An item picking apart Al Gore's recent NYT piece.
Excerpt:
Gore wrote, "The heavy snowfalls this month have been used as fodder for ridicule by those who argue that global warming is a myth, yet scientists have long pointed out that warmer global temperatures have been increasing the rate of evaporation from the oceans, putting significantly more moisture into the atmosphere -- thus causing heavier downfalls of both rain and snow in particular regions, including the Northeastern United States."
It's an interesting theory, but where are the facts?
The article goes on to mention various studies that either say the opposite or show uncertainty about this claim.
Additionally, at the end of the piece, it points out that CO2 isn't the only greenhouse gas.
Except:
Aside from clouds, water vapor accounts for as much as two-thirds of the earth's greenhouse-gas effect. Water vapor traps heat from escaping the atmosphere -- but clouds have the opposite effect (called "albedo") by reflecting the sun's energy back into space. And snow on the ground from the IPCC's predicted precipitation in high latitudes would have the same cooling effect as clouds.
What the new research suggests is that changes in water vapor may well trump the effect of carbon dioxide (only a fraction of which is man-made) and methane (which has mysteriously slowed since about 1990).
This raises an intriguing question: Since the Environmental Protection Agency declared that it has the authority to regulation carbon emissions because of their presumed effect on the global climate, why hasn't the EPA also attempted to regulate mist and fog?
I think we do need to get away from fossil fuels for the practical reasons that burning coal puts pollution in the air and that depending so much on foreign oil means we send so much money over to some pretty unsavory governments.
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