3 choices: 1- cognitive dissonance 2- insanity 3- liar Take your pick about what accounts for Dave's response.
EIA gratefully acknowledges the following persons, who provided extensive technical reviews of draft versions of this report: Dr. Richard S. Lindzen Arthur P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology Massachusetts Institute of Technology Dr. Greg Marland Environmental Sciences Division Oak Ridge National Laboratory Mr. Paul McArdle Office of Energy Demand Policy U.S. Department of Energy Prof. Mark A. Delucchi Center for Transportation Studies University of California at Davis Dr. Sylvia Edgerton Office of Health and Environmental Research Office of Energy Research U.S. Department of Energy Dr. Margaret Singh Transportation Systems Planner Argonne National Laboratory Prof. Patrick Michaels Department of Environmental Sciences University of Virginia http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/alternate/page/environment/exec.html Could you please explain how the numbers are taken out of context?
Yes I can: "Water vapor is the predominant absorber of incoming solar radiation and a major contributor to the natural greenhouse effect. Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have reported that the atmospheric water vapor content in the stratosphere at mid-latitudes in the northern hemisphere has been increasing over the last 14 years." "Lindzen and others argue that water vapor between 2 kilometers (800 millibars) and 16 kilometers from Earth's surface (the tropopause) is the primary determinant of the greenhouse effect. However, Shine and others argue that water vapor concentration in the lower troposphere is an equally important contributor to the greenhouse effect. http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/alternate/page/environment/chap2.html
All of what you say, Matt, has to do with natural greenhouse effects, without which we would all be dead. I.E., the following, from a site about the "functions the atmosphere performs": Makes possible a mean temperature on Earth's surface of +15 ðC instead of -18 ðC as would be without atmosphere. So, saying that water vapor is the principal greenhouse gas in regards to natural greenhouse effects is saying, in the context of a debate about anthropogenic effects on warming, precisely dick. The same paper notes that water vapor has been increasing recently. This is because, of course, when you apply heat to water, mirabile dictu, it evaporates. Wotta fuckin' surprise. Try to stay on topic. We're talking about man-made global warming. I'd give up on this place, as I almost did once, but elsewhere there are a lot of smart people. Down here, almost entirely dickheads.
Also, reading it for a 2nd time, it's obviously a political document. Whoever wrote that went to truly heroic pains to try to minimize discussion of man-made global warming effects, and maximize discussion of the natural kind. Last update? Jan 10, 2008. Another fuckin' surprise, that Bushies would have rather talked about anything than reality: WMD's in Iraq (non-existent but highly relevant when discussing why we invaded that country), natural greenhouse effects (very much in existence, and completely irrelevant in any discussion of man-made global warming, except as background "gee golly" info). To quote: The last sentence completely contradicts the implications of the penultimate one. But you have to have some smarts to realize that, a thing sorely lacking down here in P&R. Note the phrase, btw, "natural greenhouse effect." Even they couldn't say that it was a major contributor of anthropogenic warming. 'Cause, you know, it wouldn't actually be true. So, they resorted to obfuscation of the Bush kind. Apparently, we're going to be dealing with the toxic legacy of that worse-than-useless President for years to come.
86 pages so far. Seems to me the REAL question is, has anyone been convinced to change their opinion on the issue yet?
I am not sure if anyone has changed their minds but we did learn that the car was invented to solve the problem of too much horseshit and it has been established that when the UN needs real muscle, they call Bangladesh. The best yet, is that for the past 100 years, man has been controlling the climate.
No, Lucrum, the real question is whether science, and society, will be allowed to advance. The last time we had this debate it was over CFCs. They were banned, life went on, and guess what? It turned out that this ban is helping immensely in the fight against global warming: CFCs are listed right there with CO2, N2O, and methane as anthropogenic greenhouse gases, and are part of the Annual Greenhouse Gas Index compiled by NOAA. Scroll down on this page and you'll see a table listing the year-to-year changes in these gases expressed in their effect on warming. You will notice that there is an abrupt drop in 1990, when the Montreal Protocol banning CFCs went into effect, and in no year since then save one has the rate of change in radiative forcing been anything like what it was prior to the issuance of that ban. Science advanced, society advanced, and we're all far better off today as a result of this protocol. Du Pont and others argued, at the time, that the science was still "uncertain". Of course. Adam Smith warned in The Wealth of Nations against listening to merchants with a vested interest in the decision of an issue. Apparently, the only thing we ever really took from that book was the bit about the invisible hand and the division of labor. Mr. Smith was far wiser on a far greater range of subjects, but his wisdom on these is lost.
Here's the table: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/04/water-vapour-feedback-or-forcing/ Lucky I found it again!
Sorry, it doesn't work that way: "A timely perspective article in Science this week addresses the issues of upper atmosphere change. âUpperâ atmosphere here is the stratosphere up to the ionosphere (~20 to 300 km). LaÅ¡tovička et al point out that cooling trends are exactly as predicted by increasing greenhouse gas trends, and that the increase in density that this implies is causing various ionspheric layers to âfallâ. This was highlighted a few years back by Jarvis et al (1998) and in New Scientist in 1999 (and I apologise for stealing their headline!). "The changes in the figure are related to the cooling seen in the lower stratospheric MSU-4 records (UAH or RSS), but the changes there (~ 15-20 km) are predominantly due to ozone depletion. The higher up one goes, the more important the CO2 related cooling is. Itâs interesting to note that significant solar forcing would have exactly the opposite effect (it would cause a warming) â yet another reason to doubt that solar forcing is a significant factor in recent decades." http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/11/the-sky-is-falling/