The trillion dollar guess and the zombie theory - Climate Change: The Facts - page 112

11 The trillion dollar guess and the zombie theory
Jo Nova
Scientifically,thetheoryofacarbondisasterstartedknockingondeath'sdoortenyearsago.
It quietly went 'terminal' but hardly anyone knew. Over the last decade 28 million weather
balloons,30yearsofsatelliterecordingsand3,000roboticoceanbuoysconfirmedthatifthe
carbondisasterwasn'tdead,itwasonthecriticallist—notcriticallyimportant,butcritically
wounded. Few realised that a trillion dollar industry was based entirely on a guess made in
1896 about relative humidity, and that the guess appears to be wrong.
The first climate advisory committee (namely the compilers of the 'Charney report',
convened by the National Academy of Sciences as a kind of baby IPCC) repeated the
assumption in 1979 1 , and over the next four decades Western governments would commit
to a grand project to try to change the weather. At one point global carbon markets reached
a turnover of US $176 billion a year. 2 The Bank of America pledged $50 billion to combat
climate change (how green is your banker?). 3 Renewables investment reached $359 billion
annually. 4 Such was the cult-like fear, the EU unconvincingly boasted that they had agreed
to 'commit at least 20% of EU spending in the period 2014-2020' to 'climate action
objectives.' 5 What was scary was that nobody laughed.
Most of this money depended on an assumption made about relative humidity in the
upper troposphere. Like triple A-rated mortgages, the real uncertainty was written in fine
print while the theory was advertised as 'simple physics'.
The guess that created the trillion dollar crisis
It seemed like a good idea at the time. Water vapour (aka humidity) is a more powerful
greenhousegasthanCO 2 .Warmeraircanholdmorewatervapour.WhatifCO 2 warmedthe
world, which caused humidity to rise and amplified the warming? 6 Catastrophe.
But water molecules are the starring split-personality-molecules of chemistry. Humidity
has options: in an instant it can be cloud, rain, ice or snow, and all of these have different
impacts on the climate. Humidity warms the Earth, but most clouds cool it. The extra
warming caused by CO 2 could be amplified or undone by what the fickle water molecules
do.
Water is the real dynamo controlling the climate. While CO 2 is steadily increasing year
on year, levels of water in the atmosphere change by the hour. A CO 2 molecule might float
foryears,buteachwatermoleculestaysaloftforonlytendaysorso,andonceithasbecome