What? We're posting funny pictures now? <img src=http://www.noquarterusa.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/WEBDriving-Sarah1.jpg>
First of all, let me apologize if I misconstrued what you were saying. Please don't go away. You are at least sane and know that the 35% increase in CO2 is due to man unlike some people. You also know CO2 is a powerful greenhouse gas even at 380 ppm and don't need to have that explained to you over and over again. Like some people. So that being said, do you trust that the world's climatologists are the best ones to ask about this ? Do you respect the statements about it from the world's science organizations? Do you think they are generally presenting the actual facts and science and are not all in some conspiracy or large scale hoax? Do you trust NOAA? And yeah, I plot skew-t's all the time. They are very tasty although high in saturated fats. How do you like to prepare them?
No, see the quote from you. I'm just trying to point out in a way that amuses me, that you are insane.
We both know who is the crazy AGW alarmist. Do you get paid to post your dribble? But, you are easily amused. <img src=http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_EgXqKP0XKGM/S3XPiSQMiVI/AAAAAAAABfA/NY9pJdUBR6c/s320/Dees+Al+Gore+Church.jpg> It's a weak greenhouse gas that is irrelevant. Water vapor dwarfs it in relevance but that won't fit the Alarmists agenda. You should know that but you have trouble learning new things and you have trouble discerning truth from fiction.
The mere fact that experts and laymen agree /disagree on AGW consistent with their political ideology tells rational people the science is very very weak. It's just not plausible that belief or non belief in AGW isn't almost exclusively driven by ideology. Scientific opinion driven by ideology has got to be fucked up science.
Apology accepted. I trust the climatologists, but only to a point. Some very knowledgeable meteorologists were thrown under the bus when this heated up. I believe that was a tremendous mistake. These guys understood trends in meteorology, which is extremely important to determining climatology. Both require a great deal of extrapolation. Twice in my short Navy career, I was tasked with finding and correcting mistakes. That's not easily done when dealing with observation. Only on the rare occasion is there certainty of an error, but the slightest errors can have a huge impact. Let me explain one variable. When I launched a balloon near the equator, and if the ITCZ was essentially overhead, my balloon would go straight up, and come straight down, sometimes literally within a mile or two of the launch. We're talking about a balloon that went several miles up. Now in the mid-latitudes, that balloon may travel horizontally 100's of miles while ascending and even further when near the poles. Which of these sets of data will represent the actual state of the atmosphere vertically at a given point? Of course, the equatorial balloon, which is also where the atmosphere is most stable. That's also where it's going to be the warmest into altitude. (I know ocean temps are also a big factor, but that's for another discussion). Now times have changed, we can read this data with satellites and lasers, along with the traditional methods, but until the last few decades, real time atmospheric data was questionable, and how else do we determine if warming is occurring. I know this is simplistic, but do you see why I have doubts? I don't think 10-20 years of accurate data is enough. I don't question the observations, I question the extrapolations. I like my skew-t's with a very sharp drafting pencil and a good straight edge, though if they are still in use, they are all done by computer now. One of the nice things about them is they were a good indicator of the level of severity you could expect from thunderstorms. If I remember right, it was called the lifted K index. Been awhile, though. The skew-t was the final product of the upper air sounding.
More variables in upper air sounding data. We had launch times that we had to adhere to. On the equator, we launched 2 balloons a day, 4 if there was tropical activity within 10-15 degrees of our location. Because we had to launch at specific times, when a shower or thunderstorm was overhead the data would reflect what was occurring within the cell, but not giving what would necessarily be useful data regarding climatology (data would, however, be useful to those who study thunderstorms and CB clouds, etc.) This was common during the rainy season on the equator. Probably less so in the mid lats. My point: This data might be eliminated from modeling, and perhaps rightfully so, but how to determine if the data should be kept for modeling. Did a surface ob correlate that a thunderstorm or shower was in progress at the time a balloon was launched? Was it accurate? Or was the atmosphere so saturated that the sounding looked similar to a launch into a t storm or shower? And this scenario could occur thousands or more times over a given period and area. Let's add to that this situation: Where I was at, our balloon was the only one for 10's of thousands of square miles. Not very representive, don't you think? Do you see why the extrapolation becomes a big question mark for me? So in my mind, we've only had the more accurate methods of measuring temp (among other things) through altitude for a few decades. I simply don't believe that's long enough to conclude there has been a significant change caused by man. I'm not saying it isn't so, but questionable based on my description here. Now if we had the newer methods of measuring temps in the mid and upper atmosphere for a few hundred years, I'd be on board. Now you understand my doubts, at least if I explained them properly. It's based on my own experience of gathering data during a day gone by. I've decribed to you some of the possibilities from just one data point for many thousands of square miles. This day gone by was early 1980's.