Global warming or cooling?

Before I start (full disclosure) I'm a global warming skeptic. That's not to say I don't believe it is happening; I just don't think we know enough about it to start rolling out worst case disaster scenarios like I've seen on tv.

Let's begin with a list of my top three things that causes the greenhouse effect to our atmosphere. All percentages I found are estimations, since other gases and particles absorb the same frequencies of light as those in my list, but these numbers seem to be the consensus. (To a skeptic like me, the "consensus" makes me question all of the data. They are guessing and expecting me to take it as fact? In fairness, It's a logical guess of a dynamic system and I will except the data as being true.)

Water (in vapor and cloud form) accounts for about 66% to 85% of the total warming effect. There is (to my knowledge) no way humans can effect this on a global scale. You might be able to extract the vapor from the air on a large enough scale to lower local temperatures (as well as make a sizable drinking water supply), but you have a constant supply being produced every second of every day around the world.  Water vapor seems to have a short life of around 10 days in the troposphere (the lowest part of the atmosphere). Alternately, in the much drier stratosphere (just above the troposphere), you're looking at a few years.

Recently, there has been talk about seeding clouds with salt water the make them reflect the sunlight and it's heat. A test was preformed to test it's viability off the coasts of south Africa (which seemed successful), but many people question the unforeseen consequences.

Number two on my list is methane. Even though methane only contributes 4 to 9% of the greenhouse effect, it's where and what it breaks down into that forces it up near the top of my list. Methane finds its way up into the stratosphere where it finds a hydroxyl free radical which breaks it into water and carbon dioxide. As mentioned before, this water lives in the stratosphere for a few more years increasing the greenhouse effect and the co2 should make its way back down into the troposphere. For this reason, when pockets of methane are found in the oil drilling process, they burn it.

Next up, good old carbon dioxide noses it's way in for about 9 to 27% of the greenhouse effect. I'm not going to hit you with another round of the "where, why, and who" of co2. I'm sure you know all about it by now.

Putting all of this together, I start to think of water in the troposphere a baseline thermostat more than anything else and like the others have found, not worth talking about. This leaves methane and co2 to deal with.

Cattle seem the be the biggest producer of methane, which can be collected and used as fuel. I've seen a video on youtube where dairy farmer stored cattle waste in bladders, then burnt off the methane to power that farm. He even had a surplus he feed into the grid which the power company paid him for. So, let's say all methane produced in the world from decaying organic wastes was used as power generation. You'd still have deal with the co2, right? Oh yes, but that is much easier. If you expose co2 to caustic soda (commonly known as Lye) , the resulted chemical reaction produces  sodium carbonate and oxygen.

Wow, that was simple, I just made all cars have zero carbon emissions with a $1 plastic container hooked to an exhaust pipe and $0.30 (some random number) worth of lye per tank of gasoline. Nobel prize please.

Come on people, if the government or corporations really cared about global warming, don't you think we'd be forced to install carbon scrubbers on all cars. It's not like they didn't have the technology when we went to the moon.

Oh, sorry, I went into rant land.

So, let's say we cut all human (including food cattle) produced methane and co2 emissions to zero.

The earth has been cycling through warming and cooling periods for hundreds of thousands of years (without any interference of man).  Currently, they are telling us that global warming is going to cause a "mini ice age" within the next 50 to 100 years (reported in 2005) because the North Atlantic current is slowing and it is at about 50% of what it was.

Wait a minute. To paraphrase an old cartoon, You have to get real hot to play real cool?

They say global warming is making the ocean rise at double the rate (from 1mm to 2mm a year) and that we are looking at a 20 foot total rise in the oceans. Just so we are clear, that's 3048 years at the current 2mm a year.

Now, I read or heard something that I dismissed at the time because the guy (some doctor) was saying that global warming was a hoax, but now I wish I'd paid attention to who the guy was and where I saw it so I could research this single comment. He said that scientists used scare tactics of an up and coming ice age to get research money to study it, then when all the money was gone, they flipped and said it was warming to get more money. I personally think he was talking out his backside, but it makes you wonder since the best lies are shrouded in truth.

I believe we have global warming that may be causing global cooling, but if we stop all emissions now, do we have to sequester pass emissions and how much? What about the next ice age that is do at anytime now?

So what is my verdict? I don't know. I'm being asked to believe scientists that are basing dooms day models on guesses. Who may or may not get more funding based on how well they can scare us. Then you have a government that could force you to stop (at the very least) all car co2 emissions with 1960 technology for a very low reoccurring cost, but doesn't. Then you get into all the other people with their hands out, like carbon offseters, the auto and oil industry, etc. It all just seems like a money game where everyone loses.

Sources:

http://www.dailytech.com/Temperature+Monitors+Report+Worldwide+Global+Cooling/article10866.htm

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/11/1130_051130_ice_age.html

http://whyfiles.org/091beach/5.html

http://www.naturalnews.com/020649.html

http://www.dow.com/productsafety/finder/caustic.htm

http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm

 http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1981quoz....2..824V

http://www.lenntech.com/carbon-dioxide.htm

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/35693

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/04/water-vapour-feedback-or-forcing/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas#Natural_and_anthropogenic

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/methane-tt1029.html

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2009/06/is-global-warming-part-of-earths-natural-cycle-mit-team-says-yes.html