Thank you Iomiller1, you make the point for the other side quite well. I hadn't thought to demonstrate it that way but it's a valid way to look at things.

In case you're confused, you say CO2 is more evenly distributed than water vapour & you then describe how we can feel GH effects by going to places where there isn't much water vapour. Thus demonstrating quite nicely that water vapour is far more strongly tied into global warming than is CO2.

If CO2 was the prime candidate, you wouldn't get the desert effect at all. That 'strong influence' you mention is due to the presence or not of water vapour, not CO2.

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Not a problem, since solar cycles have nothing to do with Ice ages. As I already explained ice ages are caused by orbital variations that redistribute solar energy between northern and southern hemisphere.

Composite data sets are well established as a valid technique. They are not “poor science” just because you don’t like the outcome.

The fact that water vapor is a greenhouse gas does not prove that CO2 isn't.

You miss quite a few points here. At no point have I said we don't need to do anything. At no point have I denied the place is warming. But changing our way of life based on bad science is wrong. If GW is happening because of a normal rebalancing of the Earth after the prolonged cold spell of the Ice Age then we need to address that.

Keeping developing nations from implementing life saving advances based on fear generated off the back of poor science at the whim of politicians will not prevent the sea rising if we have it wrong. It will allow children to keep dying in massive numbers however. Those mud huts are there NOW.

If the rhetoric was accompanied by a push to reduce the rampant consumption that is causing the real problems of the world I might be less sceptical about the use of science in this subject. But too many people think their SUV is a status symbol or compensation for size issues perhaps & it wouldn't be popular telling them they have to give up their gas guzzlers NOW.

I do think we need to change our ways. There is no noticeable slow down in consumption by the developed nations - in fact the push to buy more, to get the latest etc is ongoing & increasing.

And pricing things out of existence simply widens the gap between haves & have-nots even further. It doesn't assist the vast majority of Mankind into a better life, it leads the opposite direction.

Again, nice & simple. The Earth is in a warming cycle. What we know of Earth's history suggests the warm periods are much more common than the cold ones. I showed you the graph above - strangely nobody commented on it.

Man has ONLY lived during one of the coolest times on Earth.

Using bad science & the sledgehammer of scorn & ridicule would seem unnecessary if so-called climate scientists actually had a case. If AGW is a valid case, there should be more acceptance of alternate views as the Theory is developed - there isn't. Alternate views get shut down & ridiculed. That tells me the AGW debate has become political & is no longer science at all.

If we are going to do anything about the situation we need to address the real causes & not those trumpeted loud & long by people we have every reason not to trust & who have a demonstrated advantage is not telling the truth & a record of not telling it.

Also, AGW is a cash cow & those who speak against it find their career paths strangely limited. Human factors come in here that create a 100 monkey effect - it takes strength of character to ignore the hyperbole & political rhetoric & ask awkward questions.

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Perhaps you can explain why tree ring data fails to indicate the Medieval Warm period or the Little Ice Age? Then we can talk about validity of technique. I'd appreciate a reference that tells us about how mixing different data on the same graph is good technique.

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*grins* No it doesn't, but your example nicely proves that CO2 is very much a minor player.

I do find it interesting that, although those on the side of suggesting it isn't just man-made causes have been moderate & not claimed there is no warming, we keep needing to defend against assertions we are denying anything is happening. As a debate technique I found it annoying at school & would rather not have it happen here.

I haven't claimed that nothing is occurring. Trying to argue against the idea that I have stated so is wrong. Sorry Iomiller1 but your post here is a case in point - at no point have I ever implied CO2 is not a greenhouse gas. Yet you post a single liner that implies I have done so.

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Did you not read what I posted earlier? Despite the fact that water vapor is a larger component in earth's current greenhouse effect, the CO₂ can block frequency ranges in which water vapor is optically thin, causing a significant increase in warming despite its small concentration (SO₂ can act this way on Venus actually, despite CO₂ being many times more prevalent).

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And yet strangely, what I said stands according to the example given - if CO2 was more significant than water vapour there would not be the dramatic effect in the desert. Did you not read the example given?
And, from what I read about which frequencies get blocked by what, GH effects are distinctly significant with water vapour.

And still we have the problem that of all the GH atmospheric problems, CO2 is a minor part, of all the CO2 produced, humans are a minor part. Yet it is being made out as if only the tiny fraction that is human generated is responsible for the warming.

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Acolyte: I remember you barging into a few other threads, only to have people hand you large amounts of reading homework after telling you that you didn't understand the topic very well. In my post above, I linked to a few places you can go for more information: you seem to have some fundamental misunderstandings about climate science, and appear to be just repeating some of the "standard fallacies," much as you did for other topics in those earlier threads.

Maybe you should take some time to read the AGW "primers" from the third link I gave, browse some threads at realclimate.org, and look over some of the summaries at Nature Reports? Heck, the 4th IPCC report (2007) covers pretty much everything you've complained about, though it is a much longer read.

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You misunderstood my point. Where there is already extensive water vapor, CO₂ can be increased in significance due to its blocking of frequency ranges where water vapor does not block. Note that this assumes already existing water vapor - a good assumption for much of the planet. Where there is little water vapor, that will indeed reduce the effect far more than CO₂ will increase it, however where there is already water vapor, CO₂ will have a far greater effect than a proportional increase in water vapor.

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And, as I remember, you have attitude. It's a discussion here, getting personal about other threads & deciding you know what I already know or don't know if both facile & irrelevant. Quoting an official political organisation as source shows how far removed from reality you have gone.

I have been around WAY too many government 'reports' & 'studies' to accept that those who are being paid to have a view will actually stand up & speak truth.

As you brought up other threads I will point out I also recall you from them. You make a habit of attacking the person rather than dealing with the data. The IPCC makes a point of Mann's graph as a basic - I grew up in the bush & I have actually cut down trees & seen the rings. And again I tell you, tree rings do NOT make a valid record of climate. And yet again I point out the Hockey stick fails to show events we have on record as having happened. When & if you find a reason why this might be so, then you can start to evaluate what i know or don't know.

Quoting those who are paid to have a view is nowhere near as effective as quoting those who, in spite of the danger to their careers, stand up & speak reality.

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You're correct - I don't understand. If CO2 is blocking frequencies that water vapour doesn't, and if water vapour presence or not makes such a significant difference to environment, shouldn't the effects of CO2 in areas where water vapour IS present be just a tiny effect on top of the massive effect of water vapour?

I mean, if water vapour has such a dramatic effect that it is to blame for the desert effect. then it seems logical that CO2 has an exceedingly minor effect whether or not water vapour is present. The frequencies being blocked by CO2 simply don't seem to be having much effect.

In experimenting, where one thinks there are two things having an effect, one removes one of them & checks results. If removing one has little effect or if removing one has massive effect, it tells one what is REALLY causing what one sees.

What you are saying is that, in the lack of water vapour but with CO2 being present, there is no effect, in the presence of water vapour with CO2 there is a massive effect. There's only one variable here.

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Acolyte: the scorn you hold for the ~thousand researchers who publish about anthropogenic global warming is rather insulting. Since you apparently won't read any of the sites that I linked, all of which are by currently publishing climate scientists, I must ask you: who do you trust? If you will only trust the very small number of climate scientists who say AGW isn't happening (I can only think of a handful of active climate researchers who do so, as well as a veritable plethora of folks who don't actually do climate research but think they know more than those ~thousand scientists I mentioned above), then what will it take to convince you? Ignoring the fact that your view that people are being "suppressed" is completely wrong.

Your mind seems to be made up. What would it take to change it? You don't trust the most reliable sources (actively publishing scientists), you don't trust summary reports that rely on their data (IPCC)...

I'm not attacking you, just pointing out that the "concerns" that you keep bringing up have all been heard before and have already been debunked elsewhere (I've included links to that effect).

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It does no such thing.

CO2 is a 20 times stronger greenhouse gas then water vapor, that’s easily confirmed in the laboratory. If you want top say it’s not CO2 then you need to tell use what *is* causing it or you are simply denying the science.

When you travel to the desert you go to a place with very little water vapor and can see the greenhouse effect caused by water vapor. Where exactly are you going to travel to find a place with very little CO2 so you can see its strength as a greenhouse gas?

Actually, no. It has a fairly significant effect, and it also has a lot more potential for more warming than water vapor does (in reasonable quantities).

Water vapor has a fairly significant effect, true. However, if you look at the absorption spectrum for CO₂ and water vapor, found here, you'll notice that water vapor has a large "window" where it absorbs barely any IR radiation around 10 microns. This also happens to be very near to the peak of the thermal emission spectrum from the earth. CO₂ absorbs in this range. Because of this, an increase in CO₂ further narrows this window, reducing the amount of IR light that can escape right around the earth's peak thermal emission.


Yes. This proves that water vapor has a significant effect. There is no analogous situation with CO₂ however. There is nowhere you can go to find water vapor but no CO₂. Therefore, you cannot make any conclusions about the efficacy of CO₂ as a greenhouse gas from that experiment, you can only state that water is definitely significant.

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Strangely though, that 'significant' effect is missing in areas where there is little water vapour. I've lived in desert areas over West - when the sun goes down the temperature drops precipitously. There would appear to be very little 'warming' effect from the CO₂. yet ut should be there.
That graph shows more than you might think. If you look at 10 microns as you suggest, CO₂ also doesn't absorb at that point.
If you then compare the H₂O & CO₂ with the Total graph at the top, you see that when water drops lower, so does the total blocking. When water is high, so is the total. Any correspondence between the Total & CO₂ seems to be only around the 6 or 7 microns & if I read the graph correctly, that's irrelevant because it's in between the frequency of radiation in & radiation out.

But in the areas that matter, H₂O runs the course while CO₂ has almost no effect.

PS: Thanks for the hint - haven't seen that one before.
EDIT: The above was meant to say - but the sub bits got nuked

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