Global Warming Hysteria

My recent post, “What if They Are Wrong,” explored the possibility that human-generated CO2 will be determined, after all is said and done, to have no appreciable affect on climate.  The post generated a lot of discussion. I want to follow up on some of that discussion with this brief post.

CO2 is, after all, a trace gas and humanity has added to it a trace amount. An essential requirement that it have a major influence on our climate is a set of feedback mechanisms that magnify its effect. Most notably, for CO2 increase to have any seriously dangerous ramifications for human life it is necessary that a positive and significant feedback exist between the CO2 abundance in the atmosphere and the water abundance. This feedback loop, its sign and its magnitude, are seriously in question.

To take one example, it is well-established that water vapor in the upper troposhpere and lower stratosphere (the region known as the “tropopause”) has been decreasing for the last ten years.  This was not only not predicted by climatological computer models, it has not yet been explained by those models. Speculations as to the origin of this drying out include an unexpectedly large rise from the 1998 El Nino (which is only now drying out) to a decrease in the atmospheric content of methane, another greenhouse gas, over the past decade or more. Alas, the decrease of the methane is also not explained….read it all here: Global Warming Hysteria

(my bold)

previously: Thoughts from Mike Stopa. “Suppose it turns out that CO2 has essentially nothing to do with the earth’s climate. How will the history of this colossal mistake be written?”

Dr Mike Stopa is a Harvard Physicist.