>> My impression is that almost no one denies the warming itself, just the link to greenhouse gasses.

I fall in that category. My suspicion is that water vapor from air travel is by far the biggest contributor. I saw the blue skys after 9/11. I read the NASA guys that said daily temperature range increased measurably. I saw the blue skys again during Covid19.

I'm also of the opinion that anyone looking at historical data only going back 200,000 years or less is missing the larger picture. Sea levels are NOT at historic highs, we should expect them to rise further before receeding. We should expect glaciation again if we don't do anything, but speeding up warming IMHO is more likely to trigger glaciation that to "push through" whatever causes it and break the cycle (which would be a good thing).

So as a long-term thinker all this hype is just that. If you don't have a plan to end the glacier cycle you're just making a big deal out of a small change in time-scale due to reasons (CO2 vs H2O) that may well be the wrong ones.

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16bytes 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Not to be contrarian, but if you cared, you could easily rule out your suspicions.

It's not even worth it to say why or how, since not even doing rudimentary research means that you aren't interested in developing a well-informed opinion.

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phkahler 2 hours ago | parent [-]

>> Not to be contrarian, but if you cared, you could easily rule out your suspicions.

That's just false. You might try to rule it out yourself to see. My comments here and the responses demonstrate that it's a waste of time to argue against people in the purity cycle of global warming. My position is one of moderation not denial - and I'm downvoted, told I don't care, and I haven't done even the minimum of research. Pffft. HN is not what it used to be.

	▲	16bytes an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		You are being down-voted not because of some imaginary "purity cycle", but because you discard without reasoning a vast amount of evidence to the contrary of your hypothesis. You've heard of the saying that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence? Holding a hypothesis of water-vapor from air travel being the primary driver of warming trends is extraordinary. Invoking the oft-repeated "do your own research" rhetorical crutch and referring to scientific consensus as "hype" doesn't help your case.
	▲	wat10000 an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		It took me about five seconds to find this: https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/why-do-we-blame-climate-chan... Do you have any reason to believe otherwise besides a couple of anecdotes about looking at the sky and short-term temperature variations?

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Windchaser 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> My suspicion is that water vapor from air travel is by far the biggest contributor.

Have you calculated the water vapor generated from air travel, and compared that to the water vapor already generated by the water cycle? (just normal evaporation from lakes/rivers/oceans/plants)

Even as back-of-napkin math, this should be a pretty easy sanity check.

I think you're off by a few orders of magnitude here, but I also don't want to discourage you from adopting a "check for yourself" mindset.

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phkahler 2 hours ago | parent [-]

>> Have you calculated the water vapor generated from air travel, and compared that to the water vapor already generated by the water cycle?

I've SEEN the effects with my own eyes. You can also see contrails seeding cloud formation on some days. Then there's the fact that these extra clouds are formed and dissipate on a 24 hour cycle, so part of the day they let in sunlight and part of the night they trap heat. These effects are significant and there is little research on the bigger picture effects of this (that I've seen).

	▲	gzread 20 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		How significant? Give me a number. What percentage of all the clouds in a day come from planes?
	▲	kibibu 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Clouds reflect radiant heat back into space. Contrary to your claim, "global dimming" was a very active research space for a long time, and in fact the water vapour and other airborne pollutants likely masked the impact of global warming.