This is an example of why I do not believe what the IPCC says.

What I’m getting at is this… If extra CO2 in the atmosphere causes more energy to be retained in the atmosphere/oceans (over decades), then shouldn’t there be an extra amount (albeit much much smaller) of energy to be retained each and every day in order for that to happen? Where is this extra energy stored? If it is in the oceans, then wouldn’t the oceans’ temperature be increasing, and its volume increasing?

Yes, there’s a tiny increase in heat energy stored in the surface materials. That causes them to heat up — global warming! This extra energy is stored in the form of heat energy in the surface materials. And yes, although water has extremely small compressibility, the increase in temperature of the water does cause it to expand very slightly, and in fact this is one of the contributing factors to rises in sea level. It’s still a very tiny effect, but it is growing in magnitude.

And, how does the fact that the atmosphere has cooled over the past decade work into this model? The extra energy, plus the energy that the atmosphere has lost (because it’s cooler) must then be in the oceans, no?

You’re mostly right. Yes, the oceans are the likely heat reservoir at work here. The oceans have much, much higher heat capacity than the atmosphere. Which means that the great majority of heat from the sun is stored in the oceans, not the atmosphere. That’s why I wrote earlier that the oceans are the dog that wags the atmosphere’s tail. We can see the atmospheric tail wagging back and forth but it’s the oceans that really drive the whole system. What makes this messy is that we don’t have really good temperature data for the oceans because we don’t have a lot of thermometers down deep. Our best indicator of overall ocean temperatures is the temperature of the atmosphere averaged over 30 to 50 years. 30 years is the minimum amount of time it takes for the ocean to demonstrate a significant change in temperature from radiative processes.

If the energy radiated from the ground is absorbed by a CO2 molecule, and is then almost immediately re-radiated, and 50% is sent back to the ground, then this process is repeated all over again, right? The ground absorbs this energy and then re-radiates this up again? And a small fraction of this is re-radiated back to the ground (50% of the small fraction absorbed by the small amount of CO2 in the atmosphere)? So, how long does this process take? Given all the Sun’s radiation that reaches the earth in a day, how much of this radiation is prevented from escaping to space (intercepted/re-diverted/stored somewhere) by the extra CO2 in the atmosphere? Shouldn’t all of this extra energy be radiated to space by the time night is over (hours later, as opposed to split second interactions for a given photon)?

What I’m getting at is this… If extra CO2 in the atmosphere causes more energy to be retained in the atmosphere/oceans (over decades), then shouldn’t there be an extra amount (albeit much much smaller) of energy to be retained each and every day in order for that to happen? Where is this extra energy stored? If it is in the oceans, then wouldn’t the oceans’ temperature be increasing, and its volume increasing?

And, how does the fact that the atmosphere has cooled over the past decade work into this model? The extra energy, plus the energy that the atmosphere has lost (because it’s cooler) must then be in the oceans, no?

http://www.heartland.org/suites/environment/endangerment.html

Carlin appropriated as his own, without any attribution whatsoever, whole swathes of material from the contrarian World Climate Report, run by disinformation spinmeister Patrick Michaels.

Indeed the central premise, along with at least four key sections, were lifted from that source.

Please see:
http://deepclimate.org/2009/06/28/epas-alan-carlin-channels-pat-michaels-and-the-friends-of-science/

http://deepclimate.org/2009/06/30/suppressed-carlin-report-based-on-pat-michaels-attack-on-epa/

So, much of Carlin’s analysis comes word for word from a misleading pseudo-scientific attack on the EPA, written by a known purveyor of disinformation with a history of links to fossil fuel interests.

Then Carlin actually tried to get his comments put forward as official NCEE review coments on the Endangerment TSD. And when that didn’t work, he co-operated in the orchestration of a fake “suppression” scandal, timed to inflict maximum political damge on the Administration’s legislative and regulatory initiatives.

Of course, Carlin’s analysis was utterly devoid of substance. But it goes well beyond that. Indeed, it is hard to imagine a more contemptible litany of acts of bad faith by an employee of the U.S. government agency entrusted with health and well-being of the population, and indeed the planet.

It is perfectly reasonable and logical to combine multiple scientific principles that have been individually empirically demonstrated to obtain a scientific conclusion that is itself reliable. Demanding empirical verification at each and every stage of the logical process is not rational; it is merely obstructionist.

Moreover, you forget that we are trying to make a political decision here, not a scientific one. Political decisions are usually made with very little in the way of solid evidence. Consider, for example, some of the major decisions of recent political history. What evidence was there that the bank bailouts of last September would have any beneficial effect? Certainly not enough evidence to meet your criterion. We had never faced a banking crisis quite like this one, so we had no empirical evidence to justify ANY kind of action. Or what about the economic stimulus? The health care proposals? What evidence do we have that keeping those people locked up in Guantanamo will increase our security? What evidence do we have that torturing them yields beneficial results? On what evidentiary basis is ANY tax law passed? What evidence underlay the decisions to deny marriage to gays? What evidence underlay the decision to GRANT marriage to gays?

Your criterion is absurd. If it had been used throughout history, we’d still be waiting for the Industrial Revolution.