Pasta and Climate Change.

What does cooking a big pot of pasta have to do with climate change?

It's a graphic example of what it takes to trap heat in an air space.

The theory of the "greenhouse effect" has been around for a long time and its salient idea has been stated in many different ways. Regardless of how it's stated, it is a central hypothesis of how the earth could become abnormally warmed.

Simply put, the "greenhouse effect" hypothesizes that, through some atmospheric mechanism (I will use the word "mechanism" here in its conceptual, not technical sense), heat becomes trapped in the earth's atmosphere, thus causing the earth to heat up, thus causing catastrophic climate change.

Much of the discussion on this point centers on whether certain activities create "greenhouse gasses" or contribute to the "greenhouse effect" (that is, contribute to the atmospheric mechanism that traps heat against the earth).

IOW, the greenhouse effect and all its sequelae (in whatever context) assume that (1) it is possible to put a lid on the earth's atmosphere. Moreover, it assumes that (2) this lid can become large, stable and efficacious enough to trap heat.

Of course, there is more to the theory than that: it assumes, for example, that this trapped heat can become sufficient to abnormally warm the entire planet. It also assumes that this can occur without any change in the earth's major heat source, the sun. Further, there's a big difference between boiling water, with the heat source below the lid, and heating a greenhouse, with the heat source above the "lid." But for now I would like to concentrate on the examining the mechanics of this atmospheric "lid."

All cooks know that to boil water faster than usual, they can use a lid to trap heat in the pot. But the bigger the pot, the bigger the lid has to be. In fact, there's an inverse relationship between the size and tightness of the lid and its efficacy at trapping heat. Just from cooking pasta, I would guess that a lid has to be more than 50% the size of the pot before it has any noticeable capacity to trap heat and hasten boiling.

Moreover, to hasten boiling (heat increase), the lid mostly has to be kept on the pot. It must remain stable, and not be taken on and off.

For heat to become trapped in the earth's atmosphere, how much of the earth's atmosphere would have to be under the "lid"?

How stable would this "lid" have to be to effectively trap heat?

Even if the "lid" covered the entire earth's atmosphere, how likely is it that leaks (escape valves) would not exist ---IOW, that it would fit completely and remain stable (that size and in that place) for a sufficient amount of time to trap sufficient heat, and, moreover, remain uneffected (competent as a lid) by the heat building under it? (After all, this atmospheric lid would be made of gasses, not of metal or glass as a pot lid is.)

So here's what I'm asking:

If x (something like the creation of "greenhouse gasses") leads to y (an area that traps heat in the earth's atmosphere), to reach w (global warming resulting in catastrophic climate change), y would have to equal g (the percentage of the earth's atmosphere sufficient to trap heat sufficient to effect the global climate) x s (the period of time a g-size trap would have to remain in place [stable] to trap heat sufficient to effect the global climate).

In this analysis, to demonstrate that something like the creation of "greenhouse gasses" leads to global warming, you'd have to show:

x = y
y = g x s
g x s = w
w = x

What do you think?