Nobody is saying that it's all simple.  If you look at my posts and the links, anybody can see that there is a great deal of fairly complex science involved.  Changes in Solar output  and perturbations of the Earth's orbit cause dramatic changes in climate over thousands of years. Solar irradiance is therefore crucial to understanding this issue.

If you start talking about other planets, you need to understand that they have different temperatures and solar irradiance, so different aspects of the physics come into play.

Notwithstanding that, it is inevitable that increasing carbon dioxide levels in the Earth's atmosphere causes warming. Superimposed on this effect is natural variation. 

Nobody is denying that if we had a supervolcano, there would be a significant cooling effect, or  if we get  a net reduction in solar output, the contribution will result in lower temperatures.

At the same time as all these well understood natural effects, there is an increase in carbon dioxide resulting in a net positive contribution to global warming.

You are denying that CO2 causes warming and in other posts, you speak of a huge conspiracy led by virtually every scientist in the world, including some who are long dead, such as Svante Arrhenius.

You are also denying that if you heat a body of water, this will result in an increased atmospheric concentration of water vapour. Nobody is denying that water vapour is  the most important Greenhouse gas, but it differs from CO2 in that it is non permanent.

Reduce the CO2 level and the warming contribution also drops. The consequence of this is to reduce the mean water vapour concentration in the atmosphere. Increase the CO2 level, and the water vapour concentration increases, and the leverage effect is about 3:1.

That's as basic as I can explain it, because you clearly don't understand the more rigorous mathematical explanation.

Soren wrote on Jan 1^st, 2012 at 10:39am:


Happy New Year Soren.   Your argument is flawed.  It's not necessary to have a closed system, just a system that is in short-term equilibrium.  1. You can predict the behaviour of a system without fully understanding it. An example of that is medicine. Another example is civil engineering.

2. It's also not necessary to have a system that's unchanging. Virtually all systems are changing/ dynamic. If those aspects that are changing are substantially understood and of a significantly lower magnitude, it's quite possible to predict its effects.

What you are saying flies in the face of modern engineering which routinely uses multi-variable hill climbing equations.

It is also quite possible to test  certain theories using natural events such as major volcanic activity and solar eclipses.

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I don't doubt that, but my issue is with your failure to accept basic science.  I am a great believer in gathering as much factual information as possible rather than taking the ostrich approach or the approach taken by the CEO of Soren Mining.

muso wrote on Jan 1^st, 2012 at 12:33pm:


Medicine and engineering are blessed with a very large number of patients and hills/cyclists, respectively, to test their various theories.
Not so with global climate. There is only on planet and as I said, the predictive powers of climate theories based on AGW have been disappointing.

Soren wrote on Jan 1^st, 2012 at 7:52pm:


The climate is blessed with a large number of natural events to test the accuracy of the basic science.  This is not cosmology, you know, it's really basic stuff.

Apart from that, we can measure radiative forcing directly, and that measurement is independent of the solar output. There have been a series of satellites which measure the radiative energy flux, and they have been doing that for well over 15 years so far.

The current satellite is called Aqua, and it was launched in 2004. It has a module called Modis (Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) which captures data in 36 spectral bands ranging in wavelength from 0.4  to 14.4 microns.

Here is a spec page for Modis:
http://mcst.gsfc.nasa.gov/index.php?section=32

Basically, stating that Carbon dioxide is an insignificant greenhouse gas because its concentration is measured in ppm is utter bullcrap. Sorry Soren, but it is. If you are really a graduate philosopher, you should know bullcrap when you see it.

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Yes, but the contribution to the actual increase to date is greater than 100%. That 3% is a misleading figure because it's expressed as a proportion of fluxes from the biosphere to the atmosphere  only, and omits the fact that these fluxes have always been balanced by negative fluxes from the atmosphere to the biosphere.

In other words, 3% contribution to total fluxes to the atmosphere is not the same as 3% of net flux. That's the sleight of hand manoeuvre used by confusionalists. 

It's a bit like having a 30 ml drink out of a 1 litre whisky (single malt of course)  bottle and trying to argue with the bartender that you only have to pay 3% of $12, or 35 cents.

Dnarever wrote on Jan 2^nd, 2012 at 11:17am:


In the atmosphere. A considerable amount of it  ends up in the ocean too.

Effectively the atmospheric inventory of CO2 is increasing by about 2ppm per year or about 0.7% of the pre-industrial CO2 atmospheric inventory, but the total emission is higher than that.   

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on!

Ah no, that was meant to read -
Maqqa having pointed the finger, leaves the discussion, knowing that her mis-direction will take up valuable time, by going over the same information, again & again!

muso wrote on Jan 2^nd, 2012 at 9:58am:


I just think the whole argument has become about money for the research centres and not about true science any more.

For me the real solution to this problem will be solved from entreprenuers looking to cash in on the new economy surrounding green energy, green products that people will start to demand more of. Basic supply and demand.

Governments will not solve the problem as they have more to lose then the sicentist involved. What government needs to do is get out of the way remove all subsidises to industry and let the green energy and green products directly compete on an open market.


Another point, I beleive we are doing the normal western thing when it comes to problems, we treat the symptoms not the cause, that's why I was saying maybe we are looking in the wrong place.

Consumerism in its current form is a big underlying factor to all this. everything has become at least in the western world throw away.