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Global Warming - From Inside the Globe

Posted by michael on from the crispy-on-the-outside dept.

Bill Kendrick writes "The National Post reports that a team of American and Canadian researchers has found evidence of real global warming: the temperature of the Earth's crust is increasing at a remarkable rate. What's really interesting is that heat absorbed by rocks slowly permeates into the earth. By boring holes in the ground, they can tell how hot the earth was years ago, in a 'reading tree rings' fashion."

9 of 250 comments (clear)

  1. Confused ??? by halo8 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The Articale says 'crust tempature rising' wich to me.. says its heating from the inside outwards

    but reading the entire thing says that rocks closer to the surface are warmer.. wich to me says its heating from the outside inwards

    and would most (if not all rocks) from the 1950's still be visable? let alone burried?

    --
    The More Knowledge you have the Luckier you Get- J.R. Ewing
    1. Re:Confused ??? by letxa2000 · · Score: 2, Interesting
      The Articale says 'crust tempature rising' wich to me.. says its heating from the inside outwards.

      I agree. I personally believe (not based on research) that the temeprature of subsurface rock is going to be more affected by the core than it is by the surface temperature of the air.

      In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the temperature of seismic activity was affecting the atmospheric temperature more than the atmospheric temperature was causing any major change to the temperature of surface rocks themselves.

      but reading the entire thing says that rocks closer to the surface are warmer.. wich to me says its heating from the outside inwards

      I think there has to be a middle point. If you go into any cave in the Mojave desert of California and are more than about a dozen feet below ground, believe me, you'll know that the surface temperature doesn't do much to the subsurface temperature. It gets downright cold.

      But if you get to the core, it's hot. So I suppose it's kind of like a sine wave. It's hot at the top, gets cooler as you go down from the surface, and at some point gets hotter as you get closer to the magma that's down there somewhere.

      and would most (if not all rocks) from the 1950's still be visable? let alone burried?

      That's what I was wondering, too. Ok, perhaps his approach works. But I would think he'd be able to compare temperatures from hundreds of millions of years ago to perhaps millions of years ago. Anything that was on the surface even 500 years ago is either still on the surface or very close to it, except in a few exceptional cases (fault lines, volcanos, etc.).

  2. So what do we do about it? by pjbass · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Based on this last comment in the article, what are we supposed to do?

    ...scientists predict the warming will bring with it a rise in the number of so-called "extreme weather events" such as ice storms, droughts and hurricanes.
    "That's what worries me the most," Dr. Beltrami says.

    Ok, that is something to worry about. We all know they are events on the planet (and off the planet) that we can't control that impact our lives greatly: earthquakes, hurricanes, global climate change, etc. Is all this research being done so we know how bad life is going to become or do these scientists believe they may actually be able to do something to stop nature's course?

  3. Re:Oh god, not again by letxa2000 · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Also from the article: "Dr. Beltrami and his colleagues from the University of Michigan found that more than half of the land's heat gain over the past 500 years came during the 20th century, and 30% since 1950."

    Oh really? That contradicts existing information to-date, and doesn't speak about what has happened in the last 23 years that we have a satellite temperature record for (and that shows no warming whatsoever).

    Fact is, there is no proof of human-caused global warming. Not even a correlation. And as mentioned above, the climate warms and gets cooler. It's part of a natural cycle.

    Those that believe that humans are causing global warming fit into the same group of people that, hundreds of years ago, thought you'd fall off the edge of the world if you sailed too far and that the sun circled the earth--both very "human-centric" ways of thinking. They had no proof of either, but it was a part of popular culture nonetheless and to suggest the world was round was considered rediculous.

    Likewise today, global warming is a part of popular culture. Like before, it elevates the importance of man in the universe (or on the planet, in this case) and gives them a self-important feeling, as if man can cause or prevent the next ice age or global warming. Of course, there's absolutely no proof of this--but to suggest otherwise is often rediculed by popular culture.

    Earth changed constantly over billions of years before the global warming club appeared. They definitely need to get a grip on reality and realize that the world--not even the environment--revolves around humans.

  4. Rate of warming decreased? by Adam+J.+Richter · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Dr. Beltrami and his colleagues from the University of Michigan found that more than half of the land's heat gain over the past 500 years came during the 20th century, and 30% since 1950.

    So, they believe the rate of warming for 1951-2000 was less than half what is was for 1901-1950. I don't have much basis for an opinion on the meaningfulness of these researchers' results, but I would sure like to know how they explain this apparently levelling off.

  5. The evidence accumulates by release7 · · Score: 2, Interesting
    This article which accompanies the recent news that of B-22 the ice shelf that has been around since the ice age on top of the dozens of other large ice formation that have disappeared into the sea in addition to the melting ice cap on top of Mt. Kilamanjaro, in addition to the recent news that the arctic ice cap is thinning and will be gone by 2080 on top of all the well-respected climatologists who have concluded global warming is a very real phenomena, plus the highest temperature ever recorded in the last hundred years and the fact that the carbon dioxide levels have increased to 370 ppm from 250 ppm in the last 100 years coupled with the fact that it has been shown there is a strong correlation between CO2 levels and global temperatures, well, there's only one thing left to conclude...

    Things sure aren't getting any colder.

    --

    <a href="http://www.joblessjimmy.com">Work is dumb and so is Jobless Jimmy.</a>

  6. Re:Global Warming isn't a problem by guygee · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "We are not going to destroy the planet by global warming. The earth has endured a great deal of meteorological change and life goes on. "

    A little George Carlin quote seemed appropriate here:

    "...there is nothing wrong with the planet. Nothing wrong with the
    planet. The planet is fine. The PEOPLE are fucked. Difference. Difference.
    The planet is fine. Compared to the people, the planet is doing great. Been
    here four and a half billion years. Did you ever think about the
    arithmetic? The planet has been here four and a half billion years. We've
    been here, what, a hundred thousand? Maybe two hundred thousand? And we've
    only been engaged in heavy industry for a little over two hundred years.
    Two hundred years versus four and a half billion. And we have the CONCEIT
    to think that somehow we're a threat? That somehow we're gonna put in
    jeopardy this beautiful little blue-green ball that's just a-floatin'
    around the sun?

    The planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through all kinds of
    things worse than us. Been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics,
    continental drift, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic storms, the magnetic
    reversal of the poles...hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by
    comets and asteroids and meteors, worldwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide
    fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages...And we think some plastic
    bags, and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference? The
    planet...the planet...the planet isn't going anywhere. WE ARE!

    We're going away. Pack your shit, folks. We're going away. And we won't
    leave much of a trace, either. Thank God for that. Maybe a little
    styrofoam. Maybe. A little styrofoam. The planet'll be here and we'll be
    long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological
    mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet'll shake us off like a bad
    case of fleas. A surface nuisance."

  7. Re:Oh god, not again by letxa2000 · · Score: 3, Interesting
    I remember they had a video presentation in which they showed how the warming trend had slowed for 2 years due to a recent volcanic eruption, and they talked about a computer model which had successfully predicted the effect.

    Ok, but a model has to work in all cases to be valid. As you can see they were pretty excited because in this one particular case they got it right. I.e., they were surprised because most of the time their models don't work.

    The question is whether that model worked for climate change before and after that 2-year period that it supposedly got it right.

    If I flip a coin enough times I'll eventually predict global climate change, too.

    In any case, whether or not, they can model the Earth as a whole, I don't see how anyone can deny that they have the ability to model the effects of each factor individually, and those models should lead you to the same conclusions.

    That's not true, either. They might be able to approximate affects of some factors, but until they can approximate everything that plays a factor then it is truly impossible to say how much a given factor will affect the whole.

    I'm not saying they should stop trying to model. Just that right now the models don't tell us anything and they need to keep working on it.

  8. Re:Oh god, not again by nomadic · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Get over yourself. There isn't any shortage of ideological blindness on "your side" of this issue either.

    Ah, but I don't personally benefit from global warming being true. Actually, I suffer from it. I would LOVE global warming to be a myth; I live in a coastal city, and don't really WANT it to be under water in a few decades.

    And I didn't have an opinion one way or the other until I went to college and started taking courses in climatology/metereology. Despite the right-wing FUD, climate is monitored very closely, and there is ample evidence that many climatic factors have anthropogenic sources.