News from the not-so-cold-anymore cold

[Skybird]

http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEM2U5THKHF_index_0.html

Bah. It's all an illusion.

P.S.
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/antarctica-20080123.html

[mrbeast]

Don't worry Skybird, it'll all freeze over again in the ice age that Subman was predicting a few threads ago. :up:

We had a cold winter anyway which cancelled out all the global warming....didn't it? :roll: :hmm:

Then theres always the old stand-by of 'Ok so theres a little warming but its all natural, what can we do about it? lets carry on burning carbon' :nope:

[August]

I burned a lot of carbon over the past weekend in Skybirds honor... :D

[mrbeast]

I burned a lot of carbon over the past weekend in Skybirds honor... :D

Thats not nearly enough August, Subman was getting pretty worried about the lack of sun spot activity and the ensuing ice age its going to cause! :yep:

[August]

Thats not nearly enough August, Subman was getting pretty worried about the lack of sun spot activity and the ensuing ice age its going to cause! :yep:
Ok I have two more brush piles about 30ft across and 10ft high. When i go back up to the cabin next month i will be sure to touch them off. We'll kick this global war..., er i mean "climate change" thang right in the butt!

[Skybird]

CO2? I have another worry since one year, since I first stumbled over it and then read more about it: maritime methane hydrate. Twice as much carbon as is bound in oil and gas, is encapsuled in the methane hydrate in the oceans. Energy companies are crazy about it, it sounds like the chance of a lifetime.

This stuff is very instabile, and forms blocks of "ice" (frozen H2O for sure). A rise of just 1°C in most maritime areas of the globe is enough to destabilize this stuff, so that methane escapes as a gas into the ocean, polluting it (oxygene level falling accordingly), and later the atmosphere, and immense ammounts of sweet water melt into the surrounding salt water reservoir. The ammounts of material we talk about are immense. Estimates show that by today'S energy consummation there could be enough methane hydrate to feed the energy needs of all the globe for the next 200-500 years.

that is quite a lot of methane that currently is not present in the amosphere. We talk of whole maritime massifs made of it, and layers up to several hundred meters thick covering the bottom of the deep and cold sea.

This special ice also functions as a stabilizing factor to shelfs, and mountains, preventing landslides of huge proportions, it binds not only water and methane, but also sediments and lose rocks and sand, helping to make the bottom more solid and difficult to move.

A sudden concentrated release of methane necessarily will lead to a boost in warming, which feeds back on more methane hydrate becoming instable, releasing more methane - et voila, you have a vicious circle. A rise of temperature of only 1-2°C in water layers were methane hydrate exists, is enough to start this vicious circle. And we know absolutely sure that mean water temperatures in all oceans have risen in the past decades for sure, and that tidings already have started to chnage in intensity and direction, due to changes in the interdynamics between salt and sweet waters and salientatio0n and oxygene levels in sea water caused by the warming of just some centigrades.

The system of the oceans is ridiculously sensitive to changes. It does not need much to bring it off balance.

Deep Ice probes from 1500+ meters depth show us that this already has happened once in earth's history. It led to the oceans collapsing from pollution, more than two thirds of maritime species got wiped out, and the deep seas where you have temps below 2°C today showed temperatures in excess of 15°C. The earth was an baking oven, as a result of most if not all of today'S methane being released. Oxygen levels in the ocean must have been so low that most life could not survive there anymore. That catastrophe happend around 55 million years ago, and unfolded over a period of several hundred maybe thousand years. Needless to say that it heavily affected life on land, too. the poles were tropical regions at that time. From some point on, they were poisenous tropical regions. Many land species also died during that time from the poisened atmosphere.

Before you sigh in relief when reading "hundreds or a thousand years" keep in mind that this is the time that it took to reach the climax of this catastrophe. changes and consequences that started to kill life and turned living into a mess were to be felt much, much earlier in the process. We already feel, both physically and financially/economically the consequences of the changes that manifested themselves in just the past 30 years - and we are only at the very beginning of this period of massive change. A change that is taking place at a many multiple times a higher speed than ever before in earth's history.

So far we have just become aware of the very tip of the iceberg, some of us have just started to vaguely get an impression that we are heading for a diabolically wild ride, while most still ignore it or actgively deny it. In geological terms you can compare the pace of processes that have set in only to a vertically diving rollercoaster. maybe never before in earth history, earth-born climate changes took place so fast like in our present. the way it will chnage the face of our planet over long time of let's say 3-5 centuries we cannot even imagine. And there is a chance that man as well as many other "higher" species will not play a role in that future anymore, and only more simplier, more robust species can survive in the world to come. Currently the extcinction of species already in our present takes place at a speed that outclasses that of earlier mass exctinctions earth has seen by a factor of 1000, some even say 10000. that tells something about the high level of diversity in species earth has formed until today. Nevertheless the speed at which they now dissappear is worrying.

[SUBMAN1]

I burned a lot of carbon over the past weekend in Skybirds honor... :D
Thats not nearly enough August, Subman was getting pretty worried about the lack of sun spot activity and the ensuing ice age its going to cause! :yep:Ignore the data, I don't care. You are being told to buy shorts, when you should be buying fur coats! :D Gonna get chilly on ya!

-S

[Zachstar]

I burned a lot of carbon over the past weekend in Skybirds honor... :D
Thats not nearly enough August, Subman was getting pretty worried about the lack of sun spot activity and the ensuing ice age its going to cause! :yep:Ignore the data, I don't care. You are being told to buy shorts, when you should be buying fur coats! :D Gonna get chilly on ya!

-S

"Ignore the grainy video of the missile hitting the pentagon, I don't care. You are being told to fly the flag when you ought to be cowering in fear because the big bad conspiricy is coming."

-- Random Alex Jones fan

:P