Climate In The Obama Age: An Interview With Andy Revkin

Hopes are high for an Obama-led climate strategy, but when it comes to true details there are still more questions than answers. Andrew C. Revkin has stationed himself at the intersection of science, technology, and policy for two decades, watching closely and writing like a madman. Revkin's reporting can be found in the New York Times, where he is a senior environment writer, as well as at Dot Earth. He also pops up regularly on TreeHugger around issues like geoengineering, climate taxes, and population growth. We asked Andy to shed some light on the Obama climate picture as it unfolds.

TreeHugger: I want to talk about Barack Obama and what the incoming presidential administration is going to mean for the climate. Via your blog, Dot Earth, you've elicited from your readers a list of suggestions on what the transition team should be working on. In the realm of climate, what have people spoken up about?

Andy Revkin: Well, there is a bunch of stuff coming in and I have more coming onto the blog even as we speak. White roofs, for example. Someone just told me white should be the new green as a way to cool places off and blunt some of the warming effect of growing CO2. A more reflective world is a better place, and cities still tend to be very dark.
Read the full interview or listen to a podcast of it here.

Related:
Ken Salazar Not Environmentalists' First Choice For Interior -- Grijalva Was
Hard Task for New Team on Energy and Climate

Comments

[Ranta]

Read about the theory to use water vapor to control global warming.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/226/story/58124.html

[Exusian]

I'll reserve judgment on the potential effectiveness of Ace's water spray idea until I research it a bit more, although it is already clear that Ace's scheme simply boosts natural evaporation, convection and condensation. It can not and will not convey energy to space, only to the elevation at which water vapour already condenses in the atmosphere.

No mention is made of where the energy to power the spraying will come from, or how it will be produced, and no where in the linked article is the other serious consequence of CO2 mentioned: ocean acidification, and the consequent impact on the entire marine food chain. Ace's scheme will do nothing to ameliorate that, in fact it will speed it by flushing more CO2 into the ocean.

[Exusian]

....contin­ued

CO2, on the other hand, comprises around one tenth as much of the atmosphere that water vapour does, around 0.0383%, or around 8% of all greenhouse gases. CO2 is well-mixed from the surface right up into the stratosphere, much higher than water vapour is normally found. Plus, you can add as much to the atmosphere as you like and it will not condense out--no where on Earth is it cold enough. And that's exactly what we've been doing: we've increased the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere by almost 38% since we started burning fossil carbon on an industrial scale.

The fact that CO2 can be added to the atmosphere without condensing out means that it can do what water vapour can not do: act as a direct climate forcing. And that is exactly what it is doing.

The "it's the sun" argument is what global warming/climate change deniers use until you point out that there has been no correlation between solar variation and global mean temperature since the late 1970s-early 1980s.

They use the "green is the new religion" argument when they have no science to use in their arguments.

They use the "a new cold cycle is coming" because since it's in the future no one can prove them right or wrong.....­yet.

[Exusian]

The "CO2 is miniscule" argument is a hollow, hand-waving diversion.

Over 99.5% of the gases in the atmosphere are completely transparent to all wavelengths of light--they can not alter surface temperature by interfering with the transmission of light energy. The gases that can do that, the so-called greenhouse gases, make up less than 0.5% of the atmosphere.

Water vapour comprises less than 0.4% of the atmosphere, which makes water vapour not much more than a miniscule fraction of the atmosphere, and around 80% of all greenhouse gases. It is not at all well mixed through out the atmosphere though--it can be as high as 4% near the surface over a body of water, and rapidly falls to near zero as you go up in the atmosphere. And you can not add any more of it to the atmosphere without first making the atmosphere warmer or it will just condense and precipitate out. (Look up relative and absolute humidity.) This means that as a greenhouse gas water vapour can never add warmth as a climate forcing, only as a feedback.

continued.­...

[SailFree]

1) CO2 is miniscule as a greenhouse gas compared to water vapor,etc.
2) Sun cycles are the basic driver of climate cycles. Mankind cannot change the sun.
3) Green is the new religion for those who need a religion, can't face uncertainty, but don't want to believe in any of the old, established religion, heaven forbid in Christianity.
4) A new cold cycle is coming and we best be stocking up on the carbon fuels, building nuclear reactors, and otherwise developing energy sources before everybody freezes.