Why do so many need to believe that CO2 has a significant impact on the temperature of the earth?

Algore needs "useful idiots" to carry the messsage forth, which many are glad to do, blind to changes in the science that demonstrate the IPCC climate models may be overly sensitive, and forecasting wildly exaggerated CO2/temperatures.

In the last few years, Dr. Roy Spencer has done a great deal of work in this area... and of course the True Believers denigrate his work... That's of little consequence, because eventually the truth of data will overcome the theory of coincidences.

CO2 is not a villain unless the amount in the atmosphere becomes too high. The concept of the greenhouse effect has been around since before the idea of global climate change, and it essentially states that when light from the sun reaches the earth it heats the surface (The same way a light bulb can heat a table underneath it. The visible light is an EM wave and can excite molecules, causing them to gain energy, thus more heat) Now keep in mind that there is little actual heat in space, it is only the light hitting the planet. Some electromagnetic waves cannot permeate the atmosphere and some can, which is why the entire planet is not radioactive. Think of the atmosphere as a selectively permeable membrane. As certain EM waves come through others bounce off into space. Now CO2 in the atmosphere would not be such a problem if not for another industrial waste product, chlorine.

Chlorine gas binds with O3 (ozone) molecules and creates ClO and O2. When two ClO molecules in the atmosphere bind they form Cl2O2, which is an easily broken bond, and when these molecules are excited by simple sunlight they break off into 2Cl and 1O2, the extra chlorine is returned to the atmosphere, and the ozone has been replaced by O2. Ozone is essential in the atmosphere because it is responsible for reflecting UV radiation back into space. With a "hole" in the ozone layer UV light comes through in higher amounts than usual, heating the surface of the planet to higher temperatures. This is where excess CO2 becomes a problem.

The Carbon Dioxide is a thick molecule, it acts as a greenhouse gas. In the atmosphere it traps some heat near the earths surface while letting some escape. This can be a good thing, if all the thermal energy from the sun just bounced off into space then earth would become somewhat like mars, frozen with too thin an atmosphere, but if there is too much then the not enough energy is released into space and too much is trapped near the earths surface. This process describes global climate change.

You claim that there is no correlation between CO2 levels and the temperature over the years. The man in the video was manipulating his data. Rather than show you the average global temperature, he showed you the temperature in Greenland. There is an obvious visible correlation on the graphs showing the CO2 levels and the average global temperature. The fact is that the past five years have all been in the top ten hottest years of the century. The average temperature has been steadily increasing with the CO2 levels. And people do not have an irrational nazi like need to believe this, they choose to because the evidence is overwhelming and the theory has been widely accepted amongst the scientific community.

The professional warmers are starting to give me a real bad time again as they do with anybody that presents real scientific arguments that can be validated. Every experiment or argument the warmers give even the brightest of them is so full of holes that I am amazed they have the nerve to post them. A single visit to wikipedia ignoring the politically correct propaganda paragraphs studying only the scientific ones will allow anybody to learn the basic truth.

Co2 is not a greenhouse gas and never has been because the original experiment that named it so was basically flawed through the process of producing the co2 using water contaminating the sample with humidity. This experiment has been repeated to infinity for over 100 years now with not one of these eminent scientists noticing the water condensing on the sample container as they cooled it down while the air sample had no condensing water. This really shows just how well educated and capable of observation these great scientists are. I have worked directly with co2 in the military and industry and if my knowledge was as poor on the subject as that of these great scientific minds is I would be a dead man now like others that do things without learning facts about compounds end up.

James W. Early

Long Beach, CA

Good question. Very provacative. Raises an issue which needs to be discussed.

I am not sure that Nazi Germany is a perfect analogy, but the belief that CO2 can cause catastrophic global warming is certainly a notion that is most attractive to non science oriented ultra liberal types. In a strange way, this reminds me of the 1970's when nearly every young person in America was aligned against the government and all things that smacked of “big business”. I was on the fringe of that movement at the time. My ultra liberal views were ultimately removed by the need to make a living. However, at the time my friends who were non science types (I am an engineer) were reading Karl Marx and were alarmingly attracted to communistic views, communes, free food etc.. Ideas which we now know do not work worth spit. Also, just like the 1970s, this AGW issue seems to be a rallying call for educators (non science types). All who have studied the period of history surrounding WWI and WWII will see the parallels between the people who drove both the communistic and Nazi movements than and what is going on with the AGW alarmists now. Both the communists and fascists (ardent enemies themselves) took advantage of disenfranchised people in Germany, Russia and Italy to promote new radical political ideologies which simply promised but never delivered “better times” for the many poor which than existed. Even in the United States, these fascist and communist ideas were growing in favor amongst many working class people until WWII broke out. What is so alarming is that both sides thought of the democratic process as being counter productive to their goals. They favored and pursued anarchy over democracy to promote their political agendas. I see an alarming parallel today in that the most aggressive AGW proponents want to squelch any further debate on AGW and proceed with legislation and taxes which will cost average Americans trillions and which place our economy at a disadvantage to other economies such as India and China. I can already since the desire of the AGW radicals to call each other "comrad" and to hurl up a mighty heil Gore on occasion, so I guess that is a “book burning” mentality sort of. I also find it very alarming that so many educators and news media personalities treat the subject of AGW as a given and teach our children utter nonsense when those of us who are in the sciences understand that most of the AGW argument is based on hysteric promotion of half truths. At the time, Italy and Germany worshiped Hitler and Mussolini just as so many ultra liberals now worship Al Gore and Jim Hansen. Today as than, it is perplexing how so many can be so easily fooled and misled. I guess it is true that those who don't study history are doomed to repeat it!

The correlation between solar activity and temperatures is far from 'nearly perfect'. In fact, solar output has been a straight line for 30+ years, temperatures have gone up.

http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2007/07/lockwood...

http://media.photobucket.com/image/damon%20%252526...

From Lockwood & Frohlich (2007):

'The conclusions of our previous paper, that solar forcing has declined over the past 20 years while surface air temperatures have continued to rise, are shown to apply for the full range of potential time constants for the climate response to the variations in the solar forcings.'

You're also almost certainly wrong about the greenhouse effect never affecting climate.

- The change in solar input for Milankovitch cycles aren't enough to explain the changes seen.

- Check out the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum and the 'clathrate gun' hypothesis

- Check out snowball/slushball Earth Theory

- Check out the 'Faint Young Sun Paradox'.

The last one is particularly interesting. The Sun was much weaker in the past (up to 30% or so weaker), yet temperatures were much higher. The higher greenhouse effect can explain most of these. And changes in greenhouse effect and ice albedo can explain the observations for snowball Earth.

Reduced greenhouse effect also helps explain things like glaciation in the Ordovician and Carboniferous.

http://jgs.geoscienceworld.org/cgi/content/abstrac...

http://geology.geoscienceworld.org/cgi/content/abs...

http://www.pnas.org/content/99/20/12567.abstract

Besides which, looking for correlation between temperatures and any one forcing is ridiculous! There are loads of things affecting climate with dozens of cycles on top of each other. (measure temperatures between night and day, or summer and winter to get an idea of this!). You need methods like Fourier decomposition and statistical consideration of long term trends to start with. And then you have to compare theory with these observations.

Because man, especially the more easily guided, need some type of explanation that says that we can control the Earth and her climate. I find it very funny that most of the climate change scientists have to disregard all of the previous warm periods during this inter ice age period to make their theories work. These same scientists don't want to let it be known that for CO2 to capture heat the humidity has to be around 95%. You reduce the humidity down to 30% and CO2 acts very similar to air.

"The evidence is so strong that atmospheric CO2 has never had a significant impact on the temperature of the earth."

Sorry but that's fiction, as for the correlation with solar activity also fiction the Sun has been very closely monitored for the last 30 years by satellite as the Earth had it's most marked rise in temperature, through the 1980 and 1990s. We are currently at solar minimum last solar minimum was 1997, 1998 is the warmest year on record, that's not much of a correlation theory.

As to Hitler, that seems to be something several deniers keep bring up and frankly your fascination with Hitler and trying to link him to science and AGW is repugnant and says far more about you than it does about the science of AGW.

They religiously believe that humans are destructive to the environment. People who "think" like that aren't very critical when it comes to things that punish capitalist nations who they blame for raping the Earth. They feel and don't think. They justify the contradiction because they think it would be better for us to not "pollute" so much anyway and they arrogantly think they know best. Reality doesn't matter because it might as well be a fundamental religious belief to them. That is how they ignore the fact that there is no evidence for increased greenhouse warming and stick to the religious dogma. The quality of the evidence doesn't even matter because they think they know better than anyone else.

On the contrary, it seems like people need to believe variations in solar activity are the only cause of climate change.

Solar output has not changed enough to detect from the ground at all. And the small changes detectable from space are not significantl since satellite measurements began with the space age. But the amount of CO2 has changed a great deal in that same period.

Unfortunately for both sides, measuring the temperature of the Earth is not easy. Earth does not have one temperature, and calculating an average can be done so many different ways that any calculated average is open to criticism. Do you correct for temperatures in cities being higher because of the "urban heat island effect"? How to you know what the temperature is in all the places in the world with no weather stations? Like most of the oceans? And polar areas? It is not easy at all to know the global average temperature. Knowing the solar output and OC2 concentration is child's play in comparison.

And I do not accept any information on youtube links as correct. I accept only reputable scientific organizations like NOAA or various national meteorological departments.

I think you've got things more than a little mixed up: it's the scientifically illiterate that DON'T believe CO2 has an effect on the Earth's temperature. In fact, virtually every scientist believes that it does (even ones that don't believe in AGW). There is no question that water vapor and CO2 together provide the greenhouse effect that makes Earth livable.

I love how you try to associate being concerned about global warming with the Hitler Youth, that may be the most ridiculous argument I've heard in here. Why don't you go ahead and make up some more ridiculous claims? You could say that belief in AGW predisposes people to becoming cannibals and child molester, for example.

EDIT: Kebert, you are mixing up two different things: damage to the ozone layer and CO2 forced global warming. The warming is due to increased absorption of infrared radiation coming from the surface of the Earth. It has virtually nothing to do with increased incoming ultraviolet light.