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You are correct except for > CO2 causes warming, There is no evidence that anything like realistic atmospheric concentrations of CO2 have ever caused or ever will cause significant warming. None. Zip, zilch, zero. Right, CO2 is a greenhouse gas. Now NYT climate expert (ha!) Tom Friedman explained on a late night TV show that the reason CO2 warms the earth is that it absorbs sunlight, that is, visible light. Sorry, Tom: Just exhale. See the CO2? Of course not. CO2 does not absorb visible light. Tom, poor guy, when you were studying romantic novels or Asian history in college, I was in a high end course in optics and radiography. There the prof explained that sunlight warms the surface of the earth; then that surface radiates with Planck black body radiation; considering the temperature of the surface, that radiation is heavily out in the infrared, and CO2 absorbs in three narrow frequency bands out in the infrared, one band for each of bending, twisting, and stretching of the molecule. So, CO2 in the atmosphere absorbs some infrared from Planck black body radiation from the surface. Thus, CO2 is called a greenhouse gas, although, with the roof, a greenhouse works in a significantly different way. Well water vapor is also a greenhouse gas, and clouds readily absorb a lot radiation, both infrared and visible, from the earth and also directly from the sun. If you want to think about a biggie greenhouse gas, think about water vapor, not little ole' CO2. Now, it's not at all clear if the infrared absorbed by CO2 would not also soon be absorbed by water vapor -- that's a darned tricky computation to do, especially since both CO2 and water vapor concentrations are not nearly uniform in the atmosphere, either horizontally or vertically. No, correction, it's not a "tricky" calculation; instead for now it's essentially an impossible calculation. Really, net, we have next to nothing, next to zip, zilch, and zero ability, to say what an extra 10 parts per million (ppm) of CO2 would to the temperature of the earth. First-cut, intuitively the extra 10 ppm would warm the earth; so would lighting a match; we have pretty good shot saying what the heat energy would be from the match; we can do much less well estimating the effect of CO2. E.g., would the extra 10 ppm have any radiation to absorb, that is, not already absorbed by the rest of the CO2? Tough question to answer. That in your statement CO2 warms the earth significantly or that significantly more CO2 would warm the earth significantly more, we just do NOT know that in any even half serious way. Sorry 'bout that. For more, from the 800,000 years of ice core records from the Antarctic drillings, both temperature and CO2 varied, both up and down, significantly but (1) there is not even one case where significantly lower temperature was closely preceded by significantly CO2 and (2) the situation of higher temperature and higher CO2 is nearly the same, i.e., temperature went up but not from higher CO2 except maybe, in the last 800,000 years, for the first time in the last 100 years. Next, for the past 20 years, CO2 has gone up (if believe the alarmists) but temperture has not. Next, in the JPG I linked to, there were a lot of computer calculations to predict future temperatures considering the effects of CO2. Well, now we can check the predictions with measured values. Result: The only predictions that were at all accurate were the ones that predicted no or at most tiny increases in temperature. Nearly all the predictions were for much higher temperature and now are wildly wrong. So, we can't use such modelling to predict the effects of CO2. And we have a recent test: There actually was some cooling from 1940 to 1970, but then CO2 was not decreasing. So, the cooling was not caused by CO2. So, CO2 is not the only cause of temperature change. Since in the last 800,000 years temperature has gone up and down without CO2 going up and down first (maybe the last 100 years is an exception), there MUST be significant causes of temperature change that have nothing to do with CO2. The simple observations here should settle the question for all current, practical purposes for any objective person who cares -- CO2 has essentially no effect on temperature. Sorry 'bout that. So, concentrating on CO2, and shooting our economy in the gut to reduce CO2, look no better than the Mayans killing people to pour their blood on a rock to keep the sun moving across the sky. So, what is going on here? Well, it's not science. In part it's fear, supersititon, and sacrifice as for the Mayans and others going back many thouands of years. In part it's an earth religion (uh, recall that Gore was a divinity student). Then, really, it's all driven by green, money that is. The NYT? For decades now they have gotten lots of eyeballs and ad revenue raising the level of fear and, thus, getting an audience they can continue to stimulate, week by week. Net, the whole thing about CO2 and climate is just a flim-flam, fraud, scam to trick taxpayers into having the US Federal Government spend money for nothing except to line the pockets of Musk, various wind and solar people, etc. Just where did I lose you? It's totally simple -- it's just same song and second verse of the Mayans pouring blood on a rock. Understand now? |