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Water vapor is indeed a powerful greenhouse gas, but there is plenty of room for CO2 to play a role

(Part of the How to Talk to a Global Warming Skeptic guide)

Objection: H2O accounts for 95% of the greenhouse effect; CO2 is insignificant.

Answer: According to the scientific literature and climate experts, CO2 contributes anywhere from 9% to 30% to the overall greenhouse effect. The 95% number does not appear to come from any scientific source, though it gets tossed around a lot.

Everybody does it

Thanks to Andrew for bringing up science politicization, something I've been meaning to talk about for a while. This was originally a comment on his post, but it got too long so I'm putting it up here.

It seems to me that discussions of science politicization run together two distinct issues.

Warning: techno-engineering speak ahead

Amory Lovins is rightfully admired by environmentalists. But nobody is right all the time, and the hydrogen path is one of his few mistakes. He summarizes his argument for hydrogen in Twenty Hydrogen Myths (PDF). More extensive discussion is embedded in his book Winning the Oil Endgame (book-length PDF).

His basic proposal:

‘Climate scientists dodge the subject of water vapor’–No, they really don’t

(Part of the How to Talk to a Global Warming Skeptic guide)

Objection: Climate scientists never talk about water vapor -- the strongest greenhouse gas -- because it undermines their CO2 theory.

Answer: Not a single climate model or climate textbook fails to discuss the role water vapor plays in the greenhouse effect. It is the strongest greenhouse gas, contributing 36% to 66% to the overall effect for vapor alone, 66% to 85% when you include clouds. It is however, not considered a climate "forcing," because the amount of H2O in the air basically varies as a function of temperature.

‘We are just recovering from the LIA’–Why should we expect this to happen?

(Part of the How to Talk to a Global Warming Skeptic guide)

Objection: Today's warming is just a recovery from the Little Ice Age.

Answer: This argument relies on an implicit assumption that there is a particular climatic baseline to which the earth inexorably returns -- and thus that a period of globally lower temperatures will inevitably be followed by a rise in temperatures. What is the scientific basis for that assumption?

But yes!

I was reading this month's Scientific American last night and came upon an article on ethanol. You can't read it without a subscription, so, sorry about that. Matthew Wald, a reporter for the New York Times, wrote it. Interestingly enough, not everyone at the NYT appears to have the same opinion on corn ethanol.

I was expecting the usual: inaccurate, incomplete, and pseudo-neutral. However, it turned out to be quite good. The article was long (which is a necessity with complicated topics), and the author made no pretense of neutrality.

Coal and cars, two great tastes that … gack!

...you might want to hurt yourself:

"A clean car that runs on coal!"

A more appropriate headline:

"A car on coal. Run!"

Washington guv defangs oversight panel

Washington State Governor Christine Gregoire may have announced a major program to clean up the Puget Sound just last week, but this week the tides have, er, turned.

This week, she's planning to limit the power of an independent citizen oversight panel intending to keep an eye on the oil industry -- probably the biggest threat to Sound health.

‘The CO2 rise is natural’–No skeptical argument has been more definitively disproven

(Part of the How to Talk to a Global Warming Skeptic guide)

Objection: It's clear from ice cores and other geological history that CO2 fluctuates naturally. It is bogus to assume today's rise is caused by humans.

Answer: We emit billions of tons of CO2 into the air and, lo and behold, there is more CO2 in the air. Surely it is not so difficult to believe that the CO2 rise is our fault. But if simple common sense is not enough, there is more to the case. (It is worth noting that investigation of this issue by the climate science community is a good indication that they are not taking things for granted or making any assumptions -- not even the reasonable ones!)

Navajo protest third coal-fired plant on reservation land

Members of the Navajo Nation and their supporters have been blockading the site of a proposed coal-fired power plant in northwestern New Mexico for more than a week now, hoping to halt construction of what they believe will be a social and ecological disaster.

If completed, the Desert Rock Power Plant will cover 600 acres in the largest American Indian reservation in the nation, and it will be the third coal-fired plant on Navajo land.