3 ms·
Really it nets to < 0, because there will always be a bunch of fuel sitting around waiting to be burned basically acting as captured carbon. This just doesn't a
by p1necone 5y ago
Really it nets to < 0, because there will always be a bunch of fuel sitting around waiting to be burned basically acting as captured carbon. This just doesn't accumulate over time so it's perhaps not really worth taking into account unless it is a massive amount of carbon.
- labster 5y agoReally it nets to >> 0 because you still make water from combustion, and condensation trails have a sizable impact on climate. They transmit visible light but are opaque to infrared, just like a greenhouse. Still better than fossil fuel, though.
- pfdietz 5y agoThe effect of these trails reaches steady state quickly, and does not accumulate over time like CO2. So this is mostly a red herring.
- labster 5y agoAh, cool, a red herring. Where did you get your atmospheric science degree? I got mine at UC Davis. Can you explain to me how the radiative forcing is less because it reaches steady state so quickly? The regime in the upper troposphere around the 250mb level is poor in ice condensation nuclei and the phase change is an irreversible thermodynamic process. Most of the time those parcels don’t condense easily, and the forcing is quite large as we observed in the 9/11 studies.
- pfdietz 5y agoThe point is that the water we inject into the atmosphere does not accumulate in the atmosphere. Once that water rains out it's in that enormous bucket that is the oceans (and to a lesser extent fresh water and ice), and the effect is gone. Emission of CO2, on the other hand, perturbs atmospheric CO2 level for a much longer time -- the reservoirs at the surface it's in intimate contact with are much smaller and more easily saturated.