Answers:
1. Water vapor is responsible for about 95% of the Earth's greenhouse effect. Carbon dioxide is less than 2% of the total effect, with methane taking up most of the balance, and other gasses responsible for the remainder. But all we EVER hear about is CO2.
2. The U.S., with it's vast forests (more now than in pre-Columbian times) and farmlands is a net ABSORBER of CO2...as opposed to Europe and Japan, which are net emitters.
3. Let's see...they were raising crops of oats in Greenland, and the Icelandic/Viking explorers were calling what is now the chilly area of Newfoundland "Vinland" because of the grapes which grew there. It's an era referred to as the "Medieval Climate Optimum" in old climate textbooks, and was followed by the spread of Black Plague (the fleas of the rats taking advantage of the warmer climate to spread to northern Europe). That period was followed by what used to be referred to as the "Little Ice Age", in which England saw snow in areas never before seen, and the River Thames froze quite solidly on a regular basis. That period ended in the early/middle 1700's, and we've been in a warming trend ever since.
When an eco-fanatic that I'm talking to fails the first question, I have to enquire why they feel that they are entitled to demand legislation on a technical topic of which they have absolutely NO idea what they are talking about.
Your answers are wrong, as you can see from my post just below yours. BTW, why did you not wait to let me answer your post?
I just realized that I gave the wrong link to debunk this myth. Here is the correct one:
http://illconsidered.blogspot.com/2006/04/us-is-net-co2-sink.html
1. Water vapor is responsible for about 95% of the Earth's greenhouse effect. Carbon dioxide is less than 2% of the total effect, with methane taking up most of the balance, and other gasses responsible for the remainder. But all we EVER hear about is CO2.
I already debunked the nonsense about 95% being water vapor. I'll only add one thing. The reason we hear about CO2 and not the others is because the amount of CO2 is increasing faster than the others by several orders of magnitude. The other gasses are have been pretty stable over the past 150 years.
#2 is already debunked.
3. Let's see...they were raising crops of oats in Greenland, and the Icelandic/Viking explorers were calling what is now the chilly area of Newfoundland "Vinland" because of the grapes which grew there.
I already posted a link which debunks the myth that global temperatures were lower during the Medieval Warming period. As to the annecdotes about milder climates in South Greenland and Europe, there is strong evidence that these were just local effects. Just because one part of the world gets warmer doesn't mean the same thing happens to the entire globe. In fact, the evidence points to the fact that the world as a whole was cooler then than today (though it was warmer than say, during the mid 1800's).
When an eco-fanatic that I'm talking to fails the first question, I have to enquire why they feel that they are entitled to demand legislation on a technical topic of which they have absolutely NO idea what they are talking about.
Unfortunately, you have demonstrated that you know about as much as the typical ecofanatic. You don't do the conservative cause any good by perpetuating internet myths that have been shown false long ago.