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In addition to that please raise your hand if you know why the answer to the above question is irrelevant for understanding climate change. Choose the best answ
by credit_guy 10y ago
In addition to that please raise your hand if you know why the answer to the above question is irrelevant for understanding climate change. Choose the best answer:
A) CO2 is by far not the most important greenhouse gas
B) the climate change is driven by complex interactions among (mainly) CO2, water vapors, clouds, precipitations, sea surface evaporation, air currents
C) the thermal forcing mentioned above is determined assuming none of the interactions in point B)
D) all of the above
- s_kilk 10y agoI’ll bite: D?
- MagnumOpus 10y agoBy elimination, only (B) is true. (A) is false - while water vapour has high radiative forcing, it is not "an important greenhouse gas" in the big picture, unlike what the coal industry reps say. This [1] should explain why. Methane and CFCs are far less important in aggregate (about 1/3 and 1/4 of the effect of CO2 respectively), although they are far more dangerous per unit of volume. (C) is obviously false - even in the low level layman explanation in [1] you can see that they include a table with the forcings of various combinations (like H2O vapour+CO2); you can also see that the table is from 1978, so scientists have done that since way before you were born. (D) false [1] http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/04/water-vapour-feedback-or-forcing/ http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/04/water-...
- credit_guy 10y agoThanks for your thoughtful reply and your link. I think that article is quite informative, and also well written. I guess it was not authored by the coal industry, but still it states literally "water vapor is indeed the most important greenhouse gas".