Global warming-fact or fiction and how do you propose we tackle it?

[Final-Fan]

Sqrl said:

Final-Fan said:
Sqrl, you've made some good points that I do not dismiss. However, the very quality of your objections makes the overall issue a marathon debate which I do not want to invest in at this time. Sorry to disappoint. I promise to look into it in the future, assuming I don't forget. I'm busy right now with the FairTax and Huckabee (separately) and need a little time left over for (gasp) games and books.

I do want to continue on one very specific point, however: how much humans have contributed to the rising levels of CO2.

I know your source has small percentages for human CO2 contribution, but I don't trust that website and I couldn't see where he got the data for determining human vs. natural contribution. (I looked in the source he used for the table he got the other numbers from but couldn't find that information. If I've overlooked the obvious, again, please do correct me.)

Wikipedia's numbers which I quoted show levels of CO2 that have risen at striking speed to unprecedented heights and I just don't buy that it just so happens to correspond exactly to human industrialization without some other compelling explanation.

Do you have such an explanation? Or do you question the levels that scientists attribute to past eras?

Well first of all that graph calls its human connections into question on its own. it starts to rise around the year 1750 at a very sharp rate. The first problem is that the industrial revolution begins around 1780 which this seems to be offset from. But the second problem is the rates of change, I have a hard time believing that the increase by mankind would be that steady over that period with only a single plateau. It increases linearly even though the industrialization happened exponentionally, so already it doesn't even fit.

But also there are problems with the use of this data due to the period of the graph. If you want to compare it to the other time periods when C02 and rates of change were at their highest you have to go back a lot further than this...and since those periods are the best analogue for what is being alleged now it is the best place to go to find supporting evidence and the best place to avoid if there is no such supporting evidence.

Also I want to point out that this graph is misleading to those who don't know how to read graphs very well. The starting point for mixing ratio in ppm is 270 at the bottom of the graph. The highest point is about 347. If we assume a natural content of that 347 of about 280 we still only come up with about 19.3% of C02 in the atmosphere as being man-made. And that automatically assumes that ALL C02 from 1750 until now was added only by mankind..an assumption that is probably far from accurate but still proves a point just by being an extreme example that still doesn't add up to huge man-made influence.

This next paragraph uses numbers from your graph and %'s from realclimate.

Now using the wikipedia numbers of 36-70% which are sited from realclimate lets establish an average (this debate doesn't require exact precision so this is a fair middle ground) of 50%, this is still a bit on the low side but its an easy number to work with also. So redoing my calculations from before we end up with man-made C02 is responsible for about 6.755% of warming due to the GHE. Again no where near meaningful. Even on the low end using 36% water vapor as our number man-made C02 is only ~8.6% of warming due to GHE.

And once again I have to point out that no scientist out there attributes all of the warming to the GHE in the first place. So that number shrinks even further. Its also worth pointing out the rest of my points which you have asked to be put on hold bring into question the validity of GHE as a climate driver on any meaningful scale as well. Which would even further reduce the overall impact being imposed by these numbers.

And lastly I point out that I feel I have made huge concessions in data to reach those numbers and I have massive problems with much of that data and yet it still supports my conclusions despite a lot of much friendlier data I could have used. I think that by itself is a remarkable testiment to the validity of this argument.

First, I should note that this graph ends in 1978. I forgot to mention that before.

The graph does not start to rise in 1750; it clearly shows a space after the 1750 mark before it rises; and you'll notice that the rate of increase doesn't really take off until about 1850.

The rate of increase is pretty damn steep; are you sure that it's not in fact exponential? I can definitely discern an increase in the rate of increase. And a really thorough analysis would account for the switch from coal to oil.

A different CO2 graph. This one stretches out the graph, revealing that an exponential curve does exist.

I agree that it would be nice to see the earlier graphs, but we have already heard that those earlier CO2 levels do not rise above about 300 ppm, a level we passed in the beginning of the 20th century (I think, judging by this graph) and have since left in the dust. (Wikipedia says never in the last 800,000 years; Linkzmax's source says not in the last ~375 million years.)

The point of the current discussion isn't how much of the TOTAL CO2 we're responsible for but how much of the INCREASE of it. I've shifted away from the main GW debate because as I've said, it's clear that it will be a truly massive debate and I clearly haven't done enough research on it yet; I intend to do this research, but not at a the pace required for doing it in the middle of a debate on what I am researching.

All I ask is this: Look at that graph. Know that it goes up another 35 points vertically in a few millimeters horizontally after the graph ends. Then tell me: what makes you think that the cause is mostly natural instead of due to the "exponential" rate of human industrialization?