Quote from bigdavediode:
Where did you get this nonsense number?
Suffice to say, your thought that CO2 only is responsible for 3 or 4% of total radiative forcing is wildly wrong.
I have posted this before, I will post it again.
"Carbon dioxide adds 12 percent to radiation trapping, which is less than the contribution from either water vapor or clouds. By itself, however, carbon dioxide is capable of trapping three times as much radiation as it actually does in the Earth's atmosphere. Freidenreich and colleagues [106] have reported the overlap of carbon dioxide and water absorption bands in the infrared region. Given the present composition of the atmosphere,
the contribution to the total heating rate in the troposphere is around 5 percent from carbon dioxide and around 95 percent from water vapor."
--Energy Information Administration; Official Energy Statistics from the U.S. Government
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/altern...ent/appd_d.html
"
Over 95 percent of the earth's natural greenhouse effect is from water vapor, and about 3 percent of it is from carbon
dioxide."
--Dr. Patrick J. Michaels, Virginia State Climatologist and Professor of Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/R...haels_Jun98.pdf
"The number one greenhouse gas is actually water vapor. It's something like 98 percent, by volume, of all greenhouse gases. I like the way that my colleague,
Jan Veizer at the University of Ottawa, a world-renowned expert on the carbon cycle, lists the relative importance of greenhouse gases when he speaks on the topic. He points out that the number one greenhouse gas is water vapor, the number two greenhouse gas is water vapor, the number three greenhouse gas is water vapor, the number four greenhouse gas is water vapor and CO2 is a distant fifth. Of course, this list is somewhat facetious as there is only one type of water vapor. However, he lists the relative importance of greenhouse gases this was to indicate just how insignificant the tiny carbon dioxide cycle is to the water vapor cycle that it piggybacks on."
--Dr. Tim Patterson, Professor of Geology-- Carleton University
http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=010405M
"The Environmental Protection Agency is seeking to classify water vapor as a pollutant, due to its central role in global warming. Because
water vapor is the dominant greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, accounting for at least 90% of the Earth's natural greenhouse effect, its emission during many human activities, such as the burning of fuels, is coming under increasing scrutiny by federal regulators."
http://www.ecoenquirer.com/EPA-water-vapor.htm
"The most important among these 'greenhouse gases' is
water vapor, which is responsible for about 96 to 99 percent of the greenhouse effect. Among the other greenhouse gases (CO2, CH4, CFCs, N2O, and O3), the most important is CO2, which contributes only 3 percent to the total greenhouse effect. The manmade CO2 contribution to this effect may be about 0.05 to 0.25 percent."
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/R...nsion_03-04.pdf
I hope you're not trying to discuss stratospheric water vapor. Here are the actual numbers in W/sq. meters:
http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/FAQ/wg1_faq-2.1.html
CO2 has a radiative forcing effect of over 1.5W/sq. meters, while H2O is less than .2W/sq. meter.
Do you not read these links before you post them or do you just not understand them? Those numbers are "the contributions to radiative forcing from some of the factors influenced by human activities" not the total greenhouse effect like I am referring.
