Skeptics, please explain...?

Question

Why would according to you the increased and increasing concentration of greenhouse gases not lead to an increase of global temperatures ???

Answer 1

I can't answer for the skeptics, because I'm not a skeptic.

I will note that one of the skeptics here questioned if you are old enough to remember Mount Saint Helens.  

He wondered about the cooling associated with the eruption that he says  put out more CO2 than human activity.  What he failed to take into account was the associated particulate matter it also put into the air.  

The basic science is that CO2 lets light in, but doesn't let infrared out.  It acts like a blanket or, more accurately, like the glass in a greenhouse panel.  The particulate matter from the volcano acted, for a while, like a sheet of aluminum that reflected light away before it ever reaches the ground to be turned into heat.

The two processes are not incompatible, and one happening doesn't negate the other.  The denial of the science of  the greenhouse effect based on the existence of particulate matter from volcanoes is like denying that the Cubs exist because the Yankees have more Pennants.

Answer 2

What part of "they can't" don't you understand?

Please don't report me...  ;)

Answer 3

** Sarcasm **  I simply don’t believe in the religion of science. The “Theory of Gravity” is supposed to cause objects to fall, right? Then how can birds and airplanes can fly? That they "can" fly, completely goes against everything that Newton and Einstein said, therefore their theories are a hoax.

The concentration of greenhouse gases has steadily increased, but global temperatures have not. The year 2007 was statically just as warm as the year 2006. This makes no sense. I can not comprehend how competing forces can influence climate. Anyhow, I hate Al Gore, and this Exxon funded website says that Al Gore is a joke and global warming is a hoax.

Also I agree with Dr. T. There is absolutely no experiment that can be conducted that can confirm the greenhouse gas theory. Didn’t you see his question yesterday?

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;...

I have no idea how the greenhouse effect became an established theory 200 years ago.

Edit:  Also see my “Best Answer” here in which I poke holes in the “consensus view" that spring in the Northern Hemisphere is the result of tilting of the Earth’s axis… What hogwash!

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;...

Answer 4

hmmm, do deniers think CO2 is considered the sole culprit of global warming?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPCC_list_o...

edit

the mount st. helens statement is one of many completely false statements used by denier inc.

the 1980 eruption of mount saint helens realesed no more than 3 Gt CO2 - or 1/10 the amount of annual emissions from human activity.

Answer 5

I'm sorry, but you apparently do not understand how science works.  It is not up to the skeptics to disprove a hypothesis.  It is the duty of the proponents to prove it.  This question has no merit.

Answer 6

Because we simply do not understand how the atmosphere works.  We cannot be confident we understand how the greenhouse effect works.  We cannot predict local weather more then 10 days in advance.  Do some people really believe scientists can predict the temp of the planet 30 or 40 years in advance?

The most common greenhouse gas is water vapor and the greatest source of water vapor "emission" is the oceans.  Humans only account for a very small percentage of greenhouse emissions.  Humans were polluting much more at the beginning of the twentieth century then we are now.

You precisely made my point, we do not know the impact.

Answer 7

co2 has increased about 100 ppm or just a scant 0.001%.  This cannot cause apocalyptic predictions brought forth by the believers.

We don't know much about how the climate works.  No one can tell you what the temperature of the climate will be for any given concentration of co2.

You cannot say what the temps will be in the future.  You can only take a SWAG.  That's not facts, that's not science.

Answer 8

What other green house gas is increasing other than CO2? And if you'd get your head out of the sand, you'd realize the average global temperature is on a down trend.

Edit: It's not fake, the fact is the overall global climate is cooling off, but you don't want to accept that, since it's contrary to your belief.

The other fact is water vapor also plays a bigger role in keeping this planet warm than any other green house gas, but you guys don't want to acknowledge that either. Like you don't want to acknowledge the fact that the sun plays the biggest role on keeping this planet warm or cold.

I wonder what all your tunes will be when my hypothesis about the planet cooling off comes to fruition.

I'll acknowledge that it's only a hypothesis right know, since I need a bit more data, but from things I've researched so far about the sun and observed here in Minnesota, my hypothesis is getting backed up by good solid data. That other sources besides myself are collecting. I can only observe what's happening with the seasons in Minnesota and my neighbor Wisconsin, since I have very limited resources.

Edit: PD - I feel that's what believers believe, since it's the only thing a believer harps on.

Answer 9

You make an assumption in your question. The use of the term "greenhouse gases" implies that you are accepting the greenhouse effect theory as fact. There is no experimental evidence whatsoever that the greenhouse effect actually exists. In fact, the Vostok ice core data refutes the existence of the greenhouse effect by showing temperatures dropping precipitously in the presence of the highest concentrations of so-called "greenhouse gases".

If you compute the earth's temperature using the standard blackbody model, which ignores any atmospheric effects, you get a mean surface temperature of 5.8C. That calculation assumes that the emissivity of the earth and the sun are identical. If the earth's emissivity differs from the sun's by just seven tenths of one percent that number becomes 14C, which is the currently accepted global mean temperature. If the earth's emissivity is modified by just nine one-hundredths of one percent, i.e., a factor of 1.00009,  you get a one degree change in mean temperature. This modification can be the result of cloud cover, increased water surface area, volcanic eruptions, etc. etc. It cannot, however, be modified to that extent by the constituency of the tenuous gas that surrounds the planet.

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You say, "This is the case for CO2 and has already been demonstrated 100 years ago."  Do you have a source? Is it an experimental finding or unproven theory?

By the way, I AM arguing that point. The greenhouse effect is an unproven theory.

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Nickel, if you mean the measurement of the absorption spectrum of various gases, that is not a measurement of the greenhouse effect. It is an absorption spectrum. The theory is that the absorption differences among gases will lead to a greenhouse effect. There is no experimental evidence to support that theory. None.

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gcnp58, the Blackbody article on wikipedia does the calculation in depth. They do so in reverse, however, calculating the sun's temperature from the earth's. It is a simple matter to invert that calculation using the sun's temperature to determine the earth's.

As for my "naivete'", it appears that you are conceding that there is no evidence for the greenhouse effect. Welcome aboard.

The fact that molecules absorb incident radiation differently is not at issue. What is at issue is whether this absorption can dictate a planet's surface temperature. I say it cannot and that there is no experimental proof that it does. You say that it can and that there is no proof that it does. We at least agree that there is no proof.

I need not go back to Chandrasekhar's work. I have a blackbody model that provides an answer that is more consistent with observations throughout the solar system than the greenhouse model. I have 450,000 years of data that shows earth temperatures falling precipitously in the presence of the highest concentrations of greenhouse gases. I have data that shows temperature changes always preceding greenhouse gas concentration changes. In short, I have data that the greenhouse model cannot reproduce and that the blackbody model, coupled with the temperature dependence of gas solubility in sea water, can.

Answer 10

Every heard of Mt. Saint Helen's' Johnny Boy?

When it spewed its lot, about 10 times the amount that humans have done in all of history, it got colder.  or are you too young to remember that little bit of history?

Answer 11

Doc T.:  None of your links give a reference for your no-atmosphere Earth mean temperature.  Where are you getting that in the absence of an atmosphere the blackbody temperature of the Earth is 5.3 C (and assuming the emissivity of a solid planet is the same as a glowing ball of plasma is a little weird).  Most realistic calculations I know of, by people who really can put a Dr. in front of their names, estimate the equilibrium temperature as 250 K, and that temperature is relatively insensitive to emissivity.  

Arguing that the "greenhouse effect" has never been proven is naive.  There are lots of geophysical phenomenon that have not been convincingly demonstrated in the laboratory not because they are wrong, but because recreating the relevant spatial scales isn't possible (until recently, the Coriolis effect was a notable example, cloud electrification is another).  It is extremely difficult to decouple advection from radiative transfer on the order of a few meters, which is why there really aren't any good simple demonstrations of the greenhouse effect.  

Your argument that IR absorption bands don't prove anything is completely without intellectual merit.  Radiative transfer through inhomogeneous atmospheres was worked out 50 years ago and these models work very well to predict the average global temperature of Earth if you include the radiative forcing from IR-active trace gases.  More importantly, Venus provides an excellent second test case of the theory, and it passes with flying colors.  You simply cannot explain the surface temperature of Venus without radiative forcing from CO2 (i.e., the greenhouse effect).

Silly stupid answers like yours, that sound all nice and intellectual, but are just demagogery are why you skeptics lose ground on this.  Arguing that things that are known and proven are wrong isn't going to get your anywhere, the real scientists know how to deconstruct your false logic.  

But here's what you can do: go back to the fundamental theory of radiative transfer through inhomogeneous atmospheres (Chandrasekhar's work is available as a Dover publication) and explain precisely what is wrong with the theory.  When I've challenged other "skeptics" like you with this, they normally weasel out something like "well, the theory is correct but the implementation is wrong."  I don't advise that tactic since the response is if you think MODTRAN, HITRAN, or other radiative transfer codes are wrong, point out the implementation errors.  These source codes are freely available for download, most are in fortran which I speak pretty well, so you can get technical if you want.  Prove to me there is a problem, don't just assert.

Answer 12

Wow, you just have to love the answers so far.

'Global warming has stopped'.  Nevermind that even if this were true (which it's not), the planet warmed 0.9°C over the past century and you can't explain why.

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs...

'Water vapor is to blame'.  Nevermind that atmospheric water vapor concentrations can't increase unless the atmospheric temperature increases, and so you're still ignoring what caused the warming in the first place.

'I don't understand how the atmosphere works, so nobody does, and we can't predict the weather 10 days in advance, so we can't predict the warming of the climate [which has nothing to do with your question]'.

'37% (from 280 ppm to 384 ppm) = 0.001%'.  Faiulre of basic arithmetic by 2 seperate deniers.

And my personal favorite - 'the greenhouse effect doesn't exist'.  Denial brought to a staggering new level.

I don't see how people who make these types of arguments can even object to being labeled as 'deniers'.

This is very basic science.  Greenhouse gases cause warming.  We've dramatically increased the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, so we've dramatically increased the warming.

The most amusing thing is that the skeptics/deniers try to blame the Sun, but there hasn't even been a single scientific study attributing more than one-third of the recent warming to the Sun.  There is no possible explanation for the other two-thirds besides an increased greenhouse effect.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;...

Answer 13

Let’s start with CO2; some of the studies that the IPCC used are now showing little or no link between CO2 and Global Warming. It appears that CO2 is a trailing indicator that is the temperature goes up then CO2 goes up. The IPCC stopped looking at the studies and science in about 2005.

Methane is more powerful as a green house gas but it breaks down in about 10 years, or methane could lead to a rapid rise in the global temperature, but it would be short lived as the methane was broken down. But I note some of the activity attributed to man could be called natural also.

But, I and many other skeptics have never said that man might not contribute to global warming, we’re saying that the science, the data, the assumptions, and data collection are flawed.

So I’m going to tell you why I’m a skeptic, first the IPCC continual use of bad data. You can start with the Mann graph and work from there.

The IPCC now stands accused of falsifying and destroying data. If the science is so sound why would you have to fake or destroy data?

The IPCC summary report was not; repeat, NOT edited by scientist, but politician line by line, then the IPCC stated they would make sure the report would match the summary.

The data used by the IPCC was not transparent, that is we didn’t get to see how the data was collected, what data was used, what the assumptions were.

The computer models used to “prove” man made global warming can’t be set back more then a few hundred years and come to today’s climate. NONE of the computer models have ever accurately modeled the climate.

Many of the IPCC scientists don’t or won’t share their data collection methods, they’re assumption, etc, in other words they are not being transparent in their science.

The IPCC solutions to the “problem” never really address the problem, it moves a lot of money around, but it doesn’t address the problem. Some of the solutions would cost billions of dollars per year with potential saving so small we couldn’t measure it.

I noticed how the skeptics were being treated by the IPCC and other international global warming organizations, they won’t seat skeptics. What are they afraid of?

I’ve also noticed that the non-tree proxies are showing that we still are not as warm as we were during the Medieval Warm Period.

Now I’m more then willing discuss global warming, but until the science is transparent, that is we know the theories, the assumptions, how the data was collected, but until that happens, I’m going to be a skeptic. After all if your data is sound, if your data collection is sound, if your theories are sound, if your assumption as sound  then you welcome skeptics, if not then you call them names and threaten them.

Answer 14

Hi Nickel, why should we, you are just going to pick an alarmists answer.  Well anyhow, sure they do a bit. along with other things.  That is not the error.  The error is the  politicians and press hyping it up to be the end of days.

Just putting my 5 cents worth in Nickel...lol.  But I am still betting that you pick an alarmists answer, even though you asked the question to the skeptics.  I double dog dare you to  pick a skeptic answer.

Answer 15

Perform the empty 2 liter soda bottle experiment, then observe Venus' atmosphere... note the marked contrasts between our world  and them. While you're at it research human behavior. Anticipatory responses in particular, if you expect to see something you downplay things that contradict your hypothesis. :-)