On Mar 9, 1:21 pm, Just Wondering wrote:
wrote:

Of course the latent heat of evaporation and the high heat capacity
of water overwhelms that. Small global changes in humidity or ocean
temperature absorb or emit huge amounts of heat. That is a real good
thing as it provides us with stability. It also make it devilishly
difficult to tell if the Earth is warming or cooling and at what rate,

without very long observation, unless the rate is dangerously large.



I suspect it also oretty much drowns out the effect of minute changes in
atmospheric CO2 concentrations.

Depends what you mean by drown out.

Minute changes in CO2 would only have a minute
effect in the first place.

Those aformentioned phenomena do not change
the rates at which the Earth absorbs or emits energy.
So they don't nullify the effect of changes in
those rates regardless of what causes those changes,
Milininkov cycles, solar variation, volcanism, asteroid
impact, variations in the concentration of Greenhouse
gases etc.

They slow the effect of those changes. If the small
observed variation in insolation causes an observable
change then certainly the much larger variation in
CO2 concentration will too--unless the net effect of
those two is offset by yet another changing parameter
like global dimming form stratospheric particulates and
ice crystals.

--

FF