Water vapor has a half-life of nine days before it precipitates, carbon dioxide a century. To get the same shift in global climate you'd have to evaporate H2O at 400,000 times you release CO2. I do not know what the net impact of H2O vs. CO2 is. (How many degrees increase in surface temprature for a given increase in a particular greenhouse gas?) Certainly clouds (that condensate again) scatter sunlight back into space, cooling the earth. CO2 can't. The major role of water vapor in the "global warming" debate is that the hydrostatic equilibrium can be shifted by increasing CO2, not that we could ever dump enough H2O into the atmosphere to make a difference. The way greenhouse gases work is that the surface of the earth converts visible light to heat and hence to infrared radiation. (All the wavelengths of sunlight that can be absorbed by the atmosphere are absorbed in the thermosphere, a 1000 miles above the surface and far too well insultated from the surface to much influence the temprature here.) The infrared radiation is absorbed by the greenhouse gases and which are warmed and act to re-warm the surface, shifting the thermal equilbrium point higher. That's why its cooler on top of a mountain, even though the sun is brighter. The air up there isn't warmed by the earth quit as well.
Interesting.
Where's your data for this?
I do not know what the net impact of H2O vs. CO2 is. (How many degrees increase in surface temprature for a given increase in a particular greenhouse gas?)
Climate Catastrophe, A spectroscopic Artifact?
Conclusions
It is hardly to be expected that for CO2 doubling an increment of IR absorption at the 15 µm edges by 0.17% can cause any significant global warming or even a climate catastrophe.
The radiative forcing for doubling can be calculated by using this figure. If we allocate an absorption of 32 W/m2 [14] over 180º steradiant to the total integral (area) of the n3 band as observed from satellite measurements (Hanel et al., 1971) and applied to a standard atmosphere, and take an increment of 0.17%, the absorption is 0.054 W/m2 - and not 4.3 W/m2.
This is roughly 80 times less than IPCC's radiative forcing.
If we allocate 7.2 degC as greenhouse effect for the present CO2 (as asserted by Kondratjew and Moskalenko in J.T. Houghton's book The Global Climate [14]), the doubling effect should be 0.17% which is 0.012 degC only. If we take 1/80 of the 1.2 degC that result from Stefan-Boltzmann's law with a radiative forcing of 4.3 W/m2, we get a similar value of 0.015 degC.
Consider, for example, the study of Fischer et al. (1999), who examined trends of atmospheric CO2 and air temperature derived from Antarctic ice core data that extended back in time a quarter of a million years. Over this extended period, the three most dramatic warming events experienced on earth were those associated with the terminations of the last three ice ages; and for each of these climatic transitions, earth's air temperature rose well in advance of any increase in atmospheric CO2. In fact, the air's CO2 content did not begin to rise until 400 to 1,000 years after the planet began to warm. Such findings have been corroborated by Mudelsee (2001), who examined the leads/lags of atmospheric CO2 concentration and air temperature over an even longer time period, finding that variations in atmospheric CO2 concentration lagged behind variations in air temperature by 1,300 to 5,000 years over the past 420,000 years.
The major role of water vapor in the "global warming" debate is that the hydrostatic equilibrium can be shifted by increasing CO2, not that we could ever dump enough H2O into the atmosphere to make a difference.
We don't dump enough CO2 into the atmosphere to make a difference either. Contribution of mankind to the total greenhouse gas balance is 0.26%.
...I think I know why you are "Lonesome in Mass......."