The Forum > Article Comments > Unsettled Malcolm Roberts queries United Nation's science > Comments
Unsettled Malcolm Roberts queries United Nation's science : Comments
By John Nicol and Jennifer Marohasy, published 16/9/2016At high altitudes, the greenhouse gases provide the only mechanism for the radiation of heat from the atmosphere to space.
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You have a huge misconception there. I would think that at least 97% of sceptics fully appreciate that CO2 is a GHG and that it has been proved to be so in lab experiments. The issue for that majority is; what is its NET EFFECT in an extremely complex system? There are small groups that deny GHG warming but mainstream sceptics disagree. (e,g “The Dragonslayers”, Doug Cotton and the gravitational guys like Nikolov and Zeller).
The problem is in the extreme complexity of the system and the fact that in the total thermodynamics and other dynamics such as ocean circulation causing regionalization and whatnot, the proportion of heat transfer via CO2 is tiny (See IPCC/Trenberth Earth Energy Budget above). There are many ‘poorly understood’ phenomena (admitted by the IPCC and other authorities) such as cloud cover and evapotranspiration involving negative feedbacks. That is one reason why thousands of climate scientists are still working on something that paradoxically is claimed to be “debate over”.
You ask for sceptics to produce an experiment to prove that CO2 does not cause warming! That is simply not possible because of the vast complexity of the system. In the same way, climate scientists cannot design an experiment to prove their case either, (and if they could they would become unemployed). There is no significant empirical evidence either. THAT IS WHY they resort to COMPUTER MODELS that involve estimates for ‘poorly understood’ phenomena of great complexity. Unfortunately those models still cover a wide range of predictions and are way-off from the observational trends.
Finally, perhaps you can take comfort that the 2015/16 “Super El Niño” (as described by Kevin Trenberth) which is another ‘poorly understood’ ENTIRELY NATURAL event is declining rapidly (and it is very likely that 2017 will be cooler based on typical past ENSO trends).
PS ‘poorly understood’ is a technical term to describe something that may have well-understood effects but for which the causes are unknown