I'm confused - is there too much or too little CO2 in the atmosphere to impact global temperatures?

1. The too little CO2 argument ignores the fact that the absorption cross section of CO2 is approximately 1e9 times larger than the absorption cross sections of major atmospheric constituents N2 and O2.

2. The too much CO2 argument ignores the fact that molecules emit as well as absorb radiation and at thermal equilibrium the rates of absorption and emission are equal. There is net absorption only if the destination is colder than the source. In the atmosphere emission is isotropic so half of the radiation emitted has a vector component in the direction of the earth's surface. The transport of energy in the atmosphere is a diffusive process and only the upper layers matter for the overall energy balance of the system.

There are only 1300 Physics PhD's produced annually in the US and it is evident that the contrarians on YA are not among the select few.

http://www.aip.org/statistics/trends/highlite/ed/f...

There is too much AND too little, depending upon what's convenient to mislead people at any given moment.

It also has too much or too little effect relative to the depth of the atmosphere or to other greenhosue gases:

3) CO2 absorbs all the heat that it can within a few feet, so adding more can't heat the earth more.

4) Water vapor is a much stronger greenhouse gas, so there's virtually no effect from CO2.

There's no end to their plausible-sounding B.S..

Of course they never have any links to a reputable organization or journal that backs up their claim.

There is no contradiction and you know it.

One cannot just ASSUME that an increase, by 1/10,000th of the atmosphere, of a weak heat-trapping gas, is the proximate cause of the modest warming that occurred in the 20th century.

There is plenty of reason to assume otherwise.

First, there have been comparable prior warm periods when CO2 levels were lower. Those warm periods all cycled back into cool periods - there was no runaway warming.

Second, while there have been CO2-driven warming periods in the past, these have involved increased in CO2 that were several orders of magnitude greater than what we're experiencing. Now, these also took place over hundreds of thousands of years. So, arguably, if we kept burning fossil fuel for another 50,000 years, you might be on to something - except for the fact that at most about 500 years' supply is in the ground.

There's no contradiction there.

Absorption of IR by CO2 is based on beer's law. That means that IR absorption is logarithmic when it comes to concentration. That means it takes more and more to get the same effect. All the infrared is absorbed in the first few thousand feet so all you are doing is lowering the point at which it all absorbed.

You get ice ages when the concentration is 17 times higher than today. You don't have to be very bright to figure out that the laws of physics didn't change so the bogus computer models are obviously out to lunch when it come to the real world.

The planet doesn't care... it will survive. But mankind lives in an extremely narrow band of necessary conditions. We evolved to fit a certain context. We cannot change that nearly as quickly as we are changing the necessary conditions for our survival. Suck that up!

ITS DOES MATTER WHEN THERE ARE THREE BLANKETS & U ADD ONE MORE TO IT BECAUSE THE AMOUNT OF HEAT IS INCREASD AND TO MY CONCERN I THINK CARBON DIOXIDE IS MORE IN ATMOSPHERE SINCE EVERYTHING V DO LEADS TO INCREASE IN CARBON DIOXIDE.AND IT EFFECTS ON OZONE AS WELL SO IT CAN BE CALLED AS MAJOR PART OF GREENHOUSE GASES.

It seems deniers are overwhelmed by small numbers. When you consider that it takes one well placed neutron to split one atom that sets up a chain reacton in a chunk of metal about the size of large grapefruit, that will result in the annihilation of a city, 380 ppm. is a huge number.

Ain't the power of chemistry amazing?

theres too much, when our ozone htickens, inferred heat and c02 is trapped in our atmosphere becaue it cannot reflact aback out of the earth. this why our earth is wrming up

CO2 is little but has a greater effect..

and something creates this hole in the atmosphere which cuases global thingy.. i think so..

A little more or a little less won't matter. And compared to the amount in the atmosphere, that's all we're capable of producing.