The Green Technocrat

You know how everything cause cancer?  Smoking - cancer. Drinking - cancer. Talking on the phone - cancer.  Walking down the street - cancer.  Well it seems the same thing can be said about global warming.  Because it is now official, even water causes global warming.

Actually climate scientists have long recognized the fact that water vapor in the atmosphere will trap heat in much the same way that CO2 does.  However, until recently that long standing assumption lacked the empirical evidence necessary to build a model that would accurately describe the effects of water vapor on global warming.

That all changed earlier this week when Andrew Dessler and his colleagues at Texas A&M released their findings confirming that water vapor has enough heat trapping potential to double the global warming caused by CO2 in the atmosphere. Dessler’s team used data collected by NASA’s Atmospheric Infared Sounder satellite to precisely measure the humidity throughout the lowest 10 miles of the atmosphere.  By then combining this information with data on shifts in global temperature the researchers were able to build a model that shows the warming effects of water vapor, carbon dioxide, and other greenhouse gases.

“This new data set shows that as surface temperature increases, so does atmospheric humidity,” Dessler said. “Dumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere makes the atmosphere more humid. And since water vapor is itself a greenhouse gas, the increase in humidity amplifies the warming from carbon dioxide.”

Despite the fact that this finding has long been accepted by many in the field of climate science, it still makes me pause and shudder at the implications.  The eloquence of our destruction is in its simplicity.  We polute the atmosphere enough to warm the earth a couple of degrees.  This causes increased levels of water vapor to enter the atmosphere, thereby doubling the warming effect.  This in turn leads to even more water vapor entering the atmosphere (and of course we can’t forget the massive amounts of greenhouse gases we keep sending up there), which leads to an even greater increase in temperature, and MORE water vapor entering the atmosphere.  And so on and so on.  The cycle of destruction is well on its way. I’m getting the fuck out of here.