Reply #9: Your Grandfather is Wally Broecker? [View All]

[seasat]

Cool. I read a ton of his papers when I was starting out in oceanography in the early 90's. Tell him I learned a lot from his research and he was great influence.

From another stauch Democratic Oceanographer

BTW, to the first poster. The green house gas theory of the atmosphere has been around since 1876! Without the natural level of green house gases, the earth would have an average temperature of -18°c. It is a very well supported theory and no scientist doubts it (well you can probably find a nut bag or two that think the earth is insulated by pixie dust). Also no scientist doubts that CO2 and other green house gases absorb and reradiate infrared radiation. Human activity is very clearly the major source of green house gases in the atmosphere. Volcanoes only put out a miniscule amount of CO2 compared to humans (0.1% of human output). If the warming was due to solar radiation, then why is the stratosphere cooling while the lower troposphere warming? If the sun's output had increased significantly, you would expect some warming as gases in the stratosphere absorbed the downwelling irradiance. The green house gas theory of global warming has both correlation and causality while the alternative hypotheses put forth by a small minority of scientists do not.