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To: Sid Turtlman who wrote (101)	12/12/1997 2:48:00 PM
From: nic	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 407

article by some scientist (I have no recollection of his credentials) who argued that the change in temperatures recorded this century are highly correlated with some measure of solar output, and showed a graph that looked convincing. In other words, greenhouse gases have had no effect at all, as yet. Did you happen to see that article? If so, is there anything to that argument? Sorry Sid, I didn't see that, though I'd heard of the solar output argument before. There's probably something to it, but just how much of the warming does that account for? IMO it is very important to consider five questions separately that are always mixed up in the debate: 1) Is there solar warming? 2) How much? How consistent? 3) Which factors might contribute to global warming? 4) By how much do they actually contribute to it? 5) What causes the global warming we observe? 6) What are its possible consequences? The current status is: 1) yes, definitely. 2) the current rate of temperature increase is alarming, and well above any measurement noise. 3) Solar output, inherent climate fluctuations, greenhouse gases, deforestation, soot & ash particles, ... 4) very hard to quantify. 5) unknown. 6) Looking worse and worse. Politicians would like to have an answer to 5 before doing anything, so that they can make a comparatively painless "surgical strike" against the problem. Unfortunately 5 requires that we can quantify (4) the effect of every conceivable cause (3). This will take many decades, and 2 suggests that we may not have that much time left. New plausible horror scenarios (6) emerge every year: the gulf stream (the motor of global climate) might break down, the antarctic ice shelf might slip into the sea, etc. Instead of a yes/no answer we therefore have to use our best estimates as to how much each factor contributes to the problem - and naturally opinions as to what these are vary widely. For instance, by one theory CO2 is no problem because it self-regulates by promoting plant growth (plants evaporate water, generating clouds, which reflect sunlight back into space -> cooling). This may well be true, but would I bet the future of the planet on it? The factors also interact: if the above is true, then deforestation destroys our buffer against overproduction of CO2. So while one might argue that e.g. deforestation is more important to address than CO2, all plausible factors must at this point presumed guilty until proven innocent. Another thing to consider is that many of them should be addressed for environmental reasons other than global warming as well. Alright, off the soapbox. - nic