Climate Letter #1844

Some readers may notice the appearance of a new policy template in the upper right corner. It represents my feeling that the current practice of this science is not fully in tune with the workings of nature, or what we have to learn from proper observations of nature. The current science of climate change is indeed focused on the reality of the greenhouse effect, and the dangers that go with it, which is perfectly fine, except that it does not go deeply enough in its examination of the effect. Today’s science is fixated on one class of producers of the effect, featuring a selected list of gases. Those which are selected are all of one type, beginning with radiation forcing properties that are measurable in terms of watts per square meter. Next, they all tend to be “well-mixed,” meaning evenly distributed throughout the entire atmosphere, or very nearly so. Each such uniform mixture is then measurable in terms of numbers of molecules in a given volume of air compared with the total of all molecules

With respect to stability, the concentrations of all selected gases tend to be evenly extended in time as well as space. Thus, if the concentration is growing the growth rate generally tends to be slow and regular. The turnover rate for actual molecules, as they are added and subtracted from the air, may be either very rapid (“short-life”) or very slow (“long-life”), but this does not affect the stability of concentration. Concentrations always seek a level where income and outgo are evenly balanced, and that level usually requires nothing more than small adjustments over time. The gases on the selected list all fall into this category and so too is their impact on climate change, which can therefore be no more than gradually realized over long stretches of time.

Today’s science of climate change is also fixated on those greenhouse gases that have concentrations tied to inputs that are increasing as a direct result of human activity.  Only one greenhouse gas cannot pass this test, the same one that also fails in the others I have mentioned, and that is water vapor.  There are some nuances involved in this comparison. The growth of water vapor concentrations, on average, is directly attributed to increased air temperatures, not to human activity.  Human activity is still responsible, but only in an indirect way, via direct control over the gases that do the increasing. Humans in fact have no direct control over water vapor concentrations, at least not on a meaningful scale. Without the feedback effect on temperatures mediated by other gases water vapor concentrations would perhaps have no reason to change at all. More to the point, the only realistic way to reduce the greenhouse effect of water vapor is by first reducing the human activities that cause increases in those other gases.

This argument is very logical, except for a couple of details that are not well-considered. One of these, which I have written about before, is simply inexcusable. With respect to water vapor activity, today’s scientists treat carbon dioxide as if it were the only gas causing the temperature increases that stimulate more evaporation.  Nothing else is held to account.  Not methane, not nitrous oxide, or anything else whatsoever.  So the greenhouse powers of water vapor, as calculated, are simply added to those calculated for CO2, which makes it a real powerhouse of greenhouse effects at the expense of downgrading the true importance of other gases.  This may be useful for campaigning purposes, or whatever, but it’s a terrible way to do science.  The new science of climate change will not allow such shenanigans to exist because it will have put water vapor into a new and different category of greenhouse production, where it really belongs, as an inseparable component of precipitable water (PW).

That brings us to the other and much bigger reason for not making water vapor’s greenhouse power a prisoner of CO2. PW, once thoroughly investigated, will show that water vapor has a far more expansive role than now realized in the generation of greenhouse effects, not in isolation but as the leading member of an ensemble of materials. PW incorporates water vapor, every bit of it, and PW also incorporates another major producer of greenhouse effects, which is not a gas, held within the bodies of clouds, all the clouds that exist. Furthermore, the PW ensemble will be shown to have a life of its own. It will do whatever nature allows it to do, which is plenty, because nature allows a portion of it to express significant concentrations of its greenhouse powers from positions high in the sky. Maybe for only one day at a time, but the local and regional temperature increases that result are real, they are sometimes enormous, and they are repeatable, with global implications. I believe this phenomenon will serve as a principal cornerstone of the new science of climate change.

Carl