Perseus's "spivanthropus climatensis", what a classic. Love it.

One of the glaring oversights with these high priests of humans causing global warming is an assumption that our largest plasma discharge formation the sun doesn't do anything. Just how terribly wrong can one really be? Whilst we get teddy wars and big bang stooopidities it doesn't get any more anthropocentric than human co2 emmissions causing global warming.

When the total concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is just 0.054% it represents a significantly minuscule amount but when humans contribute much less than 1 % of that very significantly minuscule amount, then to consider that humans are causing global warming is a monumental error and an absurdity. Is this zealotry manifested from some deep seated guilt complex? Perhaps but this worship of finite universal causality embodies a psychosis giving us closed systems "experts" who do their best to design their own universe with their faulty modeling, unable to see outside the earth's troposphere.

"I am foremost an auditor of public debate and reference checker of claims," says our master of froth, Perseus, self-proclaimed hero of all things mythical. Dearie me. Perhaps it's the cattle dip!

Then with much froth and petulance, he declares in querulous fashion:

"Funny how all the the (sic) plodders revert to defamation when the logic in their arguments runs thin."

A brief perusal of Perseus' posts reveals that when challenged on his tragically mangled information, it is he who reverts to a volume of defamatory descriptions for other posters. Due to his limited vocabulary, his vicious attacks (which are constant) includes, but are not limited to the following:

"climate cretins, muddlers, bull$hit, turkeys, crapology, bimboscenti, retention deficit, dogs vomit, moron, sickos, psychopaths, sad plodders, &*%%$$." The list is endless.

"Spivs" and "Parasites!" declares our "auditor of public debate."

Perseus, my dear fellow, if at first you don't succeed, why go on and make a fool of yourself?

Ooops......How rude of me. I omitted to respond to Alzo's snide comments where he states: "O'h I'd love to know all about them.....please share."

May I suggest you do your own research, Alzo. The origins of anthropogenic CO2 are well documented. After all, I am not your Mummy or your Daddy.

If you desire to know the information source of my contribution to this debate on tropospheric, stratospheric and ionospheric interference by humans, why don't you just ask?

May I also suggest you refrain from typing with one hand. Competent ambidexters are few and far between!

G’day Keiran,

There is a lot of scientific literature that look at radiative forcings, including papers published by so called deniers or contrarians (aka climate scientists that are true AGW sceptics). People who just don’t know – well they just don’t know.

As you quite rightly note, it is very useful to separate human induced forcings (e.g. fossil fuel burning, deforestation, etc) from natural forcings (e.g. volcanos and the Sun). So yes, this method of analysis is used for more formal detection and attribution studies of climate change.

What does this all mean in the real world? The total forcing from 1750 to 2000 is about 1.7 W/m2 (it is slightly smaller for 1850 to 2000, but that difference is a minor issue). The biggest warming factors are CO2 (1.5 W/m2), CH4 (0.6 W/m2, including indirect effects), CFCs (0.3), N2O (0.15), O3 (0.3), black carbon (0.8), and solar (0.3), and the important cooling factors are sulphate and nitrate aerosols (-2.1, including direct and indirect effects), and land use (-0.15).

CO2's role compared to the net forcing is about 85% of the effect, but 37% compared to all warming effects. All well-mixed greenhouse gases are 64% of warming effects, and all anthropogenic forcings (everything except solar and volcanic) are ~80% of the forcings. Can the average person understand this jargon? If not, how can they be expected to understand the science behind global warming?

Even if solar trends were doubled, it would still only be less than half of the effect of CO2, and barely a fifth of the total greenhouse gas forcing.

A few genuine climate scientists debate the cause of global warming, or its rate of change, or can we as a species do anything about it. The vast majority conservatively say there is a 90 -95% chance that it is real and caused by us. They also say we can do something about it – so why not?

I hope 98% of the experts are wrong. But hey, if they’re right, is there really anything wrong if humanity puts some effort into living in an environmentally sustainable way?

Dickie

On a point of logic: You state that Perseus' vocabulary is limited, but then contradict yourself by stating that the list of abusive terms he uses is endless.

I enjoyed this history of CO2 science from the American Institute of Physics. It might, for example, show Keiran than the warming effect of CO2 has a real basis:

http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm

A cornerstone of combating greenhouse gases is the development of alternative electricity and liquid fuel sources. The suggestion that developing such technology will be economy destroying seems silly to me. I would have thought that technological development is the foundation of civilisation. I believe that the pursuit of these technologies has the potential for immense rewards for humanity. A perusal of the technologies being developed would see those concerned by global warming as advocates for advancing civilisation rather than Doomsday's heralds. In contrast, the sceptics would appear to ba advocating more of the same.

Rojo,

I came across this website the other day:

http://lasp.colorado.edu/~bagenal/3720/

It's the web page for a university course on planetary atmospheres. It has some good info on the atmosphere of Mars and Venus and some simple calculations of their greenhouse effects. It also has a link to a (somewhat outdated, since it was published in 1973!) textbook in PDF form.

There's a lot of stuff on it. Some may be useful to you, some may not be. The greenhouse effect on Venus is dealt with in chapter 3 of the textbook and the page:

http://lasp.colorado.edu/~bagenal/3720/CLASS14/14EVM-5.html

deals with both Venus and Mars.

A few of your questions are answered within. Most of the basics are covered and well explained, and the maths is kept pretty light (by my standards anyhow). Happy hunting