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I thought water vapour was negative feedback?
Water vapour creates clouds which are white & reflect sunlight.

We don’t know where global warming will stop but the worst case scenario is that the earth will become like its sister planet Venus, with  a temperature of 250 degrees C and rain sulphuric acid. The human race could not survive in those conditions.

Bobby. wrote on Aug 11^th, 2013 at 1:18pm:

I'm far from expert, but I'll give it a go.

Water vapour is a greenhouse gas. Most of what's in the atmosphere isn't cold enough to condense and therefore can't form clouds.

That's what the so-called Venus scenario is all about:

• we reach a point at which evaporation exceeds precipitation;
• water vapour being a greenhouse gas, we trigger a feedback loop;
• eventually, all of the surface water is in the atmosphere.

With so much greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, temperatures at the surface rise to around 200 degrees Celsius. Somewhere in there, humanity's extinct along with the rest of life on the surface.

The scenario was modelled by Carl Sagan back in (iirc) the 1970s, using Venus as a model. It's thought that Venus once had oceans, much like Earth. Most of the water's still there, but it isn't liquid.

As Stephen Hawking said:
Quote:


If you're interested, there's more at:
http://350orbust.com/2010/07/23/carl-sagan-and-stephen-hawking-on-effects-of-glo...

The part I find really interesting is what happens after that:

• water vapour that circulates into the upper atmosphere is exposed to solar radiation;
• the molecules break down into hydrogen and hydroxyl ions;
• the hydrogen tends to escape into space;
• the hydroxyl ions combine with other elements in the atmosphere to form acidic compounds;
• after a few hundred millennia, there's very little molecular water left;
• the increasingly dry atmosphere absorbs water from the planet itself;
• the planet is sucked dry;
• nothing that we might recognise as life survives.
  
  The thing I find strange is the effect that environment has on the very substance of the planet. Without water, for example, rocks are much harder.

In Case anybody's wondering, notrickszone.com is yet another climate science denial site. Pierre Gosling seems the be an American with a Bachelor of Science living in Germany. The site basically rehashes fantasies from other denial sites.

The site is so low in the hierarchy that it barely registers. Here's one remark I found that mentions it http://watchingthedeniers.wordpress.com/2013/06/03/qa-be-an-honorable-ancestor-a...:
"The tricks of No Tricks Zone
You don’t have to be a scientist to see that most of the so-called climate skepticism out there is complete bollocks. Step up to the plate Pierre Gosselin in Germany who writes the ironically titled “No Tricks Zone” .

Take this. Amospheric changes on all 9 planets explains the cause of global warming as “the sun, stupid” . A real skeptic would doubt any conclusion that is so forthright but Pierre expresses no doubts whatsoever and if you don’t agree you’re stupid. But what evidence is there that warming on other planets and the Earth share the same cause? Pierre offers none . He has arrived at his explanation for global warming on the Earth by … looking at completely different planets. Unfortunately none of those other bodies in the solar system support life, a point that I have made to P but it seems to have gone past him.

A few days later Pierre’s headline is “NOAA Data Shows Slowing Sea Level Rise”. Pierre sorts the results of a selection of coastal stations around the globe into four categories which he calls ‘observed most recent rate trend’. Although he claims six stations show a ‘steady drop’ three of those (Karachi, Walvis Bay and Tenerife) actually record numerical rises in sea level. So how does Pierre arrive at his ‘observed most recent rate trend’? I ask if it’s simply Pierre’s opinion of the most recent direction of the line on the graph perhaps. “It was arrived at by looking at the data” is P’s cryptic response. He then suggests “your time would be better spent if you asked [Stefan] Rahmstorf at the PIK how they reached their conclusions of accelerating SLR. ” Quite."

Of course, to a dedicated denier, it's all Gospel. 

...
Did you mean this Carl Saga[size=12]n...[b]
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Rider wrote on Aug 11^th, 2013 at 7:45pm:


So using that logic, if you give me a $100 note (something more than $50) for something that costs $40, you'd be happy with just $10 change.

I have this bridge for sale. It's very big and it looks like a massive coat hanger............

Oh, I didn't realise you were the 'source' police. Didn't like the message aye?

International Journal of Spectroscopy
Volume 2013 (2013), Article ID 690186, 8 pages

Article: Carbon Dioxide Capture from Ambient Air Using Amine-Grafted Mesoporous Adsorbents

Annemarie Wagner,1 Bengt Steen,2 Göran Johansson,3 Ezio Zanghellini,1 Per Jacobsson,1 and Patrik Johansson1

1 Department of Applied Physics, Chalmers University of Technology, 412 96 Göteborg,  Sweden
2 Department of Energy and Environment, Chalmers University of Technology, 412 96 Göteborg,  Sweden
3ETC Battery and FuelCells Sweden AB, 449 44 Nödinge Nol,  SwedenReceived 26 February 2013; Accepted 31 March 2013Academic Editor: Rolf W. Berg Copyright © 2013 Annemarie Wagner et al.

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) have been identified as a major contributor to climate change. An attractive approach to tackle the increasing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere is direct extraction via absorption of CO2 from ambient air, to be subsequently desorbed and processed under controlled conditions. The feasibility of this approach depends on the sorbent material that should combine a long lifetime with nontoxicity, high selectivity for CO2, and favorable thermodynamic cycling properties. Adsorbents based on pore-expanded mesoporous silica grafted with amines have previously been found to combine high CO2 adsorption capacity at low partial pressures with operational stability under highly defined laboratory conditions..............

Qantas flying boats: Was air travel more fun in the 1930s?

    KATE SCHNEIDER, TRAVEL EDITOR
    news.com.au
    August 10, 2013 6:48PM

SEVENTY five years ago, there was great excitement when Qantas launched its first Short Empire Flying Boat service between Rose Bay and Singapore.

In what's a bizarre sight to today's flyers, passengers climbed the wings of the plane and stood on top, as the aircraft sat in the water.

How things have changed 

# wrote on Aug 11^th, 2013 at 8:13pm:


what, 1996... Another circular argument of bs.  It must sh1t you that I have a vote as well. Bad luck.

The sun's activities and the temperature of the Earth correlate quite nicely thank you very much.

The measured solar activity is well-correlated with the observed temperature variations, but does not follow the recent upturn in temperature as the originally published plot indicated.