Re: OT: Post Turtle

On Sun, 22 Jun 2008 12:13:35 -0700, John Larkin
<jjlarkin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

<snip>
And if you find any numbers on the PB thing, post them.

You had asked, "given that man dumps, say, 100 PPM additional CO2 into
the air, how much does that increase IR retention by water vapor?" but
for the life of me I cannot see why you feel the question is
meaningful. You'd need to explain better what you are looking to
achieve, because frankly the question itself shows a profound
ignorance of the subject.

Suppose someone wrote here, "Please give me a schematic for a 5V power
supply I want," I've a hunch I'd see all manner of asking for more
information about the application and very little by way of a
schematic. That is, if anyone were to control themselves long enough
to be polite about it.

You should know, without me telling you, that 100ppm of CO2 change is,
to put it in the local lingo, a large signal change. Understanding
the large signal behavior also may tell you very little about what you
really may want to know, even if you were to get a number. And of
course, even were I to make a set of assumptions for you, I still
cannot tell from your question whether you want to know what happens
when there is a 100ppm delta of CO2 from 280ppm to 380ppm as has
already occurred in the last century, roughly speaking, or from 388ppm
at the current global average value and towards 488ppm some time into
the future. And to provide any kind of meaningful answer I'd need to
know a lot more about "your application." You know that as well as
anyone does, John.

If you disclose your application sufficiently so that a meaningful
answer can be developed for you, I might be tempted to pass it on to
an active scientist in the field. You could do it yourself, too, if
you wanted. I could provide a name or two for you to write to, if you
are serious about learning.

The very question you asked is so very badly formed I'm honestly not
sure anyone would care to spend time educating you on it, though. It
shows just how far away you are from understanding anything someone
might say. If you'd read some of the links I provided, skipping over
the free volume even, you'd see some of the quandary because, frankly,
they discuss some of the details enough there that you'd see your own
error in your phrasing. How does one assign the responsibility of a
net IR retention, X to H2O and Y to CO2, in regions where they both
absorb and emit? It's much easier where their bands are distinct. But
they overlap significantly in the 2.5 micron band and out getting
close to 15 microns and longer, as well. What's your criteria? What
kind of answer would be meaningful to you? This is just an example of
many other related questions, before either you or someone else is
really ready to struggle together on this.

Like I said before, I don't believe you are asking the question in
anything but a disingenuous way. But if you really do have a serious,
honest question somewhere in here then I'm sure you will find people
willing to help you gain some useful answers.

Sometimes, the best answer for someone is one that is targeted at
their level of understanding. To a 2nd grader child asking about "why
is grass green," you would provide an appropriately leveled answer,
such as "because grass is a plant and plants are mostly green." For a
2nd grader, that is usually all they can handle. For a high school
student, you might provide a more detailed answer; "there is a
lens-shaped organelle contained in the cytoplasm of plant cells called
chloroplasts, which have stacks of disks called grana which house
chlorophyll and are the central sites for photosynthesis in plants."
For someone a little further along, one might go into more detail,
including the manner by which both reddish and bluish light are each
used by plants. And further still, into the quantum mechanical means
by which photosynthesis achieves such a high efficiency.

For a question such as yours, coming from you at your level of grasp
of the issues, it's enough to say that H2O levels in the atmosphere
are a short-lived response function to longer term net greenhouse
warming, part of which is due to CO2, and that H2O tends to amplify
the effects of adding additional CO2. For more discussion about H2O
and CO2 at a very broad brush level, see:

http://www.lenntech.com/The-greenhouse-effect.htm

There is a section there called "WATER VAPOR" that you might jump
towards, if you want.

Jon
.

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