2 ms·

Makes you wonder if you could do this to stop global warming. After all, global warming is a feedback loop, almost 100% running on water vapor. Remove water vap

by spwa4 2y ago

Makes you wonder if you could do this to stop global warming. After all, global warming is a feedback loop, almost 100% running on water vapor. Remove water vapor will do a lot more than anything else. And you don't have to actually remove the gases that are already there, which is the (energy) expensive part. You just have to make it turn back for long enough, probably only a few months, after which the feedback loop would take over. But that also points out a big problem with doing so. Reversing global warming will dry the atmosphere, A LOT. And once it starts reversing, it will rapidly accelerate, both rapidly cooling and rapidly drying out very large areas of the globe.

defrost 2y ago
> After all, global warming is a feedback loop, almost 100% running on water vapor. The positive feedback part kicks in with water vapor and methane after thresholds are crossed - for now the preamble heavy lifting to approach thresholds has been done by a century of what has now ramped up to an addition 11 billion tonnes per annum of additional C02 added by human activity that's over and above the 'normal' (for past 200K+ years) carbon cycle of volcanoes, fires, and organic growth and decay. We're quite away from "almost 100% running on water vapor" to date. “Thermal Equilibrium of the Atmosphere with a Given Distribution of Relative Humidity” Manabe, Wetherald (1967) https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/atsc/24/3/1520-0469_1967_024_0241_teotaw_2_0_co_2.xml https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/atsc/24/3/1520-04... By the time we get to a majority positive feedback loop it may well be too late to reverse .. that's one of the intriguing mysteries to complex non linear dynamics.
- spwa4 2y ago
  That still means global warming should (rapidly) reverse just as soon as we get enough water vapor out of the atmosphere to reverse the effect of 11b tonnes CO2 for ~a year. If you can do that, the year after that, more water should be removed from the atmosphere without interference, and then the year after that, and so on. I wonder how much that is.
  - defrost 2y ago
    > That still means global warming should .. Does it? Got a paper that expands on that thinking? > If you can do that, the year after that, more water should be removed from the atmosphere without interference Same question really. > I wonder how much that is. If only you had a model, some data, some equations, etc.

by spwa4 2y ago

defrost 2y ago

> After all, global warming is a feedback loop, almost 100% running on water vapor. The positive feedback part kicks in with water vapor and methane after thresholds are crossed - for now the preamble heavy lifting to approach thresholds has been done by a century of what has now ramped up to an addition 11 billion tonnes per annum of additional C02 added by human activity that's over and above the 'normal' (for past 200K+ years) carbon cycle of volcanoes, fires, and organic growth and decay. We're quite away from "almost 100% running on water vapor" to date. “Thermal Equilibrium of the Atmosphere with a Given Distribution of Relative Humidity” Manabe, Wetherald (1967) https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/atsc/24/3/1520-0469_1967_024_0241_teotaw_2_0_co_2.xml https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/atsc/24/3/1520-04... By the time we get to a majority positive feedback loop it may well be too late to reverse .. that's one of the intriguing mysteries to complex non linear dynamics.

spwa4 2y ago
That still means global warming should (rapidly) reverse just as soon as we get enough water vapor out of the atmosphere to reverse the effect of 11b tonnes CO2 for ~a year. If you can do that, the year after that, more water should be removed from the atmosphere without interference, and then the year after that, and so on. I wonder how much that is.
- defrost 2y ago
  > That still means global warming should .. Does it? Got a paper that expands on that thinking? > If you can do that, the year after that, more water should be removed from the atmosphere without interference Same question really. > I wonder how much that is. If only you had a model, some data, some equations, etc.