What will destroy the world and or kill off humanity?

[Jon Miller]

Originally posted by Az

A good portion goes into the sea, another big portion goes into the air and ?

Some CO2 dissolves in the water, and some also creates sediment from biological sources, true... most of it stays in the air, until it gets picked up by plants.

Since the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is rising steadily, and CO2 is a greenhouse gas, I see no reason not to worry.

yep.. since we had a lot more in the atmosphere at earlier times..

and our atomoshpere had a lot more of a greenhouse effect at earlier times also

so yes, no reason to worry...

Jon Miller

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
The earth is almost impossible to destroy. Humans, on the other hand, are much easier. If nothing else, the sun going nova will do it.

The sun is to small to go nova. It just doesn't have the mass. Our little sun will have a red giant phase in about 4 billion years and the corona of the sun will expand about to the Earth's orbit thus burning off the Earth's atmosphere and turning the Earth into a lifeless rock.

[Jon Miller]

Originally posted by Oerdin



Speaking of which I went to McDonald's gringoified Mexican place Chipotle Grill yesterday and I was very favorably impressed. It reminded of a place called Free Bird's in Isla Vista, California which has been there for 30 years and it basically serves the same basic Mexican food with the rice and beans added in. Still the ingredients are fresh, unlike McDonalds, and the prices are still McDonald's cheap. All in all it is not bad.

sometimes is ok, sometimes not

I don't have it all that often..

Jon Miller

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Az

A good portion goes into the sea, another big portion goes into the air and ?

Some CO2 dissolves in the water, and some also creates sediment from biological sources, true... most of it stays in the air, until it gets picked up by plants.

Since the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is rising steadily, and CO2 is a greenhouse gas, I see no reason not to worry.

Act5ually huge amounts of CO2 get disolved in water and are used to create CaCO2 (limestone) ot ArCO2 (Aragonite). This stripes away large amounts of CO2 from the Earth's atmosphere, however, unlike Mars the Eath has on going plate tectonics so this CO2 gets recycled and put back into the atmosphere when the oceanic plates subduct and volcanos rerelease the CO2.

[Odin]

Originally posted by BlackCat
Agreed if it was one of the really big contributants of greenhouse effect, but it isn't - water wapor is a much larger component of the picture.

I agree certainly that CO2 are rising, but is humans the only to blame for this ? Maybe, maybe not.

I read in a Scientific American article that methane (which is a green house gas) released from rice farms since rice cultivation started has delayed the start of the next glaciation (our interglacial has been unusually long, and this is probably the reason why). We should thank the Chinese for keeping the glaciers away.

Anyway, the warming is definely anthropogenic. there is a graph, now famous in Climatological circles, showing the world average temperature trends for the last 1000 years. The line is mostly horizontal when one ignores the normal variation. Then starting around the year 1900 the temperature starts to increase, levels out in the 60's and 70's (thats when everyone was hooting that there was going to be a new glaciation comming), and then started surging upwards at an absurd rate way above the "normal" variantion of the last 1000 years. The line looks like a hockey stick with the handle horizontal, hence the graph is often called the "Hockey Stick Graph".

[Geronimo]

the Big Rip

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Odin
Anyway, the warming is definely anthropogenic. there is a graph, now famous in Climatological circles, showing the world average temperature trends for the last 1000 years. The line is mostly horizontal when one ignores the normal variation. Then starting around the year 1900 the temperature starts to increase, levels out in the 60's and 70's (thats when everyone was hooting that there was going to be a new glaciation comming), and then started surging upwards at an absurd rate way above the "normal" variantion of the last 1000 years. The line looks like a hockey stick with the handle horizontal, hence the graph is often called the "Hockey Stick Graph".

It is not scientific to only look at the last 1000 years when really we should be looking at the last 30,000 years. In any event I can assure you global temperatures have not been flat in the last 1000 years. We had both the mideval warm period and the mini ice age both of which experienced temperature changes greater then we are now experiencing. That doesn't even take into account the massive temperature changes which have occured in the last 10k years with the end of the ice age.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Jon Miller


sometimes is ok, sometimes not

I don't have it all that often..

Jon Miller

I do like the fact that there are now fast food restaurants that make fresh and natural a priority but I am dismayed that it took 30 years to get here. The menu is very similiar to a half dozen California-Mexican eateries which opened out west in the 1970's. Why did it take so long for the rest of the country to catch up?

[Lancer]

Geronimo, thanks for that link.

"At this point, there is still a short interval before atoms and even their nuclei break apart. "There's about 30 minutes left," Caldwell said, "But it's not quality time.""

I love this line.

[atomant]

Originally posted by General Ludd
Humanity.

[Odin]

Originally posted by Oerdin



It is not scientific to only look at the last 1000 years when really we should be looking at the last 30,000 years. In any event I can assure you global temperatures have not been flat in the last 1000 years. We had both the mideval warm period and the mini ice age both of which experienced temperature changes greater then we are now experiencing. That doesn't even take into account the massive temperature changes which have occured in the last 10k years with the end of the ice age.

The Mideval Warm Period and "Little Ice Age" where just the latest 2 variations, there was nothing unusual about them except that they are the most well known. We are curently going past the MWP level, and we may reach average temperatures not seen since the Altithermal 6,000 years ago in a few decades. Another reason it is most likely not natural is that since the Altithermal, things have been cooling off untill 100 ago, this drastic warming is way out of character for an Interglacial that is long past the Altithermal "hump".

[Lancer]

Odin, at what point does the Antithermal cooling trend that's being theoreticly overcome by humans burning fossil fuels catch up with us and overcome global warming? Any numbers or even opinion on this?

[Snotty]

Chavs

[Odin]

Originally posted by Lancer
Odin, at what point does the Antithermal cooling trend that's being theoreticly overcome by humans burning fossil fuels catch up with us and overcome global warming? Any numbers or even opinion on this?

What triggers glaciation is still under debate. we don't totally undertand how the Milankovitch cycles of earths orbit, tilt, and precession affect the climate as much as they do. My hypothesis is that since planktonic algae like cool, nutrient-rich water, that they create positive feedback from any small coolling by the Milankovitich cycles by sucking CO2 out of the atmosphere.

[Lancer]

So...global warming will create a good environment for plankton, yes? Also the water should be nutrient rich with all the human waste going into the oceans. Global warming might counteract itself...?