> "You're applying equations which are not appropriate to the system."

Why are you saying this? Because it's not in the paper you linked? Are you sure that equation is not appropriate, and if so, because you know of an argument, or because you believe some expert?

On my side, I'm not reading things that circulate in some "circles". I'm just a guy who's curious about climate change, but who is not an expert. But I have a strong math and science background, and I can follow pretty much any scientific argument.

That being said, I'm faced with this conundrum: supposedly 97% of experts agree on a topic. The result of their agreement happens to be the result that brings in more funding for their research. There is an obvious conflict of interests. But this conflict in itself doesn't mean the consensus is wrong.

So, I'm trying to inform myself and reach a conclusion. I use both scientific reasoning and non-scientific heuristics.

Non-scientific heuristics are like this: Nate Silver (the guy behind the 538 blog) explains how he used statistics to get to the conclusion that climate change is real and is caused by the anthropogenic CO2. This sways me a bit towards believing the consensus. Freeman Dyson says the models fail to capture clouds. This sways me a bit in the opposite direction.

As for the scientific reasoning, it goes something like this. I get the general idea about CO2 absorbing the infrared radiation coming from the ground and therefore trapping some extra heat in the atmosphere. But CO2 is only 400 ppm, it's a very tiny part of the mass of the atmosphere. The youtube videos that you see with a bottle full of air and a bottle full of CO2 and how they heat up under a lamp are not very relevant. In the real world we are talking about an increase from 250 ppm to 400 ppm, not from 250 ppm to 100%. So the argument needs to be a bit more complex, and the IPCC report goes in more details. Following the details shows me they are thoughtful, and it's not junk science, so it swings me a bit towards the consensus.

But something is missing. Maybe you can fill it in, considering that you read a lot about these things. And it would honestly be appreciated (and by the way, you seem to be quite prejudiced against me, please give me a bit of benefit of the doubt).

Here's what's missing (imho). Bear with me, the story is a bit long. We are fortunate to live in a world with a lot of water. Water is special for a lot of reasons, but one absolutely remarkable property of water is that its specific heat exceeds by leaps and bounds the specific heat of any other substance that shows up in any abundance in our environment (e.g. at room temperature you need 4.2 Joules to warm up 1g of water by 1 deg Celsius, only 2.4 J for 1g of ethanol, and 1.0, 0.9 and 0.8 for air, O2 and CO2 respectively). But the truly astonishing number is the specific latent heat of vaporization for water, which is 2265 J/g. This exceeds any other specific latent heat for any other substance for any phase change by a very large amount (on a tangent note, this is what allows warm-bodied animals to keep their temperature constant, or put it another way, without this little curious property of water, humans would not exist).

There are about 750 GT of CO2 in the atmosphere (all gaseous) and about 13000 GT of water (both liquid and gas). Now the typical energy balance equation described in the IPCC report tells you how this water absorbs and re-emits radiation and in what spectrum and in what amount. But the missing piece is this: by far most of the radiation is absorbed and released by water upon the change of phase, i.e. when it evaporates from the oceans and then when it condenses in the clouds (before it falls downs as rains). When the water condenses in the clouds it must release that tremendous amount of energy I mentioned above (2.2 kJ per gram). It can do that in 2 ways: it heats the surrounding atmosphere (but that can't absorb much because of the other constants I mentioned, the 1.0 J/g/K for air, which is a puny number applied to a very rarefied substance) or it radiates. From the radiation, half points down, but half points up, towards space. To me this way of releasing energy in space should be by far and away the main way of the planet to get rid of extra heat.

Can you point me in the IPCC report where this heat enters in the heat balance of the atmosphere? I looked for it, and I didn't find it.

(PS I didn't read this thing anywhere, it's my own thinking)