07-10-2009, 06:50 AM
Quote:Again, as I see there are two simple explanations (not that this is a simple problem); A) CO2 rises linearly with the seemingly linear increase of small levels of GHG's released by humans for the past 300 years, orB)CO2 rises with an increase in temperature due to a reduced ability of the environment to sequester it. So I think that is the $10,000 Climatologist question; which came first, the CO2 rise, or the temperature rise?Not really. The role of CO2 as a greenhouse gas is well understood. If CO2 is being released, the temperature will rise, unless some feedback interferes. It doesn't matter if the CO2 begins the warming or not. That isn't really in debate.
If what you're saying is that there is some other factor generating the observed warming, and that CO2 is only playing a secondary role, then the obvious question is: what? As far as I can tell, every attempt to come up with something else has fallen far short of even being a better explanation than CO2, let alone completely displacing the idea that CO2 is a major contributor to warming.
-Jester