Current Events — HabitableZone

Current Events » in reply to Please rank these greenhouse gasses

Pretty Much Irrelevant

Relative strength and concentration are pretty much irrelevant unless they are also changing independently. The thing is they can all increase in lock step with a catastrophic phase change potential with methane. If you look at the data I provided you will see that methane and CO2 seem to rise and fall together most of the time. The data also indicates that while Methane is far stonger GW gas it is present at much lower concentrations. Releasing the methane hydrates in the ocean due to continued CO2 induced warming would be catastrophic. Of course as temperatures rise so does water vapor pressure increasing its GW contribution. There is a counterbalance here though in that more rain from more vapor means more CO2 trapped in carbonates. As with all buffer systems though this just slows down the change not eliminates it. Over the long term the carbonates are returned to CO2 through plate tectonics. CO2 and water are both believed to have contributed to the RUNAWAY GE on Venus. Ignoring this obvious sign of caution is one of the things I find most unbelievable in a space savy crowd.

Regards,
Mark

Log in or register to post.

The whole thread (25 posts)