What is the justification for assuming that CO2 is the primary GH effect driver when H20 is far more abundant and a much stronger GHG?

Question

To this date, the "control knob" theory of Svante Arrhenius remains the basis for handling CO2 concentrations as a forcing of instead of a feedback, despite the fact that historical followings of CO2 vs. time to temperature vs. time seems to indicate the opposite.  In his theory, Arrhenius noted that CO2 concentrations and fluid velocities were much more stable than those of H2O vapor. This, he reasoned, implied that CO2 was controlling H2O concentrations through the GH effect.   He argued that if more CO2 were released into the atmosphere, it would cause some warming of the atmosphere through increased CO2 GH heating.  This warming would allow the atmosphere to hold more H2O, which is actually the important GHG.  In this case the GHG heating from CO2 would be greatly magnified by the corresponding heating from H2O vapor.

As I see it, however, the stability of GHG concentrations has nothing to do with forcings and feedbacks associated with the GH effect.  It is the strongest and most abundant GHG that dominates the GH heating while the other GHGs make smaller contributions.  Therefore I strongly believe that current climate models should regard H2O vapor concentration as a forcing and CO2 concentration as a feedback.  If you feel I have missed something or my arguments are incorrect, please post an answer to this question and explain your reasoning.

Anonymous · Accepted Answer

"Climate sensitivity to raised CO2 levels" is the scientific focal point of all scientific research as it pertains to "Global Warming/Climate Change".

Here's an article that explains why CO2 is NOT as strong as an atmospheric temperature forcing as has been claimed. The end of the article has less scientific jargon, and brings an understanding as to why CO2 is NOT as strong as a forcing as the scientific alarmists have been confirming for almost 30 years : https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/01/05/physical-constraints-on-the-climate-sensitivity/

Here's the last couple of paragraphs in case you don't want to "link-up" :

" ... Finally, much of the support for a high sensitivity comes from models. But as has been shown here, a simple gray body model predicts a much lower sensitivity and is based on nothing but the assumption that first principles physics must apply, moreover; there are no tuneable coefficients yet this model matches measurements far better than any other. The complex General Circulation Models used to predict weather are the foundation for models used to predict climate change. They do have physics within them, but also have many buried assumptions, knobs and dials that can be used to curve fit the model to arbitrary behavior. The knobs and dials are tweaked to match some short term trend, assuming it’s the result of CO2 emissions, and then extrapolated based on continuing a linear trend. The problem is that there as so many degrees of freedom in the model, it can be tuned to fit anything while remaining horribly deficient at both hindcasting and forecasting.

The results of this analysis explains the source of climate science skepticism, which is that IPCC driven climate science has no answer to the following question:

What law(s) of physics can explain how to override the requirements of the Stefan-Boltzmann Law as it applies to the sensitivity of matter absorbing and emitting energy, while also explaining why the data shows a nearly exact conformance to this law? ... "

Anonymous · Answer

Water vapor is a positive feedback to CO2-driven global warming, not a causal driver. Its residence time is low and the rate of evaporation don't rise unless temperature does before it.

Kano · Answer

Your just banging your head against a wall.
Warmers already know that water vapor is a more powerful greenhouse gas, they just dont want to talk about it, unless to say it is a positive feedback, while ignoring that water vapor has also very powerful negative feedbacks, transferring earths heat to space by evaporation, circulation and condensation. water vapor also reduces atmospheric lapse rate which is a significant cooling effect.

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What is the justification for assuming that CO2 is the primary GH effect driver when H20 is far more abundant and a much stronger GHG?

3 Answers