiation to space at high altitude is modulated by GH gas levels.
The bottom line is that you have presented nothing to refute the current science. This is typical of the denier position.
I do thank the denier community for illustrating how they work, making claims without providing any evidence. This is THE problem with the US, even those that should know better, engineers, reject the scientific process in preference for ideology and inuendo.
So, the question isn't whether the "skeptics" are right, but what good can come of a nation that operates like this?
The bottom line is, you think man made CO2 is causing global warming. I don't.
I have debated this extensively and frankly the fact is the only thing that will convince me is a steady rise of global temps in lock step with CO2 levels which I am convinced is simply not going to happen. I don't have the luxury of further debate as there are more pressing matters demanding my attention.
Over 31 thousand scientists and engineers like myself have signed a petition to the government against the anthropogenic effects of CO2 on global warming.
I am all for reducing pollution in all aspects and keeping the planet and local ecosystems clean, viable and as pristine as possible. But we do need energy for improving everyone's standard of living.
We are experiencing climatechange. It is natural and to be expected. The climate has always been changing one way or the other. Once there were glaciers covering large parts of North America and New York City. At other times the entire Midwest of the US was a large shallow sea.
Man made CO2 emissions are just not physically capable of being a significant contributor to climatechange or to global greenhouse gases. CO2 levels in the atmosphere have been much higher in past millennia. I have even heard that at one time you could grow tomatoes at the North Pole. CO2, if anything it is a lagging indicator for climatechange. CO2 is also good for plants and promotes higher rates of growth and more photosynthesis and therefore more oxygen production. That is what a greenhouse is intended to do.
The money trail indicates that on both sides of the issue there are funding considerations that are getting in the way of good science. Call it Media Science, Junk Science or Pop Science it is not Real Science which encourages debate, theories that are then tested and data analyzed thoroughly to determine the results in an environment free of suasion by anything other than knowledge and reason.
If you want to find out any other notes from me on the net google ivank2139 and Ivan S Kirkpatrick etc.
I challenge you to post any scientific papers that refutes the "GW" position.
The email flap was nothing, but you can alwaysshow that I'm wrong by posting anything from scientific journals that refutes their work and refutes the "GW" claims.
Go ahead, we're waiting. Why don't any of the deniers post anything from peer reviewed journals?
I use to believe the GW hype. I even went and created a survival kit after watching "An Inconvienient Truth". My turning point was when I discovered the treasure trove of emails from the GW camp a few years later. A bunch of my coworker engineers and I used MS Visual Studio to search the entire .zip file of emails looking for certain keywords. After a couple days of analyzing the emails, it was pretty clear to us that the evidence used by these particular scientists in the GW camp was lacking, mainly by their own admission and attitude in the emails. I'd be glad to post the .zip file again to anyone interested in doing their own study of them and coming up with their own opinion. In the meantime, I still recycle, but I don't go around worrying about GW like those skeptics do. Nature will do just fine with or without us. In the meantime, enjoy life and don't worry about skeptics...the world will never run out of them.
So you've studied this extensively and written a lot of comments! I bet you have.
Where are the links to your research? I don't see any. As for the "GW" crowd's bad work, where's your proof? I don't see anything that identifies anything in specific, but that's not surprising.
Here's another take on the problem, why not read the scientific literature? Why not let the experts outline the problem and suggest solutions? I know why, and it has to do with religious beliefs that exalts man above accountability and free market ideology that implements that belief.
So, come on Ivan, I challenge you to post anything in the scientific literature that supports your contention. Let's see it.
I have studied this extensively and written lots of comments and arguments on this subject.
Most of the GW crowd is basing their analysis on computer models that are not very good. Tehy might be the best we have but one has to undeerstand these have little predictive value in as complex a science and situtation as Earth's climate.
but here's another take on the problem. Let's say you had $50 Billion to spend on making the earth a better place. Would you spend it on CO2 reduction or on improving the access to clean fresh water for the inhabitants that don't have it?
I would rather see the money spent on the water problem and let the science on CO2 being the driving factor in GW be subjected to a couple more years of research.
One of the first rules is, Don't panic! The second is to understand the problem thoroughly, formulate theories and test them to determine the true cause and effect relationships before spending $50 Billion or more on a solution.
We are closer to the inception of an Ice Age than we are to GW being a problem.
Who's to say the current cimate is optimum anyway?
First, let me express my gratitude to the Deniers. I have been teaching formal logic and was at a loss for real-life examples of the classical fallacies. You have provided me with wonderful material for several of them, especially "agrumentum ad consequentiam" and "argumentum ad hominem."
Now a challenge. If any of you can put together a scientifically defensible paper that refutes the physics behind climate change, please write it up and I will help you edit it and submit it to a refereed journal. You, of course, will be listed as First Author.
To see the physical argument you need to falsify, go to:
If you need funding for your work, I am sure the Coch Brothers, the coal associations, and and Exxon-Mobil will gladly deliver wheelbarrows full of money if you can promise them a successful rebuttal of Climate Change.
Do you really feel that water vapor as a greenhouse needs to be dealt with in a measured, rational way? That you state that indicates that you have not read the scientific literature as climatologists already take it into account!
It isn't our holier than thou attitude that is the problem, it's the denier community's absolute refusal to even read the literature! The question is why, and I think that the answer lies in their belief system, that exalts them above accountability for the harm they cause as they see that the world was created for their use by god, and if god created it then it can't fail. Now that's delusion.
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