Reply with QuoteObviously you are not past it.......yet.Originally Posted by martinw
Carbon Dioxide (CO2)
Methane (CH4)
Nitrous Oxide (N2O)
Water Vapor (H2O)
Dear Geof,
Yikes! It's been many a long year since I last heard anybody mention Brownian Motion. It all comes flooding back...( unreliably )
Best wishes
Martin
Obviously you are not past it.......yet.
13 people so far have voted for CO2 as the most important gas..vs. 21 for H20
I'm more and more amazed with each vote that those 13 people aren't paying ANY attention.....Of course, how could you expect NASA to have any credibility (the same outfit that employs James Hansen....note the irony in that one!!)
Hmmmmm......H20 is typically between .3-3% of our atmosphere, and makes CLOUDS which both cool and trap heat....while C02 is .038%....".... Since water vapor is the most important heat-trapping greenhouse gas in our atmosphere, some climate forecasts may be overestimating future temperature increases...."
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/...5humidity.html
Sorry...didn't mean to change the subject. We use SF6 here as an insulating gas for switches and spark gaps, among other things. So far no penguins have perished.
(I inhale virtual SF6 online to lower my voice. It makes me sound sexier on AOL....I do it here sometimes when I need to sound more authoritative.)
Which do which? If you will excuse the poor grammar. Tis a serious question; I thought low level caused cooling and high, maybe very high could cause heating. However, recently I read something which suggested high level causes cooling. So am I back asswards?
Cirrus clouds, which form between 30,000-60,000ft can both heat and cool, depending on thickness, altitude, and ice crystal size. Its generally considered that they trap heat though, by reflecting IR that is coming back up from earth.
So, the general idea is that high altitude clouds trap heat, and low altitude clouds reflect. Problem is, we really don't understand enough to quantify what's going on, so general circulation models (GCM) are terrible at giving us a good view of climate influences.
CloudSat and CALIPSO are gathering data on cirrus clouds, and should be giving us some interesting stuff soon...since they've been up for a year now??
Ice crystal formation and clouds are a HUGE unknown in climate science, and that's one reason I have a hard time swallowing the CO2 argument all by itself.
Here's CloudSat's homepage....just one of many links on clouds..
http://cloudsat.atmos.colostate.edu/home
Thank you. So I am not entirely upside down; high heating, low cooling to a first approximation. So are aircraft contrails high clouds? They cause heating? When they are not being used for dispersing mind altering drugs
The 'huge unknown' bit I was more or less aware of. One article I read explained that clouds were left out of some of the models the AGW crowd use because they didn't understand what the clouds did so they ignored them.
Sulphur Hexafluoride.....Bad stuff
Dear climate change dudes,
SF6 is rated at about 22,000 times worse than C02 as a "greenhouse gas"
.http://www.earthfuture.com/stormyweather/greenhouse/
Could be true, but I'm always sceptical about those climate experts. They get bread on the table for "advising" politicians who are, frankly, completely out of their depth on any issues of a technical nature. The politicians, poor dears that they are, probably studied law at university and have no idea at all of the science. A lucky few may actually be able to change a light bulb.
They easily fall victim to the "experts". Not entirely surprising given that shed-loads of money come the "experts" way to report some crisis that only the politicians can legislate against, and incidentally, about which they have zero understanding ,and then attempt to take the credit for . It is a strange kind of symbiotic circle. The more jaundiced might call it (hmm) "playing" with each other.
OK, the rant ends here. How about science?
Atmospheric CO2 concentration about 350 parts per million
Atmospheric SF6 concentration less than 0.1 parts per billion ( could well be a lot less , but I can't measure below that level myself).
If my calculator is working, that suggests that there is a worst case of SF6 molecules being out-numbered by a factor of at least 3.5 million by CO2 molecules in the existing atmosphere. Even if the SF6/CO2 "badness ratio" of 22,000, SF6 is a pigmy.
Then there is the problem of H2O ( bad stuff} ...cows breaking wind.. pine trees giving off methane and all the rest.
You have to have a good laugh...
Best wishes
Martin
I thought it was terpenes.
Contrails, so far as I've heard, tend to cool...which could offset some of the heating effect of the net exhaust components. The major exception being the jets used by AlGore, since they have Zero net effect on climage because he pays himself with carbon credits.Thank you. So I am not entirely upside down; high heating, low cooling to a first approximation. So are aircraft contrails high clouds? They cause heating? When they are not being used for dispersing mind altering drugs
The 'huge unknown' bit I was more or less aware of. One article I read explained that clouds were left out of some of the models the AGW crowd use because they didn't understand what the clouds did so they ignored them.
Odd, isn't it, that we don't hear much from the AGW crowd about the effects of depositing the exhaust gasses WAY up in the atmosphere??? Of course we won't hear much from 'em, because THEY like to enjoy the comfort, convenience, and speed of jet travel.
Comfort, convenience and speed have nothing to do with it. They are making a gallant sacrifice for the sake of the planet. You state: "(Jet exhaust} contrails...tend to cool."
Which makes me feel very virtuous about an upcoming trip to Budapest.
Dear Geof,
You are almost certainly right. Alas, it almost certainly won't be the last time I parade my stupidity in public.
Anyway, I had a closer inspection of the web link in post #47.
It says the atmospheric concentration of SF6 is about 5 parts per trillion, that it is growing at about 6% per year, and that it is 22,000 times worse than CO2 as a greenhouse gas.
I had assumed that the background level of SF6 was about 20 times greater.
If you believe their figures, it's going to quite some time for SF6 to make any difference to global warming. It's not a pigmy....... it a pigmy of a pigmy of a pigmy....(etc).
Ah, then there's that problem with H2O.
Best wishes
Martin
We probably ought to be careful about pointing out the inconvenient facts about water vapor.
Why? Because next the environ mentalists will be wanting to tax and regulate your water usage!
You could probably enslave people just as well by throttling their water as you could by throttling their energy. Think about it. Oh, wait, they're already busy on that front!
--97T--
I had a closer look at that link too...and I'm not terribly impressed. One can be easily mislead by the numbers....or lack of...
Notice that there is NO value for radiative forcing for water, which makes up (typically) between .3 to 3% of our atmosphere. There's a radiative value for something that constitutes POINT ZERO THREE EIGHT PERCENT (that's .038% ), but not for something that's an order of magnitude or 2 more???
The reason is simple, of course, it is because we don't know. We do know it is a lot, but it varies, it varies a LOT, and we don't know the net sign. Does that mean we can leave it out of the equation. NOOOOOOOOO!!!!
That is one of the many reasons that the gcm's don't work.
The residence time of H2O is estimated to be around 43 days....and to use IPCC tolerances, make that +/- 21 days. (my value)
Oh dear, you will never make a good scientist. Of course you leave it out; how are you going to make the model fit your preconceived notions if you don't?
An open mind is a virtue...so long as all the common sense has not leaked out.
Did you just call him Dear?
Hehe.
--97T--
It's ok...we're on pretty good terms at the moment..
TONIGHT ON CNN'S Headline News!!
http://www.glennbeck.com/tv/climate/...rmingsppt1.pdf
No, lower case 'd'.
An open mind is a virtue...so long as all the common sense has not leaked out.
For those of you who voted for CO2, you're in disagreement with even the IPCC. Really. Honest. That's where I got the quote!!"....Water vapour is the most important greenhouse gas, and carbon dioxide (CO2) is the second-most important one. Methane, nitrous oxide, ozone and several other gases present in the atmosphere in small amounts also contribute to the greenhouse effect...."
The IPCC says that H2O is #1. Numero Uno. El Primero. Ichiban.
So there ya have it. The IPCC says it's water vapor, the AGW deniers say it's water vapor. Even Eric Cartman says it's water vapor.
http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_FAQs.pdf
Dear fizzissist,
Presumably boiling water for a cup of coffee is now regarded as a greater global crime that releasing the carbon dioxide in my cans of lager......?
The IPCC is suggesting that the responsible global citizen should go all out to hoard the beer?
Yikes!
Best wishes
Martin
