My belief in Global Warming is getting shaky

[freeztar]

Originally Posted by Michaelangelica

Isn't the main greenhouse gas water?

We know it is going up, but by how much?
Is anybody looking?

Here's a great article that explains the role of water vapor.

RealClimate

[Zythryn]

Actually water is the biggest component of the greenhouse gases. However, water vapor only lasts for a period of days to weeks in the atmosphere. Unlike CO2 which lasts for decades to a century or so.
So, if you add water vapor to the atmosphere it leaves almost as fast as you add it. If you add CO2, it is there for a long time and can act to add solar forcing for a long time.
Freeztar's link does a much more thorough job of describing the cycle for those that are interested

[InfiniteNow]

For those members who prefer watching over reading (and even those who don't), the following is quite a quality presentation:

YouTube - The American Denial of Global Warming

It is a video of Naomi Oreskes' talk on "The American Denial of Global Warming":

The first part ("TRUTH") outlines the history of climate science research, and the unpoliticized acceptance thereof that lasted until the early 1990s. The second part "DENIAL" describes the George C. Marshall Instiute's role in creating confusion and politicizing the issue, using tactics from the cigarette wars.



Here is a index:

TRUTH

00:00 Introduction

02:00 Frank Luntz

04:00 2001 IPCC TAR, but many decades of science before

10:30 1957 Suess & Revelle; "Big Greenhouse" in Time Magazine

14:00 1964/65 NAS Science Advisory Committee; President's Science Advisory Committee "In those days, politicians listened to scientists";bipartisanship.

17:30 1970s NRC; JASON; "Charney Report"

23:30 1988 IPCC formed; US National Energy Policy Act; George H. W. Bush

DENIAL

26:30 Why is there denial? Where did it come from?

29:15: 1984 George C. Marshal Institute founded by William Jastrow

Added William Nierenberg, Frederick Seitz; S. Fred Singer later. Original goal: Cold War, support Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative from other physicists) Tactics: threaten PBS stations with lawsuits under "Fairness Doctrine" Create uncertainty

36:00 1990, cold war over, switch to other areas [global warming, CFC-ozone, tobacco] No Greenhouse problem, as long as free market allowed to solve!

39:00 1995 IPCC SAR, personal attacks on Ben Santer

42:00 1995 Connection with tobacco, Seitz, tactics Create doubt, do not publish science, but in popular literature, op-eds, Wall Street Journal

53:30 Why? In each case, political views [NO REGULATION, EVER] masked as arguments about science. [People can have whatever political views they want, but the proper place to discuss them is in politics, not by fudging science.

[Zythryn]

Awesome find InfiniteNow. Consider some rep coming your way as soon as I spread some around

[InfiniteNow]

Originally Posted by Zythryn

Awesome find InfiniteNow.

Yeah, I really like it, and think it was a fantastic presentation. Thanks for the feedback. It's nice to know that people are paying attention.

[Michaelangelica]

Originally Posted by Zythryn

Actually water is the biggest component of the greenhouse gases. However, water vapor only lasts for a period of days to weeks in the atmosphere. Unlike CO2 which lasts for decades to a century or so.
So, if you add water vapor to the atmosphere it leaves almost as fast as you add it. If you add CO2, it is there for a long time and can act to add solar forcing for a long time.
Freeztar's link does a much more thorough job of describing the cycle for those that are interested

A great article thanks. Still he is tentative in his conclusions.
(Why does the planet insist on being so bloody complex!?)
Personally, I am not so sure/convinced yet.
Water content of the air is going up.
Planes distribute a lot of water at high altitudes.
Has anyone looked at its interactions with minor GH gasses or fine particle pollution?
Is anyone really monitoring it?
Do we know what it was historically?
It would be hard to get humidity readings from ice core samples I would expect?
The number of dams we have built in the last 100 years has no precedent in history; more dams= more evaporation.

You can watch the earth's temp go up here too
Amazing Real Time World Clock!

is this amajor cause of global warming?
current work

[REASON]

Originally Posted by InfiniteNow

Yeah, I really like it, and think it was a fantastic presentation. Thanks for the feedback. It's nice to know that people are paying attention.

I just finished watching it. Naomi gives an excellent presentation. It confirms some of the reasons why people reject the science, that I was trying to get at in previous posts such as this one, after which I was accused of not adding any substance to this thread.

Thanks for presenting this INow. This video lecture is very important information to get out so that people can not only understand that the science surrounding global warming has been ongoing and is established, but that we are being misled by paid ideologues and charlatans seeking to generate doubt in our minds for political purposes.

Watch and learn!

[Turtle]

Originally Posted by CraigD

IMHO, much of what drives rational arguments for “stabilizing” or “preserving the climatic status quo” is the lack of certainty about and confidence in climate model predictions. ...

Global climate model - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Originally Posted by wiki

...Forecasts of climate change are inevitably uncertain. Even the degree of uncertainty is uncertain, a problem that stems from the fact that these climate models do not necessarily span the full range of known climate system behavior. ...

Fossils leaves reveal climate model errors - 09 July 2001 - New Scientist

Analysis of fossils leaves have shown that the standard models used for climate prediction have huge errors when taken out of familiar conditions, say an international team of scientists. ...

Originally Posted by Craig

...despite high volumes of polar melt water) and “bad news” (eg: much faster than expected melting of Artic Ocean ice) kind. ...

Never mind the underwater volcanism; we don't know enough about it to include it.

Web Results 1 - 10 of about 1,530,000 for climate model errors.

[Zythryn]

Turtly, I agree we don't know much about underwater volcanoes. However, we have models that very closely match past performance, how did those get so close?
I have also seen models that take into account natural forcings only. These show past trends pretty darn closely until the 1930's or 40s. Then they start going off target. Models that take into account only manmade forcings also don't end up being very accurate. Models that take both natural and manmade forcings fit pretty darn close.
Once you get more data on those underwater volcanoes (how many active ones, how much CO2 they put out and how much of that CO2 reaches the atmosphere) please do let us know. I am very interested in that data.

[Zythryn]

Originally Posted by Turtle

Global climate model - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

LOL, Turtle I really had to laugh at that part of the Wiki article you quoted. You do realize that part of the wiki article was atributed to Senator Inhofe?
Unfortunately he did not attribute any specific paper or research to which that conclusion came from. ** If you haven't I would recomend reading that Wiki article in its entirety.
Yes, those models can be improved, and yes they have been improved. And yes, they have been useful in the past, and I expect them to become moreso in the future as they continue to improve.

**edit- I stand corrected, I located the article Inhofe was referring to. He paraphrased the article which you can see here: Quantifying the uncertainty in forecasts of anthropogenic climate change : Abstract : Nature. While this appeared in the journal Nature, it was not a paper, but a Letter. Which I believe is essentially a 'letter to the editor'. Often these have replies of which I am looking for.

As documented in the Wiki link you provided Turtle, climate models have improved quite a bit since 2000 (when the reference Nature letter appeared).