Problem is there has been no global warming since 1998 even though high Tropospheric CO2 has been increasing. The density of air is 1.27 G/Litre, of water vapour is 0.804 G/L and of CO2 is 1.964 G/L. Consequently water vapour floats like a cloud. CO2 sinks, as everyone who has worked in a fermentation vat, and dons an oxygen mask to avoid asphyxia, knows. How has it reversed its physical state and now floats upwards? I can only think of two ways CO2 can increase in the upper atmosphere. One is volcanoes - significant but not overwhelming. The other is burning av-gas. World wide there are 24,000 flights a day burning high octane gas, approximately 1,000 planes in the troposphere at any one time, all breaking gasoline down to water vapour and CO2 - apparently the two most effective greenhouse gases. 150 million flights since the temperature stopped increasing but CO2 levels have been going up. But we don't want to trash the aviation industry do we. Seems to me like policy based evidence making.

I am an organic gardener (biodynamic) and am strongly opposed to pollution in any form.

David Fuller's view

Thank you for your interesting and informative email, particularly regarding CO2.

On global warming, Evelyn Browning Garriss of the Browning Newsletter on climate, which I last posted on 23^rd December, would most likely agree with you.  I would like to agree with you but I am not convinced that your opening sentence stands up to scrutiny, let alone from residents of the Pacific Ocean’s disappearing islands.  My own impression on what I prefer to call climate change is somewhat different, although the evidence is widely variable and inconclusive, as I mentioned on Tuesday when I posted Bloomberg’s report: Global View: Climate Change in Perspective.  I think we learn more when looking at data over the last century, as some of the better reports, including Bloomberg’s reveal.  We have all seen and generally deplored “policy based evidence making”, but I did not see that in Bloomberg’s report.  I stand by what I said yesterday and also earlier comments on this subject.