CO2 Heat Trapping Observed

The good news is the bad news for deniers just keeps rolling in. It's been a bad few days for the deniers.

First, one of their darlings was exposed as being a liar and fraud when records were released showing how Willie Soon was paid millions of dollars to produce anti-science papers, referred to as 'deliverables.' No one that is familiar with Soon is surprised by the news, I'm sure. But, it was really nice to see the confirmation of what everyone already knew. It was a real blow to the denier industry.

Now, there is a new report that, I hope, will be equally as damaging to the anti-science crowd. A team of scientists are reporting in the journal Nature that they have directly measured CO2 caused heat trapping. What they did was to use a decade of measurements looking straight up through the atmosphere. These instruments took measurements of both the CO2 level and the amount of radiative trapping. Plotting the two showed a definite connection between the two, exactly as 150 years of physics predicted.

As was reported,

In doing so, the data show clouds, water vapor or changes in sun's radiation are not responsible for warming the air, as some who doubt mainstream climate science claim, Feldman said. Nor could it be temperature data being tampered with, as some contrarians insist, Feldman said.

"The data say what the data say," Feldman said. "They are very clear that the rising carbon dioxide is actually contributing to an increased greenhouse effect at those sites."

Of course, the deniers will try to put some kind of spin on this, but the facts are there - increasing levels of CO2 cause trapping of heat in the atmosphere. The science is settled and it is conclusive.