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Engaging With Climate Skeptics
In the wake of the CRU "climategate" leak, reader Geoffrey.landis sends along a New York Times blog profile of Judith Curry, a climate scientist at Georgia Tech. "Curry — unlike many climate scientists — does not simply dismiss the arguments of 'climate skeptics,' but attempts to engage them in dialogue. She can, as well, be rather pointed in criticizing her colleagues, as in a post on the skeptic site climateaudit where she argues for greater transparency for climate data and calculations (mirrored here). In this post she makes a point that tribalism in science is the main culprit here —- that when scientists 'circle the wagons' to defend against what they perceive to be unfair (and unscientific) attacks, the result can be damaging to the actual science being defended. Is it still possible to conduct a dialogue, or is there no possible common ground?"
The claims of evolution skeptics and round-earth skeptics is not backed up by observation and evidence. On the other hand, the more extreme claims of anthropogenic global warming _proponents_ are not backed up with sufficient observation and are extrapolated from very small datasets.
Given all of this, to say the "science is settled" is a travesty, and all those who said so fully deserve what's come so far and is undoubtedly coming as there's greater public and scientific scrutiny of their methods:
a) the Yamal tree-ring data - data from 10 trees is extrpolated into a 'trend' and finds its way into a number of papers
b) CRU emails - won't say much more, too much said about this already.
c) New Zealand average temperature graphs - high-school style 'cooking the graph' to match expectations
At this point, climate scientists who don't open up their raw data, modelling code and assumptions/decision-making are going to look as sleazy as PHB managers who forecast self-serving weird shit to make themselves look good to their bosses.
Go somewhere random
How about
"Greenland's ice sheet melted nearly 19 billion tons more than the previous high mark, and the volume of Arctic sea ice at summer's end was half what it was just four years earlier, according to new NASA satellite data obtained by The Associated Press."
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/12/13/tech/main3613698.shtml
Or is that to anecdotal for you?
Here you go.
Cherry picking data is like the blind men and the elephant, in a sense you see what you want to see. You have to step back to see the elephant. There was a debate for decades about climate cooling or getting warmer. There is supposed to be a cooling trend but the problem is instead it appears to be warming. Let's say the data is suspect due to cherry picking, how do we know which is right? It's hard to deny Arctic melting as much as some are trying to deny it. Also people used to judge weather by animal patterns. We forgot how to read them but it worked well. Look at the animal patterns. Explosions of giant jellyfish off Japan and other areas. Numerous red tides including northern areas where they used to be rare. Starfish invading the Bering Straits where they used to be rare. A number of tropical species have been appearing in the UK and the north east coast of the US. It's happened before but it used to be rare and now it's getting commonplace. In Alaska the permafrost is melting deeper than anyone has ever seen before and worldwide the glaciers are melting fast and there are hundreds of photos to prove it. Assuming all the data is suspect there's still a lot of evidence of a sudden drastic change because much of this observational data has happened in the last ten years and it's consistent worldwide. A natural cycle? Why are we assuming that a volcano that spews billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere can affect weather but us doing the same every year has no affect? You might as well say that pouring water into a rain barrel can't make it overflow only rain can make a rain barrel over flow we can't do it. It makes as much sense. A change is happening the only real questions are how much and how fast.
Yeah, you're right.
None of that melting ice caps, record glacial melts, and lack of ozone layer above the Antartic stuff means anything. All of it's BS.
I'll grant you that transparency hasn't been very good. But you can ignore that little passage between Thule and Vancouver that's nearly ice free now.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Quite Anecdotal to me. The Antarctic has 90% of the earth's ice anyway. The eastern half of Antarctica is 4x the size of the western half, and is cooling/growing.
You may want to update the facts that you were trained to regurgitate.
Normal cycles, should not be made into an international crisis.
I've never studied climatology or even oceanography but if you're going to make such statements, I hope you have the credentials to back it up and tell me without any doubt what a 'normal cycle' constitutes.
My work here is dung.
Your 'point' is is not factually correct. Nothing in the CRU email and data indicates scientists who subscribe to an anthropogenic cause of climate change have not been systematically lying or engaging in unethical practices to support their work. There already are *mountains* of evidence from a huge array of sciences supporting both climate change and an anthropogenic cause. And nothing on Wikileaks invalidates any of the work done at CRU or any other climate research institute.
The reality of all that hoopla is the people doing the agitating had long since decided that not only can the climate not change but even if it did man couldn't possibly have an impact.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
Marketing. Greenland was named such to attract settlers.
Well, of the 54 prominent skeptics on the record, only eight of them have any relevant scientific qualification: Tim Ball, Robert C Balling, Bill Gray, Richard Lindzen, Patrick Michaels, Garth Paltridge, Roy Spencer and Wolfgang Thune. So I guess they could fit in one New York Yankees box seat.
Wah!
As opposed to Man Made Global Warming proponents who:
1. Use a "trick" to "hide the decline".
2. Redefine "peer reviewed" to actually prevent peer reviews of their data.
3. Conspire to thwart FOIA requests, by deleting or indicating that they will delete data in light of such requests.
4. Once the above is exposed, complain that the exposure of the truth of what they have been up to is a "smear campaign".
Watching the fire works from all this is gonna be fun. Let the games begin!
>Greenland is not called GREENland because it's covered by glaciers.
Greenland is called Greenland because Lief Erikson wanted to convince/trick Icelandic settlers to go to this glacier-covered land that he had discovered.
Just because you are paranoid does not mean that no-one is out to get you.
First off I don't think there is any serious debate, if you took the proportion of people who have some understanding of climatology and are climate change sceptics I would be surprised if it is as high as 1:1000. When you go over those published signatures on various websites, basically none of them are practising climatologists, and the ones that are are generally private consultants, which like it or not taints them. As has been said before, the debate is political not scientific. By some understanding above, I mean at the very least a PhD or equivalent experience, I'm afraid an undergrad course simply doesn't cut it.
Secondly, whilst the idea of "open-sourcing" the data/models is a nice one and I am not against it, look at the practicalities. How many of you have the capacity to deal with hundreds of terabytes of data and run models that take days on a supercomputer? Anyway, the models are actually out there, they are peer reviewed and published. Not the source code (what would you run it on?), but the maths. Although, the peer review process means you tend to be a year or two behind the latests updates I'll admit.
The Slashdot crowd like to be against "authority", but that doesn't mean we should simply be against anything we don't like. On this front page is a story about the LHC. How many people here would claim to understand all the maths and science behind that? Of those that don't (the vast majority of us) how many think it's a load of old hokum? It's far more ridiculous and unbelievable than climate change (CO2 and methane absorb infra-red radiation - it's an indisputable fact and can be proven in any high school), but we don't have a massive crowd here talking about what a waste of money the LHC is and denying that entire area of research do we?
Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
1. What is the decline being hidden? What is the trick? I ask because I know, let's see if you do.
2. Peer review hasn't been redefined. Perhaps you never knew what it was in the first place. Peer review is not equivalent to supplying open, raw data nor supplying random "skeptics" with data they want. Look up Lenski's dealing with Schlafly for an example of how silly this is.
3&4: Haven't heard of the FOIA request stuff, but given the track record so far I don't doubt that when looking into it, the picture is different than you imply. The first two may not count as a smear campaign, but they do imply outright falsehoods, so who cares? Lazy, ignorant, knee-jerk responses to out-of-context quotes used against climate scientists and global warming proponents only undermine your "skepticism".
You may not like the fact, but if you pick a random PhD from a university, as a matter of statistics he or she will probably more intelligent than you (where intelligent means able to understand abstract subjects). That doesn't make the person better than you, and it doesn't make you a moron, but it is nevertheless a fact. The same person has probably spent most of his or her adult life only trying to understand one single narrow subject, in an environment where they are surrounded by some of the best available teachers and experts.
If anything is hubris, it is thinking that you as a lay person without relevant education, after reading a few articles or whatever will be able to engage in any meaningful debate with these people regarding their research. Even if you were the smartest person alive, this would be impossible.
Analogously: Would you try to argue with Tiger Woods on what the best way to practice a golf swing is, if you have never played golf? I certainly wouldn't, not because I am a moron, but rather because I'm not.
That's not at all how I read that (IMHO interesting) comment. What I read is: lack of expertise on in a field robs you of both the ability to form an accurate opinion, and the ability to perceive the holes in your reasoning that led you that that inaccurate opinion. Ignorance begetting confidence, in all good faith. Which is nothing new at all (one of the most enlightening psychology paper I've ever read -- do check it out). It has nothing to do with being a 'moron', and that you read it as such possibly tells more about you than it does about the original poster.
-- B.
This sig does in fact not have the property it claims not to have.
Partly, but not just. There was enough arable land to sustain colonization until the Little Ice Age in the middle part of the last millenium.
In fact, I recently just read of an interesting, related hypothesis that the Little Ice Age itself was the result of the dropoff of anthropogenic CO2 due to the plagues of the Middle Ages. The loss of 10 ppm in that period was enough to shift the settled part of Greenland back into unsustainability.
"I guess the moral of the story is, don't paint your airship with rocket fuel." -- Addison Bain
Good, legitimate criticism is difficult when you find out that one side has been manipulating data, deleting data, strong-arming publications and otherwise engaging in questionable behavior in order to sabotage the opposing side.
Interesting, because the climate scientists who have been caught out in this scandal seem to be the ones working hard to avoid a real debate. In addition, the email quotes were the low-hanging fruit, publicized without hours of the leak/hack. There hasn't been time to properly parse the data. Will more dirt be found? Maybe, maybe not.
While I get where you're coming from, viz. expertise, climate science isn't that esoteric. It's hard, uncertain science, but the results are not complicated. That's why they put up those graphs. Temperature? Going up! Except now we find out by peeking into the sausage factory that it's not that simple, because of a lot of statistical dodges, data massaging and other manipulations. Are they valid? Maybe, maybe not. It's hard to tell, since climate scientists don't want to reveal their models because that might impair their ability to get funding. Especially if their models aren't as robust as they want people to believe. While that's not a simple problem, it's got little to do with science and a lot to do with politics. Expertise is not required to smell a rat.
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
Unfortunately, the emails show they have been manipulating evidence. That's why they don't want to release the raw data.
No lay person could possibly understand what you do because you're just so much smarter than they are? Or is it that you spent 40 years poring over data day and night? Are you THAT smart? Give me a break. Anyone who has the hubris to think that their work can only be understood by those in their field is just aching to be smacked down by some un-educated smarty. Look, its attitudes like yours that make the rest of us 'non-scientists' think you're an idiot. Give people some credit, we're not all morons.
Then let me clarify for him. Experts in a field, especially scientists, spend years if not DECADES studying their subject matter. The average layperson doesn't. They aren't necessarily SMARTER, just BETTER EDUCATED BY FAR in their field. The letters after their name are usually a good indicator of the minimum number of YEARS they have spent pursuing knowledge and understanding in their field.
They use words that mean specific things, and they all know what they mean as opposed to just guessing from common usage.
The best example is anti-evolutionists saying "Evolution is just a theory." They're thinking the word theory means guess, and that isn't even close. Merriam-Webster defines theory as:
1. the analysis of a set of facts in their relation to one another; ...
5. a plausible or scientifically acceptable general principle or body of principles offered to explain phenomena
Neither mean ANYTHING close to what the layperson thinks theory means, by their usage, but is exactly what a scientist means.
The same goes for terms used in climate science. There are going to be several that don't mean what people think they mean. Nor are laypeople going to understand statistical methods, standard deviation, normalization of data or any other legitimate data analysis technique. All they see is "YOU MANIPULATED THE DATA!"
I've worked with computers for over 25 years, in programming, networking and security. I have a degree, several certificates, a few published articles and decades of experience to my name. I sometimes help family or friends with problems with their PCs and I almost ALWAYS get "the kid down at Best Buy said to try X -- why don't you do X?" Usually it is step 1 or 2 in troubleshooting and something I examined and discarded 15 steps back but to be polite I not only have to explain that I did that, but WHY it won't work and wasn't appropriate in the first place. Then explain every step I've done along the way to where I am now and when I fix it.
I ENJOY doing that when I know the person is INTERESTED and going to LEARN something, but many just get defensive and say "well, Betty's son works with computers after school and HE said..." Followed by a lecture on how I should take advice from someone with 1/10th my experience and no direct knowledge of the problem, other than a brief chat over the phone with someone who is clueless. It is the equivalent of a degreed and certified mechanical engineer taking advice on building a bridge from the neighbor's kid because he has an erector set.
Which brings me back to the original discussion. The general public is the equivalent of kids with erector sets clamoring about how the degreed, tested and certified mechanical engineers with decades of experience are all doing it wrong. If they really want to participate in the process, they need to put in serious study on the scientific process, data analysis, data collection and the subject at hand. YEARS, probably. No, a quick check on Wikipedia and arguing with the guys down at the bar doesn't cut it. A degree in the field would.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Hiding from FOIA requests, conspiring to lock out a publication that wasn't swallowing their bate (how dare a peer review journal ask difficult questions of AGW!).
Lock out? They thought the publication was publishing poor quality papers. If that was their belief, why would they not refrain from publishing there or citing articles?
Then we have Phil working to keep these two papers [populartechnology.net] from being seen at the next IPCC meeting--
I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow - even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is !
So he doesn't think the papers are worthy of inclusion. No evidence of any underhand arrangements to stop it though, just that he'll make the case that they shouldn't be included.
Let's not forget that these are private emails and people are much looser with language. I once make a jocular reference to Schoning my data - how incriminating would *that* look if it was written down?
In my parents time it was global cooling, when I was younger it was a giant hole in the ozone above Australia caused by big evil America, a year ago it was Global Warming, and now it's become "Climate Change".
There was never a consensus in favour of global cooling (despite the media reports at the time), the ozone layer was real and an international treaty was made to deal with the problem, so I don't know what your point is there. Global warming is the same thing as Climate Change, it was just felt that the first term would perhaps confuse those who think that global warming implies local warming everywhere on Earth. And your "scheme to misuse taxpayer money" remark? How do the scientists benefit from that, exactly? That's verging on tinfoil-hattism. A global conspiracy amongst scientists.... to what end?
How can you be a good scientist without being able to trace your data all the way from its source? How can your results be valid if they are not reproducible?
There is more information that you should be aware of. Read about the attempts of one man to independently verify the CRU findings. They consistently obstruct him, even after he resorts to the FOIA. And now we know why. It's not just because they thought he was just making trouble for them: it's because the raw data is an impossible mess. The CRU staff knew that and it didn't bother them in the slightest because they were getting the results they expected.
Bad, bad science. Pons and Fleischmann. Condemn the bad science. I agree with George Monbiot: credibility is lost and resignations are needed.
You're an immobile computer, remember?
...And indeed has been scrutinized, by other experts in the field ....
As long as experts are chosen who agree with the opinions of those who espouse global warming caused by people. I suggest you watch the movie "Expelled", as a model of what is going on here.
All theory is gray
But IPCC's role is not to set policy, but to present evidence and options.
IPCC is an inter-governmental institution that publishes alarmist reports and policy recommendations, used as excuse for government legislation. Tell me more about them not playing politics.
Tell me more about how scientists only publish results: http://www.energybulletin.net/node/23044
http://www.abcmoney.co.uk/news/052007177503.htm
http://www.prlog.org/10075695-climate-change-petition-pits-scientists-against-each-other.html
Of course, you could google it yourself, but you prefer to keep your head in the sand.
Finally, I don't see any reason as to why any involvement in this way this would influence their research.
O'rly? Promoting policies, which are based on your research isn't going to influence you? But not promoting policies would? You're trolling, my friend, you can't be that blind to the obvious or dumb. If you are, you can't claim you understand the "science".
How did this get modded up? Two links to a discredited climate blogger?
On July 6, 2009 the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued a preliminary report that charted data from 70 stations that SurfaceStations.org identified as 'good' or 'best' against the rest of the dataset surveyed at that time, and concluded, "clearly there is no indication from this analysis that poor station exposure has imparted a bias in the U.S. temperature trends."
When the NOAA slapped him down, he suddenly became the "victim".
But of course, the NOAA is in on the climate conspiracy as well, right guys?
~X~
~X~
Ever see "The Invention of Lying"? "The world is going to end unless we have sex right now!"
Without releasing the data, asking for action on climate change is exactly the same. Reducing carbon emissions will lead directly to mass starvation in developing countries, and increased poverty throughout the world. You are essentially putting caps on industrial production, which means that everything you buy, including food and medicine, will become more expensive as a result. You'd better be DAMN sure that you're right before making that claim. Anything less, and you're reading golden tablets out of a hat. That is, you are asking people to accept things on faith, unreasonable faith. If they know the data, and how it was collected, it can be reproduced. This is science. You and other alarmists are peddling religion.
Since you can't be bothered to look, here is some reading material:
Scientific study on NOAA instrumentation in response to the linked article.
The "credentials" of the author of that book and the website you linked to.
Look, as a scientist, I'm all for ripping the shit out of bad science. That's how scientists make a name for themselves. That's also why I trust scientists to get it right. Stop posting shit from some random yahoo like it's gospel. There are plenty of serious, peer reviewed publications to choose from. Pick something with some sort of legitimacy to argue.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
The mountains of research done on this is pretty clear about why
it's happening. But I don't expect facts to get in the way of beliefs
anytime soon. Be that as it may, why is not the important. The
important questions, and the ones the climate scientists spend a lot of
time working out, are how it's going to affect us and what we can do to
prepare for it.
There are no mountains of research that show why any climate change is
happening or even IF climate change is happening. Arctic ice cover has increased
every year since 2007, for example, while the AGW models pushed by the NSIDC and IPCC
don't allow for any such increase. Carbon dioxide is
routinely pushed by politicians as the cause of global warming and yet
it is a simple calculation to show that there is already more
than sufficient carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to absorb ALL of the
IR radiation radiating from Earth that is in the wavelength where it
can be absorbed by carbon dioxide... within the first few hundred
meters of the atmosphere. It is even easier to show
that gas-phase H2O in the atmosphere (commonly referred to as humidity)
is present in much higher concentrations in the atmosphere than CO2 and
is a far more potent 'greenhouse' gas than CO2...and yet the planet is
obviously still able to radiate sufficient heat to space in the
non-absorbable IR wavelengths to cool itself. Finally,
supposing for argument's sake that atmospheric carbon dioxide
concentration really was: 1) a problem and 2) correctable, why
would it be the 'climate scientist's' job (read IPCC and NSIDC) to tell
us how to prepare for it's impact? They seem even less qualified
for that job than they are for the investigation of global
warming.
I've collected dozens of independent, peer-reviewed articles in my article devoted to engaging with climate skeptics. I even described my own personal research which independently confirms Greenland and Alaskan glacier melt through their effects on time-variable gravity. Just last month at the most recent GRACE Science Team Meeting, my advisor displayed the most recent GRACE results over Greenland, showing that the mass loss is accelerating and spreading from the southeast coast to the entire western coast.
There most certainly is a mountain of evidence showing that abrupt climate change is happening, and that it's due to anthropogenic CO2 emissions.
As I keep repeating, 2007 was the steepest drop in ice cover on record. It scared a lot of us when the extent of the drop was shown at the 2007 AGU conference because the climate models weren't predicting such a huge drop. The subsequent increases actually confirm that this decrease was due to weather, not climate, which tends to validate the models.
Completely wrong. Global circulation models allow for short-term variability due to weather. That's the whole point of taking an ensemble with varying initial conditions and parameterizations. Please remember that weather is different than climate, which is an average over at least several years.
When studying any science, it's best to ignore politicians and only focus on peer-reviewed scientific articles. In this case, you should be paying attention to the fact that scientists are saying CO2 is causing abrupt climate change.
Again, I've discussed this in detail many times. You're neglecting to consider pressure broadening, which forces any realistic climate model to treat each layer of the atmosphere differently. CO2 isn't saturated in the highest layer of the atmosphere, which is what really matters.
Yet again, I need to repeat that water vapor is a feedback in the climate, not a forcing. We can't change the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere because it establishes equilibrium with the oceans in a matter of weeks. However, because we're increasing the temperature of the planet by increasing CO2 concentrations, water vapor will tend to provide positive feedback which will make the problem worse.
Also, water vapor isn't well-mixed to t
I don't understand this position, because I don't think it's really tenable; it seems to me even less believable than if you rejected the GW entirely.
You see, if you start believing climatology as a science (so, say, some results are valid), then you don't really have much reason to disbelief other results. And antropomorphic global warming is connected by a lot of little pieces of evidence to global warming. For example, we can measure ratio of various carbon isotopes in the atmosphere, and from this we can determine, which part of CO2 comes from fossil fuels. These little pieces of evidence are consistent with each other; if you choose to not to believe one, you need to account for the other evidence that covers same theory, otherwise you would have to reject everything, including the fact that it is warming at all, which you chose to believe. Another interesting example of such connected evidence was in Copenhagen Diagnosis report, that more sunlight would cause higher peak temperatures in summer, unlike higher insulation - CO2 layer over the planet, which would cause higher low temperatures in winter; guess what is more in-line with observations. So if you were to claim that sun does it, you would have to explain also this.
I have yet to see a theory of non-antropomorhic global warming, which would be consistent with global warming observation. And since you don't have any better theory, it's logical just to accept that man does it.
I've already discussed this issue:
Surfacestations.org is saying that the surface temperature record is contaminated by the "urban heat island" effect-- that temperatures are only rising around cities because of economic growth. One example he shows is that exhaust vents have been placed closer and closer to the sensors over the years.
This is a superficially compelling argument, but it's also one that scientists have considered and rejected. One test is that the urban heat island effect should be less pronounced on windy days than calm days. That's because if this warming is just caused by local exhaust vents, wind should carry that heat away whereas calm weather won't. This doesn't happen: calm and windy days have the same warming trend. This conclusion is from an article published in Nature by Dr. Parker in 2004; here's a BBC article quoting it. Other studies have confirmed this result using different methods and data in 2003, 2006, and 2008.
NOAA recently published an answer to that specific website. They took the 70 stations that surfacestations.org designated "best" or "good" and created a time series based on them. Then they used all 1218 stations to create another time series. Both of those time series are plotted on page 3. They're practically identical.
Also, scientists don't have to blindly trust these sensors because surface temperature measurements are also confirmed by satellite measurements and proxies such as ice cores, boreholes, coral growth, tree rings, stalactites, fossil beds, ocean sediments and glacial deposits.
If by assumptions you mean, "observed properties of earth systems and well understood physics", then yes. Most people programming models don't put in gravity going up, the earth spinning backwards, etc. Every one has a different set of assumptions and simplifications. Some are fantastic at modeling clouds, others just approximate them. Some are great at modeling ocean heat transport, others just use rough averages. The key is that they are all based on observed properties. The assumptions are based on observed properties. And the results are checked against observed properties.
Climate science is well enough established that most models are trying to understand one part better. If you're looking at cloud formation, for example, why would you waste weeks of computational power modeling ocean transport down to 5000m? That particular model might just use a slab ocean, with observed surface temperatures on an annual cycle. It's an approximation, for sure. But when you get the same general results out of several vastly different models, it's a pretty good indication that the physics behind it all is fairly robust.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
For example, how do you know if your local transportation authority is really doing the best job to keep traffic moving? They could have incentive not to, such as increased tax flow to the coffers by making motorists spend just that much more on gasoline. Or perhaps their even getting kickbacks from a couple oil boys for making sure consumers spend their quota.
Bad example (or maybe not?). This was official UK government policy until this year!
As I keep repeating [slashdot.org], 2007 was the steepest drop [uiuc.edu] in ice cover on record. It scared a lot of us when the extent of the drop was shown at the 2007 AGU conference because the climate models weren't predicting such a huge drop. The subsequent increases actually confirm that this decrease was due to weather, not climate, which tends to validate the models.
No, 2007 was not the 'steepest drop' in arctic ice cover, it was the 'smallest minimum extent' recorded. The increase and decrease in arctic ice cover follows the seasonal cycle and the rate of the decrease and increase in the seasonal change is similar from year to year. It is the 'minimum' and 'maximum' extent of the ice cover during the year that are of interest as a monitor of climate warming or cooling. The increase in the 'minimum' extent in 2008 and 2009 indicate a cooling trend that cannot be attributed to carbon dioxide or greenhouse gases since the concentration of those has increased during that time period. If you want to claim that cooling somehow validates the models (which it obviously does not) you need to explain where a significant amount of planetary heat is being stored since the 'greenhouse gas' theory of planetary warming requires that the amount of heat being radiated from the earth must continuously decrease.
You're neglecting to consider pressure broadening, which forces any realistic climate model to treat each layer of the atmosphere differently. CO2 isn't saturated in the highest layer of the atmosphere, which is what really matters.
Pressure broadening? Atmospheric gas pressures are very low, varying from 1 atm at the earth's surface to near vacuum at the upper atmospheric limits. These low pressures have no significant effect on the carbon dioxide adsorption spectra. The simple fact is that there is more than sufficient carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at this very minute to absorb ALL of the IR radiation radiating from Earth that is in the wavelength where it can be absorbed by carbon dioxide... within the first few hundred meters of the atmosphere. Your reference to carbon dioxide saturation in the 'highest layer' of the atmosphere (whatever that is) suggests that you lack any understanding whatsoever of 'saturation' or phase equilibria.
Yet again, I need to repeat that water vapor is a feedback in the climate, not a forcing. We can't change the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere because it establishes equilibrium with the oceans in a matter of weeks. However, because we're increasing the temperature of the planet by increasing CO2 concentrations, water vapor will tend to provide positive feedback which will make the problem worse. Also, water vapor isn't well-mixed to the top of the atmosphere, so CO2 is the only greenhouse gas of consequence in that important outer layer.
Water vapor is an atmospheric gas that has a much stronger 'greenhouse' effect than carbon dioxide. Water concentration in the atmosphere varies VERY widely around the globe and over time, but is always many, many times greater than that of carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide, in contrast, is at a relatively constant concentration around the globe. Water vapor is certainly NOT a 'feedback' in the climate but is the single biggest driver to the climate we experience on earth due to it's contribution to global energy transfer, it's unique ability to condense and form atmospheric optical barriers, it's unique ability to accumulate as a solid over thousands of years, and it's enormous global reservoirs in liquid form. Mixing has nothing to do with water concentration in the upper atmosphere. That is determined solely by pressure and temperature (which also vary widely around the globe). When I read your comments, I'm struck by how little you seem to understand about the basic physics of gases...which is, after all, what we're talking about.