G'day,
Wow 387 parts per million! That actually is around twenty times lower than has occurred in that not that distant past, at the time of the immediately previous Ice Age. In terms of interference with solar radiation it is actually a tiny percentage of the effects that are upon solar radiation.
Aside from anything else, there is no indication at all that shows that CO2 actually is a greehouse gas in the sense of the term being that it traps heat from the sun that otherwise would not be trapped. CO2 reacts with solar radiation only over certain quite small bands of radiation and it is not at all clear whether in that reaction the impediment to the entry of the solar radiation caused by reflection or obtuse refraction is not greater than any re-radiation or absorption of outward bound heat. Just like clouds can both heat and cool an area of the earth depending on so many factors no actually knows exactly all the factors involved, so CO2 may react the same way. If you get cloud forming in the afternoon then the evening and the next morning will be warmer than if the clouds were not there. If the clouds then stick around for three or four days then both days and nights end up being much cooler than if the clouds had not been there. Depends on the type of clouds, their internal reflectivity, whether they contain large ice formations, their height, density, colour, wind, etc, etc, etc.
So while in a laboratory you might be able to demonstrate that CO2 causes the trapping of heat the same may not be true at all in the real world and there does not seem to be any evidence to support it does at all.
This is one of those assumptions that I find most troubling with the global warming argument. It goes to the very heart of the argument yet it is perhaps the least solid theory on which the whole man made global warming argument is hung.
And even if CO2 is a greenhouse gas it certainly is no the chief one. That honour goes to water but such a huge margin, a factor of many magnitueds greater than CO2 as to be laughable. Then there is a great many other materials. Methane is around 40 times as extreme as CO2 in lab tests and there is a lot of it potentially able to be released if the frozen former marshlands in Siberia and in the oceans become released.
But it might well be that together with the methane, the effect is that more clouds form and the world cools. This is an excuse being used right now by a number of scientists to explain why nothing they said would occur in relation to global warming has come to pass. Why the oceans, especially the Pacific Ocean are COOLER even when measured over very large areas and to extreme depths. Why there has been a fall in sea levels in so many areas and no major rise in areas where they said it was certain. The argument is now going that the earth has a self regulating mechanism that they were and are unaware of that has meant that perhaps more clouds or more reflective clouds or more moisture in the air has caused the lack of warming up even when there is more heat overall. of course they then cannot actually show that there has been more heat overall but they just have to have been otherwise, well, global warming is a crock.
By the way the information you started this thread with is newspaper articles. These have been shown in this forum over and over to be biased, often misconstruing or misquoting the research involved and in this case it appears that they are not even quoting research but the opinions of some scientists.
I'm sorry but I'm guilty of the same thing in not quoting any scientific research in support of my arguments here but I'm simply not well enough to do the research and I must say that the type of research needed would be that which is basically proving a negative. That is very hard to do. So I'll turn it to a positive. Please point us to any research that demonstrates that CO2 is a greenhouse gas even if only in the laboratory and better yet to research that demonstrates that increased CO2 in the atmosphere translates to an increase in world temperature.
Please don't quote any ice core data. All ice core data is subject to considerable interpretation for starters, into such esoteric things as the leaching of air pockets, the effect on part thaw and refreeze seasonally, the possible absorption of trace chemicals, ions, gases etc from the ice to the air and on and on. But much more fundamentally there is the problem that ice cores without exception show that higher temperatures cause an increase in CO2 levels. Never the other way around. It gets hotter and then CO2 increases. Bit hard for the CO2 increase some 60 years after the heat increase to be the cause if it follows the heat and the fall back that the increase in CO2 sustains the heating does not hold true for one second. In all cases the heat seems to reduce the same basic pattern or frequency regardless of how much higher the CO2 became because of the longer hotter period. So you will have to find some other research. I'd like to help but I know of none at all that demonstrate this minor point upon which the whole man made global warming argument rests.
Regards
Richard
