But, even if they are a negative feedback, they wouldn't cause cycles of warm and cold weather. At most, they would simply cancel out all of the warming, leaving things at the temperature they previously were. And, as Alph has mentioned, the historical record suggests that this is not the case, and any negative feedback from clouds is relatively small.
If only CO2 had any effect then the warming would be so small that nobody would really care about it. All the predictions of a large temperature change depend on secondary effect like you describe. Especially water vapor is much more important. But water vapor is also highly variable, raining out in a few days or evaporating back in a few days, compared to CO2 taking many years to change by a very small amount. That is why the estimates for how warm it will get are all over the place, including a cooling trend being possible. But majority consensus is it will be warmer. Just how much warmer there is really no consensus. Estimates are numbers like "something between half a degree and 8 degrees". That is like saying the stock market will go up between 5% and 80%; which is basically no prediction at all.
At least you have a scientific attitude and don't accept things just because someone wants you to believe. I agree with you. There appears to be things that buffer the temperatures; otherwise we would have had run away warming before. We emit plenty of aerosols to also cause cooling. If our CO2 emissions were so powerful, you would think we would have some warming in the last 18 years
Global cloud coverage is decreasing with increasing temperatures.
http://www.climate4you.com/images/CloudC...
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There is little evidence for negative feedbacks, except for the meltwater from Antarctica diluting sea water, causing it to freeze, and possibly ENSO. Earth's temperature has been stable because the yellow ball in the sky is basically stable. But if it weren't for positive feedbacks, subtle changes in Earth's orbit would not cause ice ages.
It is possible. It is also possible that changes in cloudiness are what caused most of the global warming, and instead are being misinterpreted as a sign of global warming.
If CO2 causes a runaway greenhouse effect it would have already happened many times in the past when CO2 was much higher concentrations than now however there is no evidence of such.
If what the AGW cultists claim is true we'd be in a runaway greenhouse effect now but we are not. CO2 is rising but global temps are not. This contradicts AGW theory and and supports the notion that negative feed back at this time is stronger than the effect of CO2 induced global warming if one is to believe CO2 is that much of a factor.
The oceans are what controls the earth's climate.
AGW cultists do not believe in negative feedback even though it is occurring in front of our faces. AGW cultists will never admit it but every one of their concocted explanations to explain the failure of AGW theory to account for no warming despite of increasing CO2 is an example of negative feed back.
The term is now "climate change" because just as you are talking about clouds. Now there is an even split between global warming or snow ball earth (which did occur millions of years ago (maybe man was the cause of it to. Archeloigest/We have not gone down far enough to that long ago in the sediments to say "no" yet
Yes you are talking about the thermostat theory, In fact if you think about it Earths climate has been remarkably stable for billions of years, we have the faint young sun, CO2 10x higher, huge volcano eruptions and yet temperatures have managed to remain stable, it seems there is a limit to how hot our planet can get, but not how cold (ice ages snowball earth)
We do not really. know. See Science News.
no. past paleoclimate does not indicate that kind of cancellation. When CO2 is hign, te earth is warm. No amount of wishfull thinking changes history.
I had always been on the fence about whether global warming is true or not. But the other day i got to thinking...Global warming creates heat. Clouds are created by water vapor. Water vapor is created by heat. Clouds reflect the suns rays, and radiation. It seems whenever it gets to hot, the global cloud coverage would be increased, and thus decrease the global temperature. It almost seems as if there would just be a continuous cycle of warmer temperatures, and colder temperatures.
Although to be honest, i don't have much experience in the field of environmental science, so i'm not so sure how well my theory holds up.
Sorry, nope. We have already emitted enough extra greenhouse gases for GW to exceed 2100 and longer if we don't do something about CO2
