Hmmm, Record Jump in Green House Gasses, but...

Biggest jump ever seen in global warming gases - Yahoo! News

Meanwhile, global temperatures have remained flat for the past ten years.

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/10/30/article-2055191-0E974B4300000578-6_634x639.jpg

 

But we're in a solar minimum, shouldn't we be going down rather than remaining flat?

Solar minimum - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Actually I think we are approaching the peak of this very weak solar cycle.

But then again, there is always delay when cycles begin to change direction. It takes time for things to cool off after the initial surge of energy begins to decrease.

If you were boiling water on an electric stove, when you first begin to turn down the current on the heating coil, the water does not immediately stop boiling. The coil is still adding heat though at a diminishing rate. I think the same principle applies to the suns weakened radiance heating up the Earth.

The concern of the sun spot theorists is not that the sun is going to simply go into some straight linear decline, but that it is cycling downward in energy and that over the next few decades it will get colder and colder as has happened before in similar circumstances.

 

Still declining you say, then we should be seeing a down trend by now, instead of flat temps. You brought them up, you explain them. According to the Wiki article the minimum was several years ago.

 

I did explain it. Maybe you should try to read it again.

 

Your explanation was simply a story that doesn't necessarily hold water. How long do we have to wait to see the decline? To me the lag shows that the effect has been blunted, making AGW a likely explanation. After all, if the sun can have an effect, why not other sources? The skeptics like to say that scientists are ignoring natural cycles(a big laugh by the way), but they consistently want to ignore the effects of GHGs.

 

The explanation does hold water, in theory, but that doesnt mean it is true, of course.

As to how long, probably over the next few years, as this cycle (25?) winds down and the sun goes dormant after an abnormally weak peak.

And other sources do have an effect, from green house gasses to the suns cyclic position in the galaxy, to wobbles on the Earths axis.

The thing that most AGW skeptics are doubting isnt that warming has been occuring up untill recently, but whether human emissions of CO2 are the primary driver of that CO2 and if that CO2 increase is what primarily is driving the higher temperatures.

I dont see enough evidence to support such a view except in a very tentative way, and ce3rtainly no where near the certitude I would think necesary to hand over tremendous power to the government and allow government bureaucrats more ability to interfere in our private lives.

 

CO2 is plant food and know it's poison to global whiners.

Mothernature will self correct itself regardless of our arrogant attempt to change the climate.

 

Richard Muller, a former skeptic, does!!!

Commentary: Science trumps climate change deniers - KansasCity.com

 

Mother nature will, of course, but it's human civilization I'm concerned about. Will that survive the worst case scenario? The fact that CO2 is "plant food" is a red-herring. No one is saying get rid of all CO2.