Frank
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The main greenhouse gas is water vapour. It is the only gas in air that can evaporate, humidify and condense into clouds that precipitate rain, hail and snow. These processes involve a transfer of energy, and water vapour makes the atmosphere behave like a giant airconditioner. Carbon dioxide is a non-condensable atmospheric gas like nitrogen and oxygen. Water vapour in air varies depending on temperature and location from five times the atmospheric carbon dioxide content in deserts to more than 100 times in the tropics. Water is 12 times more effective than carbon dioxide with respect to all incoming and outgoing radiation. Earth is unevenly heated. Our spinning oblate globe is influenced by two fluids of different composition and behaviour moving chaotically against each other over the irregular solid surface of the planet. Oceans hold most of the planet’s surface heat, not the atmosphere. Processes that occur during sunlight do not occur at night due to the prime driver of our planet’s surface temperature: the sun. Carbon dioxide is plant food. It is neither a pollutant nor a toxin. Without carbon dioxide, all life on Earth would die. Plants convert carbon dioxide, water and sunlight during photosynthesis into sugars, cellulose, fruit, vegetables and grains, which animal life uses as food. Marine organisms also take up and use carbon dioxide. Plants need almost three times today’s carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere to thrive. For decades horticulturalists have pumped carbon dioxide into glasshouses to increase yields. The fossil record shows that a thriving and diversification of plant and animal life occurs every time the atmosphere had a very high carbon dioxide content. In the past, warming has never been a threat to life on Earth. Why should it be now? When there is a low atmospheric carbon dioxide content, especially during very cold times, life struggles. For the past 500 million years, the atmospheric carbon dioxide content has been decreasing and if we halved today’s atmospheric carbon dioxide content, all life would die. This carbon dioxide has been removed into the oceans and is sequestered into coral, shells, limey sediments and muds and on the land into coals, muds, soils and vegetation.
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