I’m now closing comments on this post – it’s getting way too long and unwieldy. But don’t let that stop you talking…

If you go down this path, you end up getting things wrong. You should do a basic analytical chemistry course, then you can improve your understanding of chemistry.

CO2 is denser than dry air, this is established. However, in air, its molecular weight is 0.016. Do you disagree with this?

I did actually read the links you provided, and I still can’t find anywhere where this is mentioned. I did note the material on absorption, but this is a different matter to asserting that the levels of CO2 can be capped in the atmosphere.

I am genuinely curious how you think the atmosphere can be saturated with carbon dioxide, and I would appreciate it if you could find the specific place where this is mentioned.

Does anyone else have an opinion on this?

>Roger, can we agree on what consitutes reliable knowledge?
For me it is peer-reviewed science. This process is robust and self-correcting, and leads to an agreed-upon body of knowledge that is a foundation to be built on.

In principle, yes. However it is necessary that the peer review is real peer review and not just Mann style peer review in which a handful of individuals have a cosy agreement to rubber stamp each others’ papers. A similar process occurs with Wikipedia in which one ‘Stoat’ Connolley, who is one of the Mann clique, has control of all the Wikipedia articles on climate. The way in which he has done this has been described to me by a Wikipedia fisheries editor who has taken no side whatever on AGW. The publish or perish culture has been around in academic circles for as long as I can remember and doubtless long before that. That puts much pressure on researchers to conform. Then we have the pressure applied through grants. Are you naive enough to believe that a junior academic in VUW, for example, is going to get a grant for a line of research which might throw doubt on the position taken by Manning and Barratt?

>Can you help shed any light on Ken’s assertion that the atmosphere can become saturated with CO2, such that the excess just ‘drops out’?

My enquiries lead me to suspect that Ken Ring is barking up the wrong tree in THIS instance. I am however generally aware that there is persuasive argument supporting a logarithmic relationship between the carbon dioxide tenor in the atmosphere and the heating resulting from it. The effect of this is an approximation to Ken Ring’s assertion that there is a saturation level. However there are other areas where my interests and experience are better applied. For example I have devoted quite a lot of time to groundwater models and geophysical models. There keep me mindful of what is known in geoelectrical sounding as ‘the principle of equivalence’. Firstly more mathematical modelling there MUST be equations which FULLY describe that which is being modelled. This applies in the case of groundwater, geoelectric sounding and seismic refraction, all of which I am sufficiently familiar with. The more layers in the ground or the more anisotropic the permeability is the more solutions will fit the available data. In comparison with climate models the ones I have described have relatively few variables and the mathematics is fully understood.
In the case of climate models many of the variables and feedbacks are unknown and most cannot be reduced to equations which can be inserted in the algorithm which forms the core of the numerical model. I concede that there are physical climatic processes which can be described mathematically and which can be used in algorithms. However since climate is not driven solely by these describable physical processes the climatic models constructed on them are and must be inherently faulty.

When I observe that the climate does not correlate with CO2 and the models fail to predict the climate my belief in the inherent faults in climatic models is re-inforced.

Of course the whole AGW thing conflicts totally with my long term geological perspective of climate change.

Of course you can compare CO2 to dry air. You cannot exclude CO2 from air, no matter if it is infinitesimal. Its molecular weight is around 0.016 (out of the 29 molecular mass of air).

What is your point here?

My point is that you are incorrect to say the CO2 is twice as heavier of air.

This is not twice as much, but 1.5 as much. I think your maths is a bit off here.