Posted on 12/22/2002 7:36:29 AM PST by freeforall
Uhmmm. Water vapor, which is by far the most prevalent of the "greenhouse gases," is released in copious quantities from the nuclear power plants that have cooling towers.
On a clear day, Three Mile Island, near Harrisburg, PA, releases a cloud of water vapor that can be seen from the air as soon as the plane takes off from New York City.
As for the seals and polar bears, I feel bad for them, but that's the way the cookie crumbles.
The temperature outside my house is 8 degrees warmer than it was 6 hours ago. From detailed meausrements of the rate of warming, I predict that if this trend continues, I will be dead within a week.
Again!
Now THAT is an excellent question.
I was at my parents house watching TV not too long ago and they had one of the "in search of" (the one hosted by spock, you remember?) episodes on some satellite channel.
Commander Spock was talking ominously about how we were all doomed to die in another "ice age" that would certainly overtake and destroy us, just like the dinosaurs.. Oh my.. OH MY!
I couldn't stop laughing.. I snickered all the way through it, especially when he said "scientists predict"
LOL!
Prediction: It will continue to be cold in the winter in the Arctic and there will be ice all the way from Barrow to West Spitsbergen in season.
What do they bite on?
I was actually taught this in my Enviromental Science class in college in 1979. It was taught as a fact, just like the sky is blue. We were supposed to be having mass shortages by the early nineties and it would all be gone by 2000.
Water vapor has a half-life of nine days before it precipitates, carbon dioxide a century. To get the same shift in global climate you'd have to evaporate H2O at 400,000 times you release CO2. I do not know what the net impact of H2O vs. CO2 is. (How many degrees increase in surface temprature for a given increase in a particular greenhouse gas?) Certainly clouds (that condensate again) scatter sunlight back into space, cooling the earth. CO2 can't. The major role of water vapor in the "global warming" debate is that the hydrostatic equilibrium can be shifted by increasing CO2, not that we could ever dump enough H2O into the atmosphere to make a difference. The way greenhouse gases work is that the surface of the earth converts visible light to heat and hence to infrared radiation. (All the wavelengths of sunlight that can be absorbed by the atmosphere are absorbed in the thermosphere, a 1000 miles above the surface and far too well insultated from the surface to much influence the temprature here.) The infrared radiation is absorbed by the greenhouse gases and which are warmed and act to re-warm the surface, shifting the thermal equilbrium point higher. That's why its cooler on top of a mountain, even though the sun is brighter. The air up there isn't warmed by the earth quit as well.
This is like when that guy made the Statue of Liberty disappear, right? I don't think those nancyboys in Vegas with the tigers are even going to be around in 50 years. (Their makeup and codpieces will be, though.)
So who's going to perform the trick, and will it be pay-per-view? Hope the weather's good so the satellites can cover the trick.
You mean, no more ice fishing?
What do they bite on?
Scotch.
Interesting.
Where's your data for this?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.