Do anybody see anything wrong with this outfit? What's so wrong with looking sexy?

Obviously I can't speak for the 'skeptics' - they'll deny pretty much anything. Generally speaking though, they'll accept that atmospheric greenhouse gases have increased (some deny that this increase is anthropogenic), and they'll accept that as a consequence, the amount of downward longwave radiation has increased, and that this will cause some warming. Where I think the denial usually kicks in is in the quantization of this warming effect.

This is where the "CO2 is only 0.03% of the atmosphere" argument comes in. Usually - although there are certainly a lot of deniers who don't meet this description - deniers will argue that the anthropogenic warming is minor and overwhelmed by 'natural' warming from some unknown magical 'natural cycle'. The problem is that to calculate the temperature change, you have to get into some physics and math.

The change in radiative forcing is proportional to the natural log of the increase in atmospheric CO2, and the temperature change is the climate sensitivity multiplied by the change in radiative forcing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiative_f... But once you get into this somewhat complicated physics and math, you lose people. They probably don't even know what a natural logarithm is, let alone a radiative forcing or how these formulas are derived.

And when you don't understand something, it becomes easy to deny. Because it's easy to extrapolate and assume that if you don't understand something, then *nobody* does, which seems to be a very popular assumption among AGW denialists. Especially those who have very bloated opinions of themselves and their intellects (which frankly seems to be all of them).

A common myth among AGW denialists is that this anthropogenic attribution of global warming is based on climate models. While climate models have been used to verify the anthropogenic cause, it can be calculated simply by using the observed spectral lines you mention, then using the algebraic formulas I discussed above. It's just physics and math - there's no global climate models necessary to show that humans are causing global warming.

There's a pretty easy to follow explanation here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiative_f... Frankly it irritates me that most AGW deniers deny the anthropogenic causes of the warming. There are plenty of valid questions remaining to be answered in climate science.

Climate sensitivity, cloud and water vapor and methane and other feedbacks, the best policy measures to reduce GHG emissions, and so on. There's no point in arguing about an issue as completely settled as the anthropogenic causes of global warming. It's like if you're a smoker and your doctor tells you that you've got lung cancer and need chemotherapy, and you argue with him that smoking doesn't cause lung cancer.

What you should be trying to do, instead of arguing well-established science with the experts, is figuring out if chemotherapy is the best treatment, if there's another way to improve your health and extend your life, etc.

You have a good general description. There is always a compromise between giving a completely accurate description and a description that the general public can follow. For instance, a blackbody is a theoretical construct that is useful for understanding the physics in broad strokes.

However, real atoms and molecules have quantized energy states and do not behave like a blackbody. A partition function description is more appropriate. An ensemble of atoms and molecules can approximate the behavior of a blackbody.

I discussed this in more detail here. http://ca.answers.yahoo.com/question/ind... Regarding the water vapor issue, consult the HITRAN database for spectra that are used for atmospheric modeling calculations.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.