Dr. Bryson makes a critical point when he states that land use change affects climate. The history of land use over the globe is well documented. Since the late 1930's aerial photography (and now many other types of remote sensing) has documented human and natural changes to the landscape. Human impact on the earth's surface is significant. As a soil scientist - my education, background, and professional experience leads me to think that land use impacts on climate change have almost been completely ignored, terribly underestimated, and way under studied.

The bottom line - Dr. Bryson was on to this 40 years ago!

Hmmmm. Water vapor is not only a FAR better greenhouse gas than CO2 it is FAR more abundant as well. Hmmmm. Is he right about models that do not WORK that overemphasize CO2's role in the greenhouse effect and underestimates the role of Water Vapor? Here's a hint. THE MODELS PREDICTING DOOM AND GLOOM DO NOT WORK.

What has happened to science? "The science of AGW can withstand challenges if it's accurate, and if it's not, it needs to be challenged." Hello??????? It is not accurate. NONE of the models that predict such a bleak future work. Not only that, but the Scientific Method REQUIRES hypotheses to be TESTED and RETESTED. Once it cannot be proven wrong it becomes a THEORY. All theories need to be challenged. Good theories have few holes in them, there are so many holes in AGW (of any significance) that you can see right through it. We as Scientists must be SKEPTICS. AGW has made SKEPTIC a dirty word, when in fact scientists are skeptics and the rest are believers.

AGW is a JOKE. If it is real then NO ONE has come close to providing good EVIDENCE that it exists. This period will go down in history as a blemish on science because of the AGW religion. AGW holds about as much water as Intelligent Design. Pathetic.

There is a study that is being done now somewhere in Europe that should, at least to some extent, shed light on the role of water vapor and how CO2 increases follow warming instead of causing it. (Although I try to stay objective in this debate, I love Dr. Bryson's image of spitting influencing the environment more than CO2.)

On another note I assume the climate models are validated, not by direct confirmation (as they can't be for a hundred years) but indirectly in that they predict "sucessfully" what has happened in the past. This is fine and is great for scientific egos, but unfortunately, there are infinite ways to get an equation to equal a predetermined value.

Good points to you all, Samiam, Steve, and plish.

I really like the comment that scientists are skeptics and the rest are believers Steve. Very well put and actually quite accurate. Though not a scientist, I can see the sense in that statement.

Plish,

All the AGW's predicted massive and numerous Hurricanes last year with poor results. Now that they have plugged in wind shear they predict less storms some years and more storms other years. Predicting the past doesn't impress me at all, although some seem to find it fascinating.

The biggest problem with the Models used today is that they have not predicted the furture yet and "predicting" today's weather is like betting on a horse that raced yesterday. I'm not likely to take betting advice from someone who can tell me who won yesterday, especially one who gets paid to guess and keeps getting paid after getting EVERY guess wrong.

It is only common sense that man's building can effect climate. Where there was once trees and grass to soak up rain now there is concrete causing runoff. Cities indeed are heat islands which hold heat and cause warmer nights. I think this should be studied to a greater extent.

I talked personally to Reid Bryson a few weeks ago and we both agree about CO2 not being a global warming factor. All should know that it is a fact that the greenhouse gas "water vapor" is 100 times greater than CO2 in the atmosphere. And it is also a fact that about 30 other global warming episodes have occured during the past 5,000 years without the influence of CO2 emissions from factories and automobiles. And it is a fact that as temperatures rise during all global warming episodes, so does the water vapor and CO2 "naturally". Please refer to the website globalweatheroscillations.com/ (google it) to find out about the other 30 global warmings.

Steve, it was Joe Bastardi and Dr. Gray, both AGW deniers, who predicted that last year would have a lot of hurricanes. Nice try, though.

Man doesn't add water vapor to the atmosphere.

Mark,
Joe Bastardi is a professional medium range forecaster. He doesn't forecast Tropical Storms. Dr Grey forecasted the N Atlantic to have a "normal" year. He was too high, but guys like Dr Tenbreth and Dr Curry were off by an even higher number. It was the AGW guys who said in 2005/2006 that SST were THE ONLY THING that mattered in dealing with tropical storms.

BTW, Joe Bastardi was the only forecater that hit last Winter's forecast. Back in November, he called for a warm Dec/early Jan and a cold late Jan through early March. Funny how being a "denier" can help you make accurate weather forecasts. Maybe NOAA should take a lesson from him.

Mark said~"Man doesn't add water vapor to the atmosphere."

Water vapor is a component of vehicle exhaust. It also makes up a part of what you see coming out of industrial smoke stacks. If CO2 can be added to the atmosphere from those sources then water vapor is also added.

Uh, JP, who do you think is the main guy that develops Accuweather's official hurricane forecasts? It's Joe Bastardi. He is the chief hurricane forecaster for Accuweather.

And let's see...Joe predicted that January 2006 would be very cold. And guess what? It turned out to be the warmest January on record in the United States. So what's your point?

SM, excess water vapor turns to rain. Man has no affect on water vapor.

Mark:
SM, excess water vapor turns to rain. Man has no affect on water vapor.

OK, yea, sure. So in your world, atmospheric water vapor is in absolute equilibrium and humans cannot add even one molecule of water vapor without one returning to the ground?

Mark:

Please define excess water vapor.

Can you tell me what fog is?

Oh, and by the way, I love how the AGW crowd blames everything in the weather on AGW. Whether or not Bastardi and Grey predicted a big year last year is moot. So did everyone else. While they said it would be a big year, the Goreacles of the world dang near described biblical catastrophe. When it "dried" up, Bastardi and Grey were thankful, the AGW crowd declared that it was due to AGW and further sign of the impending doom.

Tough to be incorrect when you claim to corner the market on everything that happens. Fortunately, the media doesn't really require the facts around their soundbites to be true and verifiable.

Obviously, Darren doesn't know the difference between relative humidity and water vapor content. Water vapor content in the atmosphere can only increase if the heat capacity of the atmosphere increases, which coincidentally, is occuring because of the excess CO2. Nearly all of the water on Earth is already present on the surface. It is not sequestered. Conversely, almost all of the world's available CO2 is sequestered in rocks/limestone or buried underground in the form of fossil fuels. We're unearthing all of this sequestered CO2 at a rate that is unprecendented. CO2 doesn't naturally "evaporate" from rocks or underground the way water does, Darren.

But let's hear your explanation on how we're causing fog. Do you really want to go there?

Wow.

Also, you requested sources from Tamatu one time...did you ever read them?

I've never heard a single person claim AGW was the reason we're NOT getting hurricanes. Wow, your imagination is almost as vivid as Rich. Almost.

Besides, I don't think AGW affects the tropics much at all, so looks like you'll have to find something else to make up.

Ahh..Mark..the entire thread on wind shear is an argument that AGW causes wind shear which breaks up hurricanes....

Fog and moisture released through burning of fuels, breathing, plants, etc. are localized phenomenon; it's the weather vs. climate thing; Man could and does, create artificial clouds all the time.

I still have a hard time seeing, though I haven't crunched the numbers yet, how with CO2 taking up .04% of the atmosphere by molar content and a small percentage of that being manmade the heat capacity if the atmosphere is changed appreciably by the addition of human CO2..

Perhaps all of us might benefit from refreshing our understanding of the basic science involved with atmospheric water vapor. A reasonably accessible, though dated, overview is provided by the . I don't think the basic science has changed much, but perhaps Laura can elaborate if so.

It appears to me, as a layman, that the most important difference between atmospheric water vapor and atmospheric CO2 is the "latency" -- according this piece, a given molecule of water stays in the atmosphere nine days. By contrast, a molecule of CO2 stays in the atmosphere for something on the order of decades.

This difference alone makes it very difficult to measure, predict, and compare the behavior of the two gases.

Wouldn't discussions like this be more constructive if we first attempted to:

1. Identify specific areas of common agreement about the facts.
2. Identify and enumerate specific areas of disagreement about the facts.
3. Agree on a process to settle the disagreement about the facts.
4. Identify specific areas of common agreement about the basic science.
5. Identify specific areas of disagreement about the basic science.
6. Agree on a process to settle the disagreement about the basic science.
7. Identify specific areas of common agreement about the models.
8. Identify specific areas of disagreement about the models.
9. Agree on a process to settle the disagreement about the models.

It seems to me that until we've accomplished these, any "discussion" is just pointless argument. I suggest that most of the basic science is known and not in serious dispute.

I'd like to know, within the framework of the nine points I enumerated above, what Dr. Bryson agrees and disagrees with. Laura wrote, in her thread starter, "He believes that the data fed into computer models overemphasizes carbon dioxide and handles water vapor poorly. Is he right? "

In order to form any opinion at all about whether Dr. Bryson is correct or mistaken, I think we need see what his specific concerns are and what he thinks should be different. I don't think we have nearly enough information in the links posted by Laura or the comments posted on this thread so far to make this determination.

BK Tom,

You're postulating a static model. The amtosphere is anything but static. Water vapor is just one state of water. H2O is constantly changing states: from liquid to vator to solid etc... with each change in state there are attendent changes in vapor pressure, atmospheric pressure, and heat.

CO2 also is non-static. A molecule of CO2 produced on Monday by a catalytic converter could be trasformed into O2 by plant life. An air parcel with a "mixing ratio" of 8g of water vapor per 1kg of dry air can lose mositure or gain moisture through advection, or lose moisture through convection and forced lifting.

Most people who posit simple models cannot replicate atmoshperic conditions. Even NOAA's models cannot replicate the atmosphere accurately 12 hours out. Modeling has gotten so complex that some organizations are using chaos theory help in modeling. Modeling in very important and can yield great results in closed systems (such as an automobile's brake system), but it generally fails with open systems where the variables are in such great numbers that requires modelers to use random number theory.

You're postulating a static model.

Where on earth did I even imply, never mind postulate, anything of the sort?

I opened my last contribution by highlighting the dynamic difference between water vapor and CO2. Even if the problem was a "simple" as two gas concentrations driven by exponentials with differing (and time-varying!) time-constants and coefficients -- which it is not, as you correctly point out -- it would already be difficult or impossible to find any closed-form solution. So we're already in the realm of numeric analysis and simulation.

I don't think the models I refer to have to be meteorological. I think you're absolutely correct that chaos theory is a starting point in such modeling. In fact, chaos theory was born when Lorentz was trying to understand odd behavior in numeric models of atmospheric behavior.

Any such models must be dynamic, that's the whole point. I certainly include chaos theory and dynamic systems in the "basic science" that I refer to -- along with vapor pressure, non-linear dynamics, and the dynamics of catalyzed chemical reactions. In fact, I think we are probably in violent agreement. Hence the need for us to move past the argument about definitions of "water vapor", "relative humidity", and naive attempts to connect molar concentration of CO2 to dynamic behavior.

It is, in fact, precisely because of the nonlinear dynamics of systems like the atmosphere that assumptions like plish's (that atmospheric CO2 can't make a difference because it's concentration is so low) are so astoundingly (and counter-intuitively) wrong. This was precisely the discovery of Lorentz, about the atmosphere, nearly fifty years ago in 1960.

Isn't it, therefore, time to move past silly and infantile posturing and argumentation and get on with the science (and engineering)?

It's not my argument that CO2's relative proportion in the atmosphere is not commensurate with its influence-it's Dr. Brysons (and incidentally it's the point that water vapor in it's current concetration is more effective than CO2 in its concentration)...I'm trying to wrap my own mind around it that's all. I agree something doesn't have to have a high concentration to be influential, but I also am driven by the following scientific facts:
1. Temperature rose in the past higher than now and mankind produced CO2 was not around...how did it happen?
2. Temperature's rose in the past and CO2 wasn't as high as now...why did that happen?
3. CO2 concentrations were higher at certain times and the temperatures didn't rise as much...why?

If we can't answer all these questions and thus understand the mechanisms at work in the atmosphere any models are pretty much that...only models...

I'm going to offer a slight contained rant here.

It's interesting that when those that beleive in AGW want to simplify the assumptions that go into models that's fine. When Scientist/Skeptics simplify the AGW camp says "that's not science, it's more complicated."

It's WAY more complicated and that's precisely the point of many of the "skeptics". This isn't an oven where you turn the dial, know EVERY parameter and then predict the average temperature in the oven at a certain time. Stop the emotion and think about the science behind controlling your oven temperature! We take it for granted but it's not a simple situation; there are carefully designed controls to optimize the situation and make the baking process predictable. Yet, we still burn things and things cook unevenly....

And the earth...a wonderfully chaotic, not even truly closed system, we've predicted how this "loaf of bread" will bake in 100 years...

I wish, for just 10 seconds, there was a smidgen of humbleness from AGW promoters about their models...instead there is a smug sureness that one usually gets from religious zealots; and all the while, the bread doesn't bake evenly....

Let's see -- we are supposed to ignore the scientific models of NASA and other climatologists and instead listen to the "gut" of an old geyser who got his degree in meterology over 50 years ago.

It is very common for old scientists not to want to change their views. If the tobacco companies can dig up one eminent doctor who doesn't think tobacco causes cancer, can that wipe out all the other evidence it does?