Obviously nobody bothered checking out the link in my previous post, so let me try this again. Interestingly, Scott Denning works in the same office and sees the same data as Bill Gray--and Gray is one of the most outspoken and early critics of the global warming theory.
Adding heat changes temperature
Scott Denning and Todd Ringler � December 24, 2009
Previous coverage of the climate change negotiations in Copenhagen often includes some basic misconceptions. We'd like to point out some facts that are not in dispute and try to cool tempers a little.
We're both climate scientists with decades of experience: Scott Denning is a professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University, and Todd Ringler is a scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
One common misconception often repeated in the media is that concern about global warming is based on recent warming trends. We hear endlessly repeated arguments about how much (or how little) the weather has warmed in recent years.
Television pundits and politicians sometimes talk themselves blue about whether recent warming is caused by people or natural cycles. But the reason we expect the climate to warm with increasing levels of COis not based on past trends. It's based on simple measurements of heat radiation from the gas itself.
The Earth's temperature is set by a balance between incoming heat from the sun and the radiation of that heat back to space. Molecules of carbon dioxide and water vapor in the air absorb some of the outgoing heat and radiate it back down to the surface, like tiny heat lamps in the sky.
The heat radiation from COmolecules was first discovered almost 150 years ago. The properties of the gas are not in the slightest dispute and can be measured by any laboratory with exactly the same results. The basic science was done before the Civil War and does not depend on complicated computer models.
When scientists predict global warming due to continued reliance on fossil fuels, we are simply saying that if you add heat to the surface of the Earth, it will warm up. Another undisputed fact is that since 1800, the amount of COin the air has increased by about 35 percent.
If it were to double from preindustrial levels, 4 watts of heat would shine down on every square meter of the planet: that's the equivalent of a tiny night-light bulb that burns 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
You'd think pundits who predict this will not cause climate change would have some kind of explanation for why this extra heat will not warm the planet, but they don't. They seem to think that because there are natural climate cycles, or because the climate has not yet warmed catastrophically, or because of hacked e-mails in England, the laws of physics have somehow been repealed.
Sorry; adding heat to something changes its temperature, unless something else takes the heat away.
Media pundits also seem to think the sky will fall if we burn less fossil fuel. This view betrays a very dim view of human history. If the naysayers had their way, we'd still be driving buggies.
Some argue our entire modern economy rests on the subsidy of cheap fossil fuel. If they are right, our children's future is dark indeed because industrialization in China and India will soon outstrip world supplies.
We take the more optimistic view that human ingenuity and creativity can and will lead to a bright future in which billions of people can live well without burning coal, oil or gas.
