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That CAN'T be true! / Re: Why can't water vapour be the driver of today's climate change?

« on: 28/11/2021 18:59:01 »

The concern I see is that trusting on CO2 mitigation alone is likely to not have the compensating correction in the window of time that models predict critical events approaching 2050.  The proposed solutions being implemented currently CANNOT ever support the current energy demands let alone future demands.  Clean, sustainable combustion with adequate on-demand power is attainable including carbon, heat and water vapor mitigation, to a net neutral emissions model which is still being grossly overlooked. 

I'm delighted to welcome thoughtful comment!

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The Environment / Re: If the Earth is losing mass, is the atmosphere expanding?

« on: 26/10/2021 00:39:00 »

Anyway, back to atmospheric thickness, a fairly established and accepted fact is the temperature is rising.  The gas laws mean  either increaced pressure or increased volume or a bit of both, pressure in this case would be the gravitational attraction, so the atmosphere must be expanding . An increace in 2 degrees k would mean a significant variance in pressure and volume.

As I think about it more, I think the magnitude of temperature variation of the atmosphere by altitude is far more important than a few degrees K. Also, while, the greenhouse effect will lead to overall increased temperatures at low altitudes, at high altitudes the temperature can actually be slightly decreased.

us_atmosphere_temperature_vs_elevation.png (88.83 kB . 1125x1275 - viewed 3960 times)

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The Environment / Re: If the Earth is losing mass, is the atmosphere expanding?

« on: 25/10/2021 20:39:15 »

It will reach a steady state where the average power in is the same as the average power out, but there will have been a net increase in the Earth's energy to make it hotter.

An increase in thermal energy, yes. That doesn't mean that there was necessarily ever more incoming than outgoing. That nice picture doesn't show the magnitude of the arrow coming from below as the Earth generates its own heat through nuclear decay, tides, and other sources other than the solar radiation depicted in that nice picture.

So no:

And there's only one place that energy came from.

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The Environment / Re: If the Earth is losing mass, is the atmosphere expanding?

« on: 24/10/2021 15:56:14 »

much of the solar radiation is returned to space, hence why all the furore over a slight increace in co2, which is a tiny proportion of the atmosphere.

For the Earth to remain at thermal equilibrium the amount of energy radiated to space must equal the amount of energy that comes in (mostly from the sun, but there is also some geothermal energy too). If the amount of energy that is radiating out is less than the amount coming in, the average temperature on earth will increase until the the balance is re-established (hotter objects radiate more). So any change in how effectively the atmosphere allows heat out (no matter how small) will also result in a change in the average temperature on earth. It turns out that even very small changes in average temperature have significant changes on climate. Hence the furor.

water also has "greenhouse" properties and is there in significant quantities.

Yes. But there hasn't been a major change in the amount of water available to the atmosphere recently (other than driven by climate*). We have increased the amount of available carbon dioxide by more than 35% in the last 100 years (and methane by 100%)

*As the temperatures increase, more water vapor gets into the atmosphere, increasing the greenhouse effect of the atmosphere, but there are also complications with cloud cover, snow/ice distribution, and heat distribution... so unlike co2, where it's a simple more co2 means stronger greenhouse effect and more warming, with water, there is no simple relationship.