Thread: Carbon Dioxide as a global warming mechanism

I am new to the forum and have read quite a few posts that were both entertaining and enlightening. However, I have not seen this subject addressed. The carbon credit trading scheme that is about to be mandated (seemingly) is based, as you know, on the idea that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. I have done some searching to find scientific data to back this idea up but with no success. Even the co-leader of the last IPCC glazed over this subject during her talk here at UAB. The only thing I have seen that ties the two together (very inconclusively) is the graphs of global temperature over the last 100+ years and the graph of CO2 content in the atmosphere. Surely, there is more proof than this.Can anyone point me to research information or data that conclusively proves CO2 as a green house gas?I am doing research for my next seminar speech on global warming and wish to address this subject.Thanks.

a green house gas is defined to be a gas that absorbs outgoing terrestrial radiation. carbon dioxide, water vapor, methane, etc, all absorb terrestrial radiation and are therefor green house gases by definition.

You won't find any research on the question of whether or not carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas because that fact is obvious to everyone and is debated by no one except for those who are ignorant of the basic meteorology/physics. If carbon dioxide wasn't a greenhouse gas, we'd all be freezing.

the other thing to realize is that greenhouse gases are not bad. the entire earth would be the temperature of the north pole if we didn't have a blanket of greenhouse gases keeping us warm over the course of the last 10,000+ years of human history.

the problem is that the environment is a delicate balance. the temperature right now is "just right". minor changes in the density of the gases that trap the heat and keep us warm can potentially have dramatic changes in global temperature.

The debate is on whether or not human contributions to carbon dioxide levels have a significant influence on the total density of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to cause noticable changes in temperature and whether or not that can explain recent changes in global temperature. That is the question.

As for evidence, wikipedia generally covers this stuff quite well, and the scientific articles there always provides links of references if you ever doubt anything you read there.