Perhaps because the h2o molecules, when heated, are further spread out. This makes it easier for the heat energy to be leached from an essentially larger surface area.

>> ^bcglorf:

@NetRunner,
The difference is I stated that we don't have a high confidence in projections of temperature change due to increased CO2 when all other factors are taken into account.

The research done either ignores all other factors but CO2, or lacks a high confidence level, in no small part owing to a lack of quality long term data and understanding of H2O's role. The research done either ignores all other factors but CO2, or lacks a high confidence level, in no small part owing to a lack of quality long term data and understanding of H2O's role.

But again, that's not true. Look at the very paper I linked. Seriously.

My more general point is that what you're saying these papers say is different from what the people writing the papers say these papers say. IMO, that should make you think you missed something, rather than make you start implying that the scientists are misrepresenting their work.
>> ^bcglorf:

Translating that to what should we do means we don't have a good idea how much lowering CO2 emissions will help, what we do know is it will be expensive to do it on a large scale today.

Here's another thing I think you should reconsider. Let's say you're right, and we have no idea how much reducing CO2 will help. Maybe it'll help a little, maybe a whole lot.

I think we have a pretty good grasp on the "cost" of moving off CO2, but I think your economic analysis is faulty too. The "cost" is not some deadweight loss we'll never recoup. It's also not as if fossil fuels will last forever, so it's a matter of when we switch, not if.

So the matrix of possible actions and their consequences are:

1. We switch now, but the CO2 effect was small: It costs us a bit more, but we get a more sustainable energy system that creates less pollution, and stave off whatever damage CO2 would've had to the environment. Probably a net positive, but it's possible it could wind up being a slight net negative.
   
2. We switch now, and the CO2 effect was big: We save ourselves from a major catastrophe that would've wrecked our economy. Big net positive.
   
3. We make no attempt to switch early, but the CO2 effect was small: We save a little money from waiting, but we also do some damage to the environment, and our economy. Maybe it's a slight net positive, maybe it's still a net negative.
   
4. We make no attempt to switch early, and the CO2 effect was big: We save a little money from waiting, but the damage to the environment wrecks our economy. Big net negative.
   

So basically the choice boils down to whether we like options #1 and #2 better or worse than options #3 and #4. I like #1 and #2 better than #3 or #4 by a wide margin.

And that's without even factoring in the idea that a massive fiscal stimulus right now might actually help our economy out of its current depression. In that case, not only would the costs be small, they'd actually be a net positive to our long-run economic growth, without even factoring in the environmental damage prevented.

@dag
I'd rather be doing more to capture the mercury, sulfur and other toxins coming out of the smoke stacks. Better still, I'd rather turn them off and turn on a series of nuclear plants in their stead and go to zero emission power.

@NetRunner,

The difference is I stated that we don't have a high confidence in projections of temperature change due to increased CO2 when all other factors are taken into account. The research done either ignores all other factors but CO2, or lacks a high confidence level, in no small part owing to a lack of quality long term data and understanding of H2O's role.

Translating that to what should we do means we don't have a good idea how much lowering CO2 emissions will help, what we do know is it will be expensive to do it on a large scale today. Hence my recommendation is battery powered cars and nuclear delivered electricity, as those are things we really should be doing anyways. We should additionally be spending money adapting to a warmer world, again because I believe if you are already living within a foot of being below sea level adaptations are already long overdue.

I suppose I could be biased, I grew up on a grain farm in Canada and so we only stand to profit in a warming world, but I'd like to think I value the plight of the whole of humanity more highly.

@bcglorf, I've skimmed through this conversation, and I think that this is the most succinct expression of your position on global warming:
>> ^bcglorf:

Rapidly cutting CO2 emissions before we have the replacement technology in place would be costly, not just financially but world history shows big financial impacts generally spill over into violent impacts. Battery technology is getting very close to making electric cars that are superior in every way to their gas guzzling brethren. I truly do believe that the enormous CO2 contribution made by burning gasoline is rapidly on it's way out for purely economic rather than environmental reasons. Another reason I don't feel the need for panic.
As I stated above, I am NOT being a skeptic in declaring that H2O dominates the greenhouse effect. It is the uncontested scientific fact.
I am NOT being a skeptic in declaring that H2O's role in climate models and forcing/feedbacks is very poorly understood. It is an uncontested scientific fact, some models even disagree on whether to assign it as a positive or negative feedback.
Think about those two for a good long while before thinking everything Al Gore said should trump peer reviewed science.


I think John Cole still has the perfect description of the conservative/denier shtick on global warming:

You know the drill: global warming isn’t happening, if it is happening then it’s not caused by human behavior, if it is caused by human behavior then we can’t do anything about it, if it is caused by human behavior and we can do something about it, then that something is too expensive, if it is caused by human behavior and we can do something about it that is not too expensive, then that something is not what Democrats are proposing. And Al Gore is fat, he flies too much, look at his electricity bill, and sometimes when he goes somewhere it snows there, which is very ironic.

Now, to your credit, you have executed this script in a more thoughtful, reasoned, honestly skeptical way than most do, but ultimately you're following it to a tee. Hell, you even made a swipe at Al Gore along the way.

I think this comment of criticalthud's is pretty much speaking to why I posted the video in the first place:
>> ^criticalthud:

and I would add:
we have a psychological issue at hand.
the human species thinks it's entitled, and it's OUR planet. We think we're special.
This kind of psychological issue hides reality from us.
We have shown ourselves to be very poor stewards of the planet. How many species have we wiped out? How else have we affected our environment? What sort of poisons have we created, what scale of trash heap? Mindlessly fattening ourselves.
This makes me think it is quite likely that we are the frogs in the slowly boiling water.
So, we can argue about this and that, and whether our governments should act. But in actuality, it is up to each and every one of us to stop being energy and consumer gluttons, feasting during the oil orgy.


Human psychology isn't wired properly for dealing with things like climate change. We have trouble with making connections between our actions in the here and now, and consequences to people elsewhere in space, and in time. We're also weird about our assessment of risk. Some people are deathly afraid of flying, but have no problem driving around in a car, even though driving a car is vastly more likely to result in your death than flying on a plane.

The science isn't certain on exactly what's happening, but then science isn't certain about anything. Everything has a fucking error bar on it. We won't be certain it's gonna kill the human race until the human race dies. We won't know it's not going to be a big problem until it's already stopped...and it's showing no signs of stopping on its own.

Environmentalism at its most basic level is about trying to lessen the impact humanity is having on the natural systems we rely on for the basic necessities of life. It's about not felling forests, not poisoning our water, not blighting our soil, and in this case, it's about trying to get people to stop giving a big fucking shove to the equilibrium of our atmosphere when we don't know exactly how it works (and what we do know suggests doing that could possibly be very bad for us).

The basic disagreement here is about what our default position should be in the absence of certainty. Mine is that we should be humble, and curtail our CO2 emissions rather severely. Yours seems to be that as long as the science isn't yet 100% definite, we should just ignore the problem and just wait until scarcity of coal and oil pushes us off them.

>> ^Peroxide:

@bcglorf,
Again, I read your whole argument, I read the conclusions of the paper you posted, neither of them show that current climate changes are not anthropogenic.
Again, your argument that the current changes are not anthropogenic hinges on the ammount of water in the atmosphere. Scientists have addressed this in multiple studies. Also, it makes no sense that water is the current culprit as it has always been in the atmosphere in varying quantities within a certain range, and could only change if another forcing agent caused more energy to be trapped in the atmosphere, essentially it is a positive feedback, but not the driver.
It's co2 emissions, check back with me in 10 years.
http://www.andywightman.com/docs/metoffice_climatepaper.pdf
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI3966.1
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/152
0-0442%282004%29017%3C3721%3ACONAAF%3E2.0.CO%3B2
http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-iarticle_query?2000ESASP.463..201T&data_type=PDF_HIGH&whole_paper=YES&type
=PRINTER&filetype=.pdf
http://skepticalscience.com/gillett-estimate-human-and-natur
al-global-warming.html
http://www.skepticalscience.com/huber-and-knutti-quantif
y-man-made-global-warming.html
http://www.skepticalscience.com/lean-and-rind-e
stimate-man-made-and-natural-global-warming.html


Wow.

I'll try and use fewer sentences to summarize myself so maybe you'll bother reading it.

Scientific studies on causes and sources for current warming have relatively low confidence levels, largely because there are so many unknowns left to account for.

You can stop reading right there if you wish, everything else I have said is just demonstrating that fact.

I am not making any declarative statements about why warming is happening. If anything I've posted suggests that please let me know and I'll try to clarify.

Take a closer look at your own links, I have. The papers on causes of climate change are all based upon computer run climate models. Computer models are only as good as our understanding of a system and the data we have about the system to compare our models against(fact).

The scientific papers in your own links that you provided agree with me that there is a lack of quality long term data.

The scientific papers in your own links that you provided agree with me that our understanding of climate forcings and feedbacks is far from complete(even whether H2O is positive or negative).

>> ^Peroxide:

>> ^bcglorf:
>> ^Peroxide:
@bcglorf Your argument is the same tired old bullshit. It isn't us, don't feel guilty, and SWEET JESUS don't do anything to stop the industrial engine of economic growth that is spewing the CO2 in the first place.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/empirical-ev
idence-for-co2-enhanced-greenhouse-effect-advanced.htm
http://www.skepticalscience.com/a-comprehensive-rev
iew-of-the-causes-of-global-warming.html

Actually, I strongly encourage that we stop burning coal and oil, which would virtually eliminate our CO2 emissions. I am a big proponent of pushing battery research the 10% further it needs to go to replace gas powered cars with electric. I am a big proponent of replacing dirty coal and oil based power plants with clean running brand new nuclear plants. If the future pans out as I hope, the next 20 years will see a dramatic drop in our CO2 emissions.
I do NOT argue for that because the sky is falling and we're all gonna die if we don't. I advocate for it because it would reduce really bad pollutants AND save us a fortune very quickly.
If you feel the need to throw out a few web links instead of addressing my statements of facts, backed by peer reviewed science I think you've forfeited the intellectual and scientific high ground.

You are such a troll! OMG! The links I previously provided reference many more peer reviewed studies than your single study, even though you deleted them from your quote of me, (wonder why...) Here they are again, scroll to the bottom of the second link,
AND TAKE NOTE THAT THE LAST TWO PEER REVIEWED PAPERS ARE MORE RECENT THAN THE PAPER YOU CITE !!!
"Huber and Knutti 2011 (HR11, light blue), and Gillett et al. 2012 (G12, orange)."
http://www.skepticalscience.com/a-comprehensive-rev
iew-of-the-causes-of-global-warming.html
http://www.skepticalscience.com/empirical-ev
idence-for-co2-enhanced-greenhouse-effect-advanced.htm
BUT most importantly, you employ circular logic in your main argument, my Chem prof. explained:
You argue water vapour is the cause of current warming, so according to your theory,
-there is more water in the atmosphere making it hotter
-why is there more water in the atmosphere?
-because it is hotter.
-why is it hotter?
-uh... because there is more water in the atmosphere? wait a second...
That's called circular reasoning, and your whole argument hinges on it, scientists have considered these potential forcing agents and CO2 is the primary one, it IS humankind's fault, we CAN abate emissions, and people like you are the reason climate change will reach dangerous levels!
I sympathize for you if your guilt complex is too powerful for you to admit that the warming climate's root cause is anthropogenic. I beg you, please stop misleading others, I don't care if you're employed by exxon or a coal power plant, it MY GOD DAMN ATMOSPHERE TOO!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_denial
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_controversy
I hope wikipedia isn't too liberal a source for your liking, wouldn't be surprised if it is though.


Go back and read my arguments again, you claim that I "argue water vapour is the cause of current warming". I never said that. I talked about the percentage of our planet's greenhouse effect that is attributed to 2 gases, CO2 and H2O.

The greenhouse effect is not 'warming' it is not 'cooling', it is just the ability of various gases in the atmosphere to absorb energy and has been happening for millenia and barring absolute catastrophic disaster will continue to do so for millenia. Among the greenhouse gases climatologists estimate 70% of energy absorbed is done by H2O and 30% by CO2.

I'm afraid you've completely misunderstood even the most basic parts of what I've said. Go back and look closer, or if your not comfortable, get your chem prof to look and get him to explain it. My statements are in keeping with established science, most of it comes directly from articles like those in the links you yourself provided, like Mann et al's team(the hockey stick guys).

>> ^criticalthud:

>> ^bcglorf:
>> ^criticalthud:
just out of curiosity, in the midst of global warming doubters promoting the theory that the earth is warming through solar/cosmic/natural means... has there been much consideration into the idea that the earth is currently in a cooling phase -- enormously offset by what we're doing to it?
second,
one large concern i have with global warming is "system adaption" - that being that it generally takes the ecosystem a bit of time to adjust to whatever is happening to it (ie: glaciers don't melt immediately). Meaning that the damage we caused 10 years ago is being felt now. Meaning also that even if we were to cease mucking about right now, we could expect continued and possibly even escalating ecosystem problems in the years to come.
so, is it time to panic? dunno. could be.

Which is why it's so important to understand things better. Rapidly cutting CO2 emissions before we have the replacement technology in place would be costly, not just financially but world history shows big financial impacts generally spill over into violent impacts. Battery technology is getting very close to making electric cars that are superior in every way to their gas guzzling brethren. I truly do believe that the enormous CO2 contribution made by burning gasoline is rapidly on it's way out for purely economic rather than environmental reasons. Another reason I don't feel the need for panic.
As I stated above, I am NOT being a skeptic in declaring that H2O dominates the greenhouse effect. It is the uncontested scientific fact.
I am NOT being a skeptic in declaring that H2O's role in climate models and forcing/feedbacks is very poorly understood. It is an uncontested scientific fact, some models even disagree on whether to assign it as a positive or negative feedback.
Think about those two for a good long while before thinking everything Al Gore said should trump peer reviewed science.

you seem to mistake me as someone who is arguing with you. i'm really only interested in insights.
I'm certainly not a climatologist. I work with spines. But in answer to your proposition that it would be chaotic if we cut back, I think the strength of the human species is in their ability to adapt, and as far as i'm concerned, the ballooning world population combined with a worldwide contracture in resources makes this inevitable (not to mention the growing climate change issue) - but it's up to us on how painful we want it to be.
Our entire economic system and our culture of consumerism needs to be revised. We are mindless automatons, with little awareness to our impact on the earth as a species. Our daily lives are almost entirely self-centered.
Secondly, as to "the" question of human contribution, I would offer the microcosm of the forest fire, in which carbon is suddenly released into the atmosphere. The overall effect is, clearly, very warming, almost suffocating. On a grander scale, the species is continually burning and releasing carbon into the atmoshphere all over the planet. How that would fail to warm the planet escapes me. but, like i said, it's not my field. peace out.


Sorry if my tone comes off as combative, it's not really my intent so please don't take my vehemence on issues personally. Maybe I'm just getting older but I'm of the mindset that the fastest way to know where I'm right and wrong is to be forward and assertive with how I understand things and allow the opportunity to be corrected where I'm wrong.

My thoughts on the human contribution are tempered by a few things. From the very top, that CO2's contribution is small compared to H2O(I count this an uncontested fact). Annual CO2 emissions are small(5%) compared to natural CO2 emissions(I again count this an uncontested fact). The experts do insist that the human CO2 emissions are building up and still driving the natural CO2 levels significantly higher each year. We don't understand the natural CO2 emission and absorption processes very well, so poorly in fact our margins of error on them are larger than the human contribution. There is evidence that CO2 levels are rising in the last 100 years, and there is a correlation there to human emissions. What we don't have strong evidence for yet is what impact that has on climate. We DO know it is warming effect, but the magnitude of it is still poorly understood. As I've outlined above the understanding of temperature trends over the last 2k years is still a work in progress with large margins of error(even systematic ones that are being worked out). The computer models we have by definition are no more reliable than that data, which places us without a strong correlation or confidence in what magnitude of change the CO2 will have when all other variables are considered.

As a side point, if you look at the IPCC or listen to certain climatologists, you may hear it sounding like they disagree and believe my last statement is disproven. What they have studied is the impact CO2 increases should have overall with the assumption of all other variables being equal. It's a useful figure to have, and the confidence in it is better than my last statement described. That is because I was talking about something different, I stated that CO2's impact, with all other variables being considered NOT equal, is still poorly known and has very low confidence levels. In the real world the impact of one climate variable impacts the role of all the others, and often significantly. The IPCC and a select few climatologists talk about CO2 projections that ignore that interaction as a base assumption and somewhere along the line between them and the public or them and Al Gore, that base assumption gets dropped off. That base assumption is central and vital, and it's why as our climate models improve we will see predictions for CO2 that fall outside the error margins of the IPCC models with that assumption. That doesn't invalidate the IPCC's work, it is an advancement of it and improvement upon it. Remembering the base assumptions is vital for the public to maintain faith in the integrity and reliability of scientific research. People need to know WHY the predictions they were told by the IPCC a few years back have changed so much and yet the IPCC insists they weren't wrong. The truth is simply that they were misunderstood.

As yet another rabbit warren, there is an even smaller set of people within the climate community who actively encourage that misunderstanding. They do it firmly believing that the impact of CO2 with all else ignored is still indicative of CO2 with all else considered. Which is even a reasonable and normal expectation. The trouble is it falsely communicates the level confidence and margin of error of current known facts. I can't abide that kind of thinking, it's what is supposed to differentiate scientists from priests and politicians, they are supposed to refuse to make that kind of compromise when presenting what they do and do not know is demonstrably true.

>> ^bcglorf:

>> ^criticalthud:
just out of curiosity, in the midst of global warming doubters promoting the theory that the earth is warming through solar/cosmic/natural means... has there been much consideration into the idea that the earth is currently in a cooling phase -- enormously offset by what we're doing to it?
second,
one large concern i have with global warming is "system adaption" - that being that it generally takes the ecosystem a bit of time to adjust to whatever is happening to it (ie: glaciers don't melt immediately). Meaning that the damage we caused 10 years ago is being felt now. Meaning also that even if we were to cease mucking about right now, we could expect continued and possibly even escalating ecosystem problems in the years to come.
so, is it time to panic? dunno. could be.

Which is why it's so important to understand things better. Rapidly cutting CO2 emissions before we have the replacement technology in place would be costly, not just financially but world history shows big financial impacts generally spill over into violent impacts. Battery technology is getting very close to making electric cars that are superior in every way to their gas guzzling brethren. I truly do believe that the enormous CO2 contribution made by burning gasoline is rapidly on it's way out for purely economic rather than environmental reasons. Another reason I don't feel the need for panic.
As I stated above, I am NOT being a skeptic in declaring that H2O dominates the greenhouse effect. It is the uncontested scientific fact.
I am NOT being a skeptic in declaring that H2O's role in climate models and forcing/feedbacks is very poorly understood. It is an uncontested scientific fact, some models even disagree on whether to assign it as a positive or negative feedback.
Think about those two for a good long while before thinking everything Al Gore said should trump peer reviewed science.


you seem to mistake me as someone who is arguing with you. i'm really only interested in insights.

I'm certainly not a climatologist. I work with spines. But in answer to your proposition that it would be chaotic if we cut back, I think the strength of the human species is in their ability to adapt, and as far as i'm concerned, the ballooning world population combined with a worldwide contracture in resources makes this inevitable (not to mention the growing climate change issue) - but it's up to us on how painful we want it to be.
Our entire economic system and our culture of consumerism needs to be revised. We are mindless automatons, with little awareness to our impact on the earth as a species. Our daily lives are almost entirely self-centered.

Secondly, as to "the" question of human contribution, I would offer the microcosm of the forest fire, in which carbon is suddenly released into the atmosphere. The overall effect is, clearly, very warming, almost suffocating. On a grander scale, the species is continually burning and releasing carbon into the atmoshphere all over the planet. How that would fail to warm the planet escapes me. but, like i said, it's not my field. peace out.

ChasoEngine said:those that have disagree with you. Appeal to authority? Yes, but I wouldn't ask a climate scientist to write software.

I'd ask you to be very specific about what I've said which relevant experts disagree with me on. Go back and look at the very first article I linked to. It is the relevant experts on statistics disagreeing with and correcting the climate scientists that went off and tried to work too far outside their area of expertise and wound making a mistake that seriously altered their results. The short version is the method they applied was well known to be biased for zero if the constraints were not met, which in the situation used was exactly the case. It is EXACTLY why Mann's original hockey stick graph showed very flat temperature anomalies in his reconstruction from 1000-1800AD. You can verify this by using google scholar to look at Mann's own new work following some of the advice of the article I linked and applying a more appropriate method. It's flagged as the EIV line on the graphs, and it shows several times in the last 1k years where the temperature anomaly from the reference date exceeds what we've experienced recently.

Chaos Engine said:Emphasis mine. Do you have a source for that figure? I don't know if you read the link I posted but it would seem to contradict that figure. Besides, even if CO2 is a small contribution, sometimes a small sway can dramatically affect a system.

I'm glad to hear that you believe in reducing our dependence on coal and oil. Frankly, I think it will run out before we stop using it (and it will run out in my lifetime).

I can't find the article I went off originally but here's a different one. It does vary from the range I gave a little but I think it still is consistent with the spirit of everything I've said. It pegs H2O at 71% and CO2 at 29%, the consistent thing I've seen in the multiple journal based estimates I've seen though is that H2O at a minimum carries double the influence of CO2.

We aren't going to run out of coal anytime soon. Even oil we won't run out of soon. What we may run out of soon is cheap oil, but once a certain price point is hit up here in Canada we've got more oil than Saudi Arabia stored up in the tar sands. It's messy, dirty, expensive and a much greater concern to the environment IMHO than CO2 emissions, but it's a big supply. I am hopeful though, as I said before, that in 20 years nobody is going to want gas powered cars anymore because electric will be cheaper, more reliable, more powerful and basically better in every meaningful way.

>> ^residue:

@bcglorf would you trust someone with a doctorate in geology?
Here are some data:
Air:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cmb-faq/anomalies.php
Ocean:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v465/n7296/fig_tab/nature09043
_F1.html
(From: Lyman, J.M., Good, S.A., Gouretski, V.V., Ishii, M., Johnson, G.C., Palmer, M.D.,
Smith, D.M., and Willis, J.K., Robust warming of the global upper ocean: Nature,
v. 465, p. 334-337.)
The only real thing debated (or that should be debated) is why it's warming up. we've got 2 basic reasons: it's because of human interaction or it's because of natural processes (hey the earth has been WAY warmer than it is now several times - http://www.scotese.com/climate.htm)
In reference to your statement about the relative contributions of water vapor and CO2, there are 2 things you need to realize. First of all, the residence time of water vapor in the atmosphere is 9 days, the residence time of CO2 among other greenhouse gases can be as much as 100 years with other greenhouse gases (aerosols for example) much longer. Most aerosols were outlawed in the late 70s but graphs of their concentration in the atmosphere show no relative decrease since the cessation of their use. The second point here is that water vapor's place in the atmosphere is natural, greenhouse gas emission is not. Water vapor contributes to the amount of greenhouse effect that we need to survive on the planet (if we didn't have the greenhouse effect at all, earth could not sustain life - too cold). Humans contribute to greenhouse effect by adding in greenhouse gases and warming the planet. To specify the relative contributions of each and say "well water vapor is the biggest culprit! We only release tiny amounts of CO2 relative to water vapor, so it's really not our fault!" is irresponsible.
You might, however, find this interesting:
http://onlin
e.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052970204257504577150812451167538-lMyQjAxMTAyMDIwNDEyNDQyWj.html?mod=wsj_share_email
Definitely a different take on the issue at large, but again, the argument here isn't whether or not global warming is happening (it is) but rather what it all means.


Well, you and I seem largely agreed. I commented multiple times that the warming is not in question, but rather why and more importantly what it means to us.

The challenge with accurately modelling the contribution of H2O has nothing to do with our own emissions of H2O. For all reasonable purposes we can, again as you seem to agree, ignore the meager contribution humans make to it. H2O is as you say largely short lived in the atmosphere, but it still makes up the overwhelming majority of the greenhouse effect, despite residing in the atmosphere for a fraction of the time of gases like CO2. Obviously that means that H2O replenishes itself into the atmosphere as rapidly as it dissipates. We know that this rate is driven by temperature. What we don't understand well is how that should play out in our models, or more importantly how it plays out in reality. Just how much confidence can we place on future projections of CO2 changes when we aren't even sure which sign to attribute the feedback effect of water vapor?

>> ^bcglorf:


My background is computer science but that requires a strong math background as well.

Which is essentially my background too, although I will admit my math skills have lapsed over the years. Either way, that definitely puts you in the "layman" category. Not that that invalidates your argument, simply that it is important to recognise that no-one here has actually seriously studied the science and those that have disagree with you. Appeal to authority? Yes, but I wouldn't ask a climate scientist to write software.


>> ^bcglorf:

What we DO know is that currently, it contributes to 60-90% of the overall greenhouse effect. That tells me it's role in forcing is a much more worthy area of focus and study than CO2 and it's a crying shame so many more dollars are spent on CO2 than H2O when what we really need is to understand the whole system in order know what is really going on.


Emphasis mine. Do you have a source for that figure? I don't know if you read the link I posted but it would seem to contradict that figure. Besides, even if CO2 is a small contribution, sometimes a small sway can dramatically affect a system.

I'm glad to hear that you believe in reducing our dependence on coal and oil. Frankly, I think it will run out before we stop using it (and it will run out in my lifetime).

>> ^criticalthud:

just out of curiosity, in the midst of global warming doubters promoting the theory that the earth is warming through solar/cosmic/natural means... has there been much consideration into the idea that the earth is currently in a cooling phase -- enormously offset by what we're doing to it?
second,
one large concern i have with global warming is "system adaption" - that being that it generally takes the ecosystem a bit of time to adjust to whatever is happening to it (ie: glaciers don't melt immediately). Meaning that the damage we caused 10 years ago is being felt now. Meaning also that even if we were to cease mucking about right now, we could expect continued and possibly even escalating ecosystem problems in the years to come.
so, is it time to panic? dunno. could be.


Which is why it's so important to understand things better. Rapidly cutting CO2 emissions before we have the replacement technology in place would be costly, not just financially but world history shows big financial impacts generally spill over into violent impacts. Battery technology is getting very close to making electric cars that are superior in every way to their gas guzzling brethren. I truly do believe that the enormous CO2 contribution made by burning gasoline is rapidly on it's way out for purely economic rather than environmental reasons. Another reason I don't feel the need for panic.

As I stated above, I am NOT being a skeptic in declaring that H2O dominates the greenhouse effect. It is the uncontested scientific fact.

I am NOT being a skeptic in declaring that H2O's role in climate models and forcing/feedbacks is very poorly understood. It is an uncontested scientific fact, some models even disagree on whether to assign it as a positive or negative feedback.

Think about those two for a good long while before thinking everything Al Gore said should trump peer reviewed science.

>> ^ChaosEngine:

>> ^bcglorf:

I'm not entirely a layman. I'm basing my opinion on searches through peer reviewed journals, ones like this. If you go and take a look, you'll find it is a pretty much bullet-proof decimation of the statistical methods used in the infamous hockey stick graph. It's not a run and gun hit job by hacks funded by big oil either. Mann's team that generated the original hockey stick graph already came to the same conclusion(with gentler wording) in their own most recent work.
Read Mann's article for yourself, he's one of the most vehement of those claiming the science is 'settled'. His most recent paper's calculations with different statistical methods though show that the earth was just as warm(or warmer) twice before in just the last 2k years.
The science that is settled is that the planet has been warming for the last long while. The science is settled that the planet has been warming over just the last 100 years that we've had instrumental record. The science is settled that mankind is inputting measurable and even significant levels of CO2 into the atmosphere. The science is settled that CO2 contributes to the greenhouse effect. The science is settled that CO2's overall contribution to the greenhouse effect is less between 5-15%, while water vapor accounts for 60-90%. Science is well agreed that the role of water vapor in long term climate change is very poorly understood.
I challenge anyone to dispute the above assessment of the current state of scientific understanding, as my searching of peer-reviewed journals shows the experts in each relevant field agreeing with the above statements. Putting those together doesn't exactly add up to 'time to panic'. The only smoking gun that every was considered was the hockey stick graph that appeared to show that the last 100 years of warming was abnormal and unusual. The evidence for it is being thrown out though, and the newly recalculated data, even by the original team, suddenly looks a lot less worrying and much more normal.

That's probably the first rebuttal to climate change I've ever read that doesn't spout nonsense and lies. Kudos to you.
Out of interest, you say you're "not entirely a layman". May I ask if that means you have studied climatology or simply that you read the papers?
As for water vapour, it's not really a "forcing agent", it's reactive. It's better explained here.


My background is computer science but that requires a strong math background as well. When doing any manner of computer simulation of a complex and unknown system, the purely theoretical models are rarely sane. The reason being you can't model the bare physics of a complex system, so you have to essentially estimate(fake) the macro effects and properties. You get good computer models by comparing the results to real data and iterating back and forth until your model starts doing a better job of reflecting reality. The big red flag for me with climate models is the really limited real world data available to compare models to. I don't models aren't worthwhile, scientists are building them because they are useful. The trouble is what they are useful for. By definition, the models have to be treated as less reliable than the raw data we calibrate them against and run our sanity checks against. Neither does it matter how many different models we run, all that gets is closer to the same reliability as the real world measures that we have.

That ties into the article I linked, where the climate guys trying to rebuild temperature data to calibrate computer models from where themselves not strong enough in statistics to notice very significant flaws in the methods they were using. Flaws that systematically produced the results they initially deemed significant. Without a strong grounding there, I have to assess we are still left with a long road to go before really saying we understand this.

As for water vapor being reactive, I would very much disagree. Any climate scientist trying to tell you that is trying to simplify things for you to the point they are no longer being accurate. Ice caps melting, oceans rising, and cloud cover doubling is going to drive climate. It is going to force climate more strongly than anything else. The big unknown is just what parameters water vapor works under, it's simply not well understood yet. Computer models don't even know what sign to assign it as a forcing agent for pitysake. Most likely because it can act as both positive and negative based on environmental factors which are dependent on temperature among other things. When it comes to what kind of forcing H2O does the honest answer is that it's role is so complicated we just simply do not know. What we DO know is that currently, it contributes to 60-90% of the overall greenhouse effect. That tells me it's role in forcing is a much more worthy area of focus and study than CO2 and it's a crying shame so many more dollars are spent on CO2 than H2O when what we really need is to understand the whole system in order know what is really going on.

The thumbnail image for this video has been updated - thumbnail added by Boise_Lib.

LOL@26:35..."science elf"??

"hee hee ha ha h2o h2o"