Today, we will discuss 'climate change' on the Blue Planet. If you saw the first awe inspiring images ? in living color ? of the planet Earth, taken more than 30 years ago from the moon, you know why our astronauts named it the Blue Planet. But, if you weren't lucky enough to have seen those original images, and have seen many other subsequent images via satellite, you may wonder why it isn't called the White Planet.

Well, the planet is blue ? when it is blue ? because about three-quarters of the Earth's surface is covered with water, and the whole planet is covered with an atmosphere (about 80 percent nitrogen and 20 percent oxygen) which is transparent to visible light, incoming and outgoing. Since it is transparent to incoming sunlight, most sunlight gets through to the water's surface, where most of it is absorbed. Since it is transparent to outgoing, the fraction of the sunlight that is reflected from the surface gets transmitted back into space, to our astronauts on the moon. The visible light that is reflected from the ocean surface peaks in the 'blue' part of the spectrum. So, on a clear day, hello Blue Planet!

On the other hand, the planet is white ? when it is white ? because sunlight evaporates surface water, changing it into water vapor ? a gas like nitrogen and oxygen and also transparent to visible light. The water vapor in the air rises with the air until the air cools enough for the water vapor to condense into clouds of teeny-tiny drops of water. Clouds are not transparent to visible light, incoming or outgoing. For thick, low-altitude clouds, all parts of the visible spectrum of sunlight are reflected by the clouds back out into space. So, on a cloudy day, hello White Planet.

About a quarter of the planet's surface is dirt ? mountains, deserts and seeded plains. Clouds, once formed, tend to move along with the rest of the air from West to East and towards the poles, carrying all those teeny-tiny drops of water with them. Whenever the temperature of the air drops enough ? because of having to go over a mountain or encountering a colder air mass ? the cloud rains and, if it is cold enough, the cloud snows.

So, what is climate? Well, you get a tropical climate where it rains all the time and you get a desert climate where it never rains. Where it snows all the time you get Greenland and Siberia and Antarctica, and where it never snows you get Tahiti.

The global-warming eco-wackos claim that all you SUV-driving soccer moms are hell bent on frying the planet ? and you've got to stop right this minute!

How so? Well, they claim that the miniscule ? in comparison to water vapor ? concentrations (several hundred parts-per-million) of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have been monotonically increasing for the past several decades and those increased concentrations are causing climate change ? especially in Siberia ? and it's all your fault for driving a gas-guzzler.

You all quit laughing ? they're serious.

Now, climates do change. In fact, eco-wackos to the contrary, it is fairly well established scientifically that climate change has been occurring on decadal-to-century time frames for hundreds of thousands ? perhaps millions ? of years in response to changing ocean circulation patterns.

And that makes sense. Most of the water vapor in the atmosphere comes from the oceans, and the amount of water evaporated from the surface is directly related to the surface temperature. The surface temperature of the water is a result of energy transfer to the surface water by a) radiation from the sun b) conduction from the surrounding surface water and c) convection from surface and sub-surface ocean currents.

As you know, the planet is spinning about its axis and the oceans are, more or less, along for the ride. Also, as a patch of ocean passes the Moon, it (and the patch on the opposite side of the Earth) gets sucked up into high tide. So it should not come as a great surprise to learn that there are ocean 'currents' that are more or less stable.

In the main circulatory loop, cold, salty water sinks to the bottom in the far North Atlantic near Greenland, flows south, deep beneath the surface of the Atlantic down to Antarctica, around the tip of South America, and up the Central Pacific, north, to Alaska. The return flow of warm water to the North Atlantic starts at Alaska flows south on the surface down the West Coast of North America, west, across the Pacific and Indian Oceans, around the tip of Africa and into the South Atlantic and north, up the East Coast of the Americas to England.

You have probably seen false-color images, taken via satellite, of those warm surface ocean currents on your evening weather channel. Of course, you can't actually see the cold sub-surface convection return currents, but they're there. They have to be. The streams of both cold and warm ocean convection currents aren't constrained by river banks, so they can ? and sometimes do ? change course, changing the weather and ultimately the climate of the downwind mountains, deserts and seeded plains they flow past.

Now, this is not to say there is no such thing as an atmospheric 'greenhouse effect' that makes the surface of the planet warmer than it would otherwise be. But the primary greenhouse gas in the air is water vapor, not the several hundred parts-per-million of carbon dioxide.

Although the water vapor in the atmosphere is transparent to incoming and reflected visible sunlight, it is not transparent to the infrared radiation emitted by the planet's hot surface. The infrared energy spectrum of the emitting surface is characteristic of the surface temperature. The water vapor in the air absorbs infrared radiation from the surface and re-radiates its own temperature-characteristic infrared spectrum, about half back to the surface and the other half out to space.

The re-radiated infrared energy is absorbed by the surface ? raising its temperature ever so slightly ? and the surface then proceeds to subsequently radiate infrared energy into the atmosphere at the slightly higher temperature. Which is absorbed by the water vapor, etc, etc, etc. ? you get the idea. It's a positive feedback loop, where part of the output is fed back to the input. Unless it is somehow 'quenched' at the input, the output will grow exponentially to infinity.

The 'positive feedback' greenhouse effect ? the absorption by the greenhouse gas of radiation emitted by the surface and the re-radiation by the greenhouse gas back to the surface ? does result in slightly higher surface temperatures, especially when and where there is a lot of water vapor in the air. But, in the real world, the surface temperature doesn't increase to infinity. The feedback loop is somehow quenched at the input.

MIT's Richard Lindzen reckons that the increase in surface temperatures that we actually measure because of the 'positive feedback' of greenhouse gases is only about a quarter of what is predicted by the greenies, because there are convection currents in the atmosphere, similar to the ocean convection currents.

The earth's surface ? water and dirt ? is also cooled by atmospheric convection currents, which carry the air ? heated by conduction with the surface ? and the water vapor in it, upwards and away, towards the poles. But as the water vapor rises and cools, it frequently forms clouds at various altitudes which reflect sunlight and effectively 'cool' the surface beneath the clouds, rather than increasing it via the greenhouse effect.

In fact, in a recent study published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorlogical Society, Lindzen et al found ? as a result of comparing daily satellite observations of cloud cover over the tropics with concomitant surface sea temperature measurements ? that the overall effect of water vapor as a greenhouse gas is, in fact, negative, not positive.

That matters, because the entire global-warming brouhaha is not based upon carbon dioxide, itself, being the principal greenhouse gas. In the greenie computer models, the wee carbon dioxide positive feedback loop heats the surface ever so slightly so that more water vapor is produced than would be otherwise be the case. That is, in the global-warming 'greenhouse-gas' models that are supposed to be based on hard science, carbon dioxide is just an enabler or a catalyst for amplifying the really important positive feedback loop of the really important greenhouse gas, water vapor.

But carbon dioxide isn't much of an enabler or a catalyst. MIT's Lindzen reckons that even if there were no other greenhouse gases ? such as carbon dioxide ? in the atmosphere, we would still be left with more than 98 percent of the greenhouse effect.

Obviously, if the overall effect of water vapor and clouds in the atmosphere is not positive feedback ? but may in fact be negative feedback ? then we don't need to pay any attention to all those global-warming eco-wackos with computer printouts in hand, running around in circles of diminishing radius, screaming something about the world coming to an end unless you soccer moms quit driving your SUVs.

So what should the president do about the global-warming Kyoto Protocols of the UN's International Panel on Climate Change? Well, the sensible and apolitical thing to do would be to leave them in the trash bin where he threw them shortly after taking office. And if he wants to be re-elected, the sensible and political thing to do would be to do everything he can think of to solve the energy crisis he inherited on the West Coast ? which he didn't carry ? before the 2004 elections. That also means leaving the Kyoto Protocols in the trash bin where he threw them shortly after taking office.

A while back, when Gore carried California, a majority of Californians were then also opposed to nuclear power. Now, four months into the Bush-Cheney Administration, 60 percent of all Californians support nuclear power. Meanwhile, in Europe, the greenies and other eco-wackos ? who want us to shut down all our fossil-fueled power plants and haven't yet faced 'rolling blackouts' ? are still doing their best to shut down all their nuclear power plants.

Now, rumor has it that ? for some unfathomable reason ? the Bush-Cheney administration is preparing a counter to the Kyoto Protocols of the UN's IPCC. Well, how about this as a Bush-Cheney counter to the IPCC demand that we shut down all our fossil fueled power plants? Propose that for every new nuclear power plant we bring on line, we will agree to shut down a base-load natural gas-fired plant. The nuclear power generated for those on the West Coast who formerly opposed nuclear power, will be dependable and much cheaper, while the scarce ? and hence, very expensive ? natural gas saved can be put to better use.

Where? Well, New England has no natural gas, coal or oil of its own, and would freeze in the dark if it weren't for the rest of us. But if Senator Jeffords is reading his constituents right, at the moment, that doesn't bother them. Most of them want Big Oil to quit worrying about supplying them with energy and want the president to agree to cut back fossil fuel use by about a third, as the Kyoto Protocols require. Of course, there are three more New England winters before the next election ... that sentiment may change.