----- Original Message ----- From: "Rick Monteverde" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, November 22, 2007 3:52 AM Subject: RE: [Vo]:AGW
> Robin - > >>As the temperature rises, more water evaporates. >>This is a positive feedback loop. The effect of >>the CO2 is thus leveraged by water vapor. > > ..and then it rains. Big moderator to the loop. Of course it rains more Rick, but what matters for the global greenhouse effect of water vapor is _average_ humidity, which rises significantly with rising average temperature. If you are not convinced of this you could check average humidity vs latitute (to which temperature is strongly correlated), preferably in maritime areas where the liquid water supply is not limiting (which is the case of 70% of the globe). Now if you're worried that mitigating GHG emissions will precipitate the imminent ice age, look at the time scales. Whatever the model, you will find that man made global warming rate is at least 10 times faster (centuries at most for 5°C rise) than the periodic ice age cooling rate (several millenaries for 5°C drop). I grant you that full planetary models are complicated, but a simple model as described by Robin above is sufficient to get the big picture. Michel
