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Perhaps if there was a lot less asphalt and concrete and more shade trees and grass, it might be a bit cooler and more comfortable?
Yah that would help somewhat.
But here's the problem. Carbon Dioxide is like three springly balls stuck together when most other molecules in the air have two springy balls stuck together.
The more springy balls are in the air, the more they can absorb the wiggles from sunlight, and then even when the sun isn't shining them springs are still wiggling, releasing that wiggle into other molecules and objects slowly, at a rate much higher than if it were more nitrogen or oxygen. Our biggest problem here is one as simple as slinky-physics. We have too many springy balls wiggling in the sky, wiggling too hard and making everything wiggle more.
The way you were able to put it so simply makes me really wish that explanation was correct, but unfortunately it is not.
It's more along the lines of:
- All things shine away their hot, as long as they are at least a little bit hot.
- You know the sun shines, but actually the earth shines too.
- Actually, you shine too. (That's why you can be seen on an infrared camera.)
- The hotter a thing is, the harder it shines.
- The sun is really hot so it shines really hard.
- The earth is much less hot, and shines way, way less.
- The earth gets more hot from catching the shine from the sun, and less hot from shining itself.
- When the hot coming in from the sunshine is the same as the hot going out from the earthshine, the earth says the same hot.
- When the hot coming in from the sunshine is more than the hot going out from the earthshine, the earth gets more hot.
- And as the earth gets more hot, its earthshine becomes harder, until it's the same as the sunshine again.
- For the earthshine to take the hot away from the earth, it has to actually get to space.
- Otherwise it's like the earth shines on its own air, and the hot remains basically on (or around) the earth.
- CO2 stops some parts of the earthshine from reaching space.
- This part of the earthshine, when it starts from the ground, basically never gets to space.
- It can only get to space from really high up, where there is not so much CO2 in the way.
- But really high up is also colder, so the earthshine is less (because hotter things shine harder).
- The more CO2 there is, the higher up we have to go, the colder it is there, the weaker that part of the earthshine is.
- And when the earthshine gets weaker, the actual earth has to be hotter to shine out as much hot as is coming in from the sunshine. Which is why CO2 makes the earth more hot.
I try to explain to people in simplified ways, it's pure pedantry at best or totally confusing at worst to the average person if the heat that CO2 is storing is coming from the sun directly, or the heat being reflected back into space, either way the mechanical idea is the same, that CO2 stores energy.
Not really. CO2 is effectively a thermal blanket. It traps your radiant heat. The environmental heat still affects you, additively.
The only real difference is that people also generate their own heat instead of just storing it. But you could say a thermal blanket on a snake and have the same effect.Not really.
Yes really.
You're right, it's a thermal blanket but it also absorbs and holds more heat energy more efficiently than other molecules because infrared radiation can actually be absorbed by CO2, this isn't a fringe interpretation, but I do get that there are alternative interpretations of the processes. I just don't care to try to explain the nuance and details to average laypersons.
https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2021/02/25/carbon-dioxide-cause-global-warming/
https://www.quora.com/Why-does-carbon-dioxide-capture-more-heat-than-oxygen
I was saying that it's not really confusing.... And then used the thermal blanket analogy to try and give an example.
How do I know this isn't that confusing to the average person? I teach it to high schoolers in environmental systems. They get the hang of it pretty easily if you just give them a decent example with a visual. Unless high schoolers aren't average people anymore....
That's the point, CO2 doesn't store energy (well, it does a little, but not so much that it makes any difference). What it does is blocks the energy from leaving (until you reach a high altitude).
CO2 doesn’t store energy (well, it does a little, but not so much that it makes any difference).
Carbon dioxide, for example, absorbs energy at a variety of wavelengths between 2,000 and 15,000 nanometers — a range that overlaps with that of infrared energy. As CO2 soaks up this infrared energy, it vibrates and re-emits the infrared energy back in all directions. About half of that energy goes out into space, and about half of it returns to Earth as heat, contributing to the ‘greenhouse effect.’
https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2021/02/25/carbon-dioxide-cause-global-warming/
I understand there's many dimensions and factors involved in the entire process, but it's not a wrong interpretation to say it stores more energy, even if it's just borrowing it for a moment. It acts like both a heat sink and a thermal blanket. While I'm not a climatologist, I have a pretty good grasp of physics so I'm guessing we're just talking about pedantic or technical differences in description of the process... something that again, average layperson does NOT need to hear about, people can barely understand scientific concepts as it is.
The slinky model makes good sense and it's not wrong, it was described to me BY a scientist in RL, so I will keep using it.
edit: I genuinely wish the scientific community could embrace being "not perfect" for like, just a week or something.
- All things shine away their hot, as long as they are at least a little bit hot.
So, we cull the herd in large cities and thereby reduce the CO2 and cool the local area?
The problem is the the concrete and asphalt act as a heat sink. And it holds the heat rather than letting it dissipate in a reasonable manor, thus encouraging those springy balls to play rubby rubby for longer than they should in any one particular localized area. Let alone have some of them soaked up by the pretty green scenery.
So you're partially on the right track, concrete is one of the biggest problems we have with global warming, but it's not the slabs of hardened concrete that are the problem, yes they get hot and reflect heat upwards so cities feel hotter, but that's not causing the whole climate to change as much as the carbon dioxide produced in the manufacture and setting of concrete, which produces more of those springy balls than even airplane emissions annually.
The problem is the carbon (and other greenhouse gasses) far more than anything we do with structures and surfaces on the ground. If you were to take away every road and parking lot, it would make cities feel a little better, but the globe would still be on a runaway temperature increase. Even the idea of planting vast amounts of trees is likely not nearly enough. We had our window to act, it slipped by.
Does this mean that the global warming potential of gaseous polyethylene (plastic) is something stupidly high? Even Methane (4 springy balls radiating from 1 bigger ball) has a way higher (28:1) global warming potential than Carbon Dioxide.
I haven't read about gaseous forms of plastics in the air specifically, so it's probably not as much of a major problem as the larger greenhouse gasses, like yes, chemicals that have many more "springy balls" like Methane that are being released as the climate warms, increasing the rate at which the globe heats. The permafrost and arctic ice has massive amounts of trapped methane that is currently being released in large explosions turning areas of the arctic circle into moonscapes of craters.