The fingerprints of the greenhouse effect

The hypothesis of "man-made climate change" tells us that the increase in the concentration of CO₂ enhances the greenhouse effect of the atmosphere and has global warming as a final result.

Since the beginning of the industrialized era around 1850, man emits relatively large amounts of CO₂ into the atmosphere through the use of fossil fuels. The consequence of these emissions is that during that period, the concentration of CO₂ in the atmosphere increased sharply from about 300 parts per million to more than 400 ppm, an increase of almost 40%. The average temperature increased in the same period more or less 1.5 °C with a small variation depending on the data source used.
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Why did the warming stop?

The political reports of the IPCC are based on the hypothesis that CO₂ is the most important control knob of the Earth's temperature. The problem is that this hypothesis does not correspond at all with the empirical data available to science. Forecasts are made using models that are not capable of 'predicting' the past.
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Temperature versus CO₂ – the big picture

When discussing “Climate Change” it’s good to have an understanding of how the Earth’s climate has changed in the past. That will give us a reference to decide whether the current changes are normal or not.

Global temperatures have varied a lot over the last 500 million years. Depending on the timescale used, the current temperature is either cold or hot, so when you want to know the “normal temperature” you’ll have to indicate what timescale you’re using.
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CO₂ Band-Saturation Explained

Professor at the Geophysical Sciences department at the University of Chicago David Archer describes the band-saturation of the CO₂ greenhouse effect. After that, everything goes wrong.

The first part of the lecture is very informative. Professor Archer explains in great detail how the CO₂ greenhouse absorption works, it's logarithmic nature and the band saturation. He even shows on a working instance of the MODTRAN model how adding the first ppm of CO₂ to the atmosphere has a huge impact on the atmosphere's energy balance. Adding more CO₂, the effect fades away.
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Hydroelectricity and greenhouse gasses

Hydropower is one of the cleanest energy sources available. The only downsides known so far are the impact on the landscape and the risk of a dam breaking due to earthquakes. Carefully choosing the locations and high construction standards are needed to solve these problems.

Besides electricity generation, dams also help to regulate the water flow in the rivers, making them better navigatable and useful for irrigation.

So, overall it seems to be quite positive, but recent research has "discovered" a new downside to hydroelectricity and it's a usual suspect: Greenhouse gasses.
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The world needs more CO₂

Interview with Professor William Happer of Princeton University. Mr. Happer is a renowned physicist, specialized in the field of atomic physics, adaptive optics and spectrometry. This interview from 2015 is part of the series "Conversations that Matter."

Some quotes from this interview:
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The logarithmic nature of the CO₂ greenhouse effect

For many people, a logarithmic relationship can be a fairly abstract concept. It is hard to imagine the implication that it has on the strength of the greenhouse effect that corresponds to the amount of CO₂ that humanity emits into the atmosphere. Here we present a visualization to explain in a simple way what we are talking about.

CO₂ is a greenhouse gas. The presence of CO₂ in the atmosphere traps a part of the infrared radiation that the Earth's surface emits into space. The total greenhouse effect of the Earth's atmosphere is about 30 °C, without this effect, the temperature would be -15 °C instead of +15 °C, the actual current average temperature.
Water vapor is the most important greenhouse gas. CO₂ provides 3 °C of heating, that is, 10% of the total effect.

When the concentration of CO₂ increases, its greenhouse effect also increases, but not in a linear fashion, but logarithmically. For each increase in concentration, the effect on temperature is less and less.
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Water vapor

Water vapor is the single most important greenhouse gas. It makes up 80% to 90% of the total greenhouse effect of the Earth's atmosphere.

Climate models depend on water vapor as a positive feedback for supposed CO₂ warming. In these models, CO₂ causes a tiny warming that causes the relative atmospheric humidity to increase. That increase in water vapor produces the catastrophic warming they predict.
The problem is that in the real world, while atmospheric CO₂-concentrations increased by almost 30% since the end of World War II, the relative atmospheric humidity has been stable at low altitudes and has even decreased at higher altitudes.
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