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I remain someone who is in the middle about Climate Change because I don't feel I've studied all the factors enough to form a definitive opinion. But one of th

by SamAtt 17y ago

I remain someone who is in the middle about Climate Change because I don't feel I've studied all the factors enough to form a definitive opinion. But one of the thing that always pushes me towards the skeptics side is the fact that advocates (like this author) seem to simply ignore the skeptic's points. Take his first point where he says "All things being equal, adding greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere will warm it". Look how many times he uses the word "simple" in that section to indicate it is just beyond dispute that more CO2 will make the world dramatically hotter. The problem is that very point is one of the largest points of dispute. Skeptics point to evidence that light absorption follows a logarithmic curve as the substance absorbing the light increases. Meaning if the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is already high enough to absorb most of the infrared radiation we wouldn't see a dramatic increase by adding more CO2. Now you can obviously debate that point and that's where the debate over Global Warming should come in but the fact that this author chooses to skip it completely and present "CO2 = linear heating of the climate" as a given tells me where his bias is. Since the rest of the article is based on his first point being absolute it comes across as ineffective to me.

fhars 17y ago
That argument is wrong. Adding more C02 into an already IR-opaque atmosphere wouldn't change the amount of IR radiation finally emitted into space (so much is true, but irrelevant), but it still would move the surfaces of the same greenhouse warming (currently ca. 35°C at the surface) into higher parts of the atmosphere, thereby raising air and ground temperatures (which is the relevant point). People who dispute this just dispute their own understanding of thermodynamics.
- SamAtt 17y ago
  See, this is what I'm talking about. We don't know anything you just said for a fact. We simply don't. Because for us to know that, or for it even to be an issue of Thermodynamics, we'd have to know FOR A FACT how the CO2 is influencing our atmosphere. Which we don't know. Again, I'm not saying you're wrong. But your treatment of theory as fact is exactly the issue I was pointing out in my post above. (For the record I don't think what you're presenting is consistent with Global Warming as we understand it. What you present in your comment could cause a slight warming but the reality is heat is still coming from the sun and if the atmosphere is already IR opaque than the heat trapped inside our atmosphere is limited by that meaning the Global catastrophe that is predicted doesn't really gel. It goes back to the blanket example, no matter how many blankets you put over yourself they can only trap the heat that's already there not create new heat)

by SamAtt 17y ago

fhars 17y ago

That argument is wrong. Adding more C02 into an already IR-opaque atmosphere wouldn't change the amount of IR radiation finally emitted into space (so much is true, but irrelevant), but it still would move the surfaces of the same greenhouse warming (currently ca. 35°C at the surface) into higher parts of the atmosphere, thereby raising air and ground temperatures (which is the relevant point). People who dispute this just dispute their own understanding of thermodynamics.

SamAtt 17y ago
See, this is what I'm talking about. We don't know anything you just said for a fact. We simply don't. Because for us to know that, or for it even to be an issue of Thermodynamics, we'd have to know FOR A FACT how the CO2 is influencing our atmosphere. Which we don't know. Again, I'm not saying you're wrong. But your treatment of theory as fact is exactly the issue I was pointing out in my post above. (For the record I don't think what you're presenting is consistent with Global Warming as we understand it. What you present in your comment could cause a slight warming but the reality is heat is still coming from the sun and if the atmosphere is already IR opaque than the heat trapped inside our atmosphere is limited by that meaning the Global catastrophe that is predicted doesn't really gel. It goes back to the blanket example, no matter how many blankets you put over yourself they can only trap the heat that's already there not create new heat)