Comment Re:Climate Science (Score 1) 305
And no, those are no new findings, they go back to Gustav Kirchhoff (1860) and Svante Arrhenius (1905). The qualitative nature of the greenhouse effect is well understood, and we know that methane, water vapor and carbon dioxide are greenhouse gases, because we can exactly measure how much electromagnetic energy they trap and turn into heat at different atmospheric levels. What we didn't have 150 and 100 years ago was a way to quantitatively predict the outcome of certain levels of the greenhouse gases in a highly complex system with many feedback loops. We already know since 100 years, that increased carbon dioxide levels will increase the greenhouse effect. We know that the level of carbondioxide is rising in the atmosphere, from 270 ppm in the 1950ies to 400 ppm today. What we don't know exactly yet is how the additional thermal energy gets distributed and how much of it goes into which result (like raising sea levels, more and stronger storms, increased atmospheric temperatures etc.pp.). And that's where the computer models come in.
We also know that carbon dioxide is a comparatively weak greenhouse gas. The increase from 270 ppm to 400 ppm, which means about 50% more carbon dioxide than 60 years ago, is predicted to lead to about 3 K of additional greenhouse effect, which is only 10% of the current effect. So it's not the carbon dioxide as such, it's the sheer amount of it we are adding to the atmosphere each year.