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I haven't ever heard a plausible argument against extending the simple observation that a volume of air enclosing an absorbing and emitting solid when exposed t
by tbrownaw 12y ago
I haven't ever heard a plausible argument against extending the simple observation that a volume of air enclosing an absorbing and emitting solid when exposed to a wideband source of light (the sun being a good example) will trap heat in different amounts dependent on the concentration of the gases in the volume and that CO2 is one of the gases that increases this effect if you start with a mix the same as our atmosphere.
Things that come to mind immediately:
1. The solid can change colors (amount of vegetation, amount of snow/ice cover).
2. Cloud cover at various altitudes. (I think I heard this one tends to annoy the model-makers, since they don't have a good way to predict it yet.)
3. How much of the wavelengths that CO2 absorbs, is already at 100%? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absorption_band https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absorption_band has a picture that seems to imply "most of it".
Item #1 I've heard should make the effect stronger than your simple model, #3 would probably make it weaker, and #2 I doubt anyone knows.
- lotsofmangos 12y agook, ok, this I have thrown into the basket marked 'complexity'. I think it is unlikely, but definitely not that unlikely that reality will nicely balance for a wide range of values of CO2. I would like us to plan against that but it would be nice if it were so. We are probably somewhere near a local minima, in terms of temperature stability, however we have no fucking idea really where the edges are or how deep the next valley may be. The future doesn't have to be like the past, especially if we kick it.