Healthy Skepticism - Carbon Dioxide and Global Warming

This video covers the basic process of how Carbon Dioxide, a trace gas, coupled with Water Vapor, will end up acting to heat up the Earth's atmsosphere at a level substantially higher than today. However there are many counter balancing effects that would serve to lower Earth's temperatures and I am truly on the edge that the predicitions of a substantially hotter world based on increased loads of Human generated green house gases is valid. Please help.

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

• Global
• Warming
• Black
• Body
• Radiation
• Green
• House
• Effect
• Carbon
• Dioxide

[boltar2003]

Isn't it about time for a new video??

[jas2754]

Hi Boltar... thanks for the interest. Yes it is long overdue.. I have been swamped with real work committments the last few months!

[mailbrian]

Thanks. Not a bad point about water vapor being so important. Should we not cut back on our emissions until we understand this better. There are simple things that help and help our oil dependent economy (compact fluorescents save 80%, shipping slowed by 20% saves half of shipping fuel, hybrids get 50mpg, etc). Can we seed the sky or pump the oceans back down and put that water in underground tanks or otherwise dispose of it to keep our heads above water?

[jas2754]

Hi,

There is really not anything that can be done regarding controlling Water / Water Vapor..there is too much of it. However makes sense to try to cut back on CO2 emissions as much as possible.... often such attempts to improve the environment have side benefits like improvements in alternate energy sources and stimulating the economy. So paradoxically, even if cutting back on CO2 does not alter the warming path the Earth is on, the side benefits of doing so could be huge.

[migca]

If global mean temps are truly rising, the brutal end result may be the shut down of the ocean's Thermohaline Circulation. Warming poles send a flood of cold, fresh water into the seas from melting ice and permafrost, ruining gradients in the THC's temp/salinity ratio that drive it. The Gulf Stream is one part of it, a vast warm current flowing by Europe--the only reason the UK isn't as cold as other places at that latitude--like Hudson Bay. Global cooling?

[W1LDWESLEY]

well we know that its to blame for premachor deaths in big cities. i say global warming or not. lets clean our air and enviroment.

[MaisieAndSythey]

thank you for this. It really helped me on my case study Global Warming: Is Co2 the one to blame?

[TRUMPHENT]

CO2 absorbs IR in bandwidth that is not by H2O. Warm up the ocean and it will not absorb as much CO2. While the ocean is absorbing CO2, it is acidifying. That alone is enough for serious concern.

You mention that CO2 is a "trigger". You studiously avoid Methane. Methane is 20x more potent a GHG than is CO2. Methane is already outgassing from thawing tundra.

My climate scientist of the week/month is Veerabhadran Ramanathan. And yes, I took the effort to learn to spell his name correctly.

[daobagua]

Very nice balance show of results. I have studied some control systems in my engineering classes and I can appreciate how hard it is to model even a very limited system. But to model the earth, thats a goal if i have ever heard one. I, like you, am a skeptic. While i am not cut off from the idea of global warming, I would like to see more concrete evidence, (maybe less al gore), before we destroy our economy and refocus all our resources to solve this problem. I wish you well in your search.

[MisterRobertito1]

Thank you so much for this. I've been writing a paper and I'm not one of the smartest ones out there, but I've gotten a main understanding of things having to do with The Greenhouse Effect, etc. Your explanation helped a bit more with other things I needed to know. I wish I could use you as a source lol. Thank you so much though.

[SauceMystery]

"..you only have to go back to the Medieval Warming Period, from the 10th to the 14th Century, to find an intense global warming episode, followed immediately by the drastic cooling of the Little Ice Age. Neither of these events were caused by variations in CO2 levels"

~Walter Cunningham

Apollo 7 Astronaut

UCLA Physics BS with honors, 1960, MS with distinction, 1961

Inst of Geophysics And Planetary Sciences, Doctorate in Physics

NASA Space Sciences and Geology, 2,000 hours education 1963-71

[SauceMystery]

"Historically, temperature increases have preceded high CO2 levels, and there have been periods when atmospheric CO2 levels were as much as 16 times what they are now, periods characterized not by warming but by glaciation."

~Walter Cunningham

Apollo 7 Astronaut

graduate, UCLA (Physics) BS, 1960, with honors; MS, 1961, with distinction

Institute of Geophysics And Planetary Sciences, Doctorate in Physics

NASA (Space Sciences and Geology) 2,000 hours (education) 1963-71

[SauceMystery]

Peer-reviewed :

complete pdf available online, from abstract :

"These conclusions contrast strongly with those of recent publications based on essentially the same data. Copyright  2007 Royal Meteorological Society.... Received 31 May 2007; Accepted 11 October 2007"

search :

International Journal of Climatology of the Royal Meteorological Society [DOI: 10.1002/joc.1651]

[SauceMystery]

book that profiles prestigious scientists all over the world that are questioning "manmade" global warming :

"The Deniers" by Lawrence Solomon