New Strategy Emerges in Search for Aliens: Look for Pollution

[NuclearKangaroo]

uhmm kay i stand corrected then

?
Aliens laughing at cooling towers might have something to do with 'ZOmg! they're still on fission, not even zero-point energy yet?!?!?! Crazy primitives!'

i mean he schooled me hard, i got served harder than a rich guy in butler island

but doesnt that vapor precipitate tough? shouldnt it eventually turn into rain? as opposed to methane and other chemicals that are normally found as a gas

Yes.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11652-climate-myths-co2-isnt-the-most-important-greenhouse-gas.html#.U9FDc_mzERI

oh, i was right then, yay!

 

[St3rY]

hippie civilizations will slip right under the radar


also, why are those aliens in the pic laughing? nuclear plants release water vapor into the atmosphere, not harmful pollutants, bunch of idiot greenies

Probably because water can hold such a high amount of energie, making water vapor a more potent climate gas then CO².
Also, they may have found a different use for Uranium and Plutonium, so they may consider splitting thoose elements into lighter ones foolish since there is a limited suply of thoose rare heavy metals.

im pretty sure thats not how global warminig works

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas
Third sentence: "The primary greenhouse gases in the Earth's atmosphere are water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone."
I'm pretty sure that's exactly how climate change works

I'm pretty sure that's not how climate change works. For one, if you read the article you linked beyond the third sentence, right in the "Role of water vapour" section it's stated explicitly that artificial sources of water vapor are negligible.

As for your point about water "holding a high amount of energy", I guess you are referring to it's high heat capacity. A higher value of heat capacity means for a given amount of absorbed heat the temperature of the substance rises less than it would for a material with a lower heat capacity. Also, it has nothing to do with the material's ability to absorb radiation.

The property of materials that do effect its ability to absorb EM radiation largely depend on the wavelength of the radiation. For example, IR radiation effects molecules with a nonzero dipole moment. UV/VIS, in contrast, reacts well with the pi-bonds and non bonding electrons in molecules. In the former case IR causes the bonds to resonate (stretch/twist/waggle etc) and heat up, while UV/VIS excites the pi bond or non bonding electrons in a higher energy state, radiating the absorbed energy as the electron returns to a non-excited state.
Spectroscopy itself is a complex field, and climate science is handling a subject more complex yet, crossing over to many other fields. I don't claim to understand much of it myself.

Besides, seeing the chimneys behind the cooling towers, I would guess the picture is of a coal plant, not a nuclear power station.