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Mass Extinctions from Global Warming?
uncleO writes "The current issue of Scientific American has an interesting article,
Impact from the Deep, about the possible causes for the five major global extinctions. It contends that only the most recent one was caused by a 'dinosaur killer' asteroid impact. Evidence suggests that the others were caused by 'great bubbles of toxic H2S gas erupting into the atmosphere' from the oceans due to anoxia." From the article: "The so-called thermal extinction at the end of the Paleocene began when atmospheric CO2 was just under 1,000 parts per million (ppm). At the end of the Triassic, CO2 was just above 1,000 ppm. Today with CO2 around 385 ppm...climbing at an annual rate of 2 ppm...to 3 ppm, levels could approach 900 ppm by the end of the next century."
"I've been following global warming for a long time now doing a lot research on the side for the last couple of years. Here are some facts about global warming. Some of which you hear and don't hear from the main stream media"
Just in case you actually belive your "research", here is a handy mythbuster. A bit of research on that site will set you straight, the link itself points to a search on the word "myth", I'm confident the results will cover your objections and questions.
BTW: If you can come up with an original myth I'm sure the boffins at realclimate will be happy to try and bust it for you, if they can't then you may just end up famous.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Without going into a great deal of detail, let me provide a couple of pointers you can use to begin hunting stuff up on the net.
First, with regard to storage of nuclear waste. Passivated glass block storage solves all the storage problems. The waste is distributed in the block, the block will last longer than the waste's dangerous lifespan, the production of the block is easy and the stored materials will neither erode, progress chemically, or distribute themselves through the environment any other way. The technology is here now, and all it takes is using it to resolve the problem. In other words, money. The only down side is that once in said glass block, the "waste" is really waste, that is, we can't use it for anything else. This may not be optimum.
Second, with regard to accidents, modern reactor designs don't have those same kinds of problems. Neither do smaller, low-ish power reactors. For instance, look up pebble bed reactors. Good design is important.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
What about the American dust bowl in the early 1930's? Was that caused by huge carbon emissions or was it a small natural climate cycle that just happens?
That was man made, according to this wikipedia article:
"The Dust Bowl was the result of a series of dust storms in the central United States and Canada from 1934 to 1939, caused by decades of inappropriate farming techniques, with buffalo herds that fertilized the soil displaced by wheat farming, followed by a severe drought. The fertile soil of the Great Plains was exposed through removal of grass during plowing. During the drought, the soil dried out, became dust, and blew away eastwards, mostly in large black clouds. At times, the clouds blackened the sky all the way to Chicago, and much of the soil was completely lost into the Atlantic Ocean."
Get your facts straight, puhleeeaaase! Western civilization and productivist agriculture hold a nasty record in destroying the environment on a wide scale. You can't destroy entire ecosystems without suffering consequenses, short-term and long-term.
-- It's always darker before it goes pitch black.
Yes, houses should be better insulated. Unfortunately, many homes are quite old and would require a non-trivial amount of money from the homeowner to improve. Since many new homeowners have a fat mortgage, children, a college fund, food bills, etc., a lot of folks will not rush out and do this.
It's not because they are evil or apathetic. They are simply not rich, are commonly sleep-deprived (read: have children), and flat out do not have time to deal with it (read: have children).
As far as your "use stone instead of wood houses," that is a red herring. Yes, when starting from scratch, a stone house would be better; however, US homes are overwhelmingly built upon wood construction. Those homes don't just magically go away just because we decide stone homes are better. Even if all new construction were to be stone homes -- a long shot considering that most construction workers are familiar with wood construction, not stone -- it would be a minuscule proportion of the total number of homes.
In addition, what would you propose for earthquake-prone regions? Stone? I think not. A very good reason to build wood homes is that the wood home will sway in an earthquake instead of crumble. In 1989, a major quake hit my area. Many homes survived, but the chimneys were by and large ruined. You simply can't buy a home around here that doesn't have a cracked or repaired chimney.
The suggestion about smaller, more fuel-efficient cars is actually the most reasonable suggestion you've made. Far more so than the suggestion about wind power. Why? Check out wind density in the US. Wind power completely excludes the south and most of the southwest. Just have one state sell to another? One word: Enron. Not gonna happen.
Also, let's look at your numbers. Possibly up to 10% by 2020 in Germany? In the US, we consume upwards of 4.8 trillion kilowatt-hours per year (with a 't'). The larger windmills generate up to 5 megawatts if the wind is blowing to full potential and the windmill is in perfect working order. That's potentially about 43.8 million kilowatt-hours per year. Those 5 megawatt jobs require about an acre of land apiece (they're really big!). Hmmm... Not only would it require 19,178 of those monsters to handle 10% of the US in the perfect case (hint: we live in the real world where perfect cases don't exist), but you'd have to factor in the maintenance costs associated with keeping such a decentralized power source in good repair. This requires -- you guessed it -- more energy. If you think the repair aspect is trivial, just remember the climate found in those northern states where the wind is so abundant. Hot summers and below freezing winters with hail and sleet in between.
Coal is currently the number one US electricity source: over 50% of our total electricity production. This is a problem. For reasons mentioned above, wind is not going to replace that. For reasons I haven't spelled out but you can research yourself, solar power can't displace coal either (1.367kWh/m^2 is the solar constant). The reasons are somewhat similar though: energy density and the demands of geography. So what's left?
Hydroelectric? We've already tapped that avenue. Microtidal? Over 90% of Earth's life exists within ten miles of a coastline. I'm a bit hesitant to mess with the energy transfer found in those ecosystems. Geothermal? The US is not Iceland. Biodiesel? The amount of cropland required to offset coal usage would significantly reduce the area available for food production.
What's left? Conservation? Even if we cut our usage in half -- 2.4 trillion kilowatt-hours per year, which incidentally will not happen in the US without an energy crisis afoot -- that's still a massive amount of power required.
And we haven't even factored in vehicle needs yet, which is necessary since oil won't last forever. Plug-in hybrids? Great idea. Gonna need more electricity for that.
What hasn't been discussed yet? Nuclear. Commonly
- I don't need to go outside, my CRT tan'll do me just fine.
>From strident predictions of an "immanent ice age" to "we're all gonna fry!" within the space of a few decades
Someone took the time to assemble a bibliography of climate change literature from the 70s with reference to predictions of cooling. In the scientific literature, as contrasted with Newsweek, the closest thing was a paper that pointed out the current interglacial could end in a few thousand years, or maybe even a few hundred. The overwhelming bulk reached the totally accurate conclusion that they didn't know enough to make a prediction.
The hard data on solar output from satellite measurements goes back fifteen years and is kinda-sorta constant over that period. Much earlier, and you're relying on horribly indirect proxy measurements like radionuclides. There are a lot of uncertainties about trends in solar output, although some climatologists think it could account for 10-30% of the temperature rise we've seen.