Unfortunately also, the article fails to do justice to Richard Lindzen's idea that the climate feedback from increasing water vapor is negative rather than positive. If borne out, it might explain why the increase in greenhouse gas concentration in the past few decades has had so little noticeable effect on the climate. In fact, the effect--if there is one--is so small that the United Nations science advisory group (IPCC) has had to labor hard to come up with its ambiguous--and nonquantitative--conclusion that "the balance of evidence s uggests a discernible human influence on global climate."
A quite separate issue is the goal of the Kyoto Protocol, which aims for an atmospheric CO2 concentration of about 560 ppm, twice the pre-industrial value of 280 ppm. There is no scientific justification for this choice; it is arbitrary and purely political. In fact, what little scientific evidence there is suggests that higher values ...
