Sadly ,G.T.W. , I know of no 'extreme science' sites to allow us the chance of doing the same. We're stuck with science papers ,reviews and the IPCC........

A key issue?

The free market demonstrates its creativity in the face of a potential human disaster -

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19878-carbon-trading-tempts-firms-to-make-greenhouse-gas.html

A handful of Chinese and Indian chemicals companies seemingly have the world over a barrel – or rather a large number of barrels of a super-greenhouse gas called HFC-23, which is 14,800 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

This week, apparently following Chinese threats to vent stockpiles of HFC-23 into the atmosphere, a UN panel issued two million valuable carbon credits to a company called Juhua. It has a factory in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, where the gas can be destroyed.

Nobody needs HFC-23. It is a waste by-product of the manufacture of a refrigerant called HCFC-22, used mostly in developing nations. To curb the release of HFC-23 into the atmosphere, the signatories to the Kyoto protocol agreed to pay carbon credits to refrigerant manufacturers that agree to capture and destroy it. The manufacturers can then sell the credits to western companies that want to offset their obligations to cut emissions of other greenhouse gases, under a Kyoto scheme known as the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).

The offer only applies to HCFC-22 plants that were built before 2000. Even so it has proved highly lucrative. By some estimates, the value of the carbon credits is up to 100 times the cost of incinerating HFC-23. The resulting income of Chinese companies alone is estimated to reach $1.6 billion by 2012.

Originally Posted by: polarwind

A key issue?

The free market demonstrates its creativity in the face of a potential human disaster

By threatening to vent the stockpile?

What would be really impressive is if the free market invented a way not to produce the stuff in the first place.

Yes. Very sad that nations take a stance like that, but, that is the way that the Mafia works.

Very nice article about comparing the various surface and satellite temperature series

http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/12/16/comparing-temperature-data-sets/#more-3206

There is a lot of very very good stuff on that blog. Always taken step by step and always thorough.

Actually I have found the mauna loa website, which seems a good place to start....forgive my total ignorance of, apparently, even how to do a web search!

So total atmospheric CO2, currently running at 389 ppm, works out as 0.0389 % of the atmosphere? Just feeling my way through here, but 4 tenths of a percent? Does it really have this massive impact?

Off to do more reading :)

Edited by user 05 January 2011 21:01:11(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Originally Posted by: Ulric

The important thing about CO2 levels is that they have doubled due to industrial emissions. As a proportion of the whole atmosphere greenhouse gases may not constitute much but the way the physics works means that they are an important constituent of the atmosphere.

A useful explanation of the history of the science can be found here

http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm

Thankyou very much for that link. It answers a lot of questions, and I was glad to see that the questions I have been asking have actually been asked by scientists, and answered. This stuff never gets as far as the papers, though, does it? I was quite the fence-sitter before, but now I see why people are so deeply worried by this.

I was looking at the Milankovitch cycles, too, to try and see where we are on them, but it is pretty difficult to figure out - not one page says "we are at x,y,z points on these cycles and therefore the globe should currently be cooling/warming. It looks as if we should broadly be at or approaching peak temperatures as a result of the Milankovitch cycles, and at some point in the next 10,000 ought to start to cool down again. That is quite a long time, though, and with the unknown effect of the high CO2 levels in terms of whether they might counter that cooling cycle, or whether we will still be around by then due to having boiled ourselves off the planet, it is rather difficult to say what will actually happen.

The problem is most people are pretty parochial at the end of the day, and simply can't worry about global effects, or effects in even 100 years, let alone 10,000, which is partly why it's so difficult to get this message across. There is also the question of whether we can actually make any difference now, or if it's too late. Quite a lot of people I know say things like, "this global warming business is highly debateable, and besides if those greenies are to be believed it's too late to change it now so what's the point?" So the one message that did reach the public consciousness is the one that leads to the most apathy, sadly.

Anyway, that's an extremely useful link you have there, very in depth, but really readable. Thankyou.

Originally Posted by: Ulric

The important thing about CO2 levels is that they have doubled due to industrial emissions.

Minor quibble is that it's still some way short of doubling. Pre-industrial ~280ppm, to current ~390ppm. The big picture is most important of course but it's good to get the details right.

Originally Posted by: Ulric

As a proportion of the whole atmosphere greenhouse gases may not constitute much but the way the physics works means that they are an important constituent of the atmosphere.

Yep the absolute concentrations may be low but essentially they make the atmosphere opaque to most wavelengths of infrared. That is, if you fired a beam of infrared radiation towards Earth from the moon, the vast majority of that beam would not reach the surface - it would be absorbed and then re-radiated by the GHGs in the atmosphere.