Global Warming Network News- AKA- The Polar Water Caps
POSTED BY: chrisisall
UPDATED: Tuesday, February 7, 2006 17:41
VIEWED: 2400
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Dreamtrove, Venus's surface temperature is 482°C.
The melting point of lead is 327.5°C, how can any living thing on Earth survive that heat?
Maybe with the use of technology, but we don't have any technology that can survive that heat for extended periods yet.
This is the data we currently have on temperature extremes of Earth life:
| Group | °C | °F |
| Animals | ||
| Fish | 38 | 100 |
| Insects | 45-50 | 113-122 |
| Ostracods(crustaceans) | 49-50 | 120-122 |
| Plants | ||
| Vascular plants | 45 | 113 |
| Mosses | 50 | 122 |
| Eucaryotic microorganisms | ||
| Protozoa | 56 | 133 |
| Algae | 55-60 | 131-140 |
| Fungi | 60-62 | 140-144 |
| Procaryotes | ||
| Bacteria | ||
| Cyanobacteria | 70-73 | 158-163 |
| Other photosynthetic bacteria | 70-73 | 158-163 |
| Heterotrophic bacteria | 90 | 194 |
| Archaea | ||
| Methane-producing bacteria | 110 | 230 |
| Sulfur-dependent bacteria | 115 | 239 |
If the Earth warmed up to Venus temperatures no known life on Earth would survive.
As Finn pointed out there could be life on Venus, though I doubt it. But this life would be in no way Earth-like.
The thing about greenhouse effects is they are self sustaining, what we're doing is perhaps kick starting and accelerating it, it won't stop once we're gone.
Recently I saw a program that indicated that pollution may also be slowing global warming at the same time as causing it, by reflecting sunlight. The program suggested if we just stopped polluting without doing anything else, like what would happen if the Human race died out, Global warming would actually increase.
More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four persons is suffering from some sort of mental illness. Think of your three best friends -- if they're okay, then it's you.
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Finn was joking, but certainly life could exist on Venus. We see examples of life on earth living and even thriving in very inhospitable conditions, such as the bacteria that live within deep ocean thermal vents. If this is the case on Venus it is unknown, and probably unlikely to be widespread, but possible.
Venus and Earth have very different atmospheres. By comparison the Venusian atmosphere is 97% carbon dioxide and 90 times denser then the Earth’s. It seems unlikely that Earth could replicate those conditions, even replacing carbon dioxide with water vapor. During the Mesozoic the global climate was much warmer then it is today and during the Paleozoic it was much warmer then that. If there was going to be a runaway greenhouse effect, it seems probable that temperatures will need to increase by an unrealistically large margin for anything like what we see on Venus to occur on Earth. Not that it couldn’t happen but, I think even under the most optimal conditions we would be looking at a geologic timeframe, not anything that would effect civilization as we know it.
The natural water supply has always been a vector for human born disease. Global warming will not cause this; it has always been the case, at least since the last Ice Age.
Oh, he's so full of manure, that man! We could lay him in the dirt and grow another one just like him.
-- Ruby
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The difference is that the warming in the past is believed to be part of natural sun and orbital cycles, not a greenhouse effect. Heat is symptom and consequence of the greenhouse effect, not a cause.
The carbon dioxide in Venus's atmosphere is one of the causes it's greenhouse effect. As we remove the Earths natural carbon dioxide scrubers and pump more particulate matter and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere we're actually exacerbating the natural cycle.
More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four persons is suffering from some sort of mental illness. Think of your three best friends -- if they're okay, then it's you.
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Quote:That’s not a difference; that’s a political argument. The same exact evidence that is used to assert a greenhouse cause of global warming today is used to assert a warm global climate during the Mesozoic and Paleozoic.
Originally posted by citizen:
The difference is that the warming in the past is believed to be part of natural sun and orbital cycles, not a greenhouse effect. Heat is symptom and consequence of the greenhouse effect, not a cause.
But that's really irrelevant. A runaway greenhouse effect is one in which rising temperatures liberate more greenhouse gases, such as water vapor from the oceans or carbon dioxide from porous rocks, which in turn result in increase concentrations of greenhouse gas and thereby increased temperature. If the very high assessed temperatures of the Paleozoic could not jumpstart such a runaway greenhouse effect, then it seems unlikely that current temperatures will.
Oh, he's so full of manure, that man! We could lay him in the dirt and grow another one just like him.
-- Ruby
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Actually Finn the only direct evidence for planetary temperatures and CO2 are from Ice cores and fossilized tree rings and they only stretch back 600,000 years.
The truth is the only data we have older than that is ONLY for Carbon Dioxide and not for temperature. We have no data for global temperatures older than 600,000 years, what we can do is guess based on geological evidence what the temperatures may have been. This is no way near as reliable though.
It is incorrect to say the exact same evidence is used to assert global warming and global climate during the Mesozoic and the Palaeozoic. Global Warming suggests high temperature during those periods, and the correlation between global average temperature and CO2 levels found in ice cores and the fossilised tree records support Global Warming.
But the Earth was a very different place during the Mesozoic and Palaeozoic eras. The CO2 levels were natural and kept in check by vast forests, forests that no longer exist, and what we do have is being cut down. Further more the CO2 levels in our atmosphere is not just natural, it is also from Human activity, meaning the warming is logically going to be faster and greater than that of the Palaeozoic and Mesozoic eras, because we have all of the causes of warming present then plus a few more, and we have fewer braking systems.
More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four persons is suffering from some sort of mental illness. Think of your three best friends -- if they're okay, then it's you.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:First, ice core samples and tree rings are not thermometers. These are proxy data from which temperature is inferred, not direct measurements of temperatures. There are no direct measurements of temperature beyond a few generations. However, there is measured proxy data for temperature that goes back many millions of years based on examination of paleosols and fossils. So we do have measurement well beyond 600,000 years. All this data carries with it considerable uncertainty, however.
Originally posted by citizen:
Actually Finn the only direct evidence for planetary temperatures and CO2 are from Ice cores and fossillized tree rings and they only stretch back 600,000 years.
The truth is the only data we have older than that is ONLY for Carbon Dioxide and not for temperature. We have no data for global temperatures older than 600,000 years, what we can do is guess based on geological evidence what the temperatures may have been. This is no way near as reliable though.
Quote:The greenhouse theory and concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide are used to assert global climatic temperature trends both during the Paleozoic and today. The greenhouse theory cause of the Modern Maximum is dependent upon correlation between increased atmospheric carbon dioxide and temperature data. Similarly, the high temperatures during the Paleozoic are based on assessed concentrations of carbon dioxide and the greenhouse effect.
Originally posted by citizen:
It is incorrect to say the exact same evidence is used to assert global warming and global climate during the Mesozoic and the Paleozoic. Global Warming suggests high temperature during those periods, and the correlation between global average temperature and CO2 levels found in ice cores and the fossilised tree records support Global Warming.
But the Earth was a very different place during the Mesozoic and Paleozoic eras. The CO2 levels were natural and kept in check by vast forests, forests that no longer exist, and what we do have is being cut down. Further more the CO2 levels in our atmosphere is not just natural, it is also from Human activity, meaning the warming is logically going to be faster and greater than that of the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras.
You cannot claim that the greenhouse theory works today, but not during the Paleozoic, and dismiss it with “the Earth was a different place” stuff. According to simulated data and measured data the concentrations of carbon dioxide was significantly higher, then it is today. Your assumption that vast forests were keeping carbon dioxide in check, may or not be true, but it certainly is not supported by the assessed Paleozoic carbon dioxide concentrations. And either the greenhouse theory works or it doesn’t. If there were significantly higher concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide during the Paleozoic, then the greenhouse theory says the temperature should have been much higher. If we don’t accept that, then we can’t argue that the anthropogenic carbon dioxide is causing increased temperature today based on the greenhouse theory.
Oh, he's so full of manure, that man! We could lay him in the dirt and grow another one just like him.
-- Ruby
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Personally, I don't see a big co2 or particulate difference between the man-made polution of today, and the volcanic activity plus the hundreds of millions of daily dinosaur farts of times past.
Raise your hand if 'Eeewwwue'.
Chrisisall
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Quote:If the Greenhouse theory is correct, then that would be true. There is evidence that the Phanerozoic climate was driven by noncarbon related mechanism, such as solar and cosmic ray activity, as citizen said. However, it’s difficult to argue for a greenhouse effect today, but not the Paleozoic. It is possible that carbon dioxide was kept in check by large forests, but that’s an assumption and somewhat of a circular argument, because we don’t really know how large the forests were in those days. We just assume they were vast, because the temperatures were high. In the end, very few solid conclusion can actually be drawn from all this.
Originally posted by chrisisall:
Personally, I don't see a big co2 or particulate difference between the man-made polution of today, and the volcanic activity plus the hundreds of millions of daily dinosaur farts of times past.
My belief is that the temperature is probably due to the greenhouse effect, but that the temperature never gets high enough to jumpstart the so-called runaway greenhouse effect, like what we see on Venus. Anthropogenic effect is probably very small in the big picture. Ice core samples show regular and large spikes in the carbon dioxide concentration, and these spikes correlate well with large increases in mean global temperature, literally pulling the climate out of ice ages that last thousands of years. What is causing the carbon dioxide spikes is hard to say (cosmic ray flux?). Many things have been suggested, but this trend is not due to industrialization; this is a natural effect. And it is very large. So large that, in fact the current maximum almost disappears into the noise of the ice core temperature measurement. We are sitting on an 8000-10000 year optima, having come out of a 100,000 year stretch were the mean global temperature appears to have been around 6 degrees lower. Something is causing atmospheric carbon dioxide to rise and fall, and it very well could be cosmic and solar activity. If the last 400,000 years is any indication the current optima may end very soon (read: hundreds of years), and in an ironic twist, it is possible that the anthropogenic greenhouse gases produced by industrialization may not be enough to save the planet from an ice age that may last tens of thousands of years and completely erase the progress humans have made over the last 8000 years.
Stick that in the Kyoto Accord and eat it!
Oh, he's so full of manure, that man! We could lay him in the dirt and grow another one just like him.
-- Ruby
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Quote:I agree it might be going at a faster rate because of us; it's not natural to be able to see global climactic change this severe within one's lifetime, imo.
Originally posted by citizen:
Further more the CO2 levels in our atmosphere is not just natural, it is also from Human activity, meaning the warming is logically going to be faster and greater than that of the Palaeozoic and Mesozoic eras, because we have all of the causes of warming present then plus a few more, and we have fewer braking systems.
But once upon a time, there were no trees, no braking systems, just a surface of molten and cooling crap spewing out mega-billions of tons of co2 and ash.
Once this slowed, however, the intellegent life that evolved here moved to Venus for continued warmth and soot
Chrisisall
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This is somewhat off topic, but keeping in the spirit of light conversation. Have either of you played a PC game called Civilization IV? This along with Rome:Total War has become my favorite PC games, since none of the new WWII first person shooting games will run on my computer.
Anyway, CivIV is a strategy game in which you play one of several civilizations that compete for resources and land with other factions. You can play this game with several initial assumptions that define how the land masses are organized. There is an assumption for an ice age, in which only the tropical regions are easily habitable, and an assumption for an arid climate in which the tropics are most deserts. I’ve gotten hours of enjoyment simulating the rise of civilization in an ice age environment. The good land dwindles very quickly and competition for the few habitable places in the colder regions is intense. It’s just a game, but with a little imagination one can get a pretty good first order approximation of how civilization is affected by different climatic extrema.
Oh, he's so full of manure, that man! We could lay him in the dirt and grow another one just like him.
-- Ruby
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