Are the global warning experts ready to fight water vapor?

Question

Water vapor constitutes Earth's most significant greenhouse gas, accounting for about 95% of Earth's greenhouse effect. Are the global warning experts ready to fight water vapor? I am sure that the average politician will sign on with the doom-sayers just to prove they care.

No more sweating, you better lose those extra pounds like you’re at Dr. Phil’s house - remember no sweating though.

Sweating equals warm and that is bad. Not sweating equals cool or cold and is very good. This is just regular ol’ global warming science without the misleading charts and meaningless complicated statistics.

Bathroom visits may be limited to 1 free visit every other day. Other visits will cost you a kidney. The extras will provide a great tax revenue for the government to set up even more pointless programs, so they can tax us even more. They pay for themselves, don’t they?

It is an obvious sign to us sceptics that global warning is kicking in when you tax us so urgently.

Answer 1

Water vapour may be the strongest greenhouse gas but it is not the only one.  CO2 , Methane, NOx and many others are all important too.  Increasing any one of them will increase the greenhouse effect.  If water vapour were increasing we would no doubt expect to see stronger warming than that related to CO2.  However water vapour is not increasing where as CO2 and methane are.

Answer 2

I always thought the constituents of GW could be more creative.They kept posting the same mundane rhetoric to back their claims.They seem to leave out key links that correspond to nature,but only to promote man made correlations.Yet we have to take their demise gracefully, I just try to be patient.

Answer 3

sounds like more rain to me

Answer 4

Water vapor acts as a function of temperature, so it can't possibly be responsible for the current warming. Temperatures have to rise before water vapor can rise, otherwise it will precipitate out. So we say that water vapor acts as a positive feedback mechanism, rather than a forcing.

Which isn't to say water vapor isn't an important greenhouse gas, it is. In fact it makes up 36-66% of the overall greenhouse effect (not 95%-that's the ratio of water vapor to other greenhouse gases, not the fraction of the greenhouse effect it comprises).

Answer 5

The big companies who extract and sell oil, coal and natural gas have an obvious interest in fooling the public about the reality of CO2 and climate change.  

So do most of the big electric utility companies that get most of their energy from burning coal.  So do most American automakers, who earn most of their profits from making gas-guzzling SUVs, Hummers and other big cars whose consumption of gasoline makes the climate problem worse.

But don't get fooled by the corporate PR.

Water vapor is indeed the "most important" greenhouse gas - but its level in the atmosphere adjusts automatically to the climate.  

Which makes it kind of irrelevant when we're talking about climate changes.

Basically, the hotter the atmosphere and the ocean get, the more water evaporates from the oceans.  It goes up into the atmosphere and acts as a "greenhouse gas," reducing the intensity of the heat waves from the earth that can escape into outer space.  

This increases the "greenhouse effect" and heats up the planet, basically.  But remember - the water vapor concentrations increase in the first place BECAUSE of the clmate getting warmer.  There is so much ocean water in the world that the main factor affecting how much of it will evaporate is the average temperature of air and ocean.

The concern about other "greenhouse gases" such as carbon dioxide and methane, on the other hand, is that their concentration in the air is NOT automatically tied to the average temperature.  

Instead, the concentrations of CO2 and methane etc. are mostly determined by human activity.  By digging up coal, oil and natural gas and burning them, human beings are increasing the CO2 levels in the air.

By growing more rice, and by raising more sheep and cattle, human beings also are increasing the atmospheric concentrations of methane, another very important greenhouse gas.

And we're doing other things to affect other "greenhouse" gases as well -- producing certain kinds of industrial pollution that adds to the warming effect already created by CO2 and methane.

So what?  

Well, these "anthropogenic" or human-caused changes in greenhouse gas concentrations have a little effect on the climate, cause it to get a little warmer.  

And then as the climate warms up a little because of rising CO2 and methane concentrations, this automatically causes more water to evaporate from the oceans, which then accelerates the "greenhouse warming" that's already underway.

So the story about water vapor as the "main" greenhouse gas is that it's not the main INDEPENDENT greenhouse gas.  It's a "dependent" variable.  It basically amplifies the effect of greenhouse warming caused by other gases.

When humans change such "independent" variables as CO2 levels and methane levels, the dependent variable of water vapor goes up as well -- so that the effects of raising CO2 levels alone are amplified.

That's why many climate scientists are worried as the dickens about rising CO2 and methane levels and not so concerned about concentrations of water vapor.  It's the CO2 and methane levels that make for drastic change, they think.

For more on this subject, see "RealClimate.org" on the World wide Web, to see how professional climate scientists look at the question of H2O versus CO2 and methane.

See also Robert Henson, National Center on Atmospheric Research, "The Rough Guide to Climate Change."

See also William K. Stevens, "The Change in the Weather," although the Stevens book is a little old by now.

The Australian science writer Tim Flannery makes some questionable statements in his book "The Weather Makers."  

But to his credit, Flannery identifies another risk of rising CO2 levels -- the risk that more CO2 in the air, by increasing the amount of dissolved CO2 in the oceans, will gradually cause the fomration of more CARBONIC ACID in the oceans.

Carbonic acid really is just what you get when you mix CO2 with water.  And the risk that Flannery points out in "The Weather Makers" is that rising CO2 levels -- regardless of their effect on how warm it is -- will gradually make ocean water more acidic.  

This could have a terrible effect on coral reefs and other kinds of oceanic species that have hard calcium shells -- clams and oysters, snails, etc. etc.

For readers who really want to get into the complicated technical stuff, Spencer Weart of the American Society for Physics has written a great overview of the various debates about what's changing the climate.  I

Spencer Weart's book is  called "The Discovery of Global Warming," and you can get it cheaply in paperback.  

Weart also has a web site on the same subject that's worth visiting.

Answer 6

You are incorrect.  Water vapor may make up approximately 95% of the greenhouse gases in volume, but not in warming power (not all gases are created equal).  Methane (CH4) is 23-times as powerful as CO2 on a molecule per molecule basis.

And water vapor isn't increasing like CO2, nor does it remain in the atmosphere 1/10th as long as CO2 remains.  Once CO2 is released, it remains there for a long time and there's an accumulated effect.  That's the concern.

Answer 7

Oh brother.  Like climatologists never thought of water vapor.  Brilliant question (not).

Answer 8

do you relise that water vapor is largely self regulated and that drinking water dose not make any water?

Answer 9

i don't know. they take things on their own time...and it's WATER VAPORR!