# Global warming question **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 26, 2015, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-question/716023 "2015-03-26T14:02:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/son_of_a_rich/32/5439_2.png) [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Son_of_a_Rich)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2015, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-question/716023/1 "2015-03-26T14:02:54Z")
As the planet heats up, won’t more water evaporate, thus increasing rainfall? ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2015, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-question/716023/2 "2015-03-26T14:12:04Z")
Yes. The warmer the air the more water carrying capacity it has. Consider your bathroom when taking a shower. At first the mirror doesn’t fog up but as the bathroom air warms it can hold more water and eventually you get a foggy mirror and bathroom air. Same with the earth’s atmosphere. In general you can expect heavier rainstorms when they happen. ---
**Author:** ![Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/son_of_a_rich/32/5439_2.png) [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Son_of_a_Rich)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2015, 2:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-question/716023/3 "2015-03-26T14:27:39Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > Yes. > > The warmer the air the more water carrying capacity it has. Consider your bathroom when taking a shower. At first the mirror doesn’t fog up but as the bathroom air warms it can hold more water and eventually you get a foggy mirror and bathroom air. > > Same with the earth’s atmosphere. In general you can expect heavier rainstorms when they happen. Then what’s with all the dire predictions of running out of potable water? ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2015, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-question/716023/4 "2015-03-26T14:58:13Z")
> [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](#): > > Then what’s with all the dire predictions of running out of potable water? The rain will fall in the wrong places. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2015, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-question/716023/5 "2015-03-26T15:14:19Z")
> [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](#): > > Then what’s with all the dire predictions of running out of potable water? This past year we saw huge snowfall and gigantic floods in the eastern U.S. and extreme drought conditions in the western U.S. That will continue, and get worse. What’s needed is for rain to fall in places where it can be recaptured and added to reservoirs or aquifers. Rain that just sluices out to the ocean - taking large chunks of land with it - is not helpful. ---
**Author:** ![Machine\_Elf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@Machine\_Elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machine_Elf)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2015, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-question/716023/6 "2015-03-26T15:22:53Z")
> [@beowulff](#): > > The rain will fall in the wrong places. This. The name has been changed from “global warming” to “climate change” to reflect the fact that warming will impact different areas of the earth in different ways. Generally speaking, dry areas will become drier, and wet areas will become wetter; extreme weather will become even more extreme. ---
**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2015, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-question/716023/7 "2015-03-26T15:36:18Z")
Ironically, while water vapor is probably the most important greenhouse gas, it isn’t considered a greenhouse gas for emissions purposes. The reason for his is that if you throw a bunch of water vapor into the air, it just condenses out somewhere else. So you can’t increase the water vapor in the air just by generating a metric shit-ton of steam. The amount of water vapor in the air is related to the atmospheric temperature, so as the temperature goes up, so does the amount of water vapor. So, while more water may evaporate, more water will also stay in the air as water vapor (and will further contribute to greenhouse gas effects). Running out of potable water is mostly a problem in the Southwest U.S. Most other areas of the country don’t have a problem. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2015, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-question/716023/8 "2015-03-26T15:49:17Z")
> [@Machine\_Elf](#): > > This. The name has been changed from “global warming” to “climate change” to reflect the fact that warming will impact different areas of the earth in different ways. Generally speaking, dry areas will become drier, and wet areas will become wetter; extreme weather will become even more extreme. Agree, but there is a Nitpick there, the following needs to be mentioned because unfortunately that name “change” is a misunderstanding that is used by conspiracy theorists. > **[Global warming vs climate change](https://skepticalscience.com/climate-change-global-warming.htm)** > > \There have long been claims that some unspecificed > [@](#): > > So to sum up, although the terms are used interchangeably because they are causally related, ‘global warming’ and ‘climate change’ refer to different physical phenomena. The term ‘climate change’ has been used frequently in the scientific literature for many decades, and the usage of both terms has increased over the past 40 years. Moreover, since the planet continues to warm, there is no reason to change the terminology. Perhaps the only individual to advocate the change was Frank Luntz, a Republican political strategist and global warming skeptic, who used focus group results to determine that the term ‘climate change’ is less frightening to the general public than ‘global warming’. There is simply no factual basis whatsoever to the myth “they changed the name from global warming to climate change”. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2015, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-question/716023/9 "2015-03-26T16:02:07Z")
> [@beowulff](#): > > The rain will fall in the wrong places. In a nutshell, this is the primary problem of global climate change. The temperate zones will migrate towards the poles, more or less, leaving the current temperate regions much drier, and the equatorial regions hotter and mostly drier. Goodbye, existing breadbaskets like the US Midwest and Ukraine. Hello, Canada and Russia - which are now heavily forested and will need to be cleared for grain and crop production. So long, cities on the edge of forever running out of water (most of SoCal, and then most of the northern US south). There will be many effects in the next 100 years, but it’s only dawning on the general population that the problem is not “warming” as in “we’ll need to run the AC more,” but “warming” as in major geopolitical realignment over food-producing and water rights. Raise your hand if you knew that the food consortiums are buying up absolutely vast stretches of water rights through the middle and northern US - and doing it fairly cheaply, and doing nothing much with it… for now. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2015, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-question/716023/10 "2015-03-26T16:54:14Z")
> [@engineer\_comp\_geek](#): > > Running out of potable water is mostly a problem in the Southwest U.S. Most other areas of the country don’t have a problem. Well, yes and no. While the American Midwest gets a lot of rainfall on average, it tends to come in deluges which will also be exacerbated by cglobal climate change. The groundwater systems can only naturally absorb (recharge) a given amount at a time, and the rest is lost to outflow (primarily the Mississippi River System) and evaporation. High intensity agriculture of thirsty cereal crops (corn, soya, wheat) in the central Midwest relies upon irrigation using water pulled from the Ogallala Aquifer, part of the High Plains Aquifer System, which is not being replunished at the usage rate and is already suffering subsidence (reductuin in storage capacity) due to compaction. While the region doesn’t have the same year-to-year problems with water availability due to drought that the watershed-dependent California Central Valley does, it is still using water inefficiently and beyond replacement rate, whoch will eventually result in a decline of arable capacity. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Twoflower](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/twoflower/32/22_2.png) [@Twoflower](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Twoflower)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2015, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-question/716023/11 "2015-03-26T17:17:23Z")
California relies heavily on the Sierra snow pack to get us through the summer. If the climate is warmer, we might get more rain, but still less snow. This winter, we got half the normal amount of rainfall, but the snowpack is only 5% of what it should be.