Would Hydrogen Vehicles make the earth hotter?

Question

Environmentalists claim that hydrogen vehicles don't release any gasses that are harmful to the atmosphere. In fact, the only emmission is water vapor. But Water Vapor is BY FAR the most effective greenhouse gas there is. In fact, careful studies of scientific evidence show that Carbon Dioxide is ESSENTIAL to pleasant life on earth. CO2 could increase 4 fold and still not be detrimental to life on Earth. Other studies have shown that higher temperatures cause higher CO2 levels that walk step in step, but offset by 800 years.

So I don't think CO2 is the problem. My question is, that if Water Vapor accounts for the highest percentage of the greenhouse effect, then why would we want to make a fuel taht releases more water vapor????????????

The key is the the TEMPERATURES cause the rises in CO2, not CO2 causes the rise in temperature!

Even Wikipedia who is a huge supporter of the environmentalist movement, admits that Water Vapor is the greates of all greenhouse gases:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas

http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/268.htm

http://www.friendsofscience.org/index.php?ide=3

Answer 1

Exactly what orifice did you pull this information from? Water vapor is controlled by temperature and air pressure. If the atmosphere is saturated, it rains. End of (imaginary) problem. You may want to read something that wasn't written by Republicans and "scientists" paid by the oil companies.

Answer 2

Unless you live in a desert, the amount of water that a car might produce is negligible compared to the amount of water already in the environment. i.e., your cars might add 1% more water to the environment. On the other hand, we can, and we have altered the amount of CO2 and methane in the air. i.e., cars can easily add an additional 100% more CO2 to the environment.

I think you have confused correlation with causation. While CO2 might have risen with temperatures (can't say for sure without seeing your source), you can't say that the temperatures have caused a CO2 increase without showing what mechanism is involved connecting the two in that direction. You can easily say that CO2 and temperature are correlated, but I don't see how you can say that the temperature caused the CO2 to increase.

However, the burning of fossil fuels most certainly causes the release of CO2. The presence of additional CO2 can most certainly prevent the Earth from radiating as much heat into space. The argument for causation is much stronger in the other direction.

Answer 3

No, not in the slightest, unless the hydrogen were made using a fossil fuel energy source. Your question is silly in the extreme and the myths you report have been debunked.

The two following articles debunk the respective myths you quote that water vapor is "forcing" agent in global warming and that the lag in CO2 levels somehow disproves that increases in CO2 causes global warming:

Water vapor: feedback or forcing? See the first link below:

The gist of the article: Water vapor is approximate equilibrium with ocean waters and so plays a role as a feed back gas that increases the effect of global warming because as oceans heat up more water evaporates thus increasing global warming. One very important fact is the very fast speed with which water vapor moves between the oceans and the atmosphere. The cycle time is approximately two weeks. This rapid exchange prevents excess water vapor from remaining in the atmosphere long enough to significantly effect global temperature change. CO2 on the other hand is resident for hundreds of thousands of years and thus does have a significant differential effect. It is only the differential effects that cause global warming.

What does the lag of CO2 behind temperature in ice cores tell us about global warming? See second link below.

This is a relatively short article so rather than summarize it I will post it in its entirety:

"This is an issue that is often misunderstood in the public sphere and media, so it is worth spending some time to explain it and clarify it. At least three careful ice core studies have shown that CO2 starts to rise about 800 years (600-1000 years) after Antarctic temperature during glacial terminations. These terminations are pronounced warming periods that mark the ends of the ice ages that happen every 100,000 years or so.

Does this prove that CO2 doesn't cause global warming? The answer is no.


The reason has to do with the fact that the warmings take about 5000 years to be complete. The lag is only 800 years. All that the lag shows is that CO2 did not cause the first 800 years of warming, out of the 5000 year trend. The other 4200 years of warming could in fact have been caused by CO2, as far as we can tell from this ice core data.

The 4200 years of warming make up about 5/6 of the total warming. So CO2 could have caused the last 5/6 of the warming, but could not have caused the first 1/6 of the warming.

It comes as no surprise that other factors besides CO2 affect climate. Changes in the amount of summer sunshine, due to changes in the Earth's orbit around the sun that happen every 21,000 years, have long been known to affect the comings and goings of ice ages. Atlantic ocean circulation slowdowns are thought to warm Antarctica, also.

From studying all the available data (not just ice cores), the probable sequence of events at a termination goes something like this. Some (currently unknown) process causes Antarctica and the surrounding ocean to warm. This process also causes CO2 to start rising, about 800 years later. Then CO2 further warms the whole planet, because of its heat-trapping properties. This leads to even further CO2 release. So CO2 during ice ages should be thought of as a "feedback", much like the feedback that results from putting a microphone too near to a loudspeaker.

In other words, CO2 does not initiate the warmings, but acts as an amplifier once they are underway. From model estimates, CO2 (along with other greenhouse gases CH4 and N2O) causes about half of the full glacial-to-interglacial warming.

So, in summary, the lag of CO2 behind temperature doesn't tell us much about global warming. [But it may give us a very interesting clue about why CO2 rises at the ends of ice ages. The 800-year lag is about the amount of time required to flush out the deep ocean through natural ocean currents. So CO2 might be stored in the deep ocean during ice ages, and then get released when the climate warms.]

To read more about CO2 and ice cores, see Caillon et al., 2003, Science magazine

Guest Contributor: Jeff Severinghaus
Professor of Geosciences
Scripps Institution of Oceanography
University of California, San Diego.

Answer 4

The greenhouse effect is the heat from the sun is being trapped in our atmosphere! Think about it this way! greenhouse effect! pretend that our car is the earth, and the sun is shining through it!! You have all your windows up and! on a hot day!! Let it sit for like 4 to 5 hours in the hot sun!! Open the door! and feel the heat bursting out!! thats why! Heat gets in, but cant get out!

BUt our auto mobiles and every day life increases heat of some sort!

Answer 5

no "environmentalists" that I know don't claim this; it is car makers and governments are promoting hydrogen.

Hydrogen is not a primary energy source, you need oil or nuclear or renewable energy source to create it.

It is far more efficient to use the electric directly, without trying to store and transport a bulky gas that escapes easily (v small atoms).
see the film who killed the electric car, or check the questions on their web site.

It is even more efficient to reduce our unsustainable lifestyles.

finally yes water is an effective greenhouse gas our atmosphre keeps this fairly stable (rain) but CO2 is detrimental to current life on earth and takes 50+years to be reabsorbed.

Answer 6

World is hot as it is with tempers flying from all corners. To add to that is deforestation and alarming levels of pollution resulting in global warming. I am sure effects of using hydrogen as fuel for vehicles will hardly cause any difference.

Answer 7

Best way to prove your argument is to inhale 100% CO2 air for a few hours and come back.

Answer 8

would the sun make earth colder when the elliptical orbituals are alligned with the polar axis' in the mesosphere last january because of the global warming inside of the northern hemisphere at high tide around noon, mountain time?

Answer 9

Yes It would. Not the way you think. You have to reprogarm your head. That means start with LKG and move on

Answer 10

What the heck? I wanna know where you get your info.