Is water vapor the single largest cause for global warming?

Question

A friend of mine told me who listens to Rush Limbaugh that Rush claimed water vapor is the greatest cause to global warming. I am not saying this is true as I am an avid environmentalist and am willing to get to the bottom of this global warming issue. But if there is some truth to it it really begs the question about hydrogen powered vehicles whoses only by-product is water.

Skeff, If Regan claimed that trees produce CO2 he must really be out of touch. As far as I remember the utilities CO2 and give off O2 which allows us to live in the first place.

zen_pengu..., I don't know if I agree with everything you have written but in essense you argument revolves around the fact that CO2 and Methane are much more efficient at trapping heat than water. This may indeed be true but still the shere volume of water might outweigh these factors. And even if this is so as well the question it begs is don't we produce water vapor via steam from many different sources? Nature may be a source for global warming and man made causes may simply be the straw that broke the camels back.

exert-7, simplistic but almost funny.

acid tongue, you may be correct that methane gas is more powerful at trapping heat but it is also vastly less common compared to water vapor.

Answer 1

Sigh. There is quite a bit of misunderstanding here.

First, global warming is not a scientific debate. It is a political debate. It is a debate on whether businesses want to lose profits to install technologies to curtail global warming, and whether politicians want to "rock to boat" by supporting legislation that would protect the environment but cost businesses money. Understand that - Reputable scientists agree that global warming is occurring and that mankind is the culprit. The empirical data is clear.

Second, here is a very quick, very superficial explanation on how global warming works. Research it through wikipedia. Sunlight hits the top of the Earth's atmosphere at a certain rate (joules/m2-sec). A certain percentage is reflected back into space, but almost all continues and passes through the atmosphere to reach the Earth. The Earth absorbs the radiation and re-radiates the energy at longer wavelengths. Greenhouse gases trap this radiation, in effect trapping the heat. The more greenhouse gas, the more heat is trapped, and the greater the rise in temperature.

Water is a greenhouse gas. But a second of reflection will show that the idea of water vapor causing global warming is ludicrous. Has modern civilization increased the production of water vapor significantly? How much of an increase in water vapor would cause a global rise in temperature? It turns out that other greenhouse gases, like CO2 and Methane, are hundreds of THOUSANDS of times more effective at trapping the re-radiated energy than water. And yes, these are the byproduct of cars, planes and factories.

Water vapor is by far the most abundant greenhouse gas. What is left out is that it's also one of the least important. It's a lie of omission used by the those who ignore the data. Here's an analogy - the atmosphere is roughly 78% nitrogen and 21% oxygen. Since air is over 3/4 nitrogen, obviously it is the most important gas to sustain life, right? Of course not - that's crap. Nitrogen is inert and the oxygen is essential. In the same way, man-made greenhouse gases are hundreds of thousands of times more effective than water vapor at retaining re-radiated heat. Plus these are being ADDED to the atmosphere, unlike water vapor, which has been a non-changing percentage of the atmosphere for millions of years. Again, it is not a scientific debate - man-made greenhouse gases ARE responsible for global warming. It's entirely a political debate.

BTW, it is true that massive volcanic eruptions do spew billions of tons of greenhouse gases into the air, naturally raising global temperatures. About 380 million years ago a series of eruptions destroyed over 90% of life on Earth. At other points in history the temperature has risen and fallen, destroying entire ecosystems while creating new ones. Critics (like Bush and his cronies) like to say that global warming is natural and has occurred in the past. What they fail to mention is that while mosquitoes and rats have no problems, each of those occurrences would have destroyed civilization and probably humanity as a whole, even with all our modern technology.

Just take a critical eye and read what leading researchers have to say (not just one lone crappot on Exxon's payrole). No one is asking anything more.

Answer 2

Limbaugh? You'd believe Limbaugh about science? Pulleeeze! Maybe we could get him to reverse the next El Nino by blow-harding somewhere out west of the eastern Pacific rim. That's the same nonsense as when Reagan claimed trees were polluters because they produced CO2.

Greenhouse gases. Water vapor is important part of the water cycle. CO2 is being produced in greater quantities than the oceans and plants, however, can absorb without throwing off the natural, chemical balance, and the excess is helping to prevent optimal reflection of excess heat from the sun.

Answer 3

Yes.

Engineer and editor Patrick Bedard has an excellent article in the September 2006 issue of "Car and Driver" in which he includes the research from climatologist Richard S. Lindzen of MIT. Dr. Lindzen is generally regarded as the Einstein of his field.

According to Dr. Lindzen, nature generates 30 times more carbon dioxide than man's activities. Water vapor, almost entirely caused by nature, is by far the biggest contributor to the greenhouse effect. Greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide and methane, contribute less than 2 percent of the greenhouse effect.

His estimate is that man made carbon dioxide is responsible for 0.1 % of the greenhouse effect. In other words, 99.9 % comes from the planet itself.

If we banned everything on the planet that burned hydrocarbon fuel, the result on the greenhouse effect would be virtually nothing.

As an aside, it takes nearly double the energy to produce hydrogen gas as one gets from a gallon of gasoline. The primary source of hydrogen is the electrolysis of water, and the great majority of electricity in America is provided by burning coal.

Some how the tree huggers always leave out the fine print.

Answer 4

international warming will become international cooling via fact once you have invested a huge volume of means faking, forging, manipulating records and merchandising the fake theory that CO2 motives a international temperature upward push however the information starts off to instruct a cooling form then you incredibly pull the previous switcheroo and with slightly of luck desire everyone seems to be so concepts broken by potential of the particular pollution, mercury, lead, fluoride and Fox information that their comfortable minds may even settle for that its achievable. the fact is obviously grow to be that there grow to be no actual guy-made international warming before everything, and any average warming grow to be thoroughly organic. international temperature is pushed specially by potential of image voltaic activity, and image voltaic flare activity is now at a low so the planet is easily presently cooling after an ever so average upward push. So the respond is..... it could not. One would not reason the different the temperature purely fluctuates counting on image voltaic activity.

Answer 5

Firstly, have u watched The Day After Tomorrow
And secondly Inspite of water vapours &green house effect
CFCs &pollution is also a major cause

the cfc is consistently destroying the Ozone layer

water level is rising 'coz northen ice caps are melting

there wil be a time when our existence is merely a story

Answer 6

Heat is the single largest cause for global warming. Cold is the only remedy.

Answer 7

greenhouse gas is the culprit, it comes from many sources including Limbaugh.

Answer 8

I believe it's actually metane gas