[cbacba]

Originally Posted by Simple

Yes it does that fastest GLOBAL change is 2C in 1000 years, Greenland however has changed by several degrees in a centurary but this wasn't a global event, find a global change as rapid as 2C in a hundred years, i haven't been able to, it must be global, the Arctic is presently heading for 4-5C in 100 years and the Greenland events are due to changes in the THC which causes very rapid unique changes in this region since Panama.

Estimates of the last super volcano were 5 deg C. What makes you think the arctic is going to increase by anywhere close to that much either?

Your original point was that deserts are colder than Mississippi swamps at night therefore water vapour isn't amplifying the effect of CO2 infra red warming. This is a typical misrepresentation put forward to confuse the issue. The desert region has little water in its system where as the swamp has loads, this water absorbs heat all day due to the massive Specific capacity of the water, this heat is stored in the water and then released at night, not much water not much heat stored cold nights lots of water lots of heat stored warmer nights. This however has little to do with the overall system and is a red herring that CO2 isn't causing warming as an example it is like saying if you leave the door of the fridge open the inside is warmer because the engine isn't working.

That's the problem with using the term amplify. It leads to a major problem for most people to comprehend. The ground holds far more heat than the paltry amount of h2o in the atmosphere. What you describe isn't even a mechanism, it's a misunderstanding on your part. H2o vapor has some mass and retention ability but it also has very similar IR blocking as co2. As for h2o, it's lighter than the primary air molecules and the molar ht capacities for air at 0C is 29 while h2o is 37 at 100C. I didn't have time to do a thorough search to try to find h2o vapor Cp at 20C but suffice to say it will be less and the air value should be more. What's more, the h2o vapor will increase less in temperature for a given influx of energy than will dry air as Cp is a measure of how much heat energy it takes for a certain amount of the material to be heated by 1 deg K (same amount of temperature change as 1 deg C).

Given the same temperature and humidity, the IR blocking of the h2o in the swamp will be the same regardless of the presence of co2. It is this IR blocking and not the minor increase in the specific ht of the atmosphere that is responsible for the vast majority of the temperature differences between the desert and the swamp. At sealevel in the swamp, about the maximum percent of h2o vapor present at 100% humidity is going to be about 2%.

The average temperature at night in the desert over time will be higher when there is more CO2 in the atmosphere due to its ability to absord heat and warm the atmosphere as you clearly know as water as you say does the same thing only better, thankfully or the world would be an ice ball. The amount of water in the atmosphere is huge, and therefore changes in the overall water content of the atmosphere are small. CO2 however absorbs the heat and warms the atmosphere arround it, this warming allows that atmosphere to evaporate more water vapour in a non linear way, and therefore more actual water vapour is held in the atmosphere and there is a greater overall warming effect, this is well recognised and studied and it enhances the effect of CO2 warming by a factor of 2 or so. The warmer the atmosphere gets the more water vapour it holds the hotter it gets this relationship is none linear, which is often the case in a complex system and precisely why the very small changes in the sun's intensity over 1000 years can have such dramtic effects.

Sorry but the h2o is it's own ghg. It doesn't need co2 to act. It doesn't enhance co2's ability to act - in fact, it substantially duplicates it. The co2 will still have what effect it has plus some of what was being done by the h2o if there were no h2o. The effects of both are negative on each other as to the total amount of IR blocked compared to what either would do without the other present. Combined, both perform less well than they would separately but the total is in excess of either individually.

An absence of co2 in the atmosphere would ostensibly result in about 3 deg C less temperature as that is the total contributions of co2. While appearing catastrophic to many, that's about 1/2 the maximum drop generated by something like a super volcano impulse or the normal cyclical variations as seen in the ice cores. The usual peaks in the warm times as I recall are about 3 deg. C warmer than now. While 3 deg. might be a really significant ice age, it's no snowball earth.

IPCC 2007, Pielke web blog, Hansen science sept 2006, you should read that paper explains how the tropics arround East India and Western pacific not the poles are a lot more accurate measures of global temperature changes as they are not subject to THC variations and when you look at temperature changes there 0.2C a decade is uniquely rapid and most skeptics even feel that this event is more rapid than previous, Paradox here feels it is due to the natural forcings alignments including ones we don't know yet like magnetic fields whose influences as you know are pure speculation and even if they aren't they always been present yet this event is unique.

Why should I believe Hansen when his numbers are wilder and whackier than IPCC's?

CO2 levels were lowest ever in the Co2 record of the world between 200-290 for the last 650,000years at least, therefore we have increased very low levels, to still very low levels, but enough to increase the forcing by 0.6w/m2 in less than 50 years, and climatologists can do maths.

Anyone can do math when the problems are made simple enough - like by leaving out the important details. Ever see the horse that adds or the dog that counts? (note both are actually fakes but then ...).

Your forcing number is likely to be very high and in error. Hansen is probably off by a factor of 5-6 too high.

As for the clouds the link to cosmic rays is tenuous and real climate and climatologists in UK feel it is very over exaggerated.

I bet the weather girl does too.

Being invested in one thing and having another embarassing factor roll in can be worse than doing the weather on national tv while in the buff.

I've only ever read 30-40% reflectance and cirrus clouds less than that they let short radiation through and the water in the clouds is also heated causing a heating effect and when worked by LIn et al in 2001 the clouds where a positive forcing.

Well, what's reflected never gets in. Whats absorbed at the top ofthe atmosphere never reaches the surface, at least in any amount.

Grasping at cosmic rays is rather odd to me, when GHG as clear, where they come from, how much, what effect they have all very thoroughly investigated.

Evidently you've never observed the surface flux of cosmic rays with a detector as large as a human body or a 19" television set. While you'd be seeing 2ndary particles created in the atmosphere rather than the original, you'd also find that there is a tremendous amount of them being detected every second.

They come from all over, including the sun. At the highest end which are very infrequent, some little atoms like single iron atoms pack the punch of a fastball in a baseball game (that's a baseball thrown at over 90mph and has enough kinetic energy to kill someone were they to be hit in the head by that baseball).

The net result though is that they have known effects on cloud formation. The discovery of them was the Wilson Cloud Chamber Experiment. The forgotten purpose of that experiment was to ascertain the cause of cloud formation.

It's also known thru forensic science that the cosmic ray flux has diminished over time. One little aside - a huge intergalactic cloud at about 6 million deg. C and estimated to be about 300m light years across has very recently been discovered with the expectation there are quite a few supermassive black holes imbedded and some are thinking it might be the source of much of the super high energy cosmic rays.

The sun also produces lower energy cosmic rays in copious amounts. Since these are all charged particles, they change path with magnetic fields and the sun has a magnetic field that tends to deflect and reduce the cosmic ray flux with increased magentism. The sunspot cycle is a short term 11 yr nominal cycle variation of that field. It's also been observed that there's been a 40% increase in overall field strength over the last 50 yrs or so. To date, I've heard of no forensic approach to determining long term values. The closest being since the advent of the telescope, sunspots have been counted daily and recorded, giving a few hundred years of data. It turns out the last little micro mini ice age and cooling in the 18th and early 17th century did occur in a time where no observable spots were present for about 50 years.

As for global warming pushing money to the east thats ecomonics mate not global warming, China can produce things cheaper than the west and USA isn't exactly putting much legisation to stop GHG emissions in THe USA has a massive trade deficit with China the rise of the East is nigh your right.

Actually, it's politics like the driving force for the global warming scare. From what I hear, one of their new export products is some sort of dirty coal fired generating plant that they build (because they can under kyoto) then dismantle and sell them to countries who are not supposed to build new plants but are permitted to buy and have old/used ones.

As for producing things cheaper, when one has unlimited supplies of slave labor and doesn't need to worry about working conditions or about despoiling the environment, production costs are miniscule compared to that of the west. It also sounds like they're starting to do their bit on global warming too by reducing their population. It seems their 'undesirables' (like insurgents) are now helping them start up a new medical business - human spare parts like organs.