Beam me to Planet Gore !
Ping!
pong
The greenest thing you can do? Cultivate a garden. Green growing plants, particularly young plants, are a sink for carbon dioxide. The tiny fraction of our atmosphere that is composed of carbon dioxide, is greedily sucked up by these plants as they grow, mature, and begin to form fruit.
In past ages the ratio of carbon dioxide was MUCH higher in our atmosphere, which at one time was composed largely of methane, ammonia, water vapor and carbon dioxide. Methane and ammonia have virtually disappeared altogether, oxidized and reduced to more carbon dioxide, water vapor and free nitrogen gas. And the source of all this change? The release of free and highly reactive oxygen, one of the true pollutants of the atmosphere of primeval earth. It was released by the action of sunlight on certain microbes, that used the presence of carbon dioxide and water to form stored energy in the form of carbohydrates, and in the process, released free oxygen as a by-product. This was deadly to most other life forms of the time, other microbes that formed methane and lived in the absence of oxygen, in the dark. They were destroyed by the presence of oxygen, and retreated to places where little or no oxygen was in a free state. These life forms, anaerobic bacteria, still exist and are what break down the complex carbohydrates to methane and water, and they draw their energy from this activity.
But in the outside world, the excess oxygen was slowly but surely altering the very atmosphere, reducing the ammonia to free nitrogen, which is relatively inert, and also with an increasing proportion of oxygen. As the quantity of water vapor became so great, it formed oceans of liquid water. Liquid water has a pecularity, in that it is capable of transferring HUGE quantities of heat per unit of mass, and that in changing from solid (ice) to liquid, it takes a vastly greater amount of heat per unit of mass. But it is in changing water from a liquid to a gaseous form, that a truly STUPENDOUS amount of heat is absorbed to change one unit of mass of the liquid to an equal unit of mass (and much greater volume of space taken up) of water vapor.
Water vapor is from some twenty to over 100 times as potent a “greenhouse gas” as carbon dioxide could ever be. And it would be totally pointless to regulate water vapor.
Air Composition
The sea-level composition of air (in percent by volume at the temperature of 15ºC and the pressure of 101325 Pa) is given below.
Name-Symbol-Percent by Volume
Nitrogen-N2-78.084 %
Oxygen-O2-20.9476 %
Argon-Ar-0.934 %
Carbon
Dioxide-CO2-0.0384 %
Neon-Ne-0.001818 %
Methane-CH4-0.0002 %
Helium-He-0.000524 %
Krypton-Kr-0.000114 %
Hydrogen-H2-0.00005 %
Xenon-Xe-0.0000087 %
Water vapor is a highly variable component of the atmosphere, ranging from less than 1% to more than 4% of the volume of a given amount of air, and is expressed as “relative humidity”.
Source:
CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics
by David R. Lide, Editor-in-Chief
1997 Edition
Water vapor is from some twenty to over 100 times as potent a “greenhouse gas” as carbon dioxide could ever be. And it would be totally pointless to regulate water vapor.
Carbon Dioxide has about the same amount of “heat capture” from solar radiation per unit of mass, as water vapor. But water vapor has this really strange capability, which carbon dioxide does not have, of changing into a liquid (after it gives up its heat of vaporization), thus contibuting to the COOLING of the atmosphere, as this heat radiates AWAY from the atmosphere during nighttime hours. Carbon dioxide simply passes from the solid state (”dry ice”) to the gaseous state at conditions of very low temperature (-78.5°C), and does not exist in the liquid state at normal atmospheric pressure. Under great pressure, carbon dioxide will stay in a liquid state, until the pressure is released, but at best, it is either a laborator curiosity, or may be handled only under the greatest of safeguards against accidental release. It expends very rapidly, with an extreme cooling effect, as it spreads out an invisible cloud of carbon dioxide gas, which will extinguish a burning flame. Very useful for fire control.
The world is going to be depending on the combustion of carbon, or some form of hydrocarbon, for centuries to come. And with combustion of carbon, comes carbon dioxide. To proclaim carbon dioxide as a “pollutant” is to fly in the face of established science. Whoever is taking that position is either displaying willful ignorance, or knowingly propagating a falsehood. Carbon dioxide is so bound up in our very life processes, it cannot ever be disentangled. We are a carbon-based life form, for cat’s sake, and plants NEED carbon dioxide to even exist. Carbon dioxide is an essential part of the life cycle of all humanity, the entire animal kingdom, the entire plant kingdom and a great many inorganic reactions that take place in the earth’s crust, oceans, atmosphere, and the interior of the planet, and MUST be preserved at all costs.
I don’t worry about global warming/cooling for two reasons, the first being that I can’t do anything of consequence to affect either and second, the more important, is that the Creator has said that it will be man’s home forever.
(Psalm 37:11, 29 and Matt. 5:5)
So while some may see an expanding sun or giant asteroid destroying the earth in some distant future, I see a Creator that not only created the earth but values it and will see that it is not laid waste by any means.
(Rev. 11:18)
Fools.