Carbon Dioxide And Greenhouse Effect

Update:  Science News reports on a study with additional confirmation of the effects of anthropocentric CO2.


It is customary for global warming denialists to claim there is no basis for the greenhouse effect. However,
The impacts of CO2 on radiative transfer have been studied since the 1860s, and modern spectroscopic databases date to Air Force calculations for heat seeking missiles in the 1950s and have been validated by an enormous number of observations, both in situ and via remote sensing. The vertical fingerprint of the impact of increasing CO2 (warming troposphere, cooling stratosphere) was calculated in 1967 by Manabe and Wetherald decades before it was observed.
This fact must give us pause.  There are a variety of factors affecting the global climate, but one of them, the concentration of CO2 in the biosphere has an inevitable implication, dire consequences if the concentration continues to rise, which it will if nothing is done.  There is a lot a person must deal with in one's life, friends, work, children, politics, etc., etc. But there is one thing hanging over us, a Sword of Damocles forcing everything else into the background, the unimaginable consequences to civilization if CO2 continues to rise.   

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