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 pleekmoTriptoe Through The TulipsPremium
join:2001-09-14
Manchester, CT
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| reply to J E F F
Re: The Fate of the Earth As I recall, Venus' day is actually slightly longer than its year so that the sun rises in the west and sets in the east.
Venus and Saturn's largest satellite, Titan, are the only solid-surfaced bodies in the solar system to exhibit atmospheric superrotation -- that is, the atmosphere rotates faster than the underlying surface.
Most of Earth's carbon is locked within its biota and as the Earth gradually warms and the biota become less viable some of this carbon may eventually be permanently released to the atmosphere, thus promoting further warming, promoting further inviability of biota, releasing more carbon, warming the atmosphere further, and so on and so on, until the Earth develops runaway moist greenhouse warming.
This runaway greenhouse is inevitable even without anthropogenic forcing because as the sun ages it becomes larger and more luminous and thus warms the Earth further. Eventually, the sun will envelop the Earth because the Earth will cause a tidal drag upon the solar surface* causing the Earth's orbit to shrink sufficiently to be enveloped by the sun. The Earth may orbit within the sun's interior for a few orbits before it is ablated completely and becomes a solar surface pollutant. (That is, the sun's surface may exhibit evidence that it has engulfed a planet by displaying a more metal-rich spectrum than it ought to have.) However, anthropogenic forcing of global warming will likely cause runaway greenhouse effect several orders of magnitude sooner than were there no humans on the planet.
By the way, I might mention that there are several proposed methods of moving the Earth so that it may be able to escape solar envelopment. One prominent method involves taking Kuiper Belt objects out of the Kuiper Belt and propelling them is such a way that they pass very close to the Earth at a certain angle sufficient to cause the Earth to be pushed very slightly outward and that by using several thousand objects in this way one could eventually push the Earth out far enough to escape envelopment by the sun. The downside is that a trajectory error could cause the object to strike the Earth with catastropic result. I suppose that if this process were begun soon enough then the Earth could be propelled outward enough to mitigate or nullify much of any possible anthropogenic climate warming.
* Because by this time several billions of years into the future the sun will take hundreds to thousands of years to rotate while the Earth will still orbit the sun in at most two or three present years.
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| said by pleekmo:Most of Earth's carbon is locked within its biota and as the Earth gradually warms and the biota become less viable some of this carbon may eventually be permanently released to the atmosphere, thus promoting further warming, promoting further inviability of biota, releasing more carbon, warming the atmosphere further, and so on and so on, until the Earth develops runaway moist greenhouse warming.
While this could be a case, it should be noted that the carbon release was started by humans -- without them, all those coal and crude deposits would've stayed locked up for a long-long time.
This runaway greenhouse is inevitable even without anthropogenic forcing because as the sun ages it becomes larger and more luminous and thus warms the Earth further.
Eventually, the sun will envelop the Earth because the Earth will cause a tidal drag upon the solar surface* causing the Earth's orbit to shrink sufficiently to be enveloped by the sun. The Earth may orbit within the sun's interior for a few orbits before it is ablated completely and becomes a solar surface pollutant.
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ohh
join:2011-07-16
San Jose, CA | reply to silentlooker
Re: Global warming or is it an Ice Age? I think people have been brainwashed by bad scientists and bad politicians and as usual they want to give their money away to people that rape them.
So, no I do not think there is global warming or global colding or whatever you come up with for a name. We have not been recording weather long enough to know such things.
This is like a Y2K that never ends.  | |
| reply to silentlooker
The History Channel had an interesting documentary on HAARP and it's possible effects on the weather. Now, I used to consider any talk of HAARP being able to modify weather as pure poppycock. But this documentary presented systematic data, experiments to prove the concepts and explained it in terms easy to understand:
Basically HAARP radiates 3.2 million watts of radio frequency energy skyward, focussing on a small part of the upper atmosphere. The theory is that HAARP's transmission heats this patch of atmosphere, causing displacement of air. This displacement causes the Jet Stream to move several hundred miles off normal course. Result: bizarre weather.
Just might be something to it.. | |
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| My goodness.... 
For one, that energy ( 3.6 MW, BTW) is much smaller than what gets there from the Sun. Furthermore, it is used only occasionally.
»en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAARP
quote:
The most prominent instrument at the HAARP Station is the Ionospheric Research Instrument (IRI), a high-power radio frequency transmitter facility operating in the high frequency (HF) band. The IRI is used to temporarily excite a limited area of the ionosphere. Other instruments, such as a VHF and a UHF radar, a fluxgate magnetometer, a digisonde, and an induction magnetometer, are used to study the physical processes that occur in the excited region.
[...]
The HAARP project directs a 3.6 MW signal, in the 2.8–10 MHz region of the HF [high-frequency] band, into the ionosphere. The signal may be pulsed or continuous. Then, effects of the transmission and any recovery period can be examined using associated instrumentation, including VHF and UHF radars, HF receivers, and optical cameras. According to the HAARP team, this will advance the study of basic natural processes that occur in the ionosphere under the natural but much stronger influence of solar interaction, as well as how the natural ionosphere affects radio signals.
[...]
HAARP is the subject of numerous conspiracy theories, with individuals ascribing various hidden motives and capabilities to the project. Journalist Sharon Weinberger called HAARP "the Moby Dick of conspiracy theories" and said the popularity of conspiracy theories often overshadows the benefits HAARP may provide to the scientific community.
A 2009 episode of The History Channel series That's Impossible speculated that ionospheric heating from HAARP could theoretically cause localized atmospheric upcurrents that disrupt or "bend" the jet stream and influence regional weather patterns, prompting conspiracy theorists to connect changed weather patterns in the Atlantic Ocean during the 1980s as well as subsequent El Niño events with HAARP.
.
.
The real irony is that many people think that puny 3.6MW can result in severe weather events, while many of the same people deny the connection between gigatons (!!) of CO2 emission from fossil fuels and global climate change.
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Arguing with an idiot makes you one. | |
| reply to silentlooker
Well right now, our world is going through some weather changes but I guess none of us is sure what the hell is going to happen. Definitely, it has to come to an end someday. | |
GremzorPremium
join:2001-08-25
Melvindale, MI | reply to aurgathor
Re: The Fate of the Earth said by aurgathor:While this could be a case, it should be noted that the carbon release was started by humans -- without them, all those coal and crude deposits would've stayed locked up for a long-long time. Wait a second, by that logic that means at some point all of this carbon was actually free. Given the nature of how the coal and crude oil was deposited one might even conclude that life was able to flourish while all of this carbon was free in the atmosphere and environment. Interesting... [/mildsarcasm]
What if the age of dinosaurs had continued until the majority of the carbon was locked up, so much so that it was removed from the atmosphere. With all the conclusions drawn about increasing carbon in the atmosphere inducing global warming, I conclude that if the dinosaurs were allowed to continue on their previous path Earth would have been reduced to a cold barren frozen desert. This would have removed our possibility of existence (at least how we know it). | |
 tschmidtPremium,MVM
join:2000-11-12
Milford, NH
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| said by Gremzor: Wait a second, by that logic that means at some point all of this carbon was actually free.
Not really. To oversimplify CO2 is released by volcanoes and sequestered in the ocean sediment. Like most everything else it is cycled through the biosphere.
»www.columbia.edu/~vjd1/carbon.htm
What humans are doing is dramatically increasing the rate of CO2 release (along with other greenhouse gases). So all else being equal global temperature will increase.
I struggle to understand why this has become so controversial.
/tom | |
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1 edit | reply to Gremzor
said by Gremzor:Wait a second, by that logic that means at some point all of this carbon was actually free. Given the nature of how the coal and crude oil was deposited one might even conclude that life was able to flourish while all of this carbon was free in the atmosphere and environment. Interesting... [/mildsarcasm]
Yes, there were times with much higher CO2 concentrations, but it was during one of those times that sea levels were much-much higher (i.e. Kansas was under sea level) and there were at least one major extinction event »en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian%E2···on_event where CO2 concentration and temperatures went through the roof:
quote:
Further evidence for environmental change around the P–Tr boundary suggests an 8 °C (14.40 °F) rise in temperature, and an increase in CO2 levels by 2000ppm
What if the age of dinosaurs had continued until the majority of the carbon was locked up, so much so that it was removed from the atmosphere. With all the conclusions drawn about increasing carbon in the atmosphere inducing global warming, I conclude that if the dinosaurs were allowed to continue on their previous path Earth would have been reduced to a cold barren frozen desert. This would have removed our possibility of existence (at least how we know it).
Direct evidence comes from the ice cores (up to 800kyear or so) indirect evidence from many other sources.
As for historical variations in CO2:
quote:
Various proxy measurements have been used to attempt to determine atmospheric carbon dioxide levels millions of years in the past. These include boron and carbon isotope ratios in certain types of marine sediments, and the number of stomata observed on fossil plant leaves. While these measurements give much less precise estimates of carbon dioxide concentration than ice cores, there is evidence for very high CO2 volume concentrations between 200 and 150 Ma of over 3,000 ppm and between 600 and 400 Ma of over 6,000 ppm.[5] In more recent times, atmospheric CO2 concentration continued to fall after about 60 Ma. About 34 Ma, the time of the Eocene-Oligocene extinction event and when the Antarctic ice sheet started to take its current form, CO2 is found to have been about 760 ppm,[26] and there is geochemical evidence that volume concentrations were less than 300 ppm by about 20 Ma. Low CO2 concentrations may have been the stimulus that favored the evolution of C4 plants, which increased greatly in abundance between 7 and 5 Ma.
The important thing is that at least for the last 5 - 10 million years or so, CO2 concentrations were comparable to what is displayed on most of the above graph, and all that excess CO2 that were around several hundred million years ago have been taken out of atmosphere, and turned into a fossil fuel such as coal, crude, methane hydrate, or some other deposit such as carbonate (dolomite, limestone, etc) rocks, carbon trapped in permafrost, etc.
Humans have been using fossil fuels a lot, and that's mostly the reason behind the increase in CO2 concentration.
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| said by aurgathor:or some other deposit such as carbonate (dolomite, limestone, etc) rocks, carbon trapped in permafrost, etc.
Humans have been using fossil fuels a lot, and that's mostly the reason behind the increase in CO2 concentration.
I just mentioned permafrost a couple of days ago, and today here's an article about the release of carbon trapped in it.
»www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45494959/ns···ronment/
This is most likely to be a positive feedback to the current warming trend in a few years.
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Wacky Races 2012! | |
 DrStrangeTechnically feasiblePremium
join:2001-07-23
West Hartford, CT
kudos:1 | That plus the methane released from clathrates on the ocean bottom should speed up the warming nicely.  | |
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| If the clathrate gun goes off in the arctic, then climate change will be somewhat harder to deny.
Hopefully it doesn't happen in my lifetime.
The last time it probably went off was during the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum around 53 - 55 million years ago.
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Wacky Races 2012! | |
| reply to EGeezer
Re: Global warming or is it an Ice Age? said by EGeezer:Save it for the political talking bobble-head shows.
People who point to a single weather event or year-long pattern in one part of the planet as "proof" for or against global changes don't know crap about the science.
They also apparently don't even know the definition of climate as used in scientific study and discussion. I place no stock in their rants. The problem "I" have with the whole thing, is that people approach it from the POV of "We're responsible! We need to DO something about it!!!!"
To which I say, aside from getting off this planet, there isn't anything WE can do about it, and to think otherwise is foolish. Some god complex going on there to think my not taking the bus, or using a stupid new-type light bulb will somehow make the Earth less hot just makes me laugh. The Earth will be here long after we're all dead.
Do I believe in climate change? YES! Do I believe in MAN MADE climate change? Hell no. | |
 Subaru1-3-2-4Premium
join:2001-05-31
Greenwich, CT
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| reply to aurgathor
said by aurgathor:My goodness....
For one, that energy ( 3.6 MW, BTW) is much smaller than what gets there from the Sun. Furthermore, it is used only occasionally.
»en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAARP
quote:
The most prominent instrument at the HAARP Station is the Ionospheric Research Instrument (IRI), a high-power radio frequency transmitter facility operating in the high frequency (HF) band. The IRI is used to temporarily excite a limited area of the ionosphere. Other instruments, such as a VHF and a UHF radar, a fluxgate magnetometer, a digisonde, and an induction magnetometer, are used to study the physical processes that occur in the excited region.
[...]
The HAARP project directs a 3.6 MW signal, in the 2.8–10 MHz region of the HF [high-frequency] band, into the ionosphere. The signal may be pulsed or continuous. Then, effects of the transmission and any recovery period can be examined using associated instrumentation, including VHF and UHF radars, HF receivers, and optical cameras. According to the HAARP team, this will advance the study of basic natural processes that occur in the ionosphere under the natural but much stronger influence of solar interaction, as well as how the natural ionosphere affects radio signals.
[...]
HAARP is the subject of numerous conspiracy theories, with individuals ascribing various hidden motives and capabilities to the project. Journalist Sharon Weinberger called HAARP "the Moby Dick of conspiracy theories" and said the popularity of conspiracy theories often overshadows the benefits HAARP may provide to the scientific community.
A 2009 episode of The History Channel series That's Impossible speculated that ionospheric heating from HAARP could theoretically cause localized atmospheric upcurrents that disrupt or "bend" the jet stream and influence regional weather patterns, prompting conspiracy theorists to connect changed weather patterns in the Atlantic Ocean during the 1980s as well as subsequent El Niño events with HAARP.
. . The real irony is that many people think that puny 3.6MW can result in severe weather events, while many of the same people deny the connection between gigatons (!!) of CO2 emission from fossil fuels and global climate change. I happen to run into those websites all around when looking up some HF stuff and ran into some HAARP stuff.. But the Russian Woodpecker was just as bad but that's no longer transmitting.. ever since the meltdown
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| reply to aurgathor
Re: The Fate of the Earth said by aurgathor:If the clathrate gun goes off in the arctic, then climate change will be somewhat harder to deny.
Hopefully it doesn't happen in my lifetime.
Russian research team astonished after finding 'fountains' of methane bubbling to surface
»www.independent.co.uk/environmen···134.html
quote:
"Earlier we found torch-like structures like this but they were only tens of metres in diameter. This is the first time that we've found continuous, powerful and impressive seeping structures, more than 1,000 metres in diameter. It's amazing," Dr Semiletov said. "I was most impressed by the sheer scale and high density of the plumes. Over a relatively small area we found more than 100, but over a wider area there should be thousands of them."
Scientists estimate that there are hundreds of millions of tonnes of methane gas locked away beneath the Arctic permafrost, which extends from the mainland into the seabed of the relatively shallow sea of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf. One of the greatest fears is that with the disappearance of the Arctic sea-ice in summer, and rapidly rising temperatures across the entire region, which are already melting the Siberian permafrost, the trapped methane could be suddenly released into the atmosphere leading to rapid and severe climate change.
Dr Semiletov's team published a study in 2010 estimating that the methane emissions from this region were about eight million tonnes a year, but the latest expedition suggests this is a significant underestimate of the phenomenon.
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Wacky Races 2012! | |
DrStrangeTechnically feasiblePremium
join:2001-07-23
West Hartford, CT
kudos:1 | Never mind; skimmed and misread the post ; I just restated it and they stated it better in the first place. | |
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