Here is the problem with that graph. For the last few years we have been getting cooler. If the CO2 levels exploding means we are heating the earth, and we are the cause of most of the climate change, it's imposable to get colder (unless we have lowered the CO2).

If that graph is right, then the CO2 levels must have very little effect on global warming compared to other factors. That chart proves CO2 levels mean nothing (or almost nothing).

Actually, that's not true! Climate change doesn't mean that the mean or median temperature rises, it means that extremes become more extremes - hotter summers and colder winters.

He's right. One or two years is irrelevant when looking at an aggregate trend. Its like saying that because you have one warm day in the winter that the rest of the winter will be warm.

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/12/22/222357/40

Objection: H2O accounts for 95% of the greenhouse effect; CO2 is insignificant.

Answer: According to the scientific literature and climate experts, CO2 contributes anywhere from 9% to 30% to the overall greenhouse effect. The 95% number does not appear to come from any scientific source, though it gets tossed around a lot.


Please see this paper (PDF), the textbook referenced here, and this article at RealClimate.

There is a very important distinction to be made, as you will read if you follow the link to Real Climate, between water vapour's role in the Earth's Greenhouse effect and it's role in climate change. If you were to read through the table of climate forcings in the IPCC report or at NASA's page about forcings in its GCM, you won't find water vapour there at all. This is not because climate scientists are trying to hide the role of water vapour, rather it is because H2O in the troposphere is a feedback effect, it is not a forcing agent. Simply put, any artificial perturbation in water vapour concentrations is too short lived to change the climate. Too much in the air will quickly rain out, not enough and the abundant ocean surface will provide the difference via evaporation. But once the air is warmed by other means, H2O concentrations will rise and stay high, thus providing the feedback.

This is the exact term and proper definition.

The thing is that as the climate changes the seas will rise because of the global shift of hot and cold regions. The thing is that I wonder how things will be effected. With the massive desalinization of the oceans there will be mass extinction of marine species if they cannot evolve to handle the change.

yea, that's what it means now, because we are cooling. 5 years ago it was just about heat. 25 years ago it was just about cooling. If one day the earth stops changing temperature, environmentalist will be up in arms that we screwed things up.

or 100 years is irrelevant when looking at a million.

well we are about due for another ice age...

still the Earth isnt really heating or cooling yet. Wait till the water is about 40% desalinated. The fun will begin around that time.

in 2006 we had 37,482 record high's. in 2007, we had 37,248, in 2008 we has 12,703.

in 2006, we had 14,762 record low's. in 2007, we had 12,483, in 208 we had 9030.

So, the planet is getting less extreme over the last 3 years. Not more.

Doesn't the fact that we're setting any records indicate that we're still getting more exteme? Less records just means that the rate of change is slowing down.