Water vapor is a greenhouse gas, folks, the more of it, the greater the greenhouse effect, the greater the greenhouse effect, the hiogher the average planetary temps. Its an interactive, synergistic effect.

See ya.

What does water evaporation have to do with Co2 emissions? All water evaporates, TA. ALL WATER. From the oceans to your toilet bowl

Didn't you read Brad's comment? he said that actually water vapour is as bad if not worse than CO2 when it comes to Global Warming. And he is correct. after that he said since this is the case should we now be conserned about parking lots?

And in fact we should as i explained. yes, water evaporates from everywhere and it causes smog when it gets mixed with pollution chemicals in the air (e.g. when NOx gases or soot from cars, power and chemical plants get mixed with water vapour they form acid vapours[smog] and that is where Acid Rain comes from) and by itself contributes to the trapping of heat near earth's surface. so whenever we can minimize that it will help decrease our effect on Global Warming.

Evaporation from Oceans, Rivers and Natural lakes is part of the ecological balance of the planet. When we add more than that, we upset that balance and that is when we start feeling the effect of trapping heat on the Earth's surface.

It is very true that the effect is very small if you just look at the numbers. But the natural balance of the planet is really very very sensitive. A 0.01 degree rise in temp will cause ice to turn into water (actually it does that for any rise above 0 degrees). that is the difference that causes a kid playing on a frozen lake drown instead of skidding on its surface. Our bodies never feel that change, the Planet however feels it in a big way.

How come is it he all of a sudden is worried about something that's been going on for millions of years and is part of nature? Does he really believe that somehow parking lots creating vapor is a bad thing and worse than Africa?

yes charles .... . Pls read my reply to LW's comment. all that natural evaporations are part of the Natural balance that exists and keeps the planet's ecological cycle neutral. Any additions, ANY additions, will upset that balance. believe it or not, those hurricanes are the planet's way of trying to restore that balance from one area to another. ANY additions, or subtraction, will upset that balance. That is when you get Global Warming or Global Cooling.

If you dont think parking lots do not make much difference, try to get a permit for a new development and see how the City Engineer will make your life miserable because of those parking lots. First he says, there are not enough parking spaces. Then he says, too much water run-off from them. and he then say, do something to minimize that !!!!!.

The problem with parking lots is that they dont let water go into the ground while grass and dirt do. They also get more hot than grass and dirt. The result? more water evaporation and more water going to natural streams -------->>>> FLOODING. Now you see why i am worried about them? The City Engineeers around the country are furious from them not just worried.

From reply #67

Lula posts:



So Daiho, this is atheistic humanist speak.

There is nothing at all perjorative in calling someone an environmental humanist...as they are those who desire to protect the earth from pollution or destruction by human use. Since mankind can't live properly if he wantonly destroys nature, this kind of environmental concern must be regarded as humanistic.

My point though is environmental humanism becomes a religion when AlGore and other radical "green" environmental humanists carry this to an extreme. They will gladly see mankind fall back to a primitive level rather in order to protect the environment. I pointed out (without rebuttal) that AlGore types of environmental humanists would drastically restrict the birth of human beings, by coercion if necessary, re: China's one child policy, in order to protect the environment. Some even argue that animals have rights equal to human beings. They'll fight to save a spotted owl or a whale, but see nothing wrong with killing innocent babies in the womb.

This is what I call religious environmental humanism...a neo-paganism that worships the environment caring for it over and above the care of their fellow human beings.

Let me ask you direct, then, Lula, how do you differentiate between the good kind of environmental humanist and the radical, bad kind? I really don't see Al Gore suggesting we regress to a primitive cultural state. As to popultion, goodness, we must at some point consider the actual sustainability of our species. In nature (as I understand it),most species die out through their own success at reproducing themselves. We must be careful with scarce resources and increasing reliance on them. How do you propose we do that?

I look forward to your reply.

Be well.

So Daiho posts #67



As to what I mean by religion, I note that you have already visited my forum regarding secular humanism in which I address how in the 60s the definition of "religion" has been expanded by the US Supreme Court.

I think we do need gods to have religions....and all those gods and all those religions are false in that there is only one true God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Creator of Heaven and earth. And there is only one supernatural religion--Christianity which fulfilled biblical Judaism.

Well, for starters, the essence of the "Green religion", is that there is no "In the beginning God created.."

Human happiness and certainly human fecundity are not as important as a "healthy" planet. For them people become the cancer, the plague.

The Green religion believes the planet was not created for humans, but the other way around. This is taken from James Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis developed in the 80s and pretty much public policy of the United Nations and its agencies. It contends that the earth is a living organism, the source of all life. We are part and parcel of a living planetary organism. We are temporary living manifestations or incarnations of this earth. We are living earth in that each of us is a cell, a perceptive nervous unit of the earth.


Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis contends the earth as a living organism has the capacity to heal itself under "natural" conditions. That the human speicies has developed the technology to overwhelm Gaia's capacity to "heal" itself and is therefore doomed to destruction unless we stop our assault. He's the one who told the Global Forum Council 20 some years ago that global warming is the result of the human assault upon the earth and likened it to a fever in humans, but is worried we aren't allowing Gaia to recuperate. He one heck of an Eco-loony in my estimation...and scary taboot.

I think Draginol and others have already more than adequately addressed this.

Lula:

My, my, such certainty. I don't know Lula, the history of your church is rather bleak and seriously barbaric for it to be the possessor of the One Truth. Frankly, I believe Christianity as understood and profess by fundamentalists is false and dangerous and its adherents are idolaters. Good thing we live in the United States and our various religious beliefs are protected, eh?


On the other hand, I believe the bible itself to be a work of creative fiction with a spattering of historical reality, just enough to give it a little credence. But even if it were true to the last letter, then its followers have gone seriously astray from its teachings. We should respect and nurture life, all life, including those myriad species about to go extinct over the next couple of decades. Not because we are the center of creation, but because it is creation.

Fundamentalists, including Catholic ones, seem to have lost touch with their true purpose here, to husband God's creation. This honors God, not a lot on knee-bending and shouts of "I Believe!" That's just a lot of noise and I would blame God for retreating into his inner sanctum just to get some needed quiet from it all.

See ya.

Lula, there is no "green religion". Goodness, you have religions coming out of every closet.

The belief that the planet is living is hardly far-fetched. It's very nature is organic. Is there a "Gaiai"? Who knows or cares, for that matter. What matters is how we husband this environment of ours and the centrality of it to our existance. Remember, as a Christian, you are supposed to believe this earth is God's creation. Don't you thinks its time to act like it? Why pollute it on the least side or kill its ability to sustain life on the extreme side?


Be well.

Oh Lula: When the earth was formed, whether by God or through the cosmic formation of the solar system (still could be God's handiwork) was that the beginning? And if so, what about all those stars that are far older than our solar system's star? Or was the beginning at the moment of the Big Bang? And if so, what was before that? And if God was the beginning, what was before God? Goodness, I'm getting a headache just thinking of the multiple billions of millenia this takes it...get this, there was no "beginning" and no "end" just eternal process, we might call these God...or not. See ya.

Lula, I have read both of Gore's books and saw his film twice. Regardless of what you think, Gore is very much a modern person, rooted in modernity. If Draginol addressed the idea that Gore was desiring our regression to a more primitive culture, I certainly missed it. Could you point me in the right direction.

This is you, So Daiho, spouting the United Nations monolithic dogma that a population bomb threatens the life of all humanity and exploits the earth. It's nonsense....and worse..it's a lie that I'll never buy into.



My first response is that God takes good care of all of His creation. He blessed His creation telling is to be fruitful and multiply. He takes wonderful care of the smallest sparrow, surely He will take care of mankind, the zenith of His creation.

(and since I know by this answer that you are squinching your eyebrow!)


So, I ask seriously what scarce resources?

For 20 some years now, we have been hearing, seeing and teaching that we have a world problem, an environmental crisis of horrific proportion created by over population. The bedrock argument of the population control movement coming out of the UN is the earth is a finite "carrying capacity" and the process of fulfilling those people's wants and needs is stripping the earth of its biotic capacity to produce life. A climatic burst of consumption is overwhelming the skies, earth, waters, and fauna.

We are told world overpopulation is a menace that pollutes the environment wrecks habitats, wipes out wildlife species and causes "global warming". UN Population controllers insist the world is running out of resources such as oil, minerals, and causing economic chaos and supposedly, we'll all be plunged into famine, disease, poverty and strife. But where, So Daiho, is the solid evidence that supports the Green religion dogma?

Back in 2001, a UN report "World Population Monitoring" stresses that many of the forecasts of harm from population growth have proven groundless and will probably remain so even if the world population climbs to 8.9 billion by 2050. The report states:

1. Regarding "carrying capacity", an upper limit on how many people the earth can support shows that world capita food available for direct human consumption increased by 24 % and there is enough being produced on this planet for everyone (if we could just get along with one another)!

2. Technical advances have greatly improved people's well being. For example "from 1900 to 2000 world population grew from 1.6 billion to 6.1 billion...but... while world population increased close to 4 times, world real gross domestic product increased 20-40 times allowing the world to not only sustain a four-fold population increase, but also to do so at vastly higher standards of living." (These trends are expected to continue through today through food production.)

3. Are we really running out of oil and mineral reserves? New reserves have been discovered, producing the seeming paradox that even though consumption of many minerals has risen, so has the estimated amount of the resource as yet untapped. (Our own Alaska National Wildlife Reserve is a good example.)

4. Does population growth pollute the environment, cause poverty, famine, etc.? The report concedes that population growth may be part of some of these problems, e.g. fisheries depletion, and water pollution, but overll, "population growth appears to be much less important as a driving force" than "economic growth and technology".

On poverty, British scholar Robert Whelan from Family of the AMericas, www.familyplanning.net says, "the idea that populaton growth is responsible for poverty, famines, and unemployment has now been so discredited among honest scholars as to be hardly tenable...Poverty and prosperity are the results of economic structures and are not caused by high or low birth rates. For example, Bangladish has a population density of over 600 people per square kilometer. But then Hong Kong has about 5,000 people p/s/k and is a great center of wealth creation. So why is Bangladesh so poor while Hong Kong is rich? It can't be overpopulation. In developed countries with Social Security plans, 5-6 youngworkers are needed to support each retiree. But most now have only 2-3 workers per retiree. Dropping birth rates increase poverty to older citizens. In poorer countries and in Communist countries, the only "Social Security" is to have enough children to support you in your old age. The report states famine can come when "people have inadequate physical and/or economic access to food as a result of poverty, political instability, economic inefficiency and social inequity", not just becasue there are too many people.

5. On Global warming, Population Research Institute Review has an interesting rebuttal on the claim taht overpopulation causes loss of biodiversity and global warming. Stephen Mosher, pres. of PRI writes of the consequences of man's low esteem for human life. The notion that people are somehow social, economic niusances is a pernicious one, predisposing governments to treat their own citizens as a form of pestilence. Instead of trying to life their poor out of poverty, governments instead try to reduce their numbers. Authentic economic development is neglected, human rights abuses abound, and everyone's freedoms are put at risk.
Population control encourages domestic tryanny of a very personal and deadly sort.




By loving thy neighbor. That's true empowerment. Helping people help themselves by providing them with potable drinking water, food, methods of sanitation, real health and medical care, electricity, you know the basic things we take for granted everyday.

Population factor is just one factor influencing the environment. Economic and political mismanagement and a secular materialist culture are others. The bottom line is we must treasure people as our most important resource and not the earth especially in the Gaia hypothesis sense.

lula posts:



He referred to this in reply #50..and moreso in AngelaMarie's blog...#16

Here is a copy and paste..

What, specifically, do you think Gore would have accomplished to make the world a better place?

Let's start with CO2 emissions. Let's say that he got elected and was able to take his hypothesis about CO2 from humans causing global warming.

Okay. Do you think your life would be better if we instituted a program in which no one was allowed to commute more than say 10 miles to work?

If we want to really reduce CO2 emissions, if they really are the boogeyman, then let's talk about what it would take:

Elimination of long-distance commutting would significantly reduce US CO2 emissions.
Outlawing of air conditioning if indoor temperature is less than 80 degrees.
Elimination of private jets.
Those are the 3 most obvious things we could do to make a significant, immediate affect to CO2 emisissions.

Are you willing to do this? Would this make your life better? Or do you really mean that you want a President who proclaims that we should do something and not that we actually do anything.

BTW, I commute 6 miles to work, fly on commercial airlines, and keep the air conditioner off unless it's over 80. Al Gore, by contrast, does none of these things - yet he's the one proclaiming the coming environmental apocalypse due to CO2 use.
-------------------------------------------------------
Indeed, doing without those things would be "primitive" to many.

LuIa: Indeed, doing without those things would be "primitive" to many.

Goodness gracious, I can't believe you are thinking that to live more directly in our environment, using less A/C, driving less, etc. is being "primitive". Primitive is how half the populated world lives, Lula, no indoor plumbing, no electricity, a thatched roof hut, at best, or cardboard box at worst, with very little to eat. You have got to get out more.

Be well.

Yes, so sadly, this is true. I know this as you do SoDaiho. We could name country after country where this kind of poverty exists...I thinking immediately of Haiti. The Catholic Church and other organizations of good will silently work tirelessly on this front trying to bring the mere necessities of life to people all over the world.

Here's the difference between what the Chruch and these other organizations do about it and what environmental Green religionists do. They implement population control policies and programs with AlGore leading the way.

In reply #93 I explained how these population control policies and programs are hurting rather than helping these poor people.

You asked what I would do about it and I replied

Nonsense. 

I am pretty consistent in my beliefs - I do not buy into arguments that are based on "lots of people believe this" but rather emperical evidence.

I am just as harsh on the right wingers who insist on the literal interpretation of the bible and Christianity (and any other religion that imagines a specific magical super being).

The entire CO2 global warming argument boils down to this:

CO2 is a green house gas. Humans produce CO2. The temperature has gone up slightly since 1976. Therefore, human produced CO2 must be the change.

I find the above hypothesis so unbelievably sloppy and ridiculous. 

My parking lot analogy is just as apt:

Parking lots absorb heat. Humans make parking lots and tehre are a lot more today than there were since 1976. The temperature has gone up since 1976. Therefore, parking lots must cause global warming.

I don't think parking lots have any effect either. But it's just as valid as the CO2 hypothesis.

Liberals (American left wingers that is) tend to latch on to beliefs out of purely emotional reasons.  Conservatives, except for religious conservatives, do not tend to do this.  Why that is the case is something I don't know.

Did you SEE An Inconvenient truth?

The movie basically boils down to this:

1. CO2 is a green house gas (look at Venus for what happens when you have too much CO2)
2. Fossil fuels create a lot of CO2
3. Green house gasses will make our temperature increase
4. Global warming would result in various world wide catastrophes
5. We must do "something" to stop this.

For most of this discussion, we have debated the merits of Al Gore winning a nobel peace prize for his marketing of the human produced CO2 hypothesis on global warming.  I think (know) the science behind the hypothesis is not there.

I have also expressed in the past my frustration that when the temperature starts to drop again in the next couple of decades that the environmentalists will take no responsibility or even acknowledge that they were wrong but simply seamlessly adapt just as they did in the 70s when the temperature stopped dropping but instead started to rise.

But your comment expands the scope of this discussion.

Let's say the man made 14% of the CO2 produced each year (CO2 being 0.03% of our atmosphere) is causing global warming. 

Do you have any remote idea of what it would take to bring that down to say 2% or whatever is needed to make a material difference as far as the environmentalists are concerned? It would require moving back to a prehistoric way of living. Pre-industrial revolution.

But it's all a joke because regardless of what we do, the temperature is going to change based on much larger factors than human produced CO2.  And what will inevitably happen is when the temperature starts to decline, the environmentalists will absurdly claim victory even though CO2 emissions are going to continue to rise.

 

Explain to me how exactly is water accumulated in a parking lot unnatural? Where did this water come from? An open hose or rain? If it is rain, the water would have landed on the ground as much as on dirt and it would have evaporated all the same. Granted on dirt it would evaporate less, but water that goes thru drainage makes it to rivers, lakes and ocean where the water will still evaporate. So i don't understand how is it that we can throw off the balance of evaporation that will happen regardless of where the water is sitting.

What you might wanna be stating is that the sun is getting hotter and therefore creating more evaporation than usual which can account for the excess evaporation. I just don’t see how water that already evaporates where ever it sits and is very hot somehow is worse because of parking lots.



And how exactly do you get more evaporation with parking lots? Are you not forgetting that you also need more water? But wait, you think because the water does not saturate into the concrete or asphalt that there is more to evaporate. Well, maybe water on dirty will not accumulate as much as on pavement but that water will still evaporate, most of it anyways. I just don’t see how water that would normally evaporate anyways is actually evaporating more just because of parking lots. Not unless there is more heat from the sun evaporating more water than normal then that would be attributed to the sun, not the parking lot.

BTW, if parking lots are to blame, what would you suggest, eliminate parking lots? So we are suppose to park were? Or should we just take the pavement part out and just leave dirt so that the water can be sucked up by it. Oh yea and forget about mud puddles and stuck cars.

Sorry dude, but you're just not making any sense to me.

bangladesh wasn't as convenient a vector for yankee and british opium pushers nor as manageable location in which to bank narcobucks. also traders seem to prefer stock exchanges in locations less frequently flattened and flooded by typhoons. difficult to inspire investor confidence in firms housed in buildings that wash out to sea before construction is completed.

Draginol: Yes, I have seen the film, twice, and read the companion book. I also have read a number of biologists, including E. O. Wilson from Harvard (and Pulitzer prize winner x 2. Its interesting that he, scientist extraordinaire, supports the hypothesis and you say the science isn't there. Bull. The science is there, you just do not for whatever reason wish to accept it.

The core samples Dr. Thompson took of glaciers, for example, revealed through calculating the isotope ratios of oxygen in the samples a steady increase in global temperatures and CO2 from the year 1000. Other studies in Antarctica confirmed a steady correlation of CO2 and air temperatures from 600.000 years ago to a rapid rise beginning about a thousand years ago. The CO2 measurements were between 150 and 260 ppm for 600,000 years, but over the last 1000 years there has been a rise to about 350 ppm and rising. With each rise in CO2 level there is a correlated rise in environmental temperature. This trend has been tracked back over a half million years. (see Gore. Al, An Inconvenient Truth, Rodale, 2006: pp 65-67). And see Wilson, E. O., Creation: an appeal to save life on earth , WW Norton, 2006: p.16) (There is also a fascination discussion of the rapid extinction of species exceeding species birthrates and the related causes [one being pollution] in chapter 8).

There is only one reason the CO2 levels might rise so dramatically over the last thousand years (and especially as sharply in the last 100 years) and that is our steady industrialization. According to Wilson, over 5 % of our land mass is burned every year. This is a double whammy environmentally as the burning releases greenhouses gases and also destroys the very mechanisms for scrubbing the atmosphere: trees.

Now, you may not think much of environmental scientists like Thompson or highly honored biologists like Wilson, but I tend to take their word for it over yours.

Be well.

Draginol Posts:

So Daiho Posts:



This just goes to show that we can get the horse to water, but can't make him drink.

It also goes to show that people will drink AlGore kool-aid all day long.

"Human beings 'create' nothing other than more human beings."

What, you don't believe in evolution? We could create ANYTHING. Right? Isn't that the premise there?

As to vapor as a greenhouse gas - yes. And if the temperature gets higher, there will be more vapor in the atmosphere. And then, the temperature will continue to get higher, and higher, and higher, and everything will melt, and soon, there will be no more water on earth, because it all evaporated, and we'll all be living in a desert, not an ocean. Or maybe the Earth knows what she's doing and will cool back down again.

Again, it all comes down to what LW said. We're all going to die. Except Christians are going to live again. But at that point, God will have made the environment perfect so we won't have to worry!

Jytheir posts:



This is from a section of Gerard Keane's Creation Rediscovered.

Have you ever studied the pre-Flood water vapor canopy in Genesis 1:7?

Creation scientists have proposed that when God created the earth, He lifted up a sufficient water to expose the desired extent of dry land and arched it over the atmosphere above the planet.

they suggest that God instantly turned this water into vapor form (superheated transparent steam) and established it in a pressure-temperature distribution that would not require miracles to maintain. This transparent canopy would have held about 10 times the amount of water contained in the cloud systems above the planet today.

A greenhouse effect would have ensued with pleasant temperatures at all parts of the planet. This in turn would have established lush vegetation to grow in all areas. The atmospheric pressure would have been about 2.18 times that of todays, thus facilitating giant forms of life to exist. It would have also aided longetivity Genesis records that in the pre-Flood world that men lived for hundreds of years.

The sheer extent of buried tropical vegetation and animals which could only live in temperate conditions shows the earth must once have had a worldwide temperature climate.

Since only gentle winds would have prevailed before the Flood, the great flying birds could have readily coped. If the idea of a canopy and greenhouse effect seems fantastic one can point to another canopy in existence today on the planet Venus. The temperature at the poles and at the equator are about the same.

The Higher atmospheric pressure provides a clue as to why Noah was drunk after he had re-established his family on the earth after the waters had receded. He was caught off guard with the canopy gone the rate of formulation of the alcohol in the wine would have speeded up and Noah would not have anticipated there being more alcohol in the wine.

One scientist proposed that the pre-flood atmosphere was very much richer in CO2 whose warmer oceans were perhaps 60 degrees. This effected man's longevity. the richer amounts of co2 in the atmosphere resulted in dilation of the blood vessels increasing oxygen flow, and thus rendered the hypothalamus less active and thereby retarded the aging process.

Take this all and put it together with this bit of info...

Donald W. Patten wrote that a century ago, CO2 comprised 290 parts per million of the atmosphere. Since then, increasing burning of fossil fuels has raised the Co2 ration to 330 p.p.m. He thinks this increase in atmospheric CO2 has some relation to recent generations' increase in height and or lifespan!

Lila: You insult the life's work of very dedicated scientists who have established the link you so demand to see but are unwilling to accept. Whose drinking that KoolAid?

Take a look at the science and get off the religious conceit, please.

_______________

This really brings me back to the original topic of this post. Draginol, et.al. and Lula, et. al, represent differing, but similarly opposing groups to either environmentalism or the association between global warming and CO2 emissions. Reason suggests we should approach the evidence. I see there is, indeed, evidence in the form of glacier studies that can take us back a half million years. Yet, similar (I suspect) to the dismissal of dating evidence with regard to the fossil record, the religious fundamentalists refuse to accept the science and instead rely on what they feel is the literal word of God, their Christianized version of the Hebrew scriptures and their "New Testament."


On one hand someone insists I am not myself looking at the evidence, on the otherhand an apparent religious polemicist similar to Coulter who suggests I am drinking Kool-Aid, I suppose a reference to the Jonestown sort of hysterical suicide pacts, something far more likely of a religious zealot than a Buddhist priest.

Where is the reasoned investigation here? Draginol, show me the evidence against the hypothesis. Lula, show me scripturally where we should not husband God's gift of creation to us.

I gave a few references to hard data on the science side and I believe Bereshit (Genesis) 1:27-29 (on the Judaic side) pretty much say we are to take care of the gift of life on earth. Further, Is. 41:6 asks us to be of service to our neighbor and to be strong. We should not be hopeless, we should be hopeful together ("yahdav" in Hebrew) and enact tzedek (justice) in our partnership with God to practice tikkun olam, "repair of the world". From a Buddhist POV, our vows are to do no harm, do good, and create conditions for good to manifest. I am not so sure that careless disregard for CO2 emissions, ozone depletion, slash and burn farming, massive parking lots, massive city and suburban sprawl, inefficient use of non-renewable resources, none of this fits our civil or moral responsibilty, nor does it come close to taking care of God's gift to us.


Be well.