Dear Yapa, I am an expert in Air Pollution Management and have published a few primary research works on Air pollution in Nigeria. See my recent publication on Increase in Outdoor CO2.

Article Increase in outdoor carbon dioxide and its effects on the en...

Thanks fo your timely question. CO2 is a major contributor to increase in outdoor temperature in some regions. Although, CO, CH4, etc also contributes based on regions and sources of pollutants. Bear in mind that CO2 is driven by anthropogenic activities; increase in population is a global concern. I observed recently in Europe the “beast from the East” (Storm Emma), the snow during that period. Yes lower freezing temperatures. I will want you to study the temperature during summer in these regions and compare to previous years., you will at that point draw your conclusion.

Thanks for bringing this question up. It is timely.

Okobia

Thanks. I agree that CO2 levels are high and increasing. My question is whether we can place the full blame for climatic changes on the CO2 concentrations.

I am a professor of meteorology and apply climatology. Although Co2 concentration in our atmosphere is a major culprit when we talk about climate change issues but it can't foot the blame alone. Other green house gases such as Methane, SO2 and chlorofluorocarbons have to share in the blame. However, major to share in the blame is the attitude of man in the way we exploit the resources within our environment.

Most every indigenous community accept that we humans are changing the weather/climate, not just through physical activity, but also through lack of respect to social norms and by being greedy. They pressure the community members to correct themselves before any ritual to plead the gods. How fast have we forgotten our past.

Shakun-Nature-2012

We certainly cannot sqy that CO2 is the main cause of climate change. In my my response earlier, I state that ‘Although, CO, CH4, etc also contributes based on regions and sources of pollutants’.

Regards.

Okobia.

Dear Kashyapa Yapa , You have raised an important issue. The answer for your question is YES, CO2 is the major contributor for global warming. Let me share information obtained from Union of Concerned Scientist (https://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/science-and-impacts/science/CO2-and-global-warming-faq.html#.WrJTF9RubIU)

There are many heat-trapping gases (from methane to water vapor), but CO2 puts us at the greatest risk of irreversible changes if it continues to accumulate unabated in the atmosphere.

There are two key reasons why.

1) CO2 has caused most of the warming and its influence is expected to continue

CO2 has contributed more than any driver to climate change between 1750 and 2011. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a global climate assessment in 2013 that compared the influence of three changes to the environment resulting from human activity between 1750 and 2011: the emission of key heat-trapping gases and tiny particles known as aerosols, as well as land use change.

By measuring the abundance of heat-trapping gases in ice cores, the atmosphere, and other climate drivers along with models, the IPCC calculated the “radiative forcing” (RF) of each climate driver—in other words, the net increase (or decrease) in the amount of energy reaching Earth’s surface attributable to that climate driver. Other gases have more potent heat-trapping ability molecule per molecule than CO2 (e.g. methane), but are simply far less abundant in the atmosphere.

2) CO2 sticks around

CO2 remains in the atmosphere longer than the other major heat-trapping gases emitted as a result of human activities. It takes about a decade for methane (CH4) emissions to leave the atmosphere (it converts into CO2) and about a century for nitrous oxide (N2O).

After a pulse of CO2 is emitted into the atmosphere, 40% will remain in the atmosphere for 100 years and 20% will reside for 1000 years, while the final 10% will take 10,000 years to turn over. This literally means that the heat-trapping emissions we release today from our cars and power plants are setting the climate our children and grandchildren will inherit.

I hope the above information will give you some information for the requested clarification.

All meteorological data that I have seen used to analyze global warming does not range more than 300 years. Therefore, extrapolating beyond the data is just especulation. There are proven "global" warming and cooling cycles that last longer than 600 years. Therefore, in order to "reliably" assess what is coming, longer periods of data should be analyzed

Dear Dr. Kenneth M Towe, please have a look in to the attached document using the link to see the data and information for its realities. I hope, the information provided by the union is genuine and real.

Figure 1. How does carbon dioxide compare to other climate drivers? Carbon dioxide (CO2), more than any other climate driver, has contributed the most to climate change between 1750 and 2011. Radiative forcing units are expressed as the power (watts) per square meter surface area of Earth.

Long-term perspective

Atmospheric CO2 levels rose 40 percentbetween 1750 and 2011. (In 2013, atmospheric CO2 levels surpassed 400 million parts per million for the first time in human history.) Half of human-related CO2 emissions occurred only in the last 40 years. CO2 (and other gases emitted from industrial and agricultural sources) trap heat in the atmosphere, so it is no surprise that we are now witnessing an increase in global average temperature.

Source: Union of Concerned Scientists: Science of a Healthy Planet and Safer World (https://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/science-and-impacts/science/CO2-and-global-warming-faq.html#.WrJm7dRubIV)

Glad that here we can exchange ideas without shouting at one another. I am no expert of anything, have no axe to grind either. But I see a disturbing trend in ‘euro-centric’ science (use this term as ‘western or modern’ makes no sense): not being honest with itself, not accepting that it has no answers to everything, yet. I can understand institutions, like UN, bending their back to those who fund them. But we, individuals, we don’t need money nor facilities to think (Hawkings showed us the way, right?), to follow our intuitions to reason out things.

IPCC is blaming 400 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere for warming the planet, when H2O has been there all this time (varying between 100 to 40,000 ppm, from place to place). I think IPCC is doing what Stips et al (2016) claim (‘farmer beating his sleeping mat, when he could not catch the deer who ate the paddies’, as they say in Sri Lanka). When model predictions go haywire, IPCC should accept the error and look where they have gone wrong. May be Ellison et al (2017) or Dyson (Lemonick, 2009) have some reason (references are in my first posting), I don’t know.

Kashyapa Yapa,

Global warming is not a misnomer. It refers to the average global temperature, it doesn't mean that the temperature will increase everywhere, at least in the short term. If a class average on an exam increases, it doesn't necessarily mean that every student has done better.

There are several factors that can affect global temperature. Past ice ages are correlated with changes in the earth's orbit, referred to as Milankovitch cycles (changes which take place on a time scale of 10s of thousands of years). Once the climate starts changing, there are feedbacks that also affect climate, including increases in atmospheric CO2. The increased CO2 adds to the increasing temperature. It's estimated that increased CO2 contributed to about 1/3 of the warming in the last interglacial period.

Other factors such as volcanism, land use changes, etc. can also play a role.

What's different with the current warming is that we started pumping CO2 into the atmosphere, and that is resulting in a large climate forcing, which is causing global warming. Just because other factors initiated climate change in the past doesn't mean that this warming (or a significant portion of it) isn't caused by man's activities. That's like saying that we can't start forest fires because they've been caused by lightning in the past.

The physics behind global warming by atmospheric CO2 is very mature science. We can calculate the climate forcing by CO2; it is the single largest current climate change forcing that we are aware of. Other anthropogenic greenhouse gases also contribute. No one has been able to account for the current warming trend without including the effect of anthropogenic GHGs.

The current warming trend is extremely rapid compared to historical ones. We have warmed by about 1 degree C since pre-industrial times. Some have called that "mild" warming. To put it in perspective, the temperature change between the height of the last ice age and pre-industrial average is about 6 degrees C. That 1 degree change has brought about great changes, including large reductions in polar land and sea ice, melting of permafrost, changes in weather patterns, expansion of the range of tropical diseases, sea level rises with increased coastal damage from storms, etc.

A vast amount of research indicates that atmospheric CO2 is increasing, that man's burning of fossil fuels (and other activities)is the cause, and that it is the single largest factor affecting the current warming trend.

Thanks Mr. Judd, for your comment. Could you please help me with one reference which shows that it is the rising CO2 concentration, not changes in water vapor or any other mechanism, that drives the air temperature up? I have followed the leads given by IPCC reports but they all start with the premise that CO2 is the culprit.

Estimates of contributions to the greenhouse effect vary, from about 40 - 66 % for water vapor (up to ~ 85 % for water vapor plus liquid water in clouds), and from about 10 - 25 % for CO2). These refer to the total greenhouse effect of about 33 deg C, however, not the change. There are some subtleties in discussing climate change, however. CO2 is a non-condensing greenhouse gas with a very long atmospheric lifetime, while water exists in three phases at terrestrial temperatures. Water vapor content is a function of the temperature of the atmosphere, and quickly adjusts to other climate forcings, and is better viewed as a feedback or response to other factors. See, e.g., https://www.skepticalscience.com/water-vapor-greenhouse-gas-intermediate.htm

We have increased CO2 concentrations by about 50 % in the last 150 years, while water vapor content has increased by about 3-4 %, in response to the atmosphere warming from CO2 and other positive climate forcings.