“As I said before, I’m not a climatologist and neither are you. …
WARNING WARNING WARNING

This website references real science. It explains stuff. You will have to think. You may actually learn something. You may actually learn many things. Your head will hurt if you make it to the end of the webpage.

Its very good (at least I think so). It’s written by a real-live climatologist-type scientific person who references other real-live scientific persons and explains real-live science with English words and not-many formulas. He’s trying very hard to get information across to a layperson audience.

I keep harping on this because AGW is a con.”

Just getting the time now to respond adequately to your comments. You’re right, I’m not a climatologist, but I never claimed to be. Neither did you say this before about me. (–personal assumption counter-attacks deleted—) Quite fankly, the point of my original comment was that nobody should have much of an opinion about AGM unless they seek out AND can develop a reasonable undestanding of the scientific debate.

I read your link all the way through and you are right again, my head does hurt. It hurts because it is hard to fathom how someone would believe and present this site as a convincing argument against AGM. Not because it is chock full of untruths (it isn’t or at last not 100% untruths) or because it is “folksy”, but rather because it falls short at the core of the argument. I understand the author’s attempt to present a layman’s argument against AGM and he does a pretty good job of sticking to this concept. His obvious disdain and repeated attacks on Al Gore seem odd and out of place in a “folksy” scientific refutiation of AGM.

These bolded statements from the site speak to at the core of the AGM scientific debate:

“Man-made CO2 doesn’t appear physically capable of absorbing much more than
two-thousandths of the radiated heat (IR) passing upward through the atmosphere.

And, if all of the available heat in that spectrum is indeed being captured by the current CO2 levels before leaving the atmosphere, then adding more CO2 to the atmosphere won’t matter a bit.”

Lot’s of numbers given in the argument but the crux of the mattter is dismissed with “doesn’t appear”? Percentage of black body radiation spectral absorption, while related, is not the number or approximation that is meaningful. The second statement is very…umm…shall we say, suspect. Perhaps you should alert this Atmospheric Physicists that not all of the radiation leaving the Earth’s atmosphere is radiating directly from the Earth’s surface. Excited CO2 molecules in the atmosphere radiate in what spectrum? His percentage argument (unsubstantiated 8% CO2 absorption) is based black body surface radiation and makes sense if we were talking about an unbalanced system but this is not a physical possibility. Our system, like all others, is always moving towards a steady-state. If not, then his 2 thousands of a percent, while sounding minute, would be huge. The REAL question is how much does atmospheric CO2 change radiative properties of our atmosphere not what percentage of black body radiation can CO2 absorb. For a more in depth discussion of the issue I urge you and everyone interested to study:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect

Look for the science, not the opinions. Thank you for raising the issue and I expect to start a thread to debate the AGM core mechanism in the Forum when I find the time. This is really the only AGM topic worthy of debate at this level.

SEMATECH (SEmiconductor MAnufacturing TECHnology) is a non-profit consortium that performs basic research into semiconductor manufacturing. It was conceived of in 1986, formed in 1987, and began operating in 1988 as a partnership between the United States government and 14 U.S.-based semiconductor manufacturers to solve common manufacturing problems and regain competitiveness for the U.S. semiconductor industry that had been surpassed by Japanese industry in the mid-1980s. SEMATECH was funded over 5 years by public subsidies coming from the US Department of Defense via the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for a total of $500 million.

The US auto industry today is at a point where it has lost its leadership. I believe Larry Burns is proposing a “SEMATECH” approach to regain US leadship in this vital industry.

Once again we are seeing the complete misunderstanding of what “Global Warming” really means. For fear of adding “Hollywood” into the mix here, the flick “The Day After Tomorrow” although definately Hollywood in it’s finest, it was based on some serious scientific models, which, to me is scarey. Far too many people blindly believe that “Global Warming” simply means that we will just get a little warmer. No, not quite. What it really means is that we are heading for a definate “Climate Shift” – it may or may not be as dramatic as the movie, but it will come. This means that your climates will become more & more extreme in their temperature swings & if the ocean currents do stop due to de-salination – you will see Ice Age climates return. It is a fact that these ocean currents drive our weather, our climate, moderating the equator & the northern hemispheres.

What many people also seem to miss about this whole issue is that the Earth is a “closed” system really; matter is neither created or destroyed, it just changes state. This is exactly the case w/CO2. We are extracting fossil fuels (locked up hydrocarbons); releasing them into our atmosphere. Obviously, you will reach a point where it begins to affect your atmosphere. The only way to slow this down or stop it, is to “pull” or “filter” the CO back out of the air we breathe. Luckily, we already have bioengineered filters on our planet – they are called TREES. Therefore, instead of slashing & burning every tree in the Amazon in the name of $ & progress, we we need to plant more to help filter and “lock-up” more of the CO in our atmosphere.

Remember, the definition of insanity is doing the same things over & over; expecting different results. Carrying on with the very same ancient energy policies and vehicles will not accomplish anything. Any hydrocarbon fueled heat engine will produce CO. We need a fuel that doesn’t.