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http://geology.gsapubs.org/con...

Did you read the summary? Its entire focus is that the recent earthquake swarm is caused by fracking (unlike the many similar earthquake swarms that area has had in the past, apparently).

I RTFA, and there might be some serious issues with it. It has some severe inconsistencies with the report it cites:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com...

tl;dr version The report notes that increased fracking and the wastewater injection, if disposed in that manner, might be a problem. But the injection wells are the cause of the problem, not the nature of hydraulic fracking. Those injection wells have been there long before modern day fracking was around. Here's an abstract from Geology http://geology.gsapubs.org/con...

The takeaway is that the culprit here is injection wells for wastewater, which by the way, is not only loaded with brine water, and toxic chemicals, but lubricating agents. It was proobably never a good idea, even when these injection wells were utilized well before modern day fracking - like the culprit wells in Oklahoma.

As noted before, we need to make the fracking fluid more environmentally benign. It won't ever be completely so, as brine is picked up in drilling. But simply pumping it back underground will just expose local fault lines over the years, and endangers a whole lot of folks and real estate.

As to Yucca being unsafe for nuclear waste according to the DoE... cite that please. I can't find anything that says that. What I found was report after report after report after article after article saying it was safe. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10... [nytimes.com] What are you talking about?

You are mis-quoting me. The DOE's own 1982 Nuclear Waste policy Act reported that the Yucca Mountain's geology is "inappropriate to contain nuclear waste". So the most appropriate way to move the Nuclear Industry forward is to develop a geologically stable containment facility (I am reluctant to call plutonium 'waste') inside a mountain. That could also, potentially, house a reactor facility, and an infrastructure plan to move that 70,000 tons of plutonium to that facility would begin to look like sound nuclear policy.

As for safe, well its seismic stability is a good measure of that and I doubt the NYT is qualified to make that assessment.

And then of course there is the whole issue with the storage for the spent fuel.

First of all lets clear up the time frame here, plutonium is radioactive for 25000 years before it decays into it's daughter product, which will then be radioactive for ??000 years and iterate 20 odd times. That's why I refer to it as 'geological time frames.

Yucca mountain is not a appropriate because it is made of pumice and geologically active evidenced by recent aftershocks of 5.6 within ten miles of a repository that is supposed to be geologically stable for at least 500000 years. The DOE's own 1982 Nuclear Waste policy Act reported that the Yucca Mountain's geology is inappropriate to contain nuclear waste, and long term corrosion data on C22 (the material to contain the Pu-239 and mitigate the ingress of water - yet another Yucca problem) is just not available.

As to your rebuttal to my point about nuclear storage... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] "" The location has been highly contested by environmentalists and some Nevada residents[2]. It was approved in 2002 by the United States Congress. Federal funding for the site ended in 2011 under the Obama Administration via amendment to the Department of Defense and Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act, passed on April 14, 2011.[3] The Government Accountability Office stated that the closure was for political, not technical or safety reasons.[3] "" Quote: For political not technical or safety reasons.

Studies of the Yucca mountain hydrology revealed that the passage cl-36 from atmospheric nuclear testing took less that 50 years in ground water through Yucca mountain so the reality of Yucca is it is inappropriate to contain *any* kind of radioactive products. Yucca is pumice and volcanic ash, you *need* granite if you want a serious facility. Even the Swedish test facility is better designed than Yucca and the design of the actual facility shows the U.S how it *should* be done.

Go look up the wiki on the act if you are not convinced and you'll see that Yucca was *put* in Nevada because their represenatives did not attend.

Common myth? I can't believe you said that. Seriously. That issue is categorically lost to you.

Act

So the 5.6 earthquake in Prague was minor to who?

The USGS and Oklahoma Geological Survey say that the quake was natural, but one study argues that 18 years of cumulative injection triggered a lesser fault, which started a cascade that led up to the major fault. Aka, the "you hit a rock, it hits a bigger one, etc" scenario I outlined in my initial post.

Newly compiled Russian and U.S. seismological data support an independent Bering block in motion relative to the North American plate. This motion is likely to be driven by the westward extrusion of southwestern Alaska, resulting from compression in southern Alaska due to subduction of the Pacific plate and terrane accretion. Seismicity extends from central Alaska, through the Bering Strait, and into Chukotka. In eastern Chukotka several southwest trends are evident, some of which continue through the Koryak Highlands to Kamchatka. The seismicity outlines the Bering block, which includes most of the Bering Sea, Chukchi Peninsula, Seward Peninsula, and parts of western Alaska. Focal mechanisms, young basaltic volcanism, and normal faults in western Alaska and Chukotka indicate that the Bering Strait is under northeast-southwest extension. This, in conjunction with thrust faulting in the Koryak Highlands, indicates that the Bering block is rotating clockwise relative to the North American plate.

http://geology.gsapubs.org/con...

Also the Aleutian islands are quite active, that entire area is active.

I think animals with shells survived well enough in the past when atmospheric CO2 levels were far, far higher. They'll adapt.

Oh, the irony.

The actual paleobiological literature suggests this statement is wrong in every particular. Not only is ocean acidification implicated in the worst mass extinction in the history of mulitcellular life (see here [PDF] or here)-- although it may not have been the main kill mechanism-- it may actually be a general cause of mass extinctions (see here). If it is, that would be very interesting; it would be the only general mechanism for mass extinctions that I am aware of.

Moreover, natural selection operates differently during a mass extinction. Selective pressures are wildly different from those operating "normally." The usual rules do not apply-- traits that were previously advantageous no longer matter, or may even be detrimental. One of the very few qualities which seems to enhance the odds of survival is species-level geographic range, and in a really bad mass extinction, even that can stop being important, giving way to clade-level geographical range. I'm astonished that you could make a blithe statement like "they'll adapt" without consulting the relevant literature; in particular, we have strong evidence that animals with calcium carbonate shells fared very poorly in the past when atmospheric CO2 levels were far, far higher, and did not "survive well enough."

Mountain uplift is known to greatly enhance rates of physical erosion and chemical weathering compared to the rates in tectonically stable regions (e.g., Stallard and Edmond, 1983; Milliman and Syvitski, 1992; Derry and France-Lanord, 1997). These observations have been used to argue that orogenic events lead to global cooling over geologic time scales by accelerating the rate of atmospheric CO 2consumption by silicate weathering (e.g., Raymo et al., 1988; Raymo and Ruddiman, 1992; Edmond and Huh, 1997; Wallmann, 2001).

It talks about another cause of accelerated erosion, mountain uplift, but increased rainfall should do the same. As I assumed, it talks about geologic time-scales, so it doesn't really help us.

Venus does have a hydrogen shortage. That's why it would have to get the hydrogen from the sulfuric acid.

The sulfuric acid itself would actually rain like water if the temperature equilibrium was punctured. Interestingly, the aramid plastic is soluble in concentrated sulfuric acid, and it doesnt get more concentrated than anhydrous. This means that if an ocean of the shit could be coaxed into existence, a considerable amount of aramid could be dissolved.

The oxidation of the sulfuric acid (removal of hydrogen, rather than addition of oxygen in this case) would create free oxygen and sulfur dioxide gas. The free oxygen would be bound to the hydrogen inside the organism, allowing it to create water from the sulfuric acid, and exrete sulfur dioxide waste. It would only do this to a limited extent, as needed. the organisms would need to be designed to be very miserly with biotically produced water.

As for the lack of convection being a supposed source for the lack of a magnetosphere, that is not MY supposition, I do have a cite:

http://geology.gsapubs.org/content/30/11/987

The geochemistry of venus would be radically different from earth when cooled down enough, (sulfuric acid oceans, crustal deposits of sulfur, and atmospheric sulfur oxides, dissolved aramid plastics in the ocean, etc.) but hydrogen is one of the most abundant elements in the universe. Being closer to the sun, the solar wind near venus will be stronger. It may be possible for venus to capture hydrogen ions from the solar wind over time if a magentic dynamo could be established. Other options would be to purposefully get comets to smash into venus, as they often contain methane and water ice, both rich in hydrogen. It being uninhabited, the damage to the ancient crust would actually help poke holes in it and help it release trapped mantle heat better. Of course, it would destroy comets, which arent particularly common in a solar system that is as old as ours.

Other sources could be radiogenically produced hydrogen from alpha particle emission from man-made fusion devices on venus. (Fusing heavy elements at a loss, simply to make the missing hydrogen. The excessive sulfur would be a good candidate, being considerably lighter than iron, and as such far easier to coax into this role. Widespread deployment of farnsworth fusors working with elemental sulfur dimer plasma might work, but a reliable energy supply would be needed. It would also be nasty to the fusor..... but you win some, and lose some.)

Not that it necessarily validates the finding, but this paper has appeared in a peer-reviewed journal published by the Geological Society of America.

We don't know for sure how fast a sauropod's metabolism was compared to an elephant's. If their metabolisms were similar to those of modern reptiles, then it's perfectly reasonable to imagine that they could survive on an order of magnitude less food. From WP: "A crocodile needs from a tenth to a fifth of the food necessary for a lion of the same weight and can live half a year without eating." During the Jurassic and Cretaceous, the climate was very warm and humid, there were no polar ice caps, and a much higher proportion of the world's surface area was covered with rainforest compared to today. There seems to be a lot of uncertainty about productivity of the ancient forests, but this paper says that in the Cretaceous it was probably double that of today. Believe it or not, the scientist who did this work may not have been a complete idiot. In fact, he may know more about his subject than you do, and may have made his estimates based on knowledge of his field. In fact, his publication list contains papers with titles like "The energetics of low browsing in sauropods."

IPCC is hardly the last word; they're quite conservative in their predictions, and this is (I think) generally regarded as a low-probability event even by the people studying it. But note, asteroid strikes are also low-probability, and we study those.

Here's an example: http://geology.gsapubs.org/content/36/3/231.abstract (from searches for "global warming anoxia")

It's a bit of a judgment call these days. I would still call it a hypothesis, although it is the current thinking. There is plenty of argument about the exact form that plate tectonics took in the Archean (2500 to 4000 million years ago), let alone the Hadean (4000-4600Ma), but, yes, there is increasing evidence for plate tectonics being in operation further back than traditionally thought.

You have to realize: it is hard enough figuring things out way back in the Precambrian generally, but prior to ~3 billion years ago rocks get increasingly rare, and by the time you get to about 4 billion years or so you run out of rocks entirely (current record), and you are trying to infer what is going on from younger rocks that preserve a few mineral grains derived from even older rocks, like the zircons previously mentioned. The Earth was a very active place back then, and it's tough for rocks (or minerals) to get preserved from that time intact. Continents move around, mountain ranges get built and worn down, rocks get melted. It's kind of like you've mixed up all the ingredients for a cake, baked it, flattened it, rolled it up, baked it again, chopped it up and left it in the rain, scooped it up and baked it yet again. Then you're trying to figure out what kind of cake the first one was and the circumstances of its formation. It's not impossible (maybe you've managed to find bits of pineapple or something), but it's very challenging. So the earliest history of the Earth is always going to be a bit blurry compared to the later history where we have much more information. If the Earth settled down early in its history like the Moon did, or if tectonics waned away over time like on Mars, then we'd probably have plenty of rocks left in pristine condition from the first half billion years to look at. But the Earth is geologically a very active place compared to other terrestrial planets, so it eventually erases a lot of the earlier evidence.

I guess the bottom line is, yes, it is the "current theory" these days, but given how hard it is to resolve what is going on in the 4000-4500Ma range it probably should be regarded as a hypothesis until additional evidence backs up the results. There are papers that question some of the assumptions of the original paper, such as this one, and that support it in other ways, both of which unfortunately aren't open-access and are very technical. Anyway, I'd say the jury is still out even if it seems increasingly likely to be correct.

It's a bit of a judgment call these days. I would still call it a hypothesis, although it is the current thinking. There is plenty of argument about the exact form that plate tectonics took in the Archean (2500 to 4000 million years ago), let alone the Hadean (4000-4600Ma), but, yes, there is increasing evidence for plate tectonics being in operation further back than traditionally thought.

You have to realize: it is hard enough figuring things out way back in the Precambrian generally, but prior to ~3 billion years ago rocks get increasingly rare, and by the time you get to about 4 billion years or so you run out of rocks entirely (current record), and you are trying to infer what is going on from younger rocks that preserve a few mineral grains derived from even older rocks, like the zircons previously mentioned. The Earth was a very active place back then, and it's tough for rocks (or minerals) to get preserved from that time intact. Continents move around, mountain ranges get built and worn down, rocks get melted. It's kind of like you've mixed up all the ingredients for a cake, baked it, flattened it, rolled it up, baked it again, chopped it up and left it in the rain, scooped it up and baked it yet again. Then you're trying to figure out what kind of cake the first one was and the circumstances of its formation. It's not impossible (maybe you've managed to find bits of pineapple or something), but it's very challenging. So the earliest history of the Earth is always going to be a bit blurry compared to the later history where we have much more information. If the Earth settled down early in its history like the Moon did, or if tectonics waned away over time like on Mars, then we'd probably have plenty of rocks left in pristine condition from the first half billion years to look at. But the Earth is geologically a very active place compared to other terrestrial planets, so it eventually erases a lot of the earlier evidence.

I guess the bottom line is, yes, it is the "current theory" these days, but given how hard it is to resolve what is going on in the 4000-4500Ma range it probably should be regarded as a hypothesis until additional evidence backs up the results. There are papers that question some of the assumptions of the original paper, such as this one, and that support it in other ways, both of which unfortunately aren't open-access and are very technical. Anyway, I'd say the jury is still out even if it seems increasingly likely to be correct.

The thing is, while this is a reasonable point (the fossil record is incompletely sampled and always will be), it isn't very satisfying to people who are already skeptical. It sounds like an excuse. It's more helpful to point out that while dinosaurs are indeed very rare, and that makes it more difficult to try to show the connections between species, there are plenty of other fossil groups which are very abundant and where many connections between species are known in exquisite detail. This is particularly true for microfossils, which sometimes exist by the thousands in a cubic centimetre of rock. For those, transitions between species are commonly found, and while the record is still incomplete, it's a whole lot better than the examples most people are familiar with. Inevitably the press doesn't give much attention to discovery of new transitional fossil examples in, say, the foraminifera. They are too obscure. But such transitions do turn up routinely, such as this recent paper about Hantkenina species, published in 2010. It's as much of a discovered "missing link" as the dinosaur example we're talking about. Unfortunately you need a subscription to see the full paper, but you can access a summary diagram of specimens found through the transition. If this were one isolated example, it might be possible to dismiss it as a fluke, but there are many, many similar examples in this and other fossil groups.

The only way that anti-evolutionary creationists can muster an argument that transitional fossils don't exist is by misrepresenting what paleontologists actually find and interpret from the fossils.

The thing is, while this is a reasonable point (the fossil record is incompletely sampled and always will be), it isn't very satisfying to people who are already skeptical. It sounds like an excuse. It's more helpful to point out that while dinosaurs are indeed very rare, and that makes it more difficult to try to show the connections between species, there are plenty of other fossil groups which are very abundant and where many connections between species are known in exquisite detail. This is particularly true for microfossils, which sometimes exist by the thousands in a cubic centimetre of rock. For those, transitions between species are commonly found, and while the record is still incomplete, it's a whole lot better than the examples most people are familiar with. Inevitably the press doesn't give much attention to discovery of new transitional fossil examples in, say, the foraminifera. They are too obscure. But such transitions do turn up routinely, such as this recent paper about Hantkenina species, published in 2010. It's as much of a discovered "missing link" as the dinosaur example we're talking about. Unfortunately you need a subscription to see the full paper, but you can access a summary diagram of specimens found through the transition. If this were one isolated example, it might be possible to dismiss it as a fluke, but there are many, many similar examples in this and other fossil groups.

The only way that anti-evolutionary creationists can muster an argument that transitional fossils don't exist is by misrepresenting what paleontologists actually find and interpret from the fossils.

Zip to none. Possibly a very minor re-plumbing of a groundwater system, of the sort that happens all the time with or without external perturbation, or a small shallow earthquake on account of the minor changes in groundwater pressure. There are few mechanisms to transmit significant forces over that distance. The two systems simply don't interact in any relevant sense.

For a primer, read: http://geology.gsapubs.org/content/32/6/537.full

To look at it another way: I heard that there is lot of oil flowing in to the Gulf of Mexico. I live on the West Coast of Mexico in Salina Cruz, only a couple hundred miles from the Gulf, and wonder what effect that oil will have on the Pacific Ocean where I am at? The Pacific Ocean is very large, so I'm quite concerned.

The main point of the Schon et al. article is on the timing of gully activity, not simply the presence of liquid water. We know from numerous morphological and mineralogical lines of evidence that Mars once had a more temperate climate, but that was > 3 billion years ago....

This study points to flowing water (however transient) during the last period of higher obliquity, about a million years ago. -- the blink of an eye in geologic time.

http://geology.gsapubs.org/cgi/content/full/37/3/207

Given your statements below, I don't think your knowledge of this subject warrants such bold assertions.

If you don't believe that the CO2 hysteria is media and political hype, then you are not paying attention to the common perspective on the whole thing. I'm not talking about the science. I'm talking about the people using the science wrongly to push an agenda.

In the glacial-interglacial cycle, this is true, but it's also not a surprise; it's a prediction of Milankovitch theory, which existed before any lags or leads were ever measured in the data. It also does not imply that CO2 has no effect on temperature.

I didn't say CO2 has no effect on climate. I only said it follows rather than leads the temperature change. I understand chaos theory well enough to know that almost EVERYTHING has an effect, at least in the long term.

It's both. According to the Milankovitch theory, orbital variations cause shifts in temperature. These temperature shifts cause changes in the carbon cycle, which alters CO2 levels. The altered CO2 levels in turn amplify the original orbital temperature change.

If you leave the CO2 feedback part of that process out, then you can't explain the amplitude of the glacial-interglacial cycles anymore, and it's unclear whether you can even, say, trigger a glaciation without the contribution of CO2 drawdown.

Sure. CO2 has an effect. But, it is not THE cause as the media and political class would have us believe.

You could start here, here, or here.

Those are great references and support my argument that CO2 has an effect, but is certainly not THE cause. And, it is clearly illustrated that the coldest period in the last half billion years had a CO2 level 10 times the present level. Those references point out that there are clearly other drivers that are MUCH more significant on climate than CO2. That's not what the mass media and political class would have us believe. Orbital, solar and cloud variation are much more impactful than CO2. But, we can't write laws to deal with those things. So, we push the minor things that we believe we can control.

Human emissions don't vary smoothly, nor does the terrestrial carbon sink, which has quite a bit of interannual variability due to climatic effects on, e.g., photosynthesis and heterotrophic respiration. Just as a guess, I'd look first at the collapse of the Soviet Union (assuming there is a significant slowdown during those years, which I haven't checked).

Great point... at least partially. The natural CO2 cycle has quite a bit of interannual variability. That's why it's hard to nail down what the human factors are. And, given that the CO2 levels have been MUCH higher on the order of 1000's of percents prior to the existence of humans on the planet, it's hard to say that we are going to push things beyond what has been NATURALLY observed on Earth. Sure, there are plenty of hypothesi about the different types of carbon isotopes, but there are plenty of natural ways for those same isotopes to be released. The only thing we are doing to release them is to burn things. That happens naturally all the time.

As for human activity driving the observed increase, that's been proven beyond all reasonable doubt. Nobody seriously argues that part of the story anymore; there are about six independent lines of evidence, including historic emissions data, measurements of cumulative ocean carbon and air-sea CO2 f

The CO2 causing warming myth is nothing but media and political hype...

Given your statements below, I don't think your knowledge of this subject warrants such bold assertions.

Looking at the data, it's clear to see that CO2 increase follows, not leads, an increase in temperature.

In the glacial-interglacial cycle, this is true, but it's also not a surprise; it's a prediction of Milankovitch theory, which existed before any lags or leads were ever measured in the data. It also does not imply that CO2 has no effect on temperature.

If there is causation (thus far only some correlation has been established), then the rise in CO2 is caused by the increase in temperature, not the other way around.

It's both. According to the Milankovitch theory, orbital variations cause shifts in temperature. These temperature shifts cause changes in the carbon cycle, which alters CO2 levels. The altered CO2 levels in turn amplify the original orbital temperature change.

If you leave the CO2 feedback part of that process out, then you can't explain the amplitude of the glacial-interglacial cycles anymore, and it's unclear whether you can even, say, trigger a glaciation without the contribution of CO2 drawdown.

For those that support the CO2 driving the increase, I've yet to see how the climate models explain how the temperature 450 million years ago was colder than it has ever been in the last half billion years, but the CO2 levels were 10 times what we have today.

You could start here, here, or here.

And for those arguing that human activity is driving the increase, why does the rate of increase vary so greatly (particularly looking at the significant decrease in rate during 1991-1993) despite the consistent growth of human CO2 producing activities.

Human emissions don't vary smoothly, nor does the terrestrial carbon sink, which has quite a bit of interannual variability due to climatic effects on, e.g., photosynthesis and heterotrophic respiration. Just as a guess, I'd look first at the collapse of the Soviet Union (assuming there is a significant slowdown during those years, which I haven't checked).

As for human activity driving the observed increase, that's been proven beyond all reasonable doubt. Nobody seriously argues that part of the story anymore; there are about six independent lines of evidence, including historic emissions data, measurements of cumulative ocean carbon and air-sea CO2 fluxes, measurements of terrestrial CO2 fluxes, modeling of said fluxes, shifts in carbon isotope ratios in air and sea, and changes in the CO2/O2 ratio of the atmosphere.

However, it seems that deforestation along with ever expanding cities with concrete and asphalt that absorb and radiate heat make an even better explanation than CO2,

Urban heat islands don't explain the warming. CIties are a small fraction of the Earth's surface and the amount of heat they radiate, even if you take into account subsidiary albedo changes, isn't big enough to account for the warming. Land use change is a good idea in principle (e.g., due to surface albedo changes, alterations in evapotranspiration, etc.), because it's more widespread. But it still falls well short in magnitude: in some locations it has a substantial effect on local temperatures, but simply doesn't explain the global amount or spatial distribution of surface warming.