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To: your local physicist
Because it is not the IPCC's graph. It is from a well-researched skeptical site. The CO2 warming effect is not in question, only the magnitude and especially any feedback.

The reason they can't just put in feedback is that it depends on the concentration of water vapor. Higher concentrations, especially at higher altitudes, are warming. More diffuse water vapor is warming. OTOH, concentrated water vapor turns into rain and is cooling. Concentrated convection also dries the upper troposphere and is cooling. I think the biggest gap in your list of heat transfer and his equations is convection. Convection is really about weather. I agree with your last sentence 100%.

93 posted on 11/06/2009 8:51:08 AM PST by palmer (Cooperating with Obama = helping him extend the depression and implement socialism.)
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To: palmer
Well the Hungarians and Steven Schwartz are questioning the magnitude of any warming and saying it's greatly overstated. The Hungarians seem to be saying actual warming is close to zero. It makes no sense to me intuitively that a small concentration of CO2 replacing a small concentration of O2 in the atmosphere could cause such a dramatic amount of warming, especially considering that water vapor is far more abundant than CO2 and has 30-50 times more impact on the earth's climate. I think you're on the right track and the modeling problems are most likely in the feedback effects of water vapor. That's a tough process to model because you can't create an artificial atmosphere in your lab and run measurements. They would have to use an airplane capable of flying at high altitude and then run a lot of measurements of temperature and electromagnetic radiation at various altitudes to try to figure out how much energy is absorbed and reflected by clouds.

The most amazing thing to me about the global warming debate is the overconfidence with which these IPCC people state their conclusions. Climate science is really just getting up to speed and there are all kinds of unanswered questions. I suspect some of the IPCC people are just trying to error on the side of caution, but in the long run it's a mistake to greatly overstate the certainty level in their climate forecasts. There's human vanity involved here too; people like to think they know more than they really know about incredibly complex subjects.

95 posted on 11/06/2009 9:06:27 AM PST by your local physicist (If the Canadians and Brazilians can drill for oil off their Atlantic coast, why can't we?)
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To: palmer

My intuitive sense for global warming theory is that the actual warming effect of CO2 is very small and less than 10% of what the IPCC says it is, and essentially all of this warming is canceled out by negative feedback from the reflection of sunlight by clouds, so that the actual impact of CO2 on temperature is very close to ZERO. That’s what the temperature history has started to confirm. I’ll bet anyone a six-pack of their favorite beer that this will be the scientific consensus in ten years. I’ll freepmail all takers in ten years to collect my bets, then “party like it’s 1999.”


96 posted on 11/06/2009 9:13:53 AM PST by your local physicist (If the Canadians and Brazilians can drill for oil off their Atlantic coast, why can't we?)
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