Why I Stopped Believing in Man-made Global Warming and Became a Climate Skeptic | Climate Change Dispatch
For starters, CO2 is actually a rather flawed “greenhouse gas.” When CO2 is first introduced into the atmosphere it rapidly attracts as much heat as possible. But it doesn’t take long for CO2 to become “optically saturated.” This means that after reaching roughly 0.0020 percent (20 parts per million) of the atmosphere, CO2 starts fading. From then on, it takes ever-doubling amounts of CO2 to trap the same amount of heat. By the present concentration of 0.04 percent (400 parts per million), CO2 is essentially saturated—and can’t meaningfully trap much additional heat.
This limitation of CO2 actually runs completely counter to the prevailing notion that adding more CO2 to the atmosphere will continue to trap ever greater amounts of heat. In truth, basic science demonstrates exactly the opposite, which is why climate scientists actually base most of their projected warming on “positive feedback” from water vapor.
Significantly, water vapor functions as the predominant heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere. And so, when climate scientists use computer models to predict future warming due to man-made climate change, they are essentially saying the following: We know that CO2 rapidly fades as a greenhouse gas. We think that before CO2 becomes saturated, it will raise global temperatures enough to add more water vapor to the atmosphere. This added water vapor will trap more heat, which will raise temperatures more, which will add more water vapor. The result will be a feedback loop that keeps driving a rise in temperatures.
There’s a major flaw in this theory, however, and one that climate scientists have never been able to solve. Simply put, water vapor in the atmosphere inevitably transitions to clouds. And cumulus clouds not only reflect solar radiation back into space but also produce rain—which not only lowers surface temperatures but also scrubs CO2 from the atmosphere.
Regardless of the cloud problem, this presumed climate “sensitivity” to CO2 is the overall engine of man-made warming and continues to be programmed into computer models. But it remains a tenuous argument. So the real question should be: Well if CO2 isn’t driving global warming, what is?
For starters, CO2 is actually a rather flawed “greenhouse gas.” When CO2 is first introduced into the atmosphere it rapidly attracts as much heat as possible. But it doesn’t take long for CO2 to become “optically saturated.” This means that after reaching roughly 0.0020 percent (20 parts per million) of the atmosphere, CO2 starts fading. From then on, it takes ever-doubling amounts of CO2 to trap the same amount of heat. By the present concentration of 0.04 percent (400 parts per million), CO2 is essentially saturated—and can’t meaningfully trap much additional heat.
This limitation of CO2 actually runs completely counter to the prevailing notion that adding more CO2 to the atmosphere will continue to trap ever greater amounts of heat. In truth, basic science demonstrates exactly the opposite, which is why climate scientists actually base most of their projected warming on “positive feedback” from water vapor.
Significantly, water vapor functions as the predominant heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere. And so, when climate scientists use computer models to predict future warming due to man-made climate change, they are essentially saying the following: We know that CO2 rapidly fades as a greenhouse gas. We think that before CO2 becomes saturated, it will raise global temperatures enough to add more water vapor to the atmosphere. This added water vapor will trap more heat, which will raise temperatures more, which will add more water vapor. The result will be a feedback loop that keeps driving a rise in temperatures.
There’s a major flaw in this theory, however, and one that climate scientists have never been able to solve. Simply put, water vapor in the atmosphere inevitably transitions to clouds. And cumulus clouds not only reflect solar radiation back into space but also produce rain—which not only lowers surface temperatures but also scrubs CO2 from the atmosphere.
Regardless of the cloud problem, this presumed climate “sensitivity” to CO2 is the overall engine of man-made warming and continues to be programmed into computer models. But it remains a tenuous argument. So the real question should be: Well if CO2 isn’t driving global warming, what is?
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