Thanks for a rational response.
The main, central, key point I was passing to Gates is that we don't have anything like enough solid evidence to spend $trillions to stop human sources of CO2 to stop its effects on climate change. Or, to spend $trillions, we need some biggie evidence, and we don't have that. I don't believe we have good enough evidence to spend 10 cents, but the $trillions are a huge issue.
To spend $trillions, we need some good evidence. The claim is CO2 is and will cause harmful climate change. Well, we could claim the short skirts of young women cause climate change. For any claim for spending $trillions, CO2 or short skirts, we need some good evidence. Well, we are without good evidence.
For CO2, sure, it absorbs infrared -- and gets warm -- in three narrow bands from bending, stretching, and twisting of the molecule with the infrared from Planck black body radiation from the surface of the earth heated by the sun, and without the CO2, e.g., from humans, some of that infrared, not absorbed by, e.g., water vapor, would escape into outer space and not warm the atmosphere. Okay, all true enough.
But, how much warming from how much CO2? Well, there were computer models from whatever, the Navier-Stokes equations, diffusion calculations, physical chemistry, flows in the atmosphere, effects of water vapor, the seasons, asphalt, etc. Lots of models. As in the graph I referenced, dozens of models. So the models made predictions. The time of the predictions has passed, and the predictions are seen to have been wildly wrong. So, in science, we have to junk the models. CO2 still heats the atmosphere, but we are now without any good evidence for how much or that it will be dangerous.
It's tough to prove that the CO2 won't be dangerous, but it's the job of the people wanting to spend $trillions to give solid evidence that CO2 is dangerous, not the job of skeptics to prove it is not. If the alarmists can win on CO2 without solid evidence, then they can win on short skirts also.
Net, on CO2, we are, in the words of Groucho Marx, stuck-o.
For the movie, it seemed to show lots of ways that CO2 changes didn't fit the temperature changes but some sun spot data did. Net, in the competition for what causes climate change, so far, the sun spots win.
I have yet to go to outer space and count solar wind particles hitting cosmic rays or go to the upper atmosphere and watch cosmic rays form water droplets, but, still, so far, from just relatively crude evidence from some simple graphs (where the movie didn't give good references to the original data), still so far the sun spots win. Since we can't do anything about sun spots, we can save our $trillions.
Not only do the sun spots win, the CO2 claims quite broadly fail badly to fit the climate data. About the only evidence for danger from CO2 is my little explanation of narrow bands in the infrared.
For your [0], Wunsch is angry, as far as I can tell he is angry over nothing.
There Wunsch says:
"In the part of The Great Climate Change Swindle where I am describing the fact that the ocean tends to expel carbon dioxide where it is warm, and to absorb it where it is cold, my intent was to explain that warming the ocean could be dangerous—because it is such a gigantic reservoir of carbon. By its placement in the film, it appears that I am saying that since carbon dioxide exists in the ocean in such large quantities, human influence must not be very important—diametrically opposite to the point I was making—which is that global warming is both real and threatening.[7]"
He should calm down: His point about the oceans was nice. Another result of what he said, that seems correct, is that as ocean surface temperatures change, atmospheric CO2 levels can change. Still, the CO2 changes seem harmless and didn't cause the changes in the ocean temperatures. I.e., from what Wunsch explained, from a tiny bit of temperature change in the surface of the oceans, the oceans will go "SLURP" or "BURP" and suck up or blow out CO2, maybe a surprisingly large amount of CO2. I.e., from whatever changes in ocean surface temperatures, we can expect some maybe surprisingly large CO2 concentration changes. Okay. Good to know. But, still, no threats in sight.
To me the movie is fine, tiny flaws and objections aside -- much better explanation of the situation than from the alarmists fears of CO2 and their many $trillion dollar schemes against CO2.
A $trillion here and a $trillion there, after a while it adds up to real money. For that, we will need a lot of solid evidence, and so far we don't have any, and the attempts so far flopped. Sun spots are MUCH better evidence.
What very clearly WOULD be very dangerous to nearly everyone on earth would be the efforts of the alarmists to spend $trillions fighting CO2. If Gates contributed to this effort, he would seriously damage civilization and do much more damage than all the good he has done and is doing.
For me, Gates should drop the push against CO2.