The message
from Terry Fields contains these words:

Some two or three years ago I researched as best I could the published
evidence for and against 'global warming', as it was called then.

Then your best was just not good enough,

Well, perhaps it escaped your attention that, in a publication loaded
with bright primary colours and infant-school pictures, a major
government origanisation published a graph that said "there are twelve
suspected forcing mechanisms, and we know next to nothing about eight
of them. In the light of this profound lack of knowledge, this other
mechanism is the only one of importance".

If you can't manage to grasp that, then your best is, well, just not
up to it.

All you see is a bludgeon with which to beat those who disagree with you
and sneering at a site you are using to support your argument does
nothing to advance it.

That's how you choose to read it.

That is how it comes across. You can huff and puff all you like and
swear you are a fully paid up scientist but on Usenet you are what you
post and there is nothing of the disinterested observer about you.

I read it as a confirmation of the great lack of knowledge in the
area, and a reason not to jump on one bandwagon merely because it's
fashoonable and amenable to taxation.

So you totally ignored the fact that they had quantified each effect.

The graph in question shows the extent of the
warming or cooling effect of each factor. What is not well understood is
the mechanism by which they act.

I don't suppose you noticed that the CO2 column in that graph also had
two or three other effects added on top - just happening to give the
whole thing a taller column than it would otherwise have had.

If you had bothered to read all of what I wrote in a previous piece you
would have been aware that I had noticed they had stacked all the well
understood greenhouse gases in one column.

Why didn't they do that with the cooling mechanisms - is it because
they look like outweighing the CO2 column? Nah, no-one would ever
mislead people like that.

I didn't find it misleading in the least. However I would have found
what you suggest misleading as it would mask, for instance, the
differing role of O3 at differing heights and completely bugger the
picture of anything that worked across the divide.

Also, o-one has yet answered, let alone respond to, several other
points I made.

Roughly these we

- Why the last ice age ended, and whether those mechanisms are in
place and functioning

Try google.

- Why the Global Wamers chose 1960 - 1980 for their baseline, knowing
it covered an unusually cold period

Is it? Did they? Are you sure it just isn't the last two decades at time
things started looking serious?

If what you allege is true why didn't they pick 1900 - 1920 which was a
whole lot colder. 1960 - 1980 was as much unusually cool as 1935 - 1945
were unusually warm. Even picking 1950 - 1970 might have given a lower
base line.

We do at least know why the Denyers chose 1998 as their base year. It
sticks out like a sore thumb.

- Why the modellers chose to knowingly tuned their models to get the
same answer as the others

You have said that before so it is about time you cited your source.

- Why we know so much about one forcing mechanism, and choose to
pursue controlling that, when we know nothing about eight others, and
a little more than nothing about a couple of others.

We know the size of each effect. That is a great deal more than nothing.

As I have said before if the greenhouse effect is real than reducing
atmospheric CO2 will lead to lower temperatures than would otherwise be
the case. It doesn't matter that other independent factors are already
working in the opposite direction (unless they can be increased to
counteract the effect of increased CO2) other than if the effect of CO2
is largely counteracted already reducing CO2 will have a bigger effect
than might seem possible at first glance.

PS: the graph I referenced gave very little weight to the effect of
clouds. I suggest you look up the research that was done of the days
post 9/11, when no aircraft flew in the airspace over the US, and
climatologists took the chance to measure something that would have
been otherwise impossible. But this time, you can look it up yourself,
and form your own opinion; I've given you enough to go on. Note I
haven't said which side of the debate, if any, it supports.

Thank you but I am already aware of the con trails evidence.

--
Roger Chapman