Premise

This background on the science and politics of global warming is meant for journalists, teachers and the curious.  It is written to be understood by those with only a casual acquaintance with science, but sufficient to understand the principles used and math involved, that taught in high school.

Taken alone, capturing and treating carbon as garbage is an expensive economy-ruining undertaking seemingly sought for the United States by the international forces that could not defeat us on the battlefield, drawing board or assembly line.  They have collected the downtrodden, guilt-ridden and manic "greens" into a powerful political force that has been more effective than any historic threat to the United States. SCAF changes the economics.  This paper was written before SCAF was developed and was a primary inspiration for it.

The Science Of Global Warming 
©2006 by Adrian Vance

          We are told by government scientists that the burning of fossil fuels is causing the planet to warm such that we are going to be in a global steam bath with those on the coasts up to their belly buttons in seawater.  All polar ice will melt; all polar bears and penguins will die.  We are also told, “The debate is over," and “All scientists agree on anthropogenic global warming,” but a Google search shows thousands of PhD scientist deniers making good cases with substantial arguments.

        Anthropogenic or “man caused global warming” is now claimed by the same people who in the 70’s told us we were bringing on an ice age with smokestacks and nuclear weapons.  And, they had 40 years of data to prove it!  Now with extended graphs, including the 1930 to 1970 data as part of a “hockey stick,” is said to prove Earth is warming!  Is it, “Liars figure” or “Figures lie?” What is the truth?  What is the science of global warming? 

        In the 70's there was talk of building 1,000 nuclear power plants.  The panic pushers were in high anxiety over the amount of water vapor produced by cooling towers because water vapor is the greatest greenhouse gas, responsible for 99.875% of all the sun’s heat energy absorbed by air. But, water vapor has a 3% limit in air as our atmosphere functions as a closed system, one in a sealed flask, obeying the equilibrium laws of the great early 20th century French chemist Henri Louis Le Chatelier.  Today water vapor is never mentioned by the anthropogenic global warming people unless it is subservient to carbon dioxide, per James Hansen's "forcings" wherein water will not evaporate unless CO2 warms air first!  This is patently ridiculous and only worthy of the pre 1832 “Vitalism” theory.

        Symbolically the Le Chatelier Principle applied to atmospheric gases can be expressed by:

[N2] x [O2] x [H2O] x [CO2] = K

        If one of the gases is increased something must adjust such that K remains constant.  Where water is a liquid at the ambient temperature it will precipitate to a liquid to keep pressure constant. The liquid volume of water is 1/1244^th of what it is as a gas.  This reduction can account for very large pressure changes in air and is the mechanism of rain formation as the system attains equilibrium. This tells us gravity encloses our atmosphere as well as a sealed flask, once again making statistics part of physical science.

The Father of Climate Science 

It all began when John Tyndall (1820-1893), one of the great English physicists, did a study of the "radiative properties" of atmospheric gases in 1857.   He had observed air absorbed energy from sunlight, but how?  To do this work Tyndall created the ratio spectrophotometer to measure relative energy absorption of atmospheric gasses in infrared wave lengths between 1 and 16 microns, millionths of a meter.

          Tyndall found nitrogen and oxygen were transparent to heat waves or "IR," infrared radiation, absorbing nothing, but water vapor, the next most abundant gas in air, absorbed IR heat waves very well. 

          In the NASA "Earth Observatory" web "On the Shoulders of Giants – John Tyndall" (paragraph three, sentence two) we read: "He concluded that among the constituents of the atmosphere, water vapor is the strongest absorber of radiant heat and is therefore the most important gas in controlling Earth’s surface temperature."   

A vapor is a gas that is normally a liquid at its temperature.  Water is liquid at any temperature less than 100 Celsius degrees at one atmosphere, but random motions carom a few molecules to  have enough kinetic energy to leave the liquid and be a gas.  Once in that system they can persist until the pressure increases or temperature falls enough to put them within bonding distance.  When vapors are subjected to pressure stress they revert to a liquid state if the temperature is under their boiling point.

 At temperatures less than 100 degrees Celsius water vapor is forced out of the air by pressure; reducing volume or adding a gas with a lower boiling point than water.  This can be seen as aircraft temporarily compress air in passing, leaving a trail of condensed water or if a gas cylinder is discharged quickly or from an explosion shock wave.  Water or ice form depending on the rate of pressure change and the ambient temperature.

At one atmosphere ambient temperature has to be over 100 Celsius degrees for water to be a true gas.  Water vapor is limited to 3% by the gas/vapor equilibrium at 20 Celsius degrees and a normal pressure of one atmosphere.  Water vapor in amounts greater than 3% precipitates to form liquid clouds, fog, mist or rain.  If we add more of a true gas to saturated air we will force water vapor to come out of the air.  Only a small fraction of water molecules have enough energy to escape  liquid water and become vapor below 100 degrees Celsius. In a cubic foot of air the amount is 18 drops of water, a little more than one teaspoon.

        Our atmosphere appears to be open to space, but statistically is a bottle thanks to gravity.  A few air molecules escape, but the great majority is as well held as if Earth were in a sealed flask. That our atmosphere is a closed system is very important.  Were that not the case clouds would not form and rain would not fall.  The “bottle” would enlarge to accommodate the gas and maintain pressure per the Le Chatlier equation.

The boiling point of water is about 300 Celsius degrees up the scale from those of nitrogen at -196 degrees Celsius or oxygen at -183!  Nitrogen and oxygen have much greater vapor pressure, or tendency to be gasses, than water.  Rain, dew, mist, clouds, sweat and frost are all products of the adjustment in the gas equilibrium between nitrogen, oxygen and water vapor which are 99% of air.  Of the six or seven "trace gases" making one percent of the air, carbon dioxide is the largest of them, but has only 0.038% and is insignificant even within the insignificance of trace gases not having more than five percent of their one percent.  Five percent is the statistical threshold of “significance.”  If the atmosphere were to be represented by the length of a meter stick, CO2 would be less than 1/2 millimeter long, not the width of pencil line.  To think this could control the atmosphere is ridiculous.

          Tyndall worked with saturated air containing 3% water vapor. It varies around the world between one and three percent, but for all areas over the seas, forests and jungles it is 3%.  In the drier areas of Earth water vapor approaches zero, but even then has 26 times as many molecules as carbon dioxide.  These areas are relatively small and insignificant.  Nonetheless, John Tyndall worked with carbon dioxide and he found it also absorbs IR, but only one-fourth as well as water vapor when the energy/wavelength relationship is incorporated in the analysis.

        In Tyndall’s time carbon dioxide was present to 280 parts/million or 0.28% and where carbon dioxide molecules are 2.44 times as heavy as water molecules, all factors considered, water vapor is 776 times as significant in absorbing IR as carbon dioxide for most of the planet, all of that over water and much of the land.  Water vapor is responsible for up to 99.875% of all IR captured, but water vapor is of no interest to governments because they cannot control it or tax it. 

Meanwhile In Sweden 

          Late in the 19^th century Svante Arrhenius, (1859-1927) the greatest Swedish chemist of all time, investigated IR capture seeking a way to warm Sweden.  It is a cold, dark country much of the time, but fossil evidence had shown that bananas grew there as recently as 6,000 BC.   

          Arrhenius studied the work of Tyndall as well as doing theoretical and computing work on his own and then abandoned the idea.  Arrhenius was not strong in the lab so he depended on the work of others, but he was a very good mathematician and realized carbon dioxide in the air was too poor an absorber of heat waves for his purpose.  All of this is memorialized on the NASA website “On the Shoulders of Giants” under “Arrhenius.”  The final paper in which Arrehenius abandons his coal burning plan to turn Sweden into a banana republic was published in a German physics journal and a translation was on the NASA website until 2007 when it was removed.

 The literature reveals that early atmospheric scientists ignored water vapor because it was variable!  This was an excuse because it was troublesome in equipment, forming mists and screwing up equations.  It was also before the drawing of statistical envelopes.  We now write maximum and minimum equations, draw two curves and accept actuality is somewhere between the two curves, in the space or "envelope" between them, but this was not acceptable to early climate scientists.  They wanted everything nailed down to a single curve and that meant eliminating the likes of water vapor while making all their work nonsense in terms of the real world.  Scientists have learned to accept “perhaps” with difficulty.

Over 90% of Earth, the oceans and biome, 3% of the air is water vapor. A molar volume of air, 22.4 liters, has a mass of 29.85 grams.  ( A molar volume is that of the gas in a molecular weight in atomic weight units  converted to grams.  It is the same for all gases.  A “mole” of hydrogen would have the mass of 2 grams where a mole of oxygen would be 32 grams, but both would have the same volume, 22.4 liters.)

With 3% of air water vapor it has 0.896 grams per 22.4 liters and carbon dioxide with 0.038% has 0.0113 grams.  A mole of water vapor has 18 grams, but a mole of CO2 is 44 grams.  So we have 0.049 moles of water in the air and only 0.000257 moles of CO2.  There are 193 times as many water molecules in air as there are CO2 molecules.

            How well do water vapor and carbon dioxide absorb heat energy from the sun?  This official chart from the American Meteorological Society shows that water vapor absorbs 3.36 times as well as CO2 between 1 and 15 micron wavelengths  ( micron = millionth of a meter) in terms of areas under the curves and where shorter length waves carry more energy by: E = (h x c)/w where “E” is energy, “h” is Plancks constant, "c" is the speed of light and “w” is wavelength the water vapor absorbs more in the shorter wavelength, higher energy parts of the absorption spectrum. 

Energy Analysis of the Absorption Spectra 

          Wave energy, here infrared or “IR,” is directly proportional to the areas under the curves and inversely proportional to the wavelengths.  The shorter waves have more energy by: 

E = (h X c)/w

        Where E is the energy, h is Planck’s Constant, c is the speed of light and w is wavelength.  Where one constant times another is a constant the concept of increasing wavelength meaning reduced energy is easily seen.  For example, this says that a single wave, or “quanta” of 1 micron will have 16 times the energy of a 16 micron wave.  A 3 micron wave has twice as much energy as a 6 micron and so on. 

CO2 has a much higher proportion of its absorption in the long wave, low energy portion of the curve than water vapor.  And, water vapor has a much greater energy absorption area under the shorter wavelength areas particularly between 1 and 2.5 microns.

          When the areas and energies are accounted for and summed we see that water vapor, molecule for molecule, absorbs eight times (7.96) as much energy in the 1 to 16 micrometer band as does carbon dioxide.   

      

          Carbon dioxide, CO2, is now 380 parts/million, 0.00038 or 0.038%. And, carbon dioxide has a molecular weight of 44 g/mole where water vapor is only 18 g/mole.  This is the case over 90% of Earth, the seas, forests, jungles, grasslands and farmlands.

                [Maximum] (44g/mole/18g/mole) X (0.03/0.00038) = 193

          This is important as absorption is also directly proportional to the number of molecules. And, the overall effect is a product of the relative absorption and the ratio of concentrations.  Thus:  

8 X 193 = 1544

          Water vapor is between 1544 times more significant in "global warming" than carbon dioxide, thus responsible for 99.93% of all atmospheric heating, but it is never mentioned in any article, textbook or film produced by major media, government, Al Gore or a federal grant supported scientist for the simple reason that water vapor is ubiquitous and cannot be controlled or taxed.

Significance

Omitting physical entities like water vapor in a system under study is not good science, but has been done consistently in atmospheric physics for 100 years because water caused problems in the instruments.  It is omitted now by promoters of the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis for a very different reason.  The heat absorbing effect of water vapor makes carbon dioxide’s totally insignificant.

One rationale that has been published was that anything having a concentration less than five percent was statistically insignificant. Water vapor is only three percent of air, but responsbile for 99.9% of the heat absorbing effect.  Why is carbon dioxide held significant when it does not have even 1/100th the amount and less effect?  The reason clearly is that carbon, which is common to all fuels, can be taxed to the benefit of government paid and grant-supported scientists. 

The Forcing Concept 

        When knowledgeable people asked about water vapor James Hansen quickly responded with his "forcing" concept.  This is a throwback to Vitalism or a new Divine Theory of Chemistry because it stipulates water cannot evaporate until CO2 gives permission or drives it into the air.  This is nonsense as water evaporates very well by itself.  If you input the string "global warming water vapor" to Google you will get 100,000 websites explaining this phenomenon, but they are ignored by the elected class and their scientists.  We believe they are ignored because taxing and regulating carbon is the greatest opportunity the elected class has had for more power since the Magna Carta.    

              

        Adding carbon dioxide forces water out of the atmosphere because it is a true gas at normal temperatures and boils at -78 Celsius degrees.  Water is a vapor prone to precipitate as it boils at 100 Celsius degrees, 178 degrees up the scale from CO2!  

If air is saturated water vapor precipitates to liquid if pressure rises or temperature drops.  If it hits smoke or dust particles on which it may accrete or if a shock wave from a bullet, explosion, high velocity aircraft, propeller or rocket passes through it creating a pressure wave it precipitates.  Shock waves compress vapor and it changes state to liquid from gas in response to the stress, per Le Chatlier. Such precipitations can be seen curling from spinning propellers, jet aircraft wingtips and entire aircraft making vapor trails in the upper atmosphere.

          Increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere forces water out of the air and reduces atmospheric heating which explains the temperature decline seen immediately after the increases in industrial activity between 1930 and 1970. This is an ironic reversal on that predicted by the anthropogenic global-warming gang.  Much cooling has been due to light filtering by particle matter from fires, smokestacks, battlefields, bombed locations and volcanoes, but the increased concentration of carbon dioxide with consequent decreased concentration of water vapor cannot be discounted.  In the period between 1930 and 1970 there was a decline in the mean temperature of our atmosphere with considerable talk of a coming ice age and again carbon was blamed because it could be taxed.       

The Real Forcing Concept 

          James Hansen's carbon dioxide “forcing” concept is nonsense as water evaporates with or without CO2  present.  There is an equilibrium between the true gases in the atmosphere and water vapor.  The present mix allows up to 3% water vapor in 20 Celsius degree air in a relationship not fully understood, but in the manner of all science we do not have to understand it to exploit it.  No one has ever seen an electron, or ever will, but it has given us modern world. Philosophically, electrons are matters of faith.

          The volume of our atmosphere is 19 million cubic miles of gas such that the pressure is almost 15 pounds per square inch at the surface, but approaches zero at an altitude of 20 miles.  Half of all the gas is below two miles and most of the infrared, IR, absorption takes place in the very lowest levels where water vapor exists to the greatest degree.  

When water vapor emerged as a major player in global warming the anthropogenic, man- blaming, people tried to say it was not involved because warming happened in the upper altitudes where IR is reflected back to Earth but that was shown to be wrong.  Then, it was modified to be “re-emission,” but in the three planes of the Cartesian axis placing objects in space, in terms of degrees, IR captured from Earth has (360)^3 or 46,656,000 directions to take on re-emission and only those pointing down at 45 degrees in one of three planes, (45)^3 or 91,125 would return it to Earth.  Thus the chance of “reflection” is 91,125/46,656,000 or one of 512 or 0.19% which makes the mechanism highly unlikely and certainly not a "forcer."

 That idea quickly faded in spite of statements in defense claiming the heat was allowed to escape at night.  These "scientists" had to be reminded molecules don’t sleep and absorb IR with the lights on or off.  They had previously insisted high energy light wave absorption and re-admission of IR caused the heating, but further work showed 99% of the absorption is happening in the bottom 30 feet of the atmosphere! 

Oops!

In a final, embarrassing irony for the panic promoters it can be said that where nitrogen, oxygen, water vapor and carbon dioxide achieve their physical equilibrium with 78%, 19%, 3% and 0.038% respectively that more carbon dioxide causes water to precipitate and reduces atmospheric heating by a factor of four for every water molecule lost. On a molecule by molecule basis water vapor is eight times the absorber as carbon dioxide.  This agrees well with the 1930 to 1970 temperature drop.  The temperature increase since then must be due to something else. 

Could It Be The Sun? 

          Earth’s orbit is slightly eccentric and precesses, a motion where an oblate orbit appears to "walk" around the center in each cycle.   And, there is a regular change in the solar output.  Astronomers are now saying that Mars, the moons of Jupiter and Neptune, as well planetoid Pluto, are warming by amounts consistent with our increase.  Where there are no evil corporations or SUV's on these other planets it again seems increasing CO2 has nothing to do with it.
 

 

        This chart reads right to left, past to present.  It appears we are at or near high points for four of the five orbital, solar and geologic cycles. The next trend will be down in the direction of an ice age!  Note that Precession is at a minor peak and about to turn down.  Obliquity has already turned town in terms of taking us closer to the sun, meaning we are moving away.

Eccentricity is at a low point but not turning up, but if it follows the pattern seen in two previous cycles will turn up soon. See the two "M" patterns between 100 and 400 years, 500 and 750 years as well as the "w" patterns between 300 and 500, 700 and 900.  If this pattern continues the next turn is up.  Solar input is headed down and the net indicator, "Stages of Glaciation," has peaked and will fall.

Statistical Significance 

          In the July 27, 2006 hearing of the House Global Climate Change Subcommittee six expert witnesses stated that of the 186 gigatons of carbon dioxide produced annually by Earth man makes six gigatons.  Committee members did not realize the insignificance of man's contribution of only 3.22% and that cutting the United State 20% contribution by 50% would only take 0.4% from the total, but they did understand the global warming movement included 44 scientists taking turns co-authoring and peer reviewing papers from their friends!  Once again Congress hired foxes to guard hen houses.  These same 44 taxpayer-paid scientists are the ones sounding the carbon dioxide alarm over the last 20 years and all of them work for or are associated with the NASA Goddard Space Institute on the campus of Columbia University the academic bastion of international socialism.

          The dominance of water vapor in "global warming" and the real effect of adding carbon dioxide is bad news for the bureau-building, tax-seeking socialists and panic-pushing Marxist international environmentalists. Water vapor cannot be taxed, regulated, and treatied for or controlled.  Water covers 70% of the planet and is not under political control.  When facts are inconvenient the elected class ignores them. 

          And, where this evidence is clearly shown on a NASA website but is never quoted or cited it documents, more “DC arrogance.”  They think we will not act or are stupid.  Responsible professionals were guided to "politically correct" positions that jeopardize reputations when their cavalier ways with science and truth are known.  California’s Governor Arnold Schwartzeneger signed a restrictive bill in 2007.  It keeps many companies out of California and will be interesting to see where this goes in the state’s ongoing budget crises.

          Blaming carbon dioxide brings new taxes, regulations, bureaus, trips, treaties, land and resource grabbing, demonizing big business and “the evil corporations."  So the elected class and the ever complicitous media take the hypothesis that serves their purpose.  How much tax and how much power? 

          We have about 60 million vehicles on the road in America. 40 million are cars and 20 million are trucks. The fuel mileage is about 15 miles per gallon for cars and ten for trucks. The average vehicle is driven about 15,000 miles per year. Cars use 1,000 gallons of fuel per year.  Trucks use 1,500. Thus, the total amount of fuel used in the US is about 70 to 100 billion gallons per year.  If the socialist Democrats can get another dollar of tax on every gallon that is $100 billion dollars they can spend buying votes and making Americans more dependent on them. But, that is only the beginning. 

          If the people that hate us could get us to sign the Kyoto treaty: We would abide by it; they would not.  As we have seen many times to communists a treaty is paper with which they wipe, wad and toss.

        China, India and all of Africa are excused from Kyoto so they can “catch up.”  If not putting more CO2 in the atmosphere is a good idea why this?  The agreement during the term of the Clinton/Gore administration called for a 40% pullback from what were using in 1999 and the U.S. Senate rejected it 95 to 0.  It would have be a more than a 50% cut from what we use now. 

The Clinton/Gore plan was to pile taxes on gasoline until use fell back to these levels. What would it take?  Five dollars a gallon, six or seven?  They would have gone there, and beyond.   In Europe gasoline approaches ten dollars per gallon.  Socialist countries in Europe are already taxing gasoline heavily to the great admiration of our “progressives.” 

Half A Loaf 

          With half the energy America can produce half the goods, selling at twice the price while employing half the people. What happens to the other half?   A 50% decline would be twice as bad as The Great Depression when the economy fell 25%.  It would be a victory for international socialism over capitalism not because socialism did better, but because capitalism did worse.  The only way they ever win is by bringing us down to their level.   This is why ideas like SCAF will save America and the world in terms of fresh water.  See http://www.geocities.com/profadrian/SCAF.html

     At this time 70% of our fresh water is used in agriculture.  Green plants have virtually cleaned the atmosphere of carbon dioxide.   The entire history of man as a species has taken place in an era when plants have been starved for a critical component of their physiology, carbon.  Now we understand it  and can capitalize on it while repairing one of nature's errors, the elimination of carbon from the atmosphere.  The great irony is that carbon sequestration for global warming is doing a right thing for a wrong reason, but for man.

Adrian Vance

 

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