Here’s a good link that I’ve seen before, and may have been where I got the 0.25%. However, I see that I am in error on the CO2 thing.
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html
Human contribution to the TOTAL effective greenhouse components, including water vapor, is 0.28%. And water vapor is the largest component of greenhouse gases. The amount of CO2 is something like 3% (its in the link). And I don’t recall if the 3% is the amount of CO2, or the “effective” amount of extra greenhouse effect. The link goes into detail on all of that.
And of course all we hear about in the press is the CO2, because that is something we can sort of understand (it comes out of our tailpipes and sounds like a pollutant - actually it is now based on last years Supreme Court Ruling!!??). Water vapor doesn’t sound quite so evil.
Anyway, with the .28% thing, I showed my kids 100 copper pennies on the table, with 1/4 of a single penny colored white with wite-out. Then asked them “how much does that white color change the color of the entire bunch of pennies?”. So simple, even a 10 year-old can figure it out.
Okay , going off topic of this thread (Sun Spots), but that previous link says madmade contribution of the “effective” CO2 amount is 0.117%.
Then it summarizes things with:
“The Kyoto Protocol calls for mandatory carbon dioxide reductions of 30% from developed countries like the U.S. Reducing man-made CO2 emissions this much would have an undetectable effect on climate while having a devastating effect on the U.S. economy. Can you drive your car 30% less, reduce your winter heating 30%? Pay 20-50% more for everything from automobiles to zippers? And that is just a down payment, with more sacrifices to come later.
Such drastic measures, even if imposed equally on all countries around the world, would reduce total human greenhouse contributions from CO2 by about 0.035%.
This is much less than the natural variability of Earth’s climate system!
While the greenhouse reductions would exact a high human price, in terms of sacrifices to our standard of living, they would yield statistically negligible results in terms of measurable impacts to climate change. There is no expectation that any statistically significant global warming reductions would come from the Kyoto Protocol.”
Dr. S. Fred Singer, atmospheric physicist
Professor Emeritus of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia,
and former director of the US Weather Satellite Service;
in a Sept. 10, 2001 Letter to Editor, Wall Street Journal
thanks for the info.
CO2 is a trace gas anyway, and as you pointed out, anthropogenic is a tiny fraction of that.
I’m amazed the AGW argument ever got any traction.