More On Carbon Dioxide and Global Warming

Here is another knowledgable comment about carbon dioxide and its role in global warming. (By the way, Michael P. Byron has a PhD. in Political Science.)
Peter



from: http://myblog.michaelpbyron.com/comments/atom.aspx

Thursday, May 03, 2007, 8:51:33 PM Alan Davis
Hi Mike: I appreciate your clear writing and even your perhaps too thoughtful responses to some of the feedback. I've actually read the IPCC's Third Assessment Report and the Fourth. They both seem to brag about how great their models are. I have a few questions:

1. A classmate is the NASA – Jet Prop Lab Project manager for all space shot science experiments. He says that Venus's surface is 100% rock (no oceans) and has 100% cloud cover. The planet rotates on its axis at +/- 3 miles per hour. Yet the atmosphere all moves at > 75 mph up to an altitude of 100 km (or so). The modelers can't successfully model it. If modelers can't figure out this simple system (100% cloud cover, 100% rock, 0% "ocean"), why believe them when it comes to earth? Other than the obvious practical reason that they have all been always wrong in the past.

2 .The planets, especially those with atmospheres, are islands of heat in the ultracold of space. The second law of thermodynamics tells me that any atmospheric forcing is going to be equilibrated by a thermodynamic response (or the temperature on earth and Venus would be infinte). Applying Occam's razor, and understanding that water accounts for +/- 97% of the greenhouse effect, and CO2 some 0.28%, has anyone accurately modeled heat and water only, gotten that right, then added on the perhaps trivial overlays of CO2, NOX, SOX, methane, particulates, etc.

3. It isn't clear that the modelers even know the sign of the forcing due to clouds, let alone clouds at various altitudes, and/or increased/decreased clouds.

4. I think Herzberg's observation that the atmospheric concentration of CO2 didn't drop 30%(or even 1 ppm) when the human CO2 output dropped 30% is powerful because it is a simple declarative statement containing verifiable data which argues for a hypothesis (very well in my mind). It strongly refutes the hypothesis that the CO2 increase is due to human activities. Its simple, inherent credibility contrasts strongly with the absence of similar evidence and statements in support of global warming. Everyone says so, even if true, isn’t evidence. Models aren’t reality and aren’t evidence either. That the CO2 and temp lines increase at the same time does not prove causality. If CO2 lags temperature by 800 years, this, coupled with Herzberg's observation above argues that the recent increase in CO2 is probably due to the increase temp of the Medieval Warm Period. Incidentally, given this 1940-1975 global cooling, what caused it, and when is the next decadal cooling period, and what will cause it?

5. The Third Assessment Report put great stock in the "Hockey Stick" graph and accompanying assertions that there was no Medieval Warm Period, no Little Ice Age, and that the 1990's were the hottest in the last x,000 years. Since the Hockey Stick graph has been obliterated as a fraud, why should anyone believe anything the IPCC says? Thanks again for the thoughtful response to
Comment on Misunderstanding Global Warming: Alexander Cockburn versus Reality.