Brian
Water vapour certainly acts like a powerful green house gas, but it also
condenses in contact with a cool sea surface just as fast as it
evaporates from a warm one. Shame that this seems to be harder for CO2
but maybe not quite impossible from a high structure at the south pole.
Stephen
Emeritus Professor of Engineering Design School of Engineering
University of Edinburgh Mayfield Road Edinburgh EH9 3JL Scotland
s.sal...@ed.ac.uk Tel +44 (0)131 650 5704 Cell 07795 203 195
WWW.see.ed.ac.uk/~shs
On 30/10/2013 11:12, Brian Cartwright wrote:
To Ron,
This thread is getting unwieldy but let me clarify what I was saying
on this point.
Warming deniers sometimes bring up the fact that water vapor is a more
significant greenhouse gas than CO2, because there is more of it -- up
to 50,000 ppm - while scientists have generally treated it as if it
moves in lockstep with CO2. But does it? Everyone's observed
evaporative cooling effects such as when hot ground breathes moisture
out after a shower. That is significant for large aridified areas of
the earth. But then that water vapor goes into the atmosphere; will it
then act as a greenhouse gas? That depends on whether it is in tiny
droplets of haze or if it is coalesced into denser clouds, then
precipitates, /resulting in more cooling. /What causes vapor to
coalesce? The nucleation happens around various materials, but many of
these nuclei turn out to be bacteria from forest leaves and other
vegetative sources, which can combine in the upper atmosphere with ice
crystals.
So please, everybody, leave room for biology to help solve climate
problems. It's a science too, you know.
Brian
On Tuesday, October 29, 2013 4:18:18 PM UTC-4, Ron wrote:
List and Brian:
I just noted a mis-statement. See below.
On Oct 29, 2013, at 1:28 PM, Ronal W. Larson
<rongre...@comcast.net <javascript:>> wrote:
Brian (cc list) This to respond to your three inserts in my
yesterday’s response to you
BC1: */But that's not very good. Warming-induced feedback loops
like methane deposits are already very scary. I don't say CO2
levels are irreversible; my point is about warming from all
causes, and you need methods of cooling that are much quicker
than 50 years. /*
*[RWL1: Brian’s “that” refers to my just previous statement
(see below) that we could drop to 350 ppm in 50 years. Brian is
NOT arguing for SRM here, although it may seem so. He is arguing
for increased latent heat transfer - an approach that seems
questionable at best - given the strong warming potential of
increased atmospheric carbon.*
RWL: The last word was supposed to be “moisture” - NOT
“carbon”. Apologies. I am too used to following “atmospheric”
with “carbon”.
Ron
<snip remainder>
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
Groups "geoengineering" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send
an email to geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to geoengineering@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
--
The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
Scotland, with registration number SC005336.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"geoengineering" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email
to geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to geoengineering@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
