MDMAlliance said:
allenmaher said:
Remember that CO2 is not the only greenhouse gas, a much more powerful one that occurs naturally for a number of reasons is Methane. It has 20 times the warming potential so simple CO2 measurements are not the whole picture when it comes to global warming. The wobble in the earth's axis, and the location of the continents relative to the poles all play a part in things.
Weather in individual years and specific locations are not a good indicator of global climate. The amount of local and annual variation is very high. Global warming trends are rather modest by comparison and are only visible when you look at longer term climate data. They still matter despite this since the reference climate normals are on an upward trend.
There is not conspiracy, there is evidence and a lot of discussion about the evidence, the preponderance of which supports anthropogenic global warming. |
Carbon Dioxide is one of the least potent greenhouse gases there are. Water Vapor, on the other hand, is a lot more potent.
From what I hear, Carbon Dioxide is quite harmless. That, and our contribution to "global warming" is less than 1%.
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Carbon dioxide only blocks part of the spectrum but is in much higher concentrations than other GHGs. Unlike water vapour, CO2 it is a unidirectional temperature forcing. Water vapour acts as both warming and cooling blocking energy from escaping and reflecting energy back out into space.
According to the latest journals that I have read the probability that the current warmin trend is caused by us is about 90% certain, while the next leading candidate, natural causes is about 10%. While this is not considered a conclusive proof, which in large dynamic systems we would put at 95% or better, the likelyhood of natural causes is very low. That is what we mean by perponderance of the evidence, it is overwhelmingly the most likely explanation.
The figure you are quoting of 1% seems to be erroneous, I would check your sources.
