So you concede that we are in all likelihood responsible for the CO2 but not that it is causing warming?

The Great Global Warming Swindle is a good documentary.

Sqrl said: Not sure what I am missing but I'm honestly not seeing what you're driving at.   In any case the point I am driving at is that the human impact is pretty negligable.     But if we remove water vapor: And a better look at these breakdowns: So really the only thing Humans contribute to in a meaningful way is the category of "Other" which is only 0.007% of GHGs by concentration and 1.4% by effect, and that is after you remove water vapor. You could probably make a case that we contribute meaningfully to Methane also, but still that only accounts for .471% by concentration and 7.199% by effect. To be fair this data is probably out of date by now, but I don't have a huge list of bookmarks to work from or anything so I just did a google search for global warming and water vapor and used the first data I found that looked credible and had a good credits section. It appears to be from 2000 which is recent enough to be at the bare minimum a good indicator of how things are, even if not 100% accurate.   Edit: A quick weighting of everything shows that not including water vapor, humans are responsible for 5.5% of warming due to greenhouse effect. Considering that even the most diehard pro-GW scientist won't say that the GHE is responsible for all climate change I think 5.5% of a smaller portion is quickly getting into the territory of negligable. But even then I still think there is reason to doubt that the current warming is related to the GHE in any meaningful way just based on the NASA satellite data.

I see you're using the same site that Linkzmax used. Did you notice the post where I expose that this person cites sources that don't agree with him? What I said earlier in this thread about this site:

 Your link's references don't check out on the 95% figure. In fact, it looks like he's deliberately misrepresenting the facts. Here's one of his citations for his 95% figure:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/alternate/page/environment/appd_d.html 

"Given the present composition of the atmosphere, the contribution to the total heating rate in the troposphere is around 5 percent from carbon dioxide and around 95 percent from water vapor. In the stratosphere, the contribution is about 80 percent from carbon dioxide and about 20 percent from water vapor. It is important to remember, however, that it is currently believed that the impact of water vapor produced from surface sources such as fuel combustion on the atmospheric water vapor concentrations is minimal."

This article also contains a table which suggests that CO2 is responsible for 12% of the total greenhouse effect.

I can't believe this shit is still going on...

So if CO2 is 12% of the problem, and man made CO2 is about 3% of CO2.

Wouldn't that make Global warming due to man made CO2, '
0.36%. As in less then 1%?

Unless the numbers without water vapor are incorrect.

(actually thinks global warming is man made but applying scientific process.)

Australia just signed the Kyoto protical, and i think the US did too, that plans to cut greenhouse gas emmisions by 20 - 30% in the next few years, its gonna be a tad hard to do, but im sure we will find a way.

The US have signed it. But not ratfied. So basically it's non-binding. So the US pretty much said "We'll keep it in mind."

The Senate was 95-0 against it. Basically because there are no timetables or checks on undeveloped nations so developed nations would be handicapped vs later developed nations, and because there is fear it would hurt our economy and cost the US way too much money. (We already deficit spend like a teenager who just got his first credit card.)

I'm not disputing that the GHE effect is a real process. I'm not disputing that humans put C02 into the air. What I am saying is that the amount of C02 humans produce is pretty small to begin with compared to the normal amounts produced but even more than that I believe that the GHE is a fairly minor climate driver and even then I would say that title might be giving it a bit much credit.

I think you ignored one of my points though.

If what you are saying is true and C02 levels are 25% higher than they ever have been, then why aren't temperatures anywhere near their highest? Why isn't the rate of change anywhere near its fastest?

The only two logical conclusions I can think of are that the data about the 25% is wrong or that the GHE is not a major driver. Personally I wouldn't be surprised if both points were false.

Think about it like this, if the GHE was the major climate driver then why in the past when the climate warmed up and C02 was released from the ocean in massive quantities (the ocean is the largest reservoir of C02 on the planet BTW) did this not induce a feedback loop that would send temperatures spiraling out of control? You have to bring in some other process to cool things back down because the GHE couldn't provide cooling with GHGs on the rise. And that simple fact alone makes it a very unlikely candidate for being a major driver when all past records show major heating and cooling.

To me it seems like the more likely scenario is that C02 is a minor role in the GHE and the GHE is a minor role in the climate and when those C02 levels rose due to the heat it was a very minor influence on the heating which was easily overwhelmed by a far larger driving force, one that was likely capable of heating and cooling.

@famousringo,

I'm not sure that what you've pointed out really changes much. Those are minor changes to the numbers he presents and as Kasz pointed out really don't change my point. The data of his that I used had nothing to do with the 95% figure..I was focusing more on the other GHG numbers and man-made contributions.

As for water vapor, it is an acknowledge GHG on the alarmist side of the debate. This is a excerpt from Wikipedia, I use this more because wikipedia has a history of being dominated by pro-GW editors and so it serves that purpose well.

The role of water vapor

Water vapor is a naturally occurring greenhouse gas and accounts for the largest percentage of the greenhouse effect, between 36% and 66% ^[10]. Water vapor concentrations fluctuate regionally, but human activity does not directly affect water vapor concentrations except at local scales (for example, near irrigated fields).

Current state-of-the-art climate models include fully interactive clouds^[11]. They show that an increase in atmospheric temperature caused by the greenhouse effect due to anthropogenic gases will in turn lead to an increase in the water vapor content of the troposphere, with approximately constant relative humidity. The increased water vapor in turn leads to an increase in the greenhouse effect and thus a further increase in temperature; the increase in temperature leads to still further increase in atmospheric water vapor; and the feedback cycle continues until equilibrium is reached. Thus water vapor acts as a positive feedback to the forcing provided by human-released greenhouse gases such as CO₂.^[12]

This excerpt adds that water vapor is between 36% and 66% of the warming by GHE which further decreases the number I posted earlier about C02. The article that this was taken from also sites that the numbers are between 36% and 70% and other research I have found indicates that its based on the season as water vapor fluctuates.

Perhaps someone has data that will show how much water vapor there is by volume also? Since we know how large its effect is already it would be nice to know the % amounts as well.

Edit: According to realclimate* water vapor accounts for 80% of GHGs by mass and 90% by volume.

* - I choose this source not because of preference but because of its alignments in the debate make it worst case for my argument, in other words I'm trying to avoid the side debate over whose sources are accurate and whose aren't. 

Another way to look at the Global Warming hysteria ...

Regardless of whether you accept the 1 degree increase in global temperature for the doubling of the quantity of CO2 released, you have to accept that global temperature increases at a logarithmic rate in comparison to the quantity of CO2 released. What this means is that you need an exponential increase in CO2 levels to get a linear increase in global temperature.

Now why is this so important?

CO2 levels are directly related to the quantity of fossil fuels we mine and refine. To a certain extent we have the ability to increase our collection and processing of fossil fuels, but (for the most part) we are using all the resoruces that current commodity prices will justify. In order for us to dramatically increase production of oil worldwide we need to dramatically increase the price of oil in order to cover the complicated mining and refining of expensive resources like shale oil.

Why does the price of fossil fuels matter?

Cleaner resources like Wind, Solar, Geo-Thermal, Hydro-Electric and even Nuclear power have never been adopted on a large scale because they are typically more expensive than fossil fuels. As demands on energy increase the price of energy will end up rising at a rapid rate in order to justify using very expensive fossil fuel resources, at the same time these energy prices will justify the use of cleaner resources. As we use more cleaner resources (wind and solar in particular) the technology will rapidly increase which will reduce the cost of these resources.

Basically, natural ecconomic controlls will force people to use cleaner resources as energy demand increases thereby producing an absolute cap on the ammount of CO2 we will ever produce ...