Global Warming

Open Email to Professor Richard Lindzen, Sloan Prof. of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology:

 Dear Prof. Lindzen,
I have read about your position on global warming as covered by reporter Ethan Epstein in the magazine Weekly Standard (http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/what-catastrophe_773268.html).
Congratulations for bringing some lucidity into this continuing controversy concerning man-made global warming and particularly the dangers thereof.
Quoting from the Epstein article, you said, "The question at issue is how sensitive the planet is to increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases (this is called climate sensitivity), and how much the planet will heat up as a result of our pumping into the sky ever more CO2, which remains in the atmosphere for upwards of 1,000 years. (Carbon dioxide, it may be needless to point out, is not a poison. On the contrary, it is necessary for plant life.)". May I say your consideration of "Climate Sensitivity" strikes to the heart of the controversy.
You also said, " We all agree that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. All other things kept equal, [there has been] some warming. As a result, there’s hardly anyone serious who says that man has no role. And in many ways, those have never been the questions. The questions have always been, as they ought to be in science, how much?”. Here again, may I humbly say that you are right on.
You additionally said, " Moreover, over the past 15 years, as man has emitted record levels of carbon dioxide year after year, the warming trend of previous decades has stopped". You say this is all consistent with what you hold responsible for climate change: a small bit of man-made impact and a whole lot of natural variability. Again, right on!
While I wholeheartedly agree with your observations and conclusions and particularly the quantification aspect, I believe we need to go on to develop some theory with respect to the causes of the observable facts. I believe you touched on this when you said, "The burning of oil, gas, and especially coal pumps carbon dioxide and other gases into the atmosphere, where they allow the sun’s heat to penetrate to the Earth’s surface but impede its escape, thus causing the lower atmosphere and the Earth’s surface to warm".
I believe one could say that the sun's radiation passes through the atmosphere to the Earth's surface unimpeded, and where it strikes solid surfaces is converted to heat. Subsequently, that heat is impeded from escape from the Earth's surface to the stratosphere by the presence of greenhouse gases. In effect that means a greenhouse gas is an insulator to the passage of heat. NASA has previously stated that the greenhouse gases of the earth are responsible for temperature stabilization between night and day, so as to allow life to exist on earth. The implication here is that the major components of the atmosphere, nitrogen and oxygen, are also greenhouse gases.
The heat insulation properties of the gases under consideration are well-known through laboratory measurements of thermal conductivity. The lower the thermal conductivity, the better is the gas as an insulator. Measurements of thermal conductivity are in mW/m.K. The figures are nitrogen 24.0, oxygen 24.4, and carbon dioxide 14.7. This means that carbon dioxide is almost twice as good an insulator to the passage of heat from the Earth's surface than either nitrogen or oxygen; i.e. a better greenhouse gas. However, the atmospheric concentrations of nitrogen and oxygen are respectively 78% and 21%, while the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide is only 0.05%. This means that although carbon dioxide is a better insulator to the loss of heat from the Earth's surface, the fact that it constitutes only 0.05% of the atmosphere, makes its effect insignificant.
I believe the previous paragraph is a possible explanation for why any global warming from man's activity is insignificant, as you so eloquently stated in the Epstein article. In the true scientific method of a theory postulation, with other scientists attacking the theory, I would appreciate any negative comments as well as positive comments.

Respectfully,

Dr. Arthur Sucsy
4203 96th St.
Lubbock, TX 79423
806-794-1381