All those vaping people should be ashamed of themselves ;)[/quote]
I think the vaping people should be ashamed for a different reason – taking poisons into your body under the false belief that because they are ‘vaping’ instead of ‘smoking’, that it is somehow much healthier.
As for the article link, I have a problem with the statement:
However, water vapor does not control the Earth’s temperature, but is instead controlled by the temperature.
Which is horribly inaccurate. Water vapor does both. It is the self regulating part of the equation. Water has two aspects to its behavior. As a gas, it is a very strong global warming gas, ie positive feedback, however as a mist or cloud – it is global cooling, ie negative feedback. Topping it off, in transition between being a positive feedback gas to a negative feedback mist/cloud- water releases a considerable amount of heat energy out into space. Because it is very light as a gas, only methane poses a potential problem to water releasing its energy when doing the phase transition between gas to mist or cloud. To heat up 1 gram/1cc of water 1 degree C, it takes 1 Calorie. To turn the same amount of water into a gas, it takes 540 Calories – this gets released when water condenses. To raise the temperature of 1 gram of dry air at sea level, by one degree Centigrade only takes 0.24 Calories. That means that in 1 gram of water-gas condensing in the upper atmosphere and releasing its energy into space and forming a cloud, more than 2160grams of air will be cooled 1 degree C (actually the number is half that because the radiation pattern on condensation is spherical). Considering that dry air is about 21% oxygen and 78% nitrogen – average atomic weight is about 0.78 * 14 + 0.22 * 16 = 14.44 grams per mole. At standard temp/pressure, one mole of gas occupies 22.4 liters of space. That means the evap/condensation of 1 gram of water can cool 1080g / 14.44g * 22.4 = 1675.35 liters of dry air (I used the 50% spherical thermal radiation space-vs-re-emit to earth on condensation here ). 1 liter occupies a cube of 10 cm on a side or 1 cubic decimeter. That means 1675.35 liters occupies about 1.19 cubic meters. The end result being that the evap/condensation of 1 gram of water can cool 1.19 cubic meters of dry air by 1 degree Centigrade. For the SAE people, 1 cubic meter is slightly larger than 1 cubic yard. 1.19 cubic meters is about 1.5 cubic yards. That is why water/humidity is not only driven by the temperature, but can also drive and regulate the temperature.
This is also why when looking for inhabited planets, it is often considered that water is a prerequisite for life.
NOTE: The claim that water accounts for 60% is also horribly inaccurate. If you did the suggested spreadsheet, you would get an idea of the actual numbers.
As I said: MATH!
oh yeah, and a bit of chemistry, some physics.
