In geologic history, the evidence indicates that CO2 levels are effect, not cause, of warming. Warming oceans retain less CO2, hence atmospheric CO2 rises. The data is available at NOAA if you want to run it (I did several years ago). The ice core data clealy shows CO2 lagging behind temperature changes. During most significant changes in global temp, there is a correlation with isotopes associated with solar activity.

The fact is, CO2 levels have in geological history been 1000x greater than today without any significant difference in global temperature.

So my contention with the ‘global warming’ nonsense is that it is bunk science, not science. Yes, there is climate change. The Earth is warming because it is coming out of a mini-ice age. One of the events that drove early settlement in America was the inability of Europeans to substain agriculture due to that ice age. There is a direct correlation between that period and sun spot activity (zero sunspots).

For the past decade, we have been dealing with a similar period of low solar activity. I check spaceweather.com almost every day and today there are once again 0 sunspots and has been that way for 15 days now. A month ago we were getting all excited because it looked like sunspots were starting to ramp up, but they just died down again. We are headed for a solar max in 2011/2012, but so far, this has been the weakest solar cycle that I can remember. And oh yeah, global temperatures have been going down as a result.

So yeah, I laugh at your homocentric ‘global warming’ junk science. Mother nature has her way of letting you know who is in charge.

I mean, obviously, climate modeling is difficult science. Climatologists have to deal with data sets from various means of measurement of various levels of reliability over a limited amount of time. It’s easy enough to look at all that and say, “I’m not certain that your model is correct.” Especially if you’re not well-versed in the science behind it.

But, then, there’s the basic science behind greenhouse gases. We know, in simple, physical terms, how they interact with radiation and how that effectively traps heat here on Earth. We know for sure because, if it didn’t work that way, everything on our planet would be a popsicle, and we’d all be dead. So, it doesn’t seem that hard to understand that, when you pump tons and tons of all this stuff that traps heat into the atmosphere, things are going to get hotter.

So, I’m always curious about that. Do climate change skeptics deny the physics on how compounds like CO2 work, or do you just ignore pesky facts like that?