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> ...except that figure is less than 4%. about 8 gigatons are attributed to humans out of ~220 gigatons injected into the atmosphere overall on a yearly basis. This is like the difference between profit and savings. Accumulated CO2 is a savings accounts, and the pre-industrial climate in the short term acts like a business which has zero profit, balanced revenues and expenditure. If you come into the business, and hold expenditure the same, but increase revenues by 4%, and yield a 4% profit, which every year you put in the bank account, that is going to accumulate over time. And the warming is created by the accumulation. You talk about a 4% yearly excess as if that was a small amount! Also, your point about water vapour ties into what I said in the earlier comment, a lot of the warming is exactly that secondary effect - CO2 has a direct heating effect, that raises temperature, which then raises the partial pressure of water vapour, which increases concentrations of water vapour in the atmosphere, which as you say is a very important greenhouse gas. It's the combination of these two effects, of direct CO2 warming, causing increased water vapour concentration, which accounts for the baseline warming which everyone who is sceptical of computer models should believe in. This very well-established baseline warming accounts for about half of the climate sensitivity proposed by the IPCC, if you think computer models are junk, that discounts many of the positive feedbacks proposed, but also the negative feedbacks which would have to exist, to lead to zero warming. |
This analogy would only make sense if somehow this 4% wasn't spent or was spent differently than the rest of the money. Also don't forget we're talking .3% if you take all of the greenhouse gases into consideration.
>>...if you think computer models are junk, that discounts many of the positive feedbacks proposed, but also the negative feedbacks which would have to exist, to lead to zero warming.
This sounds like mental gymnastics trying to single out the evuuhl CO2. Given the fact that planet Earth went through multiple heating/cooling cycles way more severe than the current warming trend without any antropogenic influence, applying Occam's razor here would lead me to believe the issue lies elsewhere.