Carbon dioxide emissions, 1860-1995
(billions of tons)

The following treatise is in agreement with principles of chemistry which the author learned as an undergraduate and graduate student. Few meteorolists have coursework in chemistry let alone completing a year of organic chemistry in two months.

Carbon Dioxide Is A Dessicant

While C02 is cited in global warming, its role as a dessicant (water absorbent) immediately downwind from oil fields (and worldwide) has not been noted, explored and documented. Carbon dioxide is to the atmosphere as sodium chloride (salt) is to one's body. As the local and global levels of carbon dioxide have increased, the "saltiness" of the atmosphere has increased. What happens to you when you ingest too much salt? You get thirsty. Keep this in mind as you read the following. Keep this in mind when read of another record forest fire. Instead of water binding to water or to other particle for precipitation, the H20 molecules bind with CO2.

The oil field yielding downwind drought phenomenon is merely local warming before global warming.

1. Before the days of check valves, oil well drillers always hoped for the above left picture, oil gushing which indicated black gold had been struck. The oil gushed because it was under pressure from the associated natural gas. With a desire to stop wasting oil, technological advances allowed the oil drillers to separate the gas and oil.
2. When oil fields are developed, the natural gas is not as easily transportable as is the liquid crude oil. Transportation of gas requires expensive compression into liquid propane. So it is cheaper for the oil companies to burn off all or most natural gas which produces carbon dioxide (C02). Pictures of oil wells show the natural gas being burned off which produces vast plumes of carbon dioxide (above center picture.)
3. The CO2 plumes do not disperse immediately, but follow the prevailing seasonal wind patterns like the volcanic plumes, Kuwaiti Gulf War fires, Saharan Dust storms, Colorado fires and Alaskan fires detailed from space by NASA.  The plumes remain intact for great distances, moving slowly to different latitudes as they circle the globe. In the present circumstances, one is reminded of the slowly descending radiation cloud from the northern hemisphere in the book/film "On the Beach." The osmotic equalization of gases throughout the atmospheric envelope is not overnight. The downwind envelopes from oil fields suffer from the gases flared or consumed at the wellheads--the Local Warming before Global Warming. The plumes are like an unmanned, flailing firehose only absorb../HumanChanges/PolarTimeBomb.htming rather than dispersing water--analogy.
4. The Gulf War provided specific examples of CO2 plumes from oil fields--Kuwaiti fires. A research finding showed that the plume had not widened to more than sixty kilometers after it crossed and exited the Arabian peninula (1300km/800miles) and stayed in a relatively low atmospheric position of .5 > 4 kilometers (.3 > 2.4 miles). The gulf war also showed how removal of the check values re-creates the gushers of oil under pressure from the associated natural gas.
5. Natural gas is often used as the source of energy for the actual oil production: "As late as 1950, the largest single class of natural gas consumption was in gas and oilfield operations (18.9 per cent or 1,187 billion cubic feet)" Methane
6. Fog dissipation is an example of how burning hydrocarbons changes precipitation. In the 1960s and 1970s, there were numerous airport fog dispersal experiments with burning of hydrocarbons. In reading the excerpts from a 1973 article on fog dispersal, keep in mind that a fog is a cloud on the ground. Fog dispersal area and length is based on how much fuel is burned. It is important to the validity of the CO2 matrix thesis that before air fields were cleared of fogs by burning natural gas, the fields had been cleared by dispersing "crushed dry ice." Dry ice is frozen CO2 which sublimates to release CO2 gas. (Sublimation of polar ice by CO2 is an important factor in the polar time bomb and weather sluts.)

"Generating heat plumes (by burning smokeless propane)
which burn away the toughest fog." pg76

In effect, burrning natural gas at a fog-closed airport creates a temporary drought for the area--moisture that would condensate or precipitate is bound up. The CO2 "cloaks" the moistures as can be best seen when moisture-laden hurricanes encounter CO2 bubbles high pressure systems (blastomas).

As shown in the fog dispersal experiments, the visible moisture that composes a cloud can be molecularly rebound so that the water droplets composing the cloud cease to exist, a process akin to sublimation of visible ice into invisible vapor. Besides burning gas, the other reasons support the conclusions of the oil-drought connection:

• Ground seeding, achieved with colorless, odorless liquid propane gas sprayed as a mist in fog masses [in oil fields, this is called venting gas by release rather than the flaring gas by burning]
• Hydroscopic --moisture-removing [dessicants!]--airborne seeding with microencapsulated chemicals to evaporate fog
• Spraying electrified water droplets that attract particles like magnets.

No water molecules means no rain.

Why didn't fog dispersal by burning fuel catch on? "Cost estimates for such heating techniques range from $300 to $1500 [1973 dollars!] per plane landing, base on five minutes of fuel burning." [author's bolding] (page 152). What the airports can't afford on an irregular basis for five minutes, each oil well produces in abundance ... 24/7/365, 1440 minutes a day. Mid-East Oil Fields

This flaring in Saudi Arabai is only one example the hundreds of gas flarings in the Mid-East. Saudi Arabia flares about 6 billion cubic feet of natural gas a day--DOE Report.

The Mid-East has thousands of oil wells each of which could clear the ground clouds from fogged-in airport. Instead they clear the skies of clouds in downwind: Africa.

Two things to keep in mind.

1. If the CO2 does not immediately bind with water due the lack of water, it will absorb the moisture in its path, desiccating agricultural areas of ground moisture. The CO2 plumes from Saudi Arabia do not pick up and carry away moisture from Saudi Arabia since there is none to begin with. As the CO2 plume courses along with the seasonal prevailing winds it absorbs moisture like carbon dioxide injected into a breverage until statis is reached. Interesting analogy that provokes a question: Where does the water go?
2. Reducing flaring of gas by commercially burning the gas for local, domestic businesses (e.g., electricity) does not eliminate the existence of the CO2 plumes. It's like the person who says that electric cars will eliminate the energy crises all the while forgetting that electricity plants burn fossil fuels that pollute like oil-driven cars. Initially, and in new fields, Saudi Arabia flares the gas "associated" with oil production. Prior to 1982, all of Saudi Arabia's gas was flared. As a result of wanting to reduce domestic oil consumption so as to increase oil exports, Saudi Arabia not only has been developing a massive internal natural gas but actively exploring for "non-associated" gas discoveries, that is, gas fields without oil which they had previously ignored or capped. In Novemeber, 2000, Saudi daily gas production and thus burning by flaring or conversion was 6 billion cubic feet. That will clear a big fog. In 1999, Saudi Aramco initiated a $45 billion Master Gas System (MGS) program to develop gas reserves, committing to annually increase reserves by 5 trillion cubic feet.

CO2 as a Dessicant: Molecular Reason

Carbon dioxide is 36 times more water soluble than oxygen. This means, in effect, a molecule of CO2 in the atmosphere will bind 36 molecules that might otherwise bind together to form precipitation. This molecular binding changes the precipitation properties of atmospheric moisture. Water particles change into carbon-bound clusters that precipitate under different atmospheric conditions.

An indirect indicator of CO2 as a dessicant is when  a water-laden weather system encounters a mass of carbonated air. Hurricanes coming ashore in areas of oil fields or metropolitan areas act differently than hurricanes coming ashore in undessicating areas. A similar situation is a weather front coming across the plains which encounters a major metropolitan area which is a major CO2 producer: In Spring, 2003, the KARE 11 weatherman in Minneapolis, repeatedly noted the disappearance of the rain front that encounters the city while rain occurs both north and south of the city along the front. Cities are sponges for "polyunsaturated" weather fronts.

Dew point lower

Compounding the drought phenomenon is how increased CO2 lowers the dew point while at the same time increasing the ambient temperature--Dew Point Calculator. In other words, in order for it to rain, increased CO2 requires a lower temperature but the increased CO2 tends to raise the atmosphere temperature as a result of local warming under the CO2 plumes. If an increase in CO2 globally raises the temperature by trapping heat, it stands to reason that the relatively well-defined and distinct plumes of higher CO2 concentration from oil fields--see volcanic plumes--trap more heat locally downwind than is trapped in the overall global atmosphere.

Forest Fires: More and Sooner

The atmospheric ocean is becoming thirstier with each larger forest fire, increasing the overall dessertification of global flora that leads to more forest fires, sooner and larger.

1. "Fire season rages early in Colorado" 020425
2. "wildfires have scorched 1.75 million acres so far this year, more than double the 10-year average on this date" 020619

Plant life is increasingly stressed from heat and dryness which removes the only, only, only, only form of life that converts CO2 to oxygen. You are on the train to an environmental Auschwitz with no escape from the ovens. You are a witness to the extinction of life on earth. Each forest fire is a shipment of salt dissolved in our atmospheric ocean. Of course, the Bush administration will continue to maintain policies that encourage people to fire up their SUVs and converse about conservation. 

Meterologists and economists who say that increased CO2 will increase crop yields ignore the role of CO2 in depriving plants of water. No. Seeding the atmosphere with CO2 is the opposite of the seeding with silver nitrate. The basic, universal catalyst to life is water. No water, no reaction. Basic chemistry. It's like giving corporate CEO's more money--less problem-solving gets done.

Notes:

1. Acid Rain: 1955 vs. 1980
2. "Arctic from a sink of CO2 to a source to the atmosphere" SDSUedu
3. Carbon Dioxide, Brainy Encyclopedia
4. Carbon Dioxide, Health impact
5. "Urban heat, pollution found to mess up weather" 031216
   The massive amounts of heat and pollution that rise from the world's cities both delay and stimulate the fall of precipitation, cheating some areas of much-needed rain and snow while dousing others, scientists said.
6. Contrails, Aircraft
   1. 040430 "Plane exhaust putting heat on climate, research suggests"
   2. Image, Aircraft Contrail image from NASA, 040428
7. "CO2 is turning oceans acidic" 040719