Have you looked at the North Pole lately?

mudballs said:

Earth will be fine, just gonna be uncomfortable for humans that like 72 degrees Fahrenheit..im gobsmacked sometimes at how easily the evolution of earth and it's tumultous history is tossed aside to foment an uneasy feeling in others.

Click to expand...

Let's see if you read all this.

Have you seen the state of earth lately? It's already not very fine.

That's a common theme with people who do not want to accept a truth that is uncomfortable.

It will be fine, it will just be a little different. Lake Michigan will be a tropical zone. What's wrong with that?

Well it was almost 110 today where I live. In an area with human history of roughly 1 million years. Which region are you referring to which is on average 72 and will shift slightly? I'd like to know so that I can calculate how much hotter my region will be.

Are you aware of how desertification takes place? The Sahara was once a temperate zone as well, natural changes to the climate of Earth caused it to become a desert.

Now the issue is that we are seeing changes that could be compared to natural phenomena, only on a very rapid scale and directly correlated to actions of humans. Please show me how that is wrong. I really do want it to be wrong.

There was a massive concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere of earth for a very long period of time, a time when it was uninhabitable for humans. Plants came along and converted most of it to O2. So we are re-releasing that trapped carbon from the bodies of said plants (oil) into the atmosphere via combustion which forms CO2 again, at the same time that only 20% of old-growth forests remain and 48% of any forests remain covering land that they once did. This number is dwindling. I'm sure you can figure it out, I don't need to explain where this is going. Anyone who is not being intentionally obtuse can get to where this leads. Yes, the earth evolves, but this is the first time in its history when one species can come along and flip natural processes on their head.

Are you aware that even slight shifts in temperature can cause large-scale changes in weather systems? That the melting of the ice-caps can cause entire massive ocean-currents to stop?
What happens to the entire ecosystems reliant upon those? Doesn't matter? We have ravaged our forests, and are causing the ocean habitats to wildly change, which is an issue as the other way that CO2 is converted into O2 is by ocean flora.

Are you aware that the majority of CO2 released into the atmosphere is absorbed by the oceans and that it causes acidification of ocean water? Have you been in the water in the tropics lately? Care to explain the massive massive coral graveyards where they were flourishing 30 years ago? It's apparently not caused by acidification and temperature increase, because those are from human-caused CO2 release and the influence that it has on the earth. So I would love if you could clear the mystery for everyone.

When you speak as you are, it is important to let everyone know that you are speaking from feeling or intuition, and if you are not, it is important to provide some kind of corroborating evidence, so that casual readers do not read your comment and make the mistake of thinking that you are speaking as an authority on the matter. If you know of someone who is and shares your view, please link and defer to them.

You want me to read all that? Why, are you trying to influence me or start an argument?

...I'm busy mining lithium with my coal powered hyper dozer

"Yes, the earth evolves, but this is the first time in its history when one species can come along and flip natural processes on their head."
You sure you wanna play with me? ..im not gonna play nice

mudballs said:

"Yes, the earth evolves, but this is the first time in its history when one species can come along and flip natural processes on their head."
You sure you wanna play with me? ..im not gonna play nice

Click to expand...

Oooh spooky. Play how you want, being nice or not is your choice. I don't wanna play with you, but I am happy to have a discussion about this. I am more than happy to be proven wrong.

I see the quote that you've highlighted. Please tell me about another species that has come along and disrupted the carbon process drastically and measurably in around 100 years. I am not going to draw comparisons to things that took place over geologic periods of time.

mudballs said:

You want me to read all that? Why, are you trying to influence me or start an argument?

Click to expand...

Just making statements based upon what is currently known as what you said does not click what has been learned about the Earth. As you said the Earth will be fine, I stated some things which point to the fact that it is not fine, and is getting less fine at a rapid rate.

Please prove me wrong. I would really like if someone could so I could also live my life with the comfortable knowledge that the Earth is just fine and will be just fine.

mudballs said:

...I'm busy mining lithium with my coal powered hyper dozer

Click to expand...

Cool, I'm busy extracting from the oil sands in the arctic, and then shipping it worldwide to be refined and burned. After that I'm gonna flatten several mountains in rural Tennessee to extract something that I am going to burn once. At least with your lithium you can store energy from the sun for use at a later date until the battery loses capacity, which ends the need for combustion of carbon-chains in order to procure energy.

Solar and wind are not magical processes, they still require mining, shipping and raw materials, but it is not a big win to say "What about the minerals needed to make a battery??? What about manufacturing wind-turbines???" But it is just obviously better than extracting and burning a carbon-source and then waving goodbye to that energy as the byproduct fills our atmosphere and you need to burn more, and more, and more. There were around 2 billion humans on this planet 100 years ago. When I was 12 there were 5 billion, now there are very nearly 8, and everyone wants a modern lifestyle. Burning fossil fuels is the right way to provide this? Please explain how it is better than solar?

Finepointcanon said:

Oooh spooky. Play how you want, being nice or not is your choice. I don't wanna play with you, but I am happy to have a discussion about this. I am more than happy to be proven wrong.

I see the quote that you've highlighted. Please tell me about another species that has come along and disrupted the carbon process drastically and measurably in around 100 years. I am not going to draw comparisons to things that took place over geologic periods of time.

Click to expand...

"Since life was totally anaerobic 2.7 billion years ago when cyanobacteria evolved, it is believed that oxygen acted as a poison and wiped out much of anaerobic life, creating an extinction event."
Yeah, you just wanna fight..dontcha

...if you listen closely you can hear his 8th grade education screaming in anger..."REEEE"

mudballs said:

"Since life was totally anaerobic 2.7 billion years ago when cyanobacteria evolved, it is believed that oxygen acted as a poison and wiped out much of anaerobic life, creating an extinction event."
Yeah, you just wanna fight..dontcha

Click to expand...

No, I'd like to have a discussion, and what I would really love is to be proven wrong in my belief that we are causing the destruction of our biome.

I'm not sure what point you are trying to make. Oxygen will, by definition, wipe out most anaerobic life. Cyanobacteria are the earliest ancestors of plants. The first photosynthesizing organisms. Which began the process of converting much of the atmospheric carbon into O2, as your quote implies. This caused much of the atmospheric CO2 to be locked into the bodies of these cyanobacteria and their progeny (in the form of carbon as the free O2 was released into the atmosphere) including complex plants as we know them today. Cyanobacteria are the reason that plants can photosynthesize. Many of these bodies were compressed and converted into crude oil, as I mentioned before. Guess what we are burning now? Guess what is happening to that carbon?

Are you trying to make the point that a species came along and disrupted the carbon cycle? Did you miss the part where I said that I will not draw comparison to events which took place over geologic periods of time? The process that you've mentioned took around 2.4 billion years. I mean...

I've gone on through higher levels of schooling, but that is not important. Personal attacks are rarely the hallmark of a solid position. You do not have to be schooled to grasp these ideas, following common sense even when it is uncomfortable for you, however, is a requirement.

I never said we weren't doing damage...did i?
You want a discussion? Be my guest, I'm allowed to observe without interacting and interact at my discretion. Does this bother you?

mudballs said:

I never said we weren't doing damage...did i?
You want a discussion? Be my guest, I'm allowed to observe without interacting and interact at my discretion. Does this bother you?

Click to expand...

You said the Earth will be fine. I am showing what I have learned which leads me to believe that it will not. I would like if you could convince me that I am wrong, but mainly I don't want others to read your post and think "Oh good, just like I thought, we'll be fine." without a dissenting opinion backed up by something.

You don't have to reply. Do you.

mudballs said:

I never said we weren't doing damage...did i?
You want a discussion? Be my guest, I'm allowed to observe without interacting and interact at my discretion. Does this bother you?

Click to expand...

..pollution...but strangely its never mentioned any more

"clean it up "should be the cry..

She would sing this 1981song

I'm your World
don't mess with me
if you mess with me
you mess with yourself

Finepointcanon said:

You said the Earth will be fine. I am showing what I have learned which leads me to believe that it will not. I would like if you could convince me that I am wrong, but mainly I don't want others to read your post and think "Oh good, just like I thought, we'll be fine." without a dissenting opinion backed up by something.

You don't have to reply, do you.

Click to expand...

"Earth will be fine, just gonna be uncomfortable for humans that like 72 degrees Fahrenheit"
You implead something that wasn't insinuated...cuz you just wanted to fight.
"You don't have to reply, do you"
oh..well thank you your most high imminence emperor extraordinaire for allowing me the gift of individuality.

Oh i wouldn't be too happy..im about to smoke you..
"The interaction between the tectonic and the hydrologic systems causes constant recycling of the materials of the Earth's crust. Rocks are heated, metamorphosed, melted, weathered, sediment is transported, deposited and lithified, then it may be metamorphosed again in yet another cycle"
"The recycling of Earth's crust in volcanoes happens much faster than scientists have previously assumed. Rock of the oceanic crust, which sinks deep into the earth due to the movement of tectonic plates, reemerges through volcanic eruptions after around 500 million years"
earth is 4.5B years old? Something like that? ..numerous cycles have occured already..numerous cataclysmic events already a whisper of a memory...theres even 1B years of strata missing from history...look it up...so i can begin having a discussion worth the effort.
You need to know how a system works before calculating affects and outcomes...you seem to be missing a large portion of the founding material...i think you'd be better off staying in ur lane screaming about how the earth will not be fine...im sure there's some literature you'd like me to peruse at my leisure?

mudballs said:

Oh i wouldn't be too happy..im about to smoke you..
"The interaction between the tectonic and the hydrologic systems causes constant recycling of the materials of the Earth's crust. Rocks are heated, metamorphosed, melted, weathered, sediment is transported, deposited and lithified, then it may be metamorphosed again in yet another cycle"
"The recycling of Earth's crust in volcanoes happens much faster than scientists have previously assumed. Rock of the oceanic crust, which sinks deep into the earth due to the movement of tectonic plates, reemerges through volcanic eruptions after around 500 million years"
earth is 4.5B years old? Something like that? ..numerous cycles have occured already..numerous cataclysmic events already a whisper of a memory...theres even 1B years of strata missing from history...look it up...so i can begin having a discussion worth the effort.
You need to know how a system works before calculating affects and outcomes...you seem to be missing a large portion of the founding material...i think you'd be better off staying in ur lane screaming about how the earth will not be fine...im sure there's some literature you'd like me to peruse at my leisure?

Click to expand...

I read about the missing billion years of missing rock strata, I think that's what you were referring to. That's interesting. Especially the harrowing story of how it was first discovered. They still haven't reached an agreement as to what may have caused it. Possibly the forming and separating of supercontinents causing large-scale erosion and melting of rock through subduction, or glaciation on a massive scale during the biggest ice-age scouring away the rock surface. The main hypotheses share the common thread that they would have happened over absolutely massive periods of time.

The first part says that the earth's crust is recycled through subduction and volcanism roughly every 500 million years. Which is a very long time on a human-scale for a cycle to complete. It also does not happen uniformly in each place on earth. I believe that much of humanity may have been wiped out by an asteroid impact in the past. Just bad luck you know. Totally with you about cataclysms being numerous and now only a whisper of a memory. However these were random natural events.

Humans began burning fossil-fuels for energy on a large scale around 1875. I pulled this graph from Wikipedia. The earth has increased by about 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit from pre-industrial levels, which is equal to 1.3 degrees Celsius. The generally agreed-upon average limit of increase, at which point we could see extremely massive flooding, drought and famine globally, is 2 degrees Celsius. Do you see where the most drastic increase begins?




This one is from a site called Earth.org. It shows the average global CO2 levels over the past 800,000 years. Do you see where the most rapid increase begins?


I'm not sure if you were being serious when you asked for reading material, but if you were this is a good explanation of the '1.5 threshold'. This is the idea that if we can keep the global average temperature increase to below 1.5 Celsius, we can avert many of the most deadly effects of climate change. I live in the tropics, so 'hottest day on record' hits a little differently here than it did when I lived in Michigan. As does the term 'extreme flooding'.


If you have any more material I would be happy to look at it.

Yeah sure go find and quote the mean temperature, temp flux, and CO2 during the Phanerozoic Eon...yes i already know the answer..yes i know more than you about global warming, probably already know the outcome too...but i wanna see you post an answer instead of constantly coming at me...you know..a 2 way discussion. So, phanerozoic mean temps and CO2?

"Oh good, just like I thought, we'll be fine."
and what if i was saying that?

mudballs said:

Yeah sure go find and quote the mean temperature, temp flux, and CO2 during the Phanerozoic Eon...yes i already know the answer..yes i know more than you about global warming, probably already know the outcome too...but i wanna see you post an answer instead of constantly coming at me...you know..a 2 way discussion. So, phanerozoic mean temps and CO2?

Click to expand...

I want you to know that I am reading enough about everything that you post to understand the concepts. Thanks for the opportunity to learn.

Unfortunately, what I found is that the consensus is that it is difficult to obtain the mean temperatures of prehistoric eons. If you could share what you have learned I would be grateful.

I'm not coming at you man, I am contesting your view. It doesn't have to feel like a personal attack. If you know these things, you can post links or post the articles here, but since you'd rather that I go look these things up (I am not an expert on pre-historic earth) I will. Remember that I would be joyful at being proven wrong. Also this is for the benefit of others reading because I'm guessing that most people checking this thread are also not experts on the different eras of Earth.

So the Phanerozoic Era refers to the period of time in Earth's history where abundant visible life was present, from approximately 541 million years ago to present-day, so a period of roughly 541 million years.

The Phanerozoic is divided into 3 periods which correlate to the characteristics of observed life: 1. Paleozoic (541-252 million years ago) 2. Mesozoic (252-66 million years ago) and Cenozoic. (66 million years ago - present)

It appears that the catalyst for the shift into an era where observable life spread to nearly every niche had to do with what we were talking about before, the appearance of cyanobacteria and early plants, which secured much of the atmospheric carbon in their bodies through photosynthesis, allowing for O2 to fill the air and allow for more complex life to develop. This process, called the great oxidation event, took roughly 2.5 billion years to render the atmosphere of earth habitable for widespread respirating life. Before this time the atmosphere lacked any important amount of free O2 which would allow for respiration in higher animals.

This quote is from the co-author of the most accurate climate-reconstruction to this day, reaching back 66 million years into the phanerozoic. “As we reconstructed past climates, we could see long-term coarse changes quite well. We also knew there should be finer-scale rhythmic variability due to orbital variations, but for a long time it was considered impossible to recover that signal,” Zachos said. “Now that we have succeeded in capturing the natural climate variability, we can see that the projected anthropogenic warming will be much greater than that.” - James Zachos, professor of Earth and planetary sciences and Ida Benson Lynn Professor of Ocean Health at UC Santa Cruz

Here is a graph showing the global temperatures from around the beginning of the phanerozoic era to present-day. Global average temperatures are at times as high today as they have been in the past 120,000 years or so, and they've reached that point astonishingly fast for a global process. Even 120,000 years ago, it is believed that the average temperature did not reach much more than 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels.

Photosynthesis began to maintain O2 levels in our atmosphere in earnest around 500 million years ago. Do you see the spikes and dips in the Pleistocene? The Earth has always gone through temperature changes brought on predictably about every 100,000 years due to slow changes in the orbit of the Earth.



Here is another which shows the same data, slightly differently, without slowing the presentation of data into the thousands of years near to present-day as the first did. You can see several major events which are labeled. The first is the Latest Ordovician Ice Age, believed to have been caused by a great emergence in photosynthesizing marine biodiversity causing decreasing atmospheric CO2 levels. This change, while sudden in a geologic timescale, still took about 25 million years. From the article: "A direct link has been shown between the greatest increase in Phanerozoic marine biodiversity and the onset of a sudden icehouse."

"This was a time in Earth history previously believed to be characterized by extreme CO2 levels. Due to the occurrence of a short-lived ice age towards the end of the Ordovician, this has been viewed by some climate skeptics as proof that fluctuating CO2 levels does not affect climate. Thus, human-made emissions due to the burning of fossil fuels therefore could not facilitate global warming," lead author Christian M. Ø. Rasmussen explains. "With this new study, that assumption can no longer be supported as we demonstrate clear-cut evidence for glaciations some 30 million years prior to the end Ordovician ice age," he continues. (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/01/160106101030.htm)

The second event is the Middle Devonian Hothouse, which took place roughly 50 million years after the Ordovician Ice Age. This event was caused by intense volcanism releasing large amounts of CO2 and CH4 into the atmosphere as well as continental drift, which has an influence on climate. It was also fueled by what are known as 'feedback mechanisms', such as the melting of the ice-caps once temperatures reach a certain point causing heating to increase at an even more rapid rate. I'll leave it up to you and anyone else reading to relate this idea to present-day events. The thing about such an extreme event taking dozens of millions of years to complete, is that many species were able to change environment and even to offshoot new taxa and evolve into life which is better suited to endure that environment, and this is exactly what we see in the fossil record.

Next is the Permo-Carboniferous Icehouse, caused again by widespread photosynthesizing marine-life pulling CO2 from the atmosphere which allowed heat to once again radiate out into space via reduction of the greenhouse effect at the point in time where volcanism had more or less ended and the gas levels in the atmosphere had become relatively stable. Another factor may have been the formation of a supercontinent, which influenced climate through surface-heating and changes in ocean currents which influenced ice formation. It took around 100 million years to move from the peak of the Latest Ordovician Ice Age to the Middle-Devonian Hothouse.

Next we see the Great Permo-Triassic Extinction event during the Triassic Hothouse era. This was caused by volcanism on an absolutely massive scale, mainly in the area that is now modern-day Siberia (Siberian Traps) which caused the greenhouse effect to again increase via the release of CO2 and CH4, causing temperature increases which themselves created an inhospitable environment for life adapted to cooler temperatures.

Now here is a worrisome point, marine records indicate that concurrent to the increase of CO2 in the air, we saw that much of this was dissolved into the waters of the ocean, creating carbonic acid among several other things which have a cascading effect on marine-life. When the ocean acidifies via CO2 dissolution, available oxygen decreases in relation to the amount of dissolved CO2. Respiring marine life will die in this environment. Go look at any coral reef and tell me what is happening. As everyone knows, each species on this planet is part of an ecosystem, and rely on each other to maintain the environment in which the current state of more or less homeostatic life is possible.

The second part of this worrisome point is that acidification itself led to the extinction of not only respiring life, which should be important because that is what we are, but to photosynthesizing life. An increase in available CO2 might seem like a good thing for plants, algae, cyanobacterium etc, that is true only to a reasonable point. Acidifying the ocean waters by definition shifts the ph-level of that water. I think all of us on this site share the first-hand knowledge of what can happen to the nutrient-uptake ability of a plant that is living outside of its required ph range.

After this we see the Jurassic-early Cretaceous Cool Period, caused by several factors including residual dust in the upper-atmosphere as a result of volcanic activity reflecting sunlight, plate-tectonics causing both a change in ocean current behavior and absorption of CO2 via certain forms of rock weathering, and of course the re-emergence of photosynthesizing life after the stabilization of volcanism and injections of CO2 into the atmosphere.

Following this we have the Late-Cretaceous Hothouse, This was caused again by increased volcanism releasing massive amounts of CO2/CH4 into the atmosphere causing the greenhouse effect, changing plate-tectonics decreasing the weathering of certain rocks which can absorb CO2 and influencing marine heat movement via locations of land-masses.

The hottest point of this period is known as the PETM, or Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum which occurred 56 million years ago. It is believed that tectonic events such as volcanism and increased CO2 in the atmosphere leading to temperature increase triggered the sudden separation of CH4 from methane hydrates stored in the sediments of the ocean. These would have accumulated enormously by this time due to processes described below. An increase in heat can cause methane hydrates (basically ice crystals bonded with CH4 which keep CH4 trapped in a lattice) to dissociate and form free CH4 which is a potent greenhouse gas. This is also a concern today as global temperatures increase. Feedback mechanisms.

"As the evidence for warming climate became better established in the latter part of the 20th century (IPCC 2001), some scientists raised the alarm that large quantities of methane (CH4) might be liberated by widespread destabilization of climate-sensitive gas hydrate deposits trapped in marine and permafrost-associated sediments (Bohannon 2008, Krey et al. 2009, Mascarelli 2009). Even if only a fraction of the liberated CH4 were to reach the atmosphere, the potency of CH4 as a greenhouse gas (GHG) and the persistence of its oxidative product (CO2) heightened concerns that gas hydrate dissociation could represent a slow tipping point (Archer et al. 2009) for Earth's contemporary period of climate change."

Methane Hydrates and Contemporary Climate Change

Climate-sensitive methane hydrates are a tiny fraction of global deposits and should not contribute measurably to atmospheric methane increases in the 21st century.

www.nature.com

Methane hydrates are caused by CH4 seeping through the crust through tectonic activity into areas of cool water, and from biological processes of certain bacterium in cool water. Without these processes, and the cool ocean temps required to facilitate them, the CH4 will release freely into the atmosphere.

However, prior to this, around 66 million years ago, we see an astonishingly rapid cooling event. This one is really cool because it is direct proof of an asteroid-impact event. The one that killed most of the dinosaurs that were not birds. The effect of a large asteroid impact is not simply mechanical damage to the planet and the areas surrounding the impact crater, it causes something akin to nuclear winter. Enormous amounts of dust, vapor and particulate matter were ejected and suspended into the upper-atmosphere, causing 24 hour darkness, and the inability of the sun's heat to penetrate into the atmosphere to warm the planet. Likely this would have triggered volcanism which increased even more the concentration of CO2 and CH4 in the atmosphere, although at that time the suspension of particulate matter in the atmosphere would have rendered the heat-trapping ability of these gasses impotent, as most radiant-heat would have been reflected back into space. However, after the dust settled, literally, temperatures shot back to a very warm level.

This event is believed to have lasted from several months to 10 years, more than long enough to kill most a large amount of life on the planet.

After this we see fairly sustained cooling, driven by reduction of CO2 in the atmosphere through various processes already mentioned, leading us to where we are today. The LGM, or Last Glacial Maximum occurred about 20,000 years ago. This last ice-age ended due to predictable changes in the orbit of earth, the effects of which we can see as blue spikes every 100,000 years or so in the previous graph, in tandem with feedback loops and plate tectonics. If you look at the end of the graph you can see a very rapid increase in temperature.



Now, the difference between this current rapid spike in temperature and CO2 concentration and those seen previously in the history of Earth is that we have not had cataclysmic volcanism or any of the other events which lead to a natural increase in CO2 concentrations or heat. We are doing it artificially, and extremely quickly. We are taking the carbon that has been sequestered by photosynthesizing life over, as we have seen, millions and millions of years, and releasing it back into the atmosphere.

It's worth noting that our genus of animal, Homo, first emerged around 2.8 million years ago, while modern Homo Sapiens have been around around 200,000 - 300,000 years, which means that the highest average temperature that we have been around for was about 1.5 - 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. We are projected to reach 2 degrees in roughly 20-40 years.

The issue is that this this not caused by natural phenomena, it is caused by us, which means that the orbit of the earth will not stabilize, leaving us in a warm climate that we can adapt to, there is no ceiling, no cyclical factors which will push back against this heating. The only thing that can reign in this process is the same thing that caused it: human activity.

Here is a graph showing biodiversity during the Phanerozoic Era. You can see the correlation with temperature increase and decrease.


And here is a graph showing the correlation between O2 levels and temperature during the Phanerozoic. The presence of O2 roughly indicating the acquisition of carbon from the atmosphere by photosynthesizing life. Now, some of these changes do not correlate directly with CO2 levels. Why is this? CO2 is not the only, or the most potent greenhouse gas. Events which have released methane (one of which being heating via CO2 buildup itself) can cause incredibly rapid heating, and the records indicate this.



Here is a graph showing CO2 levels during this era (black line) as well as O2. (orange line) Although CO2 levels do not perfectly correlate with every instance of temperature increase in exactly the same way, the overwhelming trend is clear that increases in atmospheric CO2 correspond to increases in global temperature. Compare this graph with the temperature graph for this era.

You can see a divorce between CO2 levels and the PETM event, but as was already explained, this event is believed to have largely been caused by a massive release of CH4 from methane hydrate.



Again, thank you for the opportunity to learn, and I look forward to your response should you want to make one. A back-and-forth discussion is also what I would like.

mudballs said:

"Oh good, just like I thought, we'll be fine."
and what if i was saying that?

Click to expand...

Then someone like me may come along and say "Do you have anything to back that up? Because I have some information which indicates the opposite.".

And I'd like you to know that it is not to make you feel bad, or to try to be right. If you and I lived together in a house, and that house was on fire, if you told me "It'll be fine, just not the temperature we're used to." I would just have to ask how you know that, and even then I'd suggest getting a firehose to be sure.