Comment on 6 Tips for Productive Arguments

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 04:02:14 GMT

The way I've always heard it, mainstream estimates of climate sensitivity are somewhere around 3 degrees (with a fair amount of spread), and the direct effect of CO2 on radiation is responsible for 1 degree of that, with the rest being caused by positive feedbacks. It may be possible to argue that some important positive feedbacks are also basic physics (and that no important negative feedbacks are basic physics), but it sounds to me like that's not what you're doing; it sounds to me like, instead, you're mistakenly claiming that the direct effect by itself, without any feedback effects, is enough to cause warming similar to that claimed by mainstream estimates.

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