What I am trying to accomplish with this series is to give people an alternative look at some of the issues around climate and energy production; to understand that what they read, hear or see in the traditional media sources is likely not the full story and is often wrong. Not every article or study I post on may be the full truth itself, but they contribute to a more complete picture of this complex issue. I will now indulge in the climate hysterics favorite tactic–it is very cool across most of the country later this week. That coolness means we are heading into a new ice age. See how easy that was!! So every time it is cooler than normal I want all of you to tell everyone you know that we must be heading for a new ice age.
This article comes from an organization called Science of Climate Change which aims to give some forum to climate scientists who aren’t in lockstep with the hysterics. These scientists have difficulty publishing and getting research funds due to an organized effort by the hysterics to blacklist them. In this article the authors describe an experiment with various “greenhouse” gases, gases that absorb and re-emit radiation from the Earth’s surface. As is widely accepted, water vapor is the most significant of these gases, both by volume and effect. The primary constituents of the atmosphere, oxygen and nitrogen, do not absorb this radiation. Carbon dioxide is villainized solely because it is a byproduct of fossil fuel combustion and certain ideologues wish to rid the Earth of fossil fuel use, impoverishing everyone in the process.
What the experiment demonstrates is that these supposed greenhouse gases have a cooling effect as well as a warming effect in certain circumstances. Water vapor in particular is so prevalent that it tends to mask the impact of the much smaller concentrations of CO2 and other villainized greenhouse gases. And increasing concentrations of water vapor in the air, which supposedly occurs with global warming, diminishes any effect of CO2, thus suggesting that CO2 isn’t a factor in any net warming. In addition, CO2’s action as a “greenhouse” gas diminishes, indeed disappears, above a certain concentration. This is consistent with other theories regarding the complex feedback processes occurring in our atmosphere and it’s interactions with solar radiation and radiation off the Earth’s surface.
This is a pretty complex article, but I encourage you to take the time to read it, as it describes critical physics that are the basis of the interaction of various gas components of the atmosphere and the air’s interaction with other parts of the total system–solar radiation and radiation off the Earth’s surface. (SCG Article)
