The Science, Economics and Politics of Global Warming 
©2009 by Adrian Vance

Premise

This background on the science, politics and economics of global warming was produced for journalists, teachers and general readers.  It is written for those having only a casual acquaintance with science, but sufficient to understand basic principles with high school level math.

Summary:

          Carbon dioxide is a trace gas in the atmosphere and insignificant within it.  The atmosphere’s temperature is controlled by the sun and the surface of Earth which has a temperature of 10° Celsius due to heat generated by the decay of radioactive elements.  Without that our planet would now be a very cold rock sealed in ice.

There are three principle atmospheric gases: nitrogen, oxygen and water vapor.  Water vapor is the most important gas in atmospheric heating by a large factor.  But, the control and taxing of carbon is the most powerful tool governments could have as carbon is common in fuels, controlling energy production.  It is to this end that power-seeking politicians poison science with fraudulent concepts.

Capturing and treating carbon as garbage is an expensive economy-ruining undertaking sought for the United States by international forces that could not defeat us on the battlefield, drawing board or assembly line.  They have forged the downtrodden, guilt-ridden and manic "greens" into a very  powerful political force more effective than any historic threat to the United States.  Our SCAF technology changes carbon economics.  This paper was written before SCAF was developed and an inspiration for it.

          A number of government scientists claim the burning of fossil fuels is causing the planet to warm such that we are going to be in a global steam bath with those on the coasts up to their belly buttons in seawater.  All polar ice will melt; all polar bears and penguins will die.  We are also told, “The debate is over," and “All scientists agree on anthropogenic global warming,” but a Google search shows many thousands of PhD scientist deniers making good cases with substantial arguments.

        Anthropogenic or “man caused” global warming is now claimed by the same people who in the 70’s told us we were bringing on an ice age with smokestacks.  And, they claimed 40 years of data to prove it!  Now with the same graphs, adding 1930 to 1970 data to make a “hockey stick,” they claim proof Earth is warming!  Is it, “Liars figure” or “Figures lie?” What is the truth?  What is the science of global warming? 

        In the 70's there was talk of building 1,000 nuclear power plants.  The panic pushers were in high anxiety over the amount of water vapor produced by cooling towers because water vapor is the greatest greenhouse gas, responsible for 99.875% of all sun heat energy absorbed by air. But, water vapor has a 3% limit in air because our atmosphere functions as a closed system, one in a sealed flask, obeying the equilibrium laws of the great early 20th century French chemist Henri Louis Le Chatelier even though he did his work with aqueous solutions.

       Today water vapor is never mentioned by the anthropogenic global warming people unless it is subservient to carbon dioxide, per James Hansen's "forcings" wherein water will not evaporate unless CO2 warms air first!  This is patently ridiculous and only appropriate under the pre-1832 “Vitalism” theory dashed by the Wohler synthesis.

        Symbolically the Le Chatelier Principle applied to atmospheric gases can be expressed by:

[N2] x [O2] x [H2O] x [CO2] = K

          Where one of the gases in the system can precipitate, reducing its volume by a factor of 1244, it operates in the system such that “K” remains unchanged and is a "constant."       

Where water is a liquid in our normal temperature range it will precipitate to keep pressure, and K, constant. The liquid volume of water is 1/1244^th of what it is as a gas.  This reduction can account for large pressure changes in air. It is the mechanism of rain formation by which the system achieves equilibrium. Gravity retains our atmosphere as well as a sealed flask while making atmospheric physics a statistical exercise.

The Father of Climate Science 

It all began when John Tyndall (1820-1893), one of the great English physicists, did a study of the "radiative properties" of atmospheric gases in 1857.   He had observed air absorbed energy from sunlight, but how?  To do this work Tyndall created the ratio spectrophotometer to measure relative energy absorption of atmospheric gasses in visible through infrared wave lengths between 1 and 16 microns, millionths of a meter. 

          Tyndall found nitrogen and oxygen were transparent to heat waves or "IR," infrared radiation, absorbing nothing, but water vapor, the next most abundant gas in air, absorbed IR heat waves very well and this is from where the kinetic energy in air comes. 

          In the NASA "Earth Observatory" web "On the Shoulders of Giants – John Tyndall" (paragraph three, sentence two) we read: "He concluded that among the constituents of the atmosphere, water vapor is the strongest absorber of radiant heat and is therefore the most important gas in controlling Earth’s surface temperature."   

A vapor is a gas that is a liquid at normal temperature.  Water is liquid at any temperature less than 100 Celsius degrees and one atmosphere of pressure, but random motions carom a few molecules into enough kinetic energy to leave the liquid as gas.  Once in that system they persist until the pressure increases or temperature falls enough to bring them within bonding distance with other water molecules.  When vapors are subjected to pressure or temperature stress they revert to the liquid state if the ambient temperature is under their boiling point.

 At temperatures less than 100° Celsius water vapor is forced out of the air by pressure; reducing volume or adding a gas with a lower boiling point than water.  This can be seen as aircraft temporarily compress air in passing and leave trails of condensed water.  If a gas cylinder is discharged quickly or an explosion makes a shock wave we see condensations.  Water or ice form depending on the rate of pressure change and the ambient temperature.

At one atmosphere pressure ambient temperature has to be over 100 Celsius degrees for water to be a true gas.  Water vapor is limited to 3% by the gas/vapor equilibrium at 20 Celsius degrees and a normal pressure of one atmosphere.  Water vapor in amounts greater than 3% precipitate to form liquid clouds, fog, mist or rain.  If we add more of a true gas to saturated air we will force water vapor to come out of the air.  Only a small fraction of water molecules have enough energy to escape liquid water and become vapor below 100° Celsius. In a cubic foot of air the amount of water as vapor is 18 drops or one “heaping” teaspoon.

        Our atmosphere appears to be open to space, but statistically is a bottle walled by gravity.  A few air molecules escape, but the great majority are as well held as if Earth were in a glass flask. That our atmosphere is a closed system is critical to life.  Were it not the case clouds would not form and rain would not fall.  The “bottle” varies to satisfy the Le Chatlier equation.

The boiling point of water is about 300 Celsius degrees up the scale from those of nitrogen at -196º Celsius or oxygen at -183º!  Nitrogen and oxygen have much greater vapor pressure and tendency to be gasses, than water.  Rain, dew, mist, clouds, sweat and frost are products of adjustment in the gas equilibrium between nitrogen, oxygen and water vapor which are 99% of air.  Of the six or seven "trace gases" making one percent of the air, carbon dioxide is the largest fraction, but only 0.038% and is insignificant within the insignificance of trace gases not having more than five percent of their one percent.  Five percent is the statistical threshold of “significance.”  If the atmosphere were represented by a meter stick, CO2 would be less than 1/2 millimeter long, not the width of pencil line.  To think CO2 controls the atmosphere is every way ridiculous.

          Tyndall worked with saturated air containing 3% water vapor. It varies around the world between one and three percent, but for all areas over the seas, forests and jungles it is 3%.  In the drier areas of Earth water vapor approaches zero, but even there has 26 times as many molecules as carbon dioxide.  These areas are relatively small and insignificant.  Nonetheless, John Tyndall worked with carbon dioxide and he found it also absorbs IR, but only one-sixth as well as water vapor when the energy/wavelength relationship is included in the analysis.

        In Tyndall’s time carbon dioxide was present to 280 parts/million or 0.28% and where carbon dioxide molecules are 2.44 times as heavy as water molecules, all factors considered, water vapor is 1200 times as significant in absorbing IR as carbon dioxide for most of the planet, all of that over water and much of the land.  Water vapor is responsible for up to 99.9% of all IR captured, but water vapor is of no interest to governments because they cannot control it or tax it. 

Meanwhile In Sweden 

          Late in the 19^th century Svante Arrhenius, (1859-1927) the greatest Swedish chemist of all time, investigated IR capture seeking a way to warm Sweden.  It is a cold, dark country much of the time, but fossil evidence had shown that bananas grew there as recently as 6,000 BC.   

          Arrhenius studied the work of Tyndall as well as doing theoretical and computing work on his own and then abandoned the idea.  Arrhenius was not strong in the lab so he depended on the work of others, but he was a very good mathematician and realized carbon dioxide in the air was too poor an absorber of heat waves for his purpose.  All of this is memorialized on the NASA website “On the Shoulders of Giants” under “Arrhenius.”  The final paper in which Arrehenius abandons his coal burning plan to turn Sweden into a banana producer was published in a German physics journal and a translation was on the NASA website until 2007 when it was removed.

 The literature reveals that early atmospheric scientists ignored water vapor because it was variable!  This was a popular excuse because it was so  troublesome in equipment, forming mists and corroding metal.  It was also before the drawing of statistical envelopes.  We now write maximum and minimum equations, draw two curves and accept actuality is somewhere between the two curves, in the space or "envelope" between them, but this was not done by early climate scientists.  They wanted everything nailed to a single curve and that meant eliminating the likes of water vapor which made all their work nonsensical as the water percentage changed.  Scientists have accepted “perhaps” with great difficulty.

Over 90% of Earth, the oceans and biome, 3% of the air is water vapor. A molar volume of air, 22.4 liters, has a mass of 29.85 grams.  ( A molar volume is that of the gas in a molecular weight in atomic weight units expressed in grams.  It is the same for all gases.  A “mole” of hydrogen would have the mass of 2 grams where a mole of oxygen would be 32 grams, but both would have the same volume, 22.4 liters.)

With 3% of air water vapor it has 0.896 grams per 22.4 liters and carbon dioxide with 0.038% has 0.0113 grams.  A mole of water vapor has 18 grams, but a mole of CO2 is 44 grams.  So we have 0.049 moles of water in the air and only 0.000257 moles of CO2.  There are 193 times as many water molecules in air as there are CO2 molecules, but the anthropogenic global warming people would have you believe that CO2 is prevalent and dominant in the system and it is not.  Furthermore, it is a poor absorber of infrared radiation compared to water vapor.  And methane, another reviled “greenhouse gas” found in cow belches and farts is an even poorer absorber.

Absorption Area Analysis

          In a printout where this chart is 13 cm wide the areas between 1 and 15 microns the absorption areas shown have areas of 677 mm^2 as they are 61.5 mm by 11 mm.  The carbon dioxide has four absorption areas; water vapor has six.  CO2’s are at 17.5, 28.5, 34 and 61 mm on the horizontal scale.  Each is a triangular area we can estimate in mm^2.  Water vapor has six such areas at 2.0, 7.0, 24.0, 34.0, 51.0 and 63.0 mm.

          The areas in the CO2 absorption spectrum are: 7.5, 37.5, 22.5 and 37.5 mm^2 respectively while for water vapor they are:  19.5, 28, 64, 144, 240 and 35 mm^2.

          The sum total of the areas covered for CO2 is 105 mm^2, 9% of the potential while for water vapor it is 467 mm^2, or 40% of the potential.  On this basis alone water vapor is 4.44 times the IR absorber as CO2, but there is an important consideration we cannot overlook.

            How well do water vapor and carbon dioxide absorb heat energy from the sun?  This official chart from the American Meteorological Society shows that water vapor absorbs 3.36 times as well as CO2 between 1 and 15 micron wavelengths  ( micron = millionth of a meter) in terms of areas under the curves. Shorter length waves carry more energy by: E = (h x c)/w where “E” is energy, “h” is Planck’s constant, "c" the speed of light, is a constant, and “w” is wavelength the water vapor absorbs more in the shorter wavelength, higher energy parts of the absorption spectrum. 

Energy Analysis of the Absorption Spectra 

          Wave energy, here infrared or “IR,” is directly proportional to the areas under the curves and inversely proportional to the wavelengths.  The shorter waves have more energy by: 

E = (h X c)/w

The numerator is a constant because one constant times another is itself a constant. Thus, the concept of increasing wavelength meaning reduced energy is easily seen.  For example, this says that a single wave, or “quanta” of 1 micron will have 15 times the energy of a 15 micron wave.  A 3 micron wave, or quantum, has twice as much energy as a 6 micron, and so on...

If we analyze and sum the absorption areas we will have a more complete picture of the sun-atmosphere system correlating each absorption area with its’ position the spectrum.  We do this with a very simple set of equations relating each absorption area to its’ position in the IR spectrum:

[7.5/17.5] + [37.5/28.5] + [22.5/8.4] + [ 37.5/12.6] = 7.40

When we do the same exercise for the water vapor data we obtain:

[19.5/9.75] + [28/12.7] + [64/17.3] + [144/21.8] + [240/21.8] + [35/63] = 26.1

           Thus the difference between water vapor and CO2 IR absorption per molecule is:

26.1/7.40 = 3.52 

How many molecules?

          Carbon dioxide, CO2, is now 380 parts/million, 0.00038 or 0.038%. And, carbon dioxide has a molecular weight of 44 g/mole where water vapor is only 18 g/mole.  This is the case over 90% of Earth, the seas, forests, jungles, grasslands and farmlands.

(44g/mole/18g/mole) X (0.03/0.00038) = 193

          This is important as absorption is also directly proportional to the number of molecules. And, the overall effect is a product of the relative absorption and the ratio of concentrations.  Thus:  

3.52 X 193 = 679

          Water vapor is 679 times more significant in "global warming" than carbon dioxide, thus responsible for 99.9% of all atmospheric heating, but it is never mentioned in any article, textbook or film produced by major media, government, Al Gore or a federal grant supported scientist for the simple reason that water vapor is ubiquitous and cannot be controlled or taxed.

Significance

Omitting physical entities like water vapor in a system under study is not good science, but has been done consistently in atmospheric physics for 100 years because water caused problems in the instruments.  It is omitted now by promoters of the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis now for political power.  The heat absorption of water vapor makes carbon dioxide’s totally insignificant.

Water vapor is only three percent of air, but responsible for 99.9% of the heat absorbing effect.  Why is carbon dioxide considered significant when it has 1/80th the amount and 1/8 the effect per molecule?  The reason clearly is that carbon, common to all fuels, can be taxed for the benefit of government paid, grant-supported scientists. 

The Forcing Concept 

        When knowledgeable people asked about water vapor James Hansen quickly responded with a "forcing" concept.  This is a throwback to Vitalism, a Satanic or Divine Theory of chemistry because it stipulates water not evaporate until CO2 gives permission or drives it into the air.  This is nonsense.

Water evaporates very well by itself.  If you input the string "global warming water vapor" to Google you will get 100,000 websites explaining the phenomenon, but all are ignored by government scientists and politicians.  We believe they are ignored because taxing and regulating carbon is the greatest opportunity the elected class has had since the Magna Carta. 

        Adding carbon dioxide forces water out of the atmosphere because it is a true gas at normal temperatures, boiling at -78 Celsius degrees.  Water is a vapor prone to precipitate as it boils at 100 Celsius degrees, 178 degrees up the scale from CO2!  

If air is saturated water vapor precipitates to liquid if pressure rises or temperature drops.  If it hits smoke or dust particles on which it may accrete or if a shock wave from a bullet, explosion, high velocity aircraft, propeller or rocket passes through it creating a pressure wave it precipitates.  Shock waves compress vapor and it changes state to liquid from gas in response to the stress, per Le Chatlier.  Such precipitations can be seen curling from spinning propellers, jet aircraft wingtips and entire aircraft making vapor trails in the upper atmosphere.

          Increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere forces water out of the air and reduces atmospheric heating which explains the temperature decline seen immediately after the increases in industrial activity between 1930 and 1970. This is an ironic reversal of that predicted by all the anthropogenic global-warming people.  Much cooling has been due to light filtering by particulate matter from fires, smokestacks, battlefields, bombed locations and volcanoes, but the increased concentration of carbon dioxide with the decreased concentration of water vapor cannot be discounted.  In the period between 1930 and 1970 there was a decline in the mean temperature of our atmosphere with considerable talk of a coming ice age and again carbon was blamed because it could be taxed.   

The Real Forcing Concept 

          James Hansen's carbon dioxide “forcing” concept is nonsense as water evaporates with or without CO2 present.  There is an equilibrium between the true gases in the atmosphere and water vapor.  The present mix allows up to 3% water vapor in 20 Celsius degree air; a relationship that is not fully understood, but in the manner of all science we do not have to understand it to exploit it.  No one has ever seen an electron, or ever will, but it has given us the modern world. Philosophically, electrons are matters of faith.

          The volume of our atmosphere is 19 million cubic miles of gas such that the pressure is almost 15 pounds per square inch at the surface, but approaches zero at an altitude of 20 miles.  Half of all the gas is below two miles and most of the infrared, IR, absorption takes place in the very lowest levels where water vapor exists to the greatest degree.  Higher altitudes are cold, water precipitates to form clouds and the remaining air is dry.

When water vapor emerged as a major player in global warming the anthropogenic, man-blaming, people tried to say it was not involved because warming happened in the upper altitudes where IR was said to reflect back to Earth.   That was shown to be wrong.  Then, it was modified to be “re-emission,” but examination of that phenomenon reveals some interesting facts.

We locate objects in space in three dimensions, the three planes of the Cartesian axes, x, y and z.  To the classic “x,y” axes of Algebra we add a “z” axis that project straight out and back from the paper.  With this system we can locate objects in space and deal with them mathematically.

If we divide circles inscribed on each plane in degrees then we have  (360)^3 or 46,656,000 directions from to go from our location and absorbed energy can be re-emitted in 46,656,000 directions, in degrees, but only a relatively small number will take the energy back to the atmosphere.  That number will be downward in the two planes of “x” and “z” as “y” will not matter at any height where the horizon appears at or below 270 and 90 degrees in the “y” plane.  So, the number of directions that will put emitted quanta back in the atmosphere is 180^3, the cube of 180, where the number of directions possible is 360^3, the cube of 360.  So the probability of emission back to the atmosphere is:

(180^3)/(360^3) = 0.125

          Or, one chance in eight.  Given CO2 is a “trace gas” with only 0.038% of the atmosphere this mechanism is pushing insignificance into ridiculous and certainly not worthy of the term “forcing.”

 That idea quickly faded in spite of statements in defense claiming the heat was allowed to escape at night.  These "scientists" had to be reminded molecules don’t sleep and absorb IR with the lights on or off.  They had previously insisted high energy light wave absorption and re-admission of IR caused the heating, but further work showed 99% of the absorption is happening in the bottom 30 feet of the atmosphere! 

Oops!

In a final, embarrassing irony for the panic promoters it can be said that where nitrogen, oxygen, water vapor and carbon dioxide achieve their physical equilibrium with 78%, 19%, 3% and 0.038% respectively more carbon dioxide causes water to precipitate and reduces atmospheric heating by a factor of eight for every water molecule lost. On a per molecule basis water vapor is eight times the absorber as carbon dioxide.  This is exactly what happened from 1930 to 1970 when the average temperature dropped in response to war activities.

How well do CO2 and temperature correlate?

          In the above chart using elemental proxies in rock layers for CO2 and temperature shows the correlation between them is 0.14, positive, but very poor.

Statistical Significance 

          In the July 27, 2006 hearing of the House Global Climate Change Subcommittee six expert witnesses stated that of the 186 gigatons of carbon dioxide produced annually by Earth man makes six gigatons.  Committee members did not realize the insignificance of man's contribution of only 3.22% and that cutting the United State 20% contribution by 50% would only take 0.4% from the total, but they did understand the global warming movement included 44 scientists taking turns co-authoring and peer reviewing papers from their friends!  Once again Congress hired foxes to guard hen houses.  These same 44 taxpayer-paid scientists are the ones sounding the carbon dioxide alarm over the last 20 years and all of them work for or are associated with the NASA Goddard Space Institute on the campus of Columbia University the academic bastion of international socialism.

          The dominance of water vapor in "global warming" and the real effect of adding carbon dioxide is bad news for the bureau-building, tax-seeking socialists and panic-pushing international environmentalists. Water vapor cannot be taxed, regulated, and treatied for or controlled.  Water covers 70% of the planet and is not under political control. When facts are inconvenient the elected class ignores them. 

          And, where this evidence is clearly shown on a NASA website but is never quoted or cited it documents, more “DC arrogance.”  They think we will not act or are stupid.  Responsible professionals moved to "politically correct" positions that jeopardize reputations when their cavalier ways with science and truth are known.  California’s Governor Arnold Schwartzeneger signed a restrictive bill in 2007.  It keeps many companies out of California and has contributed to the state’s budget crises.

          Blaming carbon dioxide brings new taxes, regulations, bureaus, trips, treaties, land and resource grabbing, demonizing big business and “the evil corporations."  So the elected class and the ever complicitous media take the hypothesis that serves their purpose.  How much tax and how much power? 

          We have about 60 million vehicles on the road in America. 40 million are cars and 20 million are trucks. The fuel mileage is about 15 miles per gallon for cars and ten for trucks. The average vehicle is driven about 15,000 miles per year. Cars use 1,000 gallons of fuel per year.  Trucks use 1,500. Thus, the total amount of fuel used in the US is about 70 to 100 billion gallons per year.  If the socialist Democrats can get another dollar of tax on every gallon that is $100 billion dollars they can spend buying votes and making Americans more dependent on them. But, that is only the beginning. 

          If the people that hate us could get us to sign the Kyoto treaty: We would abide by it; they would not.  As we have seen many times to communists a treaty is paper with which they wipe, wad and toss.

        China, India and all of Africa are excused from Kyoto so they can “catch up.”  If not putting more CO2 in the atmosphere is a good idea why this?  The agreement during the term of the Clinton/Gore administration called for a 40% pullback from what were using in 1999 and the U.S. Senate rejected it 95 to 0.  It would have be a more than a 50% cut from what we use now. 

The Clinton/Gore plan was to pile taxes on gasoline until use fell back to these levels. What would it take?  Five dollars a gallon, six or seven?  They would have gone there, and beyond.   In Europe gasoline is at ten dollars per gallon.  Socialist countries in Europe are already taxing gasoline heavily to the great admiration of our “progressives.” 

Half A Loaf 

          With half the energy America can produce half the goods, selling at twice the price while employing half the people. What happens to the other half?   A 50% decline would be twice as bad as The Great Depression when the economy fell 25%.  It would be a victory for international socialism over capitalism not because socialism did better, but because capitalism did worse.  The only way they ever win is by bringing us down to their level.   This is why ideas like SCAF will save America and the world in terms of fresh water.  See http://SCAF.i8.com

       At this time 70% of our fresh water is used in agriculture.  Green plants have virtually cleaned the atmosphere of carbon dioxide.   The entire history of man as a species has taken place in an era when plants have been starved for a critical component of their physiology, carbon.  Now we understand it  and can capitalize on it while repairing one of nature's errors, the elimination of carbon from the atmosphere.  The great irony is that carbon sequestration for global warming may do a right thing for a wrong reason.

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