Welcome to FreeRepublic, and thanks for the good post and the links. I am also in the geosciences. A very simple site with some simple explanations is given below. But rather than looking at CO2 on the whole, they look at it as the percentage of greenhouse gases. So - it is a BIT higher of a percentage that it can add to the greenhouse effect.
Even so, the grand sum of mandmade CO2 greenhouse effect is about 0.28%. Still, a REALLY small number that adds diddly-squat to temperature changes. But just think, if we destroy our econonmy we might be able to move that from a 0.28% to a 0.20%!
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html
Since two years, the solar spots are no longer following the
predictions.
The so called “experts” at NOAA Space Weather Prediction
Center predicted in January 07 the beginning of the cycle 24
to occur in mid 2008. As this did not occur, they shifted the
prediction one year later to mid 2009.
Now we are at the end of 2009 and still no beginning of
the next sunspot cycle ...
Furthermore, they reduced the predicted maximum from
140 to 90 sunspots, and delayed the predicted peak also
one year.
Now have a look at the latest update of the preditions
(2009 Dec. 8), and you see that still the preditions are
way out of reality ... see:
http://home.datacomm.ch/hb9abx/sunspot-08-09.htm
There you also see the previous predictions that were
revised and revised ...
I ask, why the “experts” still continue to make new
predictions, as the situation is so undecided, that we may
even enter a “maunder minimum” or any kind of solar
spot maximum between 25 and 150 ...
Would it not be wiser if the “experts” would say: We cannot
make any valid prediction, as the present behaving of the sun
is completely out of the our knowledge ?
Felix HB9ABX