Slashdot Mirror
Water Vapor Causing Climate Warming
karvind writes "According to BBC, new studies suggest that water vapor rather than carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is the main reason why Europe's climate is warming. The scientists say that rising temperatures caused by greenhouse gases are increasing humidity, which in turn amplifies the temperature rise. This is potentially a positive feedback mechanism which could increase the impact of greenhouse gases such as CO2. Even though 2005 will probably be warmest year, climatologists still differ in opinion"
Too bad we wont be able to say "At least it's a dry heat" if this continues.
I could be missing something, but isn't this basic astronomy (or whatever science you care to term it)? Water vapor (among other gasses) is responsible for keeping a planet heated, and not a frozen ball of rock like Mars. Maintaining that delicate balance of how much water is in the air is important of course, but noting that water is causing the atmosphere to retain heat is... nothing new.
-Daniel
Scientists promptly advised everyone to:
1. Stop drinking water
2. Stop breathing
3. Stop taking showers (note: this doesn't apply to some countries such as France and Mexico)
Warming starts with CO2 and other greenhouse gases. Warmer climate means more evaporated water in the atmosphere. Guess what? Water vapor is also a greenhouse gas. So climate gets warmer. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
This isn't a story that undermines or changes the prevailing scientific view. This may allow some fine tuning of the models. Some skeptics had argued with the results of the models because they didn't believe the contribution of water vapor. This may force them to reevaluate their view. (Yeah right).
The reason we don't know how much global temperatures are going to rise is because we don't know enough about water vapor. Water vapor is thousands of times more potent than man made greenhouse gas. The main reason we can't 100% accurately predict the temperature is because we don't know for sure where the water vapor goes in the atmosphere. However, that does not mean that water vapor is causing global warming. Human emissions are the reason why there is more water vapor in the air than ever before. This isn't really knew, mainstream science has known this for ten plus years.
Accepted facts about global warming are as follows:
a)We are putting more greenhouse gases into the air than ever before.
b)Greenhouse gases trap heat.
c)The earth is getting warmer.
No one disagrees on these facts. The only legitamite disagreement is on how much warmer the earth will get, and this is because we don't know where the water vapor sits in the atmosphere. Supercomputers estimate the temperature increase will be between 1.5 and 11 degrees celcius in the next 50 years. At the low end we are seriously screwed. At the high end it is the end of civilization as we know it.
I knew I should've voted for the EPA to ban that blasted dihydrogen monoxide!
Assuming this your post wasn't completely tongue-in-cheek...
So, in order to "mine" the water vapor out of the atmosphere, you would need some way of condensing the vapor. Any sort of heat exchanger would work, but the laws of thermodynamics dictate that, in the end, you would just be heating the atmosphere up more than accomplishing anything else. This does assume that the control volume for the system is the earth itself, and you're not using space as your 'cold reservoir'--doing that gets into all sort of pesky heat transfer issues as space is rather non conductive. There is something to be said for radiation, but it would only really be effective if shielded from the sun. Anyway, since the most likely mediums for heat rejection would probably be either the atmosphere (you lose), the ocean (you lose again), or the terrestrial bits of the earth (you lose still), all you would be doing it heating the atmosphere up more and putting more water vapor into the atmosphere in the long run.
If your toast does not accquire any kind of royalty, please do not contact us. We can't help you.
(Hopefully) before this ends up in a big pissing match over whether or not global warming is real, I'd like to lay down some ideas.
Our climate changes- it has for billions of years and it will for billions of more years.
Our climate is *incredibly* complex, so accurate prediction either way is nigh impossible (and I think it's arrogant to imply we know enough about our climate to even try to control it).
Global warming *is* happening, but factually only in the sense that our planet has been getting warmer- the debate is over whether or not man is to blame. Keep in mind, we just came out of an ice age several thousand years ago, so global warming is basically a given until we enter the next ice age.
There is NO consensus on whether or not man-made global warming is happening- anyone who claims to have "climatologist" friends who say it most definitely is or isn't real and that all the real scientists agree are just pulling stuff out of their ass (and it's pretty obvious, too, so don't even try to do it).
Not everyone who believes global warming is caused by man is a crazy hippy and not everyone who believes it isn't caused by man is some money-grubbing republican. It's that kind of black and white approach to this and other topics, both by the people and especially the media, that has trivialized the issue at hand.
Please try to keep this in mind.
-Moses
I'm just curious how many scientists have looked at the possibility that the earth warms and cools in cycles
Thousands. They list glaciation, ocean variability, plate tectonics, solar variation, orbital variations, magnetic field changes, vulcanism as some of the natural causes of climate change.
And there's really not anything we can do to affect it, or stop it.
Since the industrial revolution the burning of fossil fuels has increased the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide to about 1.5 times the level it was in the early 1800s. By 2100 we are expected to be at double the 1800s level, resulting in a temperature increase of about 2 to 5 degrees celsius. So yes, we can affect the global temperature.
:wq
So greenhouse gases are causing the earth to get warmer, thus increasing the rate of evaporation of water above previous levels.
And somehow its the water vapor that is released from this evaporation, from increased heating, that is warming the earth?
If I hit my tumb with a hammer, and it starts bleeding. It would be like saying it is the blood that is causing the pain.
Worst article summary ever!
I'm just curious how many scientists have looked at the possibility that the earth warms and cools in cycles,
Yes. All of them. Find an atmospheric science textbook. It's in there.
and there's really not anything we can do to affect it, or stop it.
You're asking whether atmospheric scientists, people who study the atmosphere and its behavior, think that the manner in which earth's chaotic, multi-factored atmosphere behaves over time is fixed, unchanging, and can never be effected by anything.
No, none of them think that. The cycles themselves, which are quite erratic, demonstrate that changes can happen: For one thing, the cycles obviously happen for some kind of reason. For another thing, the cycles to which you refer haven't always happened. Further back in the past the climate's cycles operated differently.
The way in which the atmospheric cycles have operated for the last 2 billion years or so-- long stable periods followed by slowly increasing, then sudden and dramtic shifts-- suggest not that climate is some preplanned externally determined thing, caused by the hand of God moving a knob on a thermostat somewhere. What they suggest is the idea of the earth's atmospheric state having a number of equilibrium points, and we are moving back and forth between those equilibrium points. This is exactly what the article slashdot links here is about-- feedback mechanisms. The idea is that as you move further away from a stable equilibrium point, positive feedback mechanisms come into play which move you further and further away from that equilibrium point, and negative feedback mechanisms which were keeping you stable at that equilibrium point shut down. Once you nudge things away from the place where they were, the more the mean temperature rises the more the mean temperature is inspired to rise further, and the more the CO2 concentration rises the more the CO2 concentration is naturally inspired to rise even further. The lesson to take away here isn't to blame the cycles; the cycles themselves need that nudge to start. The lesson to take away is, you don't want to nudge the atmosphere out of that stable state, because once you start it may be too late to nudge it back.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
But this vapor is just a feedback effect, not an atmospheric forcing. This is due to the incredibly short residence time of water in the atmosphere of ~10 days. This means that even if you could somehow instantly cause the earth to have 0% humidity everywhere, things would stabalize back to "normal" within about 20-30. True forcings like CO2 have residence time of decades, which makes them the greenhouse gas to worry about.
Everyone posting here should first read this article for the full explination. The site in general is excelent.
"You saved 1968." - Ms. Valerie Pringle to the crew of Apollo 8
As it turns out, bullets aren't responsible for killing people.
A bullet fired from a gun does not cause death! It's the injury that causes death.
If the injury happens to be caused by a bullet, that's the injury's fault. But just firing bullets does not kill people.
Some bullets cause injuries that cause death, but some bullets cause injuries that don't cause death.
Also some injuries caused by things other than bullets do cause deaths, and some deaths happen without injuries.
You can't tell, by just looking at a bunch of bullets, which ones would cause a deadly injury, which ones would cause a non-deadly injury, and which ones would fall harmlessly somewhere or end up in the drywall.
Finally some bullets are never fired.
So stop trying to blame the bullets. Bullets don't kill people.
"Piter, too, is dead."
Not necessarily.
If 1 gallon of water in the atmosphere over 1 year retains an extra, say, 10 thousand calories of heat, and your device only expends 5 thousand calories to condense and trap a single gallon of water (I have a dehumidifier sitting right next to me so I could probably work up some better numbers, but feh, whatever), then you've broken even in 6 months, and get a bonus 5k every 6 months thereafter.
~Lake
"Vapor does not represent a heating, it represents a cooling."
Water evaporates when it gets hotter. The fact that more water is evaporating indicates that the Earth's system has gained heat (from the sun), even if that's stored when the water vaporizes. And water is a greenhouse gas. Much moreso, in fact, than CO2. That's presumably (without reading the article) the feedback loop.
...I got stung several times by a mosquito, and have the lumps to prove it. Having lived in the UK since 1963, I can confirm having never ever ever seen or been stung by a mosquito in November - they normally appear in the summer months. To any detractors out there, global warming IS happening, but because a number of large corporations stand to profit from it (were the ice sheets are melting), it's just not being given the sort of focus that it should be.
O'WONDERWe're working on it.
There goes all the hype for hydrogen powered cars right out the window. "All they emit is water vapor." Yeah.
Scientists have reported that they have discovered a thick layer of gases and evaporated liquids around the earth which they believe contributes to global warming. They have named this layer of various elements, composed primarily of nitrogen and oxygen, the "atmosphere". It is hoped that further investigation of the atmosphere could lead to a greater understanding of global warming.
If you check my posts you will see that I have been saying this for years.
Most of this is probably due to a lot of land at high elevation. This causes a cooling because water vapour falls out at high elevation and cannot trap the incomming solar radiation. Furthermore we get a high reflection off the snow and ice as well.
In all likelihood the cooling from the Miocene was caused by mountain building with the himalyan plateau being the latest addition. The Rockys and Andies, Pyrannies, Alps and 2 Hellenic ranges appeared before the Himalain plateau was pushed up. In North America we have the Colorado Plateau.
As part of this cooling Antarctica froze over and that locked the planet into the current snowball earth. Prior to this freeze over Antactrica was cold - but still had significant amounts of water vapour which trapped solar energy falling during the Antarctic summers. After the freeze over, Antarctica became the dryest continent on the planet - with a huge increase in the loss of solar energy falling on Antarctica. So this is a powerful positive feedback mechanizm that locked us into the current snowball earth phase.
Since then a lot of erosion has taken place which my have moved us past the equilibrium point. Still - the ice on antarctica and the glaciers at high elevation have kept us locked into the snowball earth phase.
I suspect that irrigation is causing a warming. It makes a great deal of sense. But offsetting this is the distruction of the rain forests.
CO2 is negligable. During the ordovician levels of CO2 were 13x to 19x higher than now and the earth cooled.
Some have pointed out correctly that the sun was not as strong back then. While that is true - there was a fair amount of mountain building during the ordovician (taconic orogany) and this may have been what tipped the planet from the hot house into the snowball phase. The sun was also weaker when the planet came out of the snowball phase a few million years later.
For over 80% of the last 540 million years the earth has been about 22 degrees warmer on average than now. So it makes sense that the earth will warm up - we just do not know when.
Another thing is that we have had about 22 ice cycles in the last 2+ million years and typically with a frequency of about every 100,000 years or so. 5 million years ago there were trees north of the Arctic circle in Canada. This is probably true of Russia as well.
Since we have had a number of ice cycles (the last was at peak about 50,000 years ago) it would make sense that we will have another. If so then we may be within a few 1000 years of another ice age developing.
It really will depend on where the equilibrium points are and I don't think anyone has any real idea.
One thing that is really instructive is to look at a globe of the earth that has actual mountains on it. There is one at the Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller Alberta. When you look at this globe and see just how thin the atmosphere really is - 2/3 of it lies below 30,000 feet for instance (Mount Everest) - it becomes very clear that a lot of solar incident energy is simply reflected off into space.
Get rid of the mountains and you gain a very effective H2O blanket.
In the tropics at sea level and 35C the absolute H2O vapour in the atmosphere is over 8% (80,000 ppm). This is in contrast to CO2 levels of 365 PPM.
H2O is a stronger absorber than CO2 by far - in all wavelengths.
So I frankly do not think CO2 is even a factor to be honest. The models used by the IPCC do not take into consideration that water vapour levels may be changing. When your most significant variable is not handled properly then your model isn't very believable.
From a paleoclimate standpoint - CO2 can change climate. It did several times in the Precambrian. The thing is that in order to do this the CO2 levels had to climb to many 1000 PPM. This occurred back then because so much of the earth froze over that even the oceans may have frozen r
I love how two incredibly outspoken scientists making a wager is translated here as "climate scientists differ". The fact is that climate scientists who agree that long-term anthropogenic global warming is a reality versus those who don't are in the same sort of the same sort of ratios as between biologists who believe in sevolutionist and those who don't.
And it's not a surprise. Vostok and other core data show two very telling things: 1) Global temperatures are extremely tied in to CO2 levels, and 2) barring natural catastrophes (such as major volcanic events), this is among the fastest climate changes in recorded history. You then factor in the fact that the balance of CO2 outflux to influx is computable and we're very obviously putting out CO2 faster than it can be consumed (and while higher CO2 levels increase CO2 consumption, that capability is limited), and factor in climate modelling... well, it's no real surprise that the ratios are so extreme.
He's just being nice so my real father won't freeze him in carbonite and sell him for spice.
Since the industrial revolution the burning of fossil fuels has increased the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide to about 1.5 times the level it was in the early 1800s. By 2100 we are expected to be at double the 1800s level, resulting in a temperature increase of about 2 to 5 degrees celsius. So yes, we can affect the global temperature.
_ 400kyr.png
Whoa whoa, those are big numbers we're throwing around. First, carbon dioxide was at what level in 1800? I hunted down some sources images for long term CO2 concentrations:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Carbon_Dioxide
So, CO2 levels were at, lets say 260ppm. Now they're at 375ppm. That, is indeed, a rise of 44%. First, I'm surprised. If we've been pumping out so much CO2, why have we only raised the concentration by 44%? Wouldn't you figure it'd be a lot more?
Next, we're still talking 375ppm - that's 0.0375%. How can we be certain that such a small portion of our atmosphere is causing such a huge change? The answer is we can't. We only have guesses about what the climate is going to be like in 5, 10, 20 years. Computer models are so far off - if they're within 400% they're doing well - that it can be considered no more than a guess. In fact, this article is much more on target - it is likely water vapor that would cause a large increase in global temperature. But water vapor in our atmosphere varies a lot based on weather patterns.
Put simply: there is simply no way that you can say that a 100% increase in carbon dioxideconcentration is going to do or not do anything. We simply do not know. I am certain some scientist somewhere "predicted" that this could happen. And sure, it could. But we could also trigger the next ice age. It's nothing more than a guess.
I am not saying we shouldn't cut back. We should. Anything we do on the planet will affect it in some way, and certainly the less we affect the better. But, I am much more worried about the pollution problems in China, and that 60% of petroleum is consumed for transportation, than the CO2 output of the industrialized world.
The space unintentionally left unblank.
There seem to be a few things missing in this discussion:
s .1896.climate.pdf
1. The fact that most of the warming associated
with global warming is directly forced by water
vapor is well established, going back at least
as far as Arrhenius's 1895 paper often credited
with "discovering" global warming.
(original paper at:
http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~archer/PS134/arrheniu
)
i.e. this result is CONSISTENT with our understanding
of global warming.
2. Increases in atmospheric water vapor are tightly tied
to temperature. The saturation specific humidity
(the amount of water air will hold) increases
exponentially with temperature (an implication of the
Clasius-Claperyon relationship). Thus when you increase the
temperature of the atmosphere by dT (by, for example, adding
some CO2), more water vapor evaporates into the atmosphere,
amplifying the warming.
3. This effect, known as the water vapor feedback, has been in
our climate models from the beginning (at least as far back
as 1895), and produces results consitent with observations.
4. The cited Geophysical Research Letters paper uses observations
to estimate the strength of the water vapor feedback and
finds that it is strong (even stronger than most models
predict). It is also a step in the process
of understanding climate change on a regional level.
Z
You have negleted to mention one thing: greenhouse gasses only act as such at certain wavelengths depending on their absorption spectra. Therefore, there is a point at which adding more of any greenhouse to the atmosphere does not change the absorption spectra of the atmosphere since the absorbable light from the sun is already being fully absorbed.
I was unable to find a website explaining this or giving examples, but I remember being told at one point by a professor (2 years ago) and shown the data/graph showing it that the water vapor in the atmosphere already absorbs 100% of its absorption spectra but that since this is not the case for all this man-made junk (CFCs etc.) or CO2 that those things resulting in global warming.
Anyway, here is a link I found remotely interesting: http://www.spaceguarduk.com/cd/dict/dictionary/inf rared.htm/A.
I just love global warming debates!
Any reputable scientist of any discipline will have no problem in telling you that when you are talking about a complex system, that has been in operation for billions of years, a sampling of measurements over the past couple hundred years is nowhere near enough to KNOW how the system behaves to a particular factor over any meaningful span.
Yet, that doesn't stop people from coming right out and saying that all scientists agree, that people are causing a catastrophic climactic change with environmental pollution.
Why?
Because global warming is the modern, secular, version of original sin. People just know that there has to be some horrible price to pay for eating from the tree of knowledge, and destroying all life on the planet sounds just about right to them as the price we have to pay. Therefore, it makes perfect sense that we surely must be killing the very planet in order to live our comfy lives.
The problem with this theory, is that it is pure conjecture, mixed with no small amount of hubris. Sure, everyone has heard that one major volcanic eruption vents more carbon dioxide than all the cars ever constructed by man combined, but that can't really be right, because we are more important than some stupid volcano. Surely we the tax of our vices must be higher than some random venting of gas. Besides, if the temperature of the entire planet is rising due to factors that have nothing to do with us, that means we can't stop it, which can't be right. We are the most important thing on the planet, and obviously there isn't anything that we can't do. If we are destroying the planet, then all we need to do is renounce our evil ways, and we can save the planet. That makes much more sense. That is how the universe really works. If we want to destroy a planet, then we can, and likewise if we want to save a planet, then we can do that too. We aren't just a bunch of insignificant specs crawling around the surface of some giant system totally beyond our control. We are the center of everything, and all that matters is what we choose to do. Yeah, that sounds much better.
The simple fact is that there has been a very slight rise in temperatures globally over the past blink of a global eye that we call a century. If anyone knew why, they could probably also reliably tell you if it was going to rain tomorrow, where the next tsunami will hit, and what day the next big earthquake would hit California. They can't tell you any of those things because there are actually some things that are so complex that the human brain can't properly model them, even with the help of all the fancy supercomputers in the world.
I know, I know, this has to be just a load of crap. Obviously it is the Republicans, and Americans with SUVs causing all of this, because we can change that with a vote and some laws, and there is nothing more important to the world than politics. If Mother Nature is so powerful, why have I never seen her name on a ballot, right?
By the way, just to head off any political partisan attacks, let me say that as far as being a good green citizen, I probably have more "street cred'" than you, seeing as how I spent 10 years going everywhere on a bicycle, haven't driven (or even owned) a car in over 7 years, and now go everywhere either by walking, or riding on the largest fleet of clean air busses in America. I am hardly the gas-guzzling, big-business loving, neo-conservative republican you might like to think is the mold of every person on earth who disagrees with you.
Why does he say 'it is water vapor rather than caron dioxide that causes warming in europe'? The next sentence makes it clear that this is not the case, so the first sentence should have been omitted as it is misleading.
I miss my rubber keyboard.(Homepage)
The historical record is imporant since it has the potential to establish whether it is necessary.
No, that's where you are mistaken. The historical record is irrelevant to determining whether action is necessary. CO2 emissions must inevitably lead to a change in the absorption and emission of radiation from earth. Furthermore, CO2 that we emit today will be around for centuries, so whatever we do today, we are going to be stuck with for a long time.
The only uncertainty is whether the consequences of those changes will be serious or not. That depends on complex feedback mechanisms (water vapor, oceans, plants, ice cover, etc.) that nobody understands yet. Those can kick in at any time, and very quickly. If we wait until we understand them, it can be too late.
People with vested interests have been trying to reframe the debate as if we needed empirical data demonstrating anthropogenic warming in order to justify action. That approach is potentially suicidal. Whether we can demonstrate anthroprogenic warming is largely an academic question.
Say someone claims an asteroid is about to hit the earth, and we should all get together and establish world government to deal with it. Well, you might feel that world government and getting together would be fine, but still look askance at the trajectory calculations. That's where I am coming from.
That's a bad analogy. Whether an asteroid is going to hit earth is an all-or-nothing proposition, our options are limited, and mentioning "world government" is a scare tactic,
For global climate change, it's a question of degree (barely detectable to devastating) that we can expect in the future. And the options for preventing it are simple: increase energy efficiency, something that is technologically trivial and economically beneficial to everybody except current energy producers. Dealing with global warming does not require "world government". Quite to the contrary, fighting global warming effectively amounts to ridding ourselves of "world government" and dominance of the political process by fossil fuel producers, and instead focuses on efficiency, technology, self-sufficiency, and local generation. True Conservatives should be all for it.
By producing "this magic fuel" in a powerstation and not in every car on the planet, at least the polution :
- is in one place (a small number compared to the amount of cars)
- can be monitored more exactly
- can be improved at any time without having to replace every car
- can be filtered more effectively (carburetors are only effective after being warmed up for about 10 minutes, which is a shorter time period than many journeys)
- can be polution free (see iceland)
- moves polution from population centers thus improving health
I'm sure i could go on / get sources for all these statements, but i can't be arsed
"In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act." - George Orwell
Has anyone ever run the numbers to see if all the heat we create on a daily basis could be causing temperatures to rise? Our cars don't just emit CO2, but some really hot CO2! Everything else we do creates heat. Cities can be 10 degrees warmer than the surrounding countryside because of all the concrete and heat.
Every climate scientist knows that water is responsible for most of the greenhouse effect -- this is not news.
The important point to remember is that in the lingo of the climate scientists, water is a "feedback" rather than a "forcing". CO2 is considered a forcing because you can affect the climate by adding to or removing it from the environment -- the levels of CO2 in the environment are not affected much by climate processes.
Water is completely different: there is so much water available on the surface of the earth that adding extra water to, or removing it from, the environment -- say, by building big condeners that feed storage tanks, or by building pumps that spray water into the air -- won't make much difference, at least once you turn the pumps or condensers off.
You can read all about it here.
Funny, I could have sworn not too long ago I was reading sites that attacked the anti-global-warming pposition because these people (those that dispute global warming) were saying that water vapor was a much more significant greenhouse gas than CO2 and there's much more H2O than CO2 in the atmosphere than CO2; the logical conclusion being, "Why try to make massive cuts in CO2 output if the greenhouse effects of H2O completely dwarf the effects of CO2?"
So the global warming advocates put up a bunch of graphs showing how, yes, H2O was a more effective greenhouse gas, but that energy absorption was already maxed out at the H2O wavelength(s)... or something like that. Therefore, they claimed, it didn't matter that climate models couldn't properly model the effects of cloud cover nor was it valid to observe that since H2O was a much more important greenhouse that draconian efforts to reduce CO2 were misguided since, they said, the energy absorption of H2O was at a different wavelength than CO2.
Now they're saying that increased water vapor is causing a positive feedback loop that's causing the temperature change??? I thought they had said that the impact of H2O's greenhouse effect was already maxed out? If it isn't, then once again I must ask: Why do we place such efforts on reducing CO2 if water vapor seems to have a much bigger impact?
Global temperatures are extremely tied in to CO2 levels
This could also be written to imply the opposite of what you intended: CO2 levels are extremely tied to global temperatures. How do you tell which caused which?
The standard argument against global warming:
1. Weather is complicated. The models aren't perfect.
2. No matter how much of a scientific consensus there may be, there will always be a few guys who don't agree.
Conclusion: We don't really know anything about climate or global warming.
Rinse, lather, repeat.
The wonderful thing about these arguments is that no matter what we may discover in the future about climate, they will remain valid (well, as valid as they are today), so you can safely trot them out any time anybody dares to suggest that you should be inconvenienced in any way to reduce global warming.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
We're all gonna die!
When I was a kid the world was going to be destroyed by nukes. Either WWIII would happen and MAD would do us all in or a nuclear reactor would go out of control somewhere and destroy everything. Pay attention kids, that's really the way it was for us. They taught it to us in school, it was the theme of many of our Saturday morning cartoons, it was in every magazine and book and all over the TV.
That myth was slowly shattered over time. The Soviets had a couple of nuke reactor problems and so did we. Life went on. Then the USSR fell and the idea of MAD went away with it. Suddenly nukes didn't seem so frightening. People started to wake up to the fact that life was even going on in the cities that the US had nuked in WWII.
So what do we do without the threat of nukes? Without the fear of nuclear death we would have to accept the fact that the fate of every living thing might be in the hands of a higher power or, worse yet, not in the hands of anyone at all. As humans we can not accept that. Something or someone must be in control and we like it best if we can imagine it to be us as we had imagined it with nukes.
So now there is some data that can be stretched to imagine that the climate of our planet will kill us all. That's even bigger and more scary than nukes. Children can be taught to fear that with ease. Better yet, our ego will allow us to believe that we can control it, that we caused it. And most of us can accept as fact that although we caused it there is nothing we can do to correct it.
Yes, we're all going to die.
. Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
What happens when we go to a hydrogen economy?
Lots of extra water vapor.
A little water is good for you. A lot of water will kill you.
A few cards using hydrogen are probably good for us. All cars using hydrogen needs to be investigated to see if it puts out significantly more water vapor than our current gasoline cars (which also put out water as a part of burning the fuel).
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
While Global Warming may be a fact, its anthropogenic nature is still reasonably disputed for several reasons. First, there have been many climatic swings of warming and cooling since before man even existed. There is no compelling evidence to suggest that this current warming spell is not a natural occurrence.
Second, as far as CO2 levels are concerned, correlation != causation. For example, it is not out of reason to speculate that naturally warming temperatures might disrupt the ability of phytoplankton in the oceans to sequester carbon thereby causing increased oceanic and atmospheric CO2. Because the oceans are the world's largest single carbon sink and phytoplankton are probably the largest sequesterors of carbon in the world, that would cause a release of carbon that would dwarf human industrial activity. This would also provide a correlation between warming and CO2, but the causation would be reversed.
Another scenario is that the reported "solar dimming", could also disrupt the ability of phytoplankton in the oceans to sequester carbon. In this scenario, the extra release of CO2, may well be causing the warming, but the CO2 is largely released by diminished phytoplankton activity, with human releases being a drop in the bucket. The dimming itself may be caused by natural fluctuations of solar activity, natural atmospheric changes, or even to human activity creating particulate matter. (However, there is at least some evidence that human generated particulate matter in the atmosphere is actually decreasing since coal and wood are no longer burned in large quantities in modern industrial societies, outside of power plants.)
Recorded human history is merely a blink of an eye in geologic terms. Recorded *climatic* history has only started in the modern times (last 500 years). Our frame of reference is short. Our idea of "normal" climate is very limited. What we consider "normal" might actually be cold. We only consider our current climate to be "normal" because of our own hubris. Since we are also naturally anthropocentric, we look for human cause and human solutions everywhere, even where they do not belong.
Apparently, the Earth magnetic field has decreased by 10% in the last 10 years. I'm an electrical engineer and during my studies in sub-atomic physics, I learned that a particles velocity can be effected by magnetic fields. I keep hearing about the increased activity of our Sun and I believe it's possible that more of the Sun's radiation is penetrating the Earth's magnetic field due to it being weaker. If more radiation hits the Earth and the Sun is spewing out more heat, shouldn't that also increase the overall temperature of the Earth and can global warming be attributed to this? I've been bouncing this idea in my head for a while now and I can't see why this MAY not be true.
The fact that more water is evaporating indicates that the Earth's system has gained heat (from the sun)
:)
No, it means that the *atmosphere* is changing, not the entire Earth. There's a reason it's called the "solar constant" because it very nearly is (and a good thing, too, or we'd not be here to argue about it
If the atmosphere heats up, it's capacity for holding vaporized water increases...
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
There is NO consensus on whether or not man-made global warming is happening- anyone who claims to have "climatologist" friends who say it most definitely is or isn't real and that all the real scientists agree are just pulling stuff out of their ass (and it's pretty obvious, too, so don't even try to do it).
Well, here I go pulling stuff out of my ass (and by "my ass" I mean "the positions of the most influential bodies in the field") [my bold].
From the Position Statement of the American Geophysical Union:
Human activities are increasingly altering the Earth's climate. These effects add to natural influences that have been present over Earth's history. Scientific evidence strongly indicates that natural influences cannot explain the rapid increase in global near-surface temperatures observed during the second half of the 20th century.
From the Position Statement of the American Meteorological Society:
* The theory of how greenhouse gases directly interact with atmospheric radiation is not controversial. If no other factors counter their influence, increases in their concentration will lead to global warming.
* A steady rise in the concentration of greenhouse gases began over 200 years ago and is continuing. Atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, the principal greenhouse gas, has increased from pre-industrial concentrations of 280 ppmv (parts per million by volume) to over 367 ppmv in 2000, an increase of more than 30%; methane has increased from 0.7 to about 1.8 ppmv, an increase of more than 150%; nitrous oxide has increased from 0.27 to over 0.31 ppmv, an increase of 16%. Tropospheric ozone is estimated to have increased by 35% since the industrial revolution...
The first line of the National Academy of Sciences 2001 report titled "Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions", performed at the request of President Bush:
Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise.
In short... there is no controversy. Yes, there are a handful of very loud people who are attempting to create one, who are assisted by the media's dedication to "balance," which consists of giving equal weight to totally unequal positions. Really, though, in the scientific community, anthropogenic warming is considered to be a fact.
Now, to be clear, this doesn't mean that we should necessarily do anything about it. The existence of a phenomenon is not de facto support for any particular policy position. But let's not screw around-- the "controversy" over whether global warming is at least partially anthropogenic is manufactured and does not reflect the views of the scientific community.
Ah, so geology, plate tectonics, evolution , et cetera are all bunk. Each is characterized by relying on direct observations dating back about 200 years or less-- all other data is extrapolated. We can't KNOW that earthquakes are caused by movements of the plates that compose the Earth's crust, because we've only been observing the correlation for a short time. Darn, better not put in that tsunami warning system.
I've already listed several statements from the most major scientific organizations in the field, all of which find an overwhelming consensus on the existence of anthropogenic climate change. Yes, you can find a handful of cranks who believe otherwise, just like how you can find a handful of cranks who believe any stupid position imaginable.
Yet, that doesn't stop people from coming right out and saying that all scientists agree, that people are causing a catastrophic climactic change with environmental pollution.
Nice strawman. Let me rephrase it so that it actually represents a reasonable position:
"An overwhelming majority of climate scientists agree, anthropogenic climate change exists and could potentially impose some (unknown magnitude of) costs upon humanity."
Something more like that is about right.
Because global warming is the modern, secular, version of original sin. People just know that there has to be some horrible price to pay for eating from the tree of knowledge, and destroying all life on the planet sounds just about right to them as the price we have to pay. Therefore, it makes perfect sense that we surely must be killing the very planet in order to live our comfy lives.
Obviously you haven't eaten from the tree of knowledge [ooh, snap]. Go read the scientific literature on the topic, starting with the NAS Study to which I linked in my aforementioned post. Your psychoanalysis is a cute ad hominem [as is this paragraph], but it contributes nothing to the debate.
The simple fact is that there has been a very slight rise in temperatures globally over the past blink of a global eye that we call a century. If anyone knew why, they could probably also reliably tell you if it was going to rain tomorrow, where the next tsunami will hit, and what day the next big earthquake would hit California. They can't tell you any of those things because there are actually some things that are so complex that the human brain can't properly model them, even with the help of all the fancy supercomputers in the world.
Yes, because all those systems are equivalent, and those predictions are all equivalent in nature. Except not. Please explain how several climate models have actually proven quite accurate at predicting global average temperature, if your claim is true. Or, better yet, go think long and hard about why it's possible to predict average values with much higher reliability than one can predict point values.
[The rest of your political crap]
I don't care about you, nor do I care about the politics of the issue. I do care that you're polluting the conversation with your nonsense claims that we don't understand the basics of the issue. I also care about the policies that grow out of the scientific consensus on the issue-- but, at present, I can't say for sure exactly what, if anything, we should do. Perhaps some people do take global warming to be some sort of moral tale, but their existence does not devalue the position taken by those who are compelled by the overwhelming sc
What happens when we go to a hydrogen economy?
:-p It's all in and around us. :-D
... WATER) is going to alter the equilibrium one whit.
;-)r yId=4453&contentId=7004951
Lots of extra water vapor.
Moderation fails again.
This isn't insightful. It's pretty much wrong (or was maybe meant to be humorous). This is like saying that if it rained more we'd all get killed (by the intense global warming that would results from all that water vapor! Clouds!). Water is a cycle that's basically at equilibrium. We aren't gaining or losing any to/from space (except tiny, tiny, insignificant amounts). We aren't going out of our way to find, dig up, and then burn billions of gallons of water every year.
I don't see how the burning of hydrogen (created by and large from the electrolysis of
Now, what would alter the current balance, is if a bunch of CO2 that had been buried (and hence locked out of the atmosphere) for like 100 million years was being routinely sought, found, dug up and then burned in huge volumes every year.
The problem with the 'hydrogen economy' is that as it's currently envisioned it's still just a petrochemical economy -- except the gas pump is hidden to the consumer. It's still just coal plants and natural gas plants and whatever else we can dig up and burn to generate electricity to split hydrogen out of water or whatever else. Of course then we'll package and transport it with plastics and other petrochem-derived goodies. Until we get over ourselves and stop burning the oil and coal and using nuclear and other alternatives hydrogen is just a facade.
If it wasn't the big oil companies wouldn't be promoting it
http://www.bp.com/sectiongenericarticle.do?catego
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.