Global warming 'is three times faster than worst predictions

Lore

Think of it as trying to setup a Martian colony on our own planet.
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The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life.
... Theodore Roosevelt

Heineken

Given the subject of this thread, maybe more like a Venus colony, Lore. Ha, ha. Good point, though. Every day and in every way, we are relentlessly making the Earth less hospitable to humans. In essence, making it more alien. The irony is that our population continues to rise---for now---fueled by ancient sunlight and a lot of other stored resources that cannot last.
_________________
"Actually, humans died out long ago."
---Abused, abandoned hunting dog

"Things have entered a stage where the only change that is possible is for things to get worse."
---Me and my brother

Heineken

Cabrone

Chaparral

That supposed methane eruption 55mya is cause for doomerishness. There is an additional estimate which claims that the amount of carbon in the undersea gas-clathrates is equivalent to that in all the coal, oil and nat gas deposits. If that is even remotely the case, we now have 10-12 teratons of C available. That puts us squarely in the middle of the IPCC's 8-16 TT requirements for their 5-6 deg projections.

WRT ocean circulaton stalling out, I wonder exactly what parts would stall. Where I live, the currents seem to be mainly a function of the Earth's rotation rather than any thermohaline mechanisms. Maybe the currents would stall out in places like the GOM or perhaps the South China Sea or Meditarranean. I suspect all areas of the ocean would not be toxic and unproductive.

WRT H₂S, that stuff is supposed to react with water and make H₂SO4. Where are the giant reserves of H₂S waiting to erupt out of the ocean and asphyxiate coastal regions? Again, where I live, the continental shelf is mainly rocky and steep with not a whole lot of buried sediments compared to say, the GOM so I'm having a bit of difficulty seeing it as anything but a somewhat localized problem.

Tyler_JC

The ocean takes a long time to warm up.

We won't see the effects of global warming on deep sea water temperatures for centuries.

Water surface temperatures are important to note for evaporation and cloud-making purposes. But it is the deep sea water temperatures that need to increase drastically in order to get the world's supply of methane hydrates to bubble up and create fireballs that will "tear across the sky".

Simply increasing the global average air temperature by a few degrees isn't going to gasify the methane hydrate deposits.
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"www.peakoil.com is the Myspace of the Apocalypse."

Heineken

Whoa, not so fast, Tyler. A lot of the methane hydrates aren't at the bottom of the ocean. They're locked up in the permafrost, which is now melting.

I wouldn't count too much on your blithe assurances about the oceanic methane, either. Every time we turn around, we learn that events are moving faster than anyone guessed, and in unexpected directions.

One way or another, methane is about to become a huge new contributor to global warming, and it will create a new and deadly feedback loop.

http://www.energybulletin.net/3647.html
_________________
"Actually, humans died out long ago."
---Abused, abandoned hunting dog

"Things have entered a stage where the only change that is possible is for things to get worse."
---Me and my brother

Lore

The Big Seep

oowolf

Anyone in Europe/UK willing to sell/ship me a copy of "Six Degrees" by Lynas? I can't get a copy anywhere "over here" ???

(I don't understand this because I was able to order "Revenge of Gaia" from the UK as soon as it came out.)

dohboi · Light Sweet Crude Joined: Dec 05, 2005 Posts: 1271

As bad as many recognize the problem to be, I'm not sure we've fully appreciated the importance of the extremely rapid rate of change.

It I were to steadily press my fist against your head so that I pushed it three inches, you would not be harmed in the least. You would have time to adjust. This is what generally happens with earthly climate change.

If the same fist were to push the same distance, but at the speed of a quick punch, it could potentially knock you out. This is the equivalent of what happened in the Permian Triassic "Great Dying": relatively rapid change (by evolutionary standards--some ten thousand years) knocked the living world out, leaving much of compex life extinct.

Now, if I fire my fist at you from a cannon (never mind the pain that would cause me!), then even if it only goes the same three inches into your head, the result is not likely to be pretty. This is essentially the equivalent of what we are doing today.

Timing is everything. In biological systems, as with your head, time to absorb the blow, adapt, evolve, recoil, is everything.

Put another way, people tend to assume that GW is like tapping someone on the forehead with a bullet--we and life can adjust; while in reality, it is more like a point blank shot to the head.

Heineken

A critical point, dohboi. The human perception of time warps the human interpretation of this problem, and of so many others that are sweeping away the living, healthy earth at a pace that is by planetary standards dizzying.
_________________
"Actually, humans died out long ago."
---Abused, abandoned hunting dog

"Things have entered a stage where the only change that is possible is for things to get worse."
---Me and my brother

Doly · Expert Joined: Dec 03, 2004 Posts: 4034