On 8 Dec, 19:14, "The Medway Handyman"
wrote:
Roger Chapman wrote:
Phil L wrote:

At the basic level it demonstrated that CO2 is a greenhouse gas
(despite what Dennis claims) but then that is not exactly news. The
greenhouse effect has been known about for at least 100 years.

If it was first noticed 100 years ago, it's fairly safe to say that
it had been occuring for centuries before that, so how is it
mankind's fault, when the world population 300 - 400 years ago was a
tiny fraction of what it is now, and virtually none of them used
fossil fuels?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect

Why don't you answer the question directly yourself? *Its a simple
straightforward question.

Or are you trying to avoid an annoying hole in the green argument?


Going back to Phil's question, the point isn't that it was 'noticed'
100 years ago but that the basic physics was described. If I recall,
some of the earliest science in this area was formulated by Fourier so
in fact that would have been well over 100 years ago.

This is the crux of the matter really. The greenhouse effect is basic,
established physics. At the same time, we know that CO2 levels are
increasing. The uncertainty is in modelling and predicting the
*precise* consequences of that. However there is general agreement on
broad trends and it does not provide good news. If anything
predictions that have been made seem to have been on the optimistic
side.

I don't understand why people feel that when it comes to certain
topics, science is a matter of opinion. Why don't we get threads
about general relativity or something? A lot of the climate change
sceptic stuff that I see on the internet reminds me of the
creationist, anti-evolution opinions that I come across and seems to
employ similar tactics:

- putting forward spurious arguments that have been refuted time after
time
- picking holes in small areas, ignoring the fact that in practice
science relies on real world measurements that contain outliers and
need to be analysed using (again very well understood and
established ) statistical methods
- most importantly, doing the above while not putting forward good
quality peer-reviewed science of their own

Unfortunately these tactics seem to work. Most people are happy to be
ignorant and when the scientific message is as unappealing as it is in
this case, are happy to accept dissenting voices without scepticism.