With respect to volume, CO2 occupies 0.00039 of the atmosphere and water vapour averages about 2% or 3%. I note that 2% or 3% is 0.02 or 0.03 of the atmosphere, which is about 1,000 times greater than 0.00039. Sorry! I mucked that up by calling it 10,000. (Corrected.)

With respect to mass, I compared the 3000 gigatonnes of CO2 with 13,000 gigatonnes of water vapour, making about four times more water vapour than CO2.

But we actually have more water vapour at 1,000 times greater by volume and 4 times greater by mass than CO2.

But I didn’t concern myself with the atomic weights. What happens if we do that?

You have water vapour 10000 times bigger than CO2 by volume and 400 times by mass.

With the atomic mass of CO2 being about three times H2O this doesn’t seem right. What am I missing?

Or, as Steven Goddard puts it:-

Warmists Prefer Little Boys

They get very upset when La Nina shows up.

Hansen has been hoping for a big El Nino for years, and talks about La Nina as if it were something unnatural created by Exxon.

For those that are not subscribed to CCG comments, see this ‘Australia’ thread for a tangled web of Warmer (and Drier) World contradictions.

I would implore some sympathetic funding agency to commission research into the attribution of global warming over the last 50 years (if they confirm any such warming). Because historically, engineers planned for the future by carefully measuring the past. By seeing that only a single flood in the last 100 years, for example, reached 2300mm up that retaining wall, that’s as far as we need to allow in our present work. That sort of thing.

For all our planning now to be delegated to unverified models is unsatisfactory. If the models are claimed to be verified, then why do some scientists still claim they’re not? Let’s start talking to each other and sharing the data. The matter is too important to be left to any single group. Which also requires New Zealand to detach itself from the IPCC and do its own research and policy formulation.

I guess it is, or should be, self-evident, but you omitted to specifically say that we are one of a group of carbon-based organisms and that carbon dioxide is an essential part of the cycle that controls our lives. Others have estimated that a doubling of CO2 will enable us to grow 35% more food i.e. to cope with a substantial increase in population. To set policies which reduce CO2, then, either assumes a miraculous reduction in population, or implies substantial starvation.

The so-called Greenhouse Effect is based on an experiment in a greenhouse — not in the unconstrained atmosphere. The so-called climate sensitivity has been determined by climate models — not by experiment. It may be of interest to note a very recent report by the BBC — not exactly a supporter of sceptical views on AGW — about the UK Government report on climate impact (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16730834) in which David Shukman wrote:

“The assessments rely on multiple scenarios based on computer modelling of the future climate.

“The authors admit that there are large uncertainties leading to a wide range of possible results.”

“Large uncertainties” begs a myriad of questions. It is a pity that these are not addressed by those in a position to set policies which affect us all.