The important thing is: the science is not “settled”. And, yes, IR absorption or the greenhouse effect (an odd name, but now used by one and all), is a fact, since without it the surface of the earth would be around -27C – not very hospitable.

The ice core data clearly shows that CO2 concentration follows temperature (about 800 or more years) and does not precede it. So, historically, CO2 cannot be tha cause of temperature change. This does not mean that modern conditions may complicate matters, but it is certainly true that in the past, CO2 did not cause climate change. Cause must occur before effect.

The existence of the greenhouse effect is not debated because if the greenhouse effect didn’t exist, neither would we. Venus is hot enough to melt lead because of the greenhouse effect. Earth would be frozen solid if it weren’t for the greenhouse effect. I can do the math for you if you’d like, but doing some Google searches on black body radiation, black body absorption, and energy absorption from the sun at the earth’s orbit should get you all the physics you need to do it yourself.

It was nice to have a break.

I shall go read some more.

Glad you are posting the weekly carbo again. It is probably the best regular read on S & R.

For our other readers, however, Jeff’s point that we can’t control water vapor is correct – there’s just too water in the world to control it directly, and so even though it’s the most important greenhouse gas, we have to work with what we actually can control. And that means carbon dioxide (the 2nd most important greenhouse gas), methane, ozone, CFCs, HCFCs, pollution aerosols, and all that good stuff.

The advantage of this, though, is that if we can reduce those other greenhouse gases, they’ll get a fast feedback kick from water vapor, since it responds to climate changes within months instead of years, decades, or centuries as with most of the other greenhouse gases.

Jeff

This week: David Evans’ debunked; deserts may be carbon sinks; environmental cartoons; MIT develops cheap water electrolysis catalyst for hydrogen; utilities worry about plug-in cars; pollution needs better climate modeling….

One of the more interesting links I came across a while back was over on RealClimate.org, where one of the cobloggers ran a quick model to see how long the model said water vapor stayed in the atmosphere. The guy artificially set the water vapor to 0 and watched to see how long it took for it to get back to normal – it was 14 days to 90% of normal and 50 days to 99% of normal. Cool little simulation.

Jeff