Global Warming: EXPLAINED AT LAST!

I've read the IPCC report twice. I can tell that you have not. If you had, you would not say that it is the definitive answer concerning global warming. The primary problem with the IPCC report is that the hard science contained therein, the charts & data, really do not agree, IMHO, with the summary at the end. The writers of the IPCC summary seem to have realized most would not wade through the data and not realize the conclusions of the report are not supported fully. In short, the IPCC report is full of holes. Svensmark is not as correct as I first thought, but neither is he as far off the mark as the IPCC conclusions. The truth of the global warming matter is that no one really knows the complete story as of yet. As to man made global warming, take a peek at what percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere is man made. This will give you a clue as to how much global warming can be (possibly) attributed to man. Then only if the earth does not have some yet unknown counter balanencing mechanism to counter the extra CO2. Or possibly the CO2 is a counter balence. There is one thing almost for sure. Mankind could not heat up the earth 1 degree if they wanted to. Why don't you figure up the mass of the atmosphere of the earth? Then calculate how many btu's it would take to raise that mass 1 degree. I have not done this calculation, but it is probably more energy than contained in all our nuclear weapons. Which by the way, if all were set off, would cool the earth, anyway. Man-made global warming is a hoax. You are being lied to.

"I believe humans are partly to blame." Yes, they are. The problem lies in the misrepresentation as to how much they are to blame. In the last 100 or so years the mean average temperature of the earth has raised about .6 degree C. Maybe mankind is responsible for 3% of that. .6 times .03 = .018 or .02 degrees C. Yes, strictly speaking mankind is partly to blame. Just not enough to make much difference. The IPCC report weasels around this by stating there is a high probablility of a discernable man made change in the temperature of the earth. This discernable difference is only even detectable because of modern high precision instruments. On its face it is a true statement. There is a discernable man made difference. However, this is a very misleading statement taken by itself.

red I have to disagree. I believe humans are partly to blame. We are responsible for more gasses like Nitrous oxide in our atmosphere. Some of these will last for centuries adding to the greenhouse effect. I think that all of the tourist trips to see the glaciers can do nothing but speed the process. I will also say if humans are responsible we could reverse it, but we can't. The Earth goes through natural cycles. Like you said we are just a speck. We can't control the weather.

Make sure you do a search without the quotation marks. Now that I have read about it I don't think he is even close. He has altered data to suit his hypothesis. A series of attempts by Svensmark to show an effect have come unstuck. Initially, Svensmark claimed there was a correlation between cosmic ray intensity and satellite measurements of total cloud cover since the 1980s – yet a correlation does not prove cause and effect. It could equally well reflect changes in solar irradiance, which inversely correlate with cosmic ray intensity. Furthermore, this apparent correlation depended on adjustments to the data, and it does not hold up when more recent cloud measurements from 1996 onwards are included. Svensmark and others then pointed to an apparent correlation between low-altitude cloud cover and cosmic rays. But after 1995, the beguiling fit of Svensmark's graph depends on a "correction" of satellite data, and the satellite scientists say this is not justified. "It's dubious manipulation of data in order to suit his hypothesis," says Joanna Haigh, an atmospheric physicist at Imperial College London, UK. Then there is the question of how changes in clouds will affect climate. Svensmark claims the overall effect of less cloud cover is a warmer world, with less heat loss due to reflection off clouds during the day outweighing higher loss of heat at night. Yet even during the day, many clouds in the upper atmosphere can have a warming effect. Not all scientists agree that reducing cloud cover would warm the planet. In fact, clouds are one of the greatest uncertainties in climate science. It is not even clear whether the satellite measurements of changes in cloudiness are correct or how these changes have affected temperature, let alone what will happen in the future. Clouds might mitigate global warming or amplify it.

Thank you very much for taking the trouble to read, understand, think and respond. So, few people do. "Clouds are one of the greatest uncertainties in climate science." This is so true. It really is the crux of the problem. By far, the largest amount of any green house gas is H20. More than CO2. More than methane. More so than anything. H2O forms clouds. As you have convincingly argued no one even really knows what role clouds play. Hence, Svensmark's work at best constitutes a theory, and given your analysis, surely it must be rated back down to a hypothesis! Oh well, guess I can't be right about everything. I just wish more people understood that this is such a complex problem that no one has a simple complete totally correct answer.

"Yet a correlation does not prove cause and effect." I just had to add a comment on this quote. This is very true and can not be over emphasized. Yet, to date I have heard exactly zero people other than myself criticize Al Gore's movie, "An Inconvenient Truth" for using correlation as evidence of proof that CO2 causes global warming. Thanks, for bringing up an important point many people do not understand.