taniwha, the point isn't that a lab experiment with a candle is even a remote analog of what's happening in reality, the point is that CO2 is easily shown to be an absorber of IR that anyone can understand. Granted, I may have been responding to something that IntLibber didn't imply, which I apologize for. That reply was at 2AM.
TallDave, going in circles now, my man.
I'm going to relink the Economist article for this new page (won't hurt the 22k Google results for Darwin Zero!):
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democrac ... scientists
MSimon,
So he is in the pay of the oil and natural gas cartels. Or maybe the nuclear cartel.
Nah, Hansen is old hat ("father of AGW"). He's not in the pockets of anyone as far as I understand, unless we're going to throw NASA under the bus (and remember, I spent years defending NASA against alien crazies, so, yeah). He always does have the highest figures of anyone, though, and was responsible for predicting sea ice losses that no one thought were possible at this stage (IPCC AR4 was too "uncertain" to make any statements about dynamical ice flow, it was outdated the day it was published).
Hansen, much to the dismay of many environmentalists, has come out in support of nuclear, particularly third generation (Thorium for example). And he actually supported McCain until he picked Palin.
The coal phaseout idea he's pushing is more because, I believe, he's getting old and he's just not giving a shit (he got a lot of flack for saying scientists should get political a few years back). You read his essays about his grandchildren and it's clear the guy doesn't want them to inherit a screwed up world, and he sees the science as accurate.
Yes. And CO2 sequestration will price coal out of the market. Good for the nuclear, wind, and solar guys though.
I believe in economic isolationism. We need to be able to use our own resources for energy, so I could care less if we got rid of fossil on other grounds. And I personally think that banning CO2 in some way or requiring it to be sequestered with coal would make nuclear very competitive (and I believe that's one reason that many environmentalists like the failure that is cap and trade rather than a CO2 tax or ban, because it means nuclear is quite viable and it means we move to clean energy more quickly; instead the cap and trade envisioned by the Senate will be a long drawn out process that will bring us to 450-550 ppm long before anything is done).
As far as I can tell the only method of CO2 sequestration people are comfortable with is trees.
Hansen wants to bring us back down to 280. His method? Trees (and of course the whole coal phaseout thing).
seedload, nah, I was merely making a statement on the understanding that we know that CO2 is an IR absorber, and we know that for certain. The absorption profile is in the Handbook of Chemistry and physics. They use it in the models, they don't just glean it from bigger observations, the models are pure physics, generalized of course since computers can't run them.
I am pretty sure that IntLibber was talking about the radiative effects of CO2 on a bit grander scale than you little high school dome.
Fair enough, but it seemed as if he was throwing out the radiative forcing of CO2 in its entirity. I apologize if I mischaracterized.