<< Woop Woop >>
That's the science alarm going off.
however I do not believe/subscribe whole heartedly in the "greenhouse effect", it does happen all you have to do is look at Venus, but I doubt 0.038% of CO2 in our atmosphere is causing it.
The greenhouse effect is an
effect - it's experimentally proven that greenhouse gases can trap reflected IR radiation inside the atmosphere, and that this is how the atmosphere stays above the theoretical -18*C that it would naturally be at without this effect. The main gases responsible are also well known, and these include CO
2. 'Greenhouse Effect' however, is not a substitute for the terms 'Climate Change' or 'Global Warming'. Those are terms for the deviation from the assumed constant state by whatever means.
If looked at from a physical chemistry point of view the energy released must go somewhere, and if we consider our earth as a "closed" system when all that energy is released it will inevitably warm up.
'Closed System'??? By what justification? Empty space sits at a cool 3K (-270*C), so Earth is comparatively hot, and will radiate heat (as well as particles for that matter) into space. Also remember that the mass of the atmosphere is immense with an okay specific heat - it takes a lot of heat to warm up all of the atmosphere... but that of course assumes you're heating a single body, and ignores all effects of climate, weather patterns, and currents. Then the atmosphere is in contact with the oceans, also quite large, which are in contact with the Earth, which also weighs a lot.
Thinking that this heat has nowhere to go is a little over-naive.
I'm not skeptical about the whole global warming thing, it's happening, no doubt about it.
I love these justifications - they've grown so much now that this is sufficient to prove the case.
'Average surface/ground temperatures' and the like are not only poorly defined, but poorly measured. To assume that the global properties of an entire planet can be summarised in a single (averaged!) parameter is scientifically laughable. To then make the leap that this single parameter is caused by a single change in environment conditions entirely exclusive of any other effects is the pinnacle of 'bad science' and yet it has so many people convinced of its authority that people are going to extraordinary lengths to combat something that we have such a poor understanding of.
The global environment may be warming. I'm not going to doubt that - I haven't seen any experimental evidence that sways me either way. Pollution is bad, I'm pretty sure of that one. Green technologies, although unlikely to be money-savers, are a clever way to generate the power that we all rely on, and should be encouraged.
I can't emphasise this last one enough: '
the Earth's atmosphere/environment is an immensely complicated and obsfucated system that cannot be summarised by one or two variables, and which we do not understand well enough to call anything "normal". Saying that the conditions are moving away from normal is a ridiculous statement that entirely ignores the first half of this paragraph. By all means, reduce the human contribution to greenhouse gas emissions, but FFS - stop pretending you're saving the planet."
I can't wait - once we have zero carbon emissions, and the global temperature keeps rising, we'll have to blame something else. I would like to nominate all reality-show contestants as the next cause of global warming. I can draw a graph of the rise in their numbers vs. the rise in global temperatures if that would persuade enough people.
h34r: 
