Global Warming for Dummies And "Snowball earth"

Philosophy Forums Science, Technology, and Math
1

I saw a recent documentary on the possibility of earths temperatures plummeting so greatly that the entire earth freezes into one big snowball.

The documentary was aptly called “snowball earth”.

And here’s how it all works.

The amount of energy That the earth receives from the sun (the amount of energy that is retained) depends on the amount of carbon dioxide which is in our atmosphere.

The Suns rays are reflected at varying degrees off of the earths surface and like i said, depending on the amount of CO2, the earths atmosphere will maintain more or less heat.

That being said, here is a very solid theory of how a snowball earth comes to pass.

Firstly about 630 million years ago the continents were believed to have been centered and localized near the equator. The significance of this is that the suns rays, which are strongest at the equator (by far the strongest), do not absorb well into land. That is to say, land reflects alot of sunlight back into space, more so than water. The reflectivity of surface is referred to as an “albedo”, and the albedo of land is significantly less than that of water. So the earth is missing out on alot of the suns energy.

Another factor adds to the reaction. A certain type of rock, when exposed to air and water, actually removes CO2 from the air through a process known as weathering. I forget the actual equation but let’s assume that we are all dummies here. Anyway the excess CO2 ends up on the ocean floor in the form of limestone.

So Most of the CO2 being sucked out of the air, the earth got very very cold and started to freeze, starting with its poles. Once the earth was completely frozen, something funny happened. The albedo of ocean water frozen at low temperatures is extremely high because tiny crystals form all over its surface, causing the entire globe to reflect enough energy from the sun to make the earth even colder.

Over the next 50 million years or so, the CO2 levels in the atmosphere were affected by underwater volcanoes. Underwater volcanoes would have made spring holes (where the a prehistoric bacteria called “cincture” who were the first to use photosynthesis survived during the snowball), which would slowly put CO2 into the air until it was in sufficient quantities to melt the earth (many times higher than todays levels).

And so the earth broke out of its wintery hibernation, and the cyanobacteria was allowed to multiply. (what do we know is the result of photosynthesis?). This cyanobacteria filled the atmosphere with CO2 and is likely the ancestor of all photosynthetic plant life. (cyanobacteria is like a green scum you see on ocean floors).

So as it stands today, the earth lives in a balance between the effect of weathering (which takes CO2 out of the atmosphere), and the process of photosynthesis from all plant life on earth (takes CO2 out of the atmosphere into the atmosphere)

If there is not enough CO2 then plant life will start to die off and recede to compensate until it reaches an equilibrium with things like volcanoes. Or if there is too much CO2 then plant life will flourish to compensate once again until it reaches an equilibrium with the production of CO2 (more heat, more CO2 more plant growth). (lets not forget the contribution of living things. As living things we do our part by removing oxygen and replacing it with CO2. we are like mini-volcanoes).

It is fair to say that the earth is killing off more plant life then new growth. It is also safe to say that we are pumping a fair amount of CO2 into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels.

We are lopsiding the balance toward CO2. Plant life might have flourished to compensate for the burning of fossil fuels but we are destroying it faster than it can grow.

Add that to the fact that the distribution of the continents creates less weathering, thereby sucking less CO2 out of the atmosphere.

We are left with a rising level of CO2. Plain and simple, and the heat effects are almost irrefutable. We screwed up the balance, and now shit is getting hotter.

And that’s it.

Any science types can feel free to correct me. This was made entirely out of memory.

cheers.

2

faster than plant-life can grow with humans/cows and so forth.

Huge amounts of land mass is made up of cities and farm-land. If these cities and farmland didn’t exist, nature in the form of massive forests and so forth, would use up a LOT of that extra c02 in an insane burst of life.

In a few thousand years, most traces of humans would be gone, balance would be more than restored. (well, that is excluding the unforseen consequences of killing off humans)

3

Yea it’s kind of pathetic to think about. The earth is more than better off without us.

Has anyone seen the film “the happening”?

If we didn’t hinder nature so much it might actualy be able to withstand our fossil fuel addiction.

The thing is with every liter burned, another tree is felled (so to speak).

Maybe we should start mining the type of rock which erodes and weathers to take CO2 out of the air…

Mining companies would be charged with mining the same amount of rock necessary to neutralize the CO2 :smiley:

But how would you sell nugget to the gas buyers #-o

(if it’s even possible for us to forcibly erode enough material to counteract furl consumption that is)

4

The earth is better off without us in a sense. In another sense, its much much much worse off. Humans will be able to divert meteors soon, because of that, humans help earth more than they hurt it.

Besides meteorites and other space-holocausts, animals would be temporarily better off without us. (until 80% of species get wiped out by a random space rock).

There was a show on the other day “Population zero: After-math” following what would happen during the days following all humans dissapearing from earth, and then years, then centuries later, anyway it goes for quite some time until cities have long collapsed.

Good program.

There was some brutal quote about cows. “Cows provided food for millions of humans, but only days afterwords their decaying corpses only provide ravenous dog packs with sustenience”

like a few days after humans die off, cows start dying from dehydration/packs of large dogs which grouped together like packs. most of them die.

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I would be more interested in the behavior of cats. :-k

But yes, i can see crap like that happening. Did they go into detail about anything resulting from something we left behind? like a nucluear power plant exploding?

Also, did they take into account that the owners of wall–mart have an underground bunker capable of supportingg their whole family (the Waltons) for about 80 year?s :smiley:

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The world isn’t “better off” without humans – it isn’t any way at all, because there’s no one to put value on it.

We are screwing up the balance primarily for ourselves, and secondarily for organisms which share our climate preferences.

“Feeling sorry for the earth” is actually feeling just sorry for mankind.

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Actually speaking from a perspective of “success of the diversity of life on this planet described as “mother nature””, the earth is better off without us. No sorry, all other life on this planet is better off without us.

Is that suitable :smiley:

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Wonderer: life is not better off without us because life can’t divert meteorites without us, which can do more damage to the planet than we can.

  1. As to ‘aftermath: population zero’ (or whatever the show was called) yeah it shows how we’d almost immediately lose power, how nuclear power plants would stop giving power in about three days, then it highlights how a lot of these chemical, electrical and nuclear plants reach critical meltdown.

The powerplants have systems that have cool *running water to cool down specific nuclear materials, without humans the cooling system fails, and very quickly these nuclear materials reach critical levels and release massive amounts of radiation into the environment.

The envrionment soaks it up in an eyeblink of geological time. Even an eyeblink by our standards. I could find the link if you wanted (though theres a few shows about this subject and some good books too)

entertaining documentary.

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Theres no certainty that a meteor will hit us between now and until the sun enguls the earth, if anything we humans present a value to the earth by transporting it to other habitable planets (i know it’s a dream)

But as it stands all life on this planet is currently suffering. The destruction of the Glaciers marks a critical change in this phase of evolution; many things will die out, and it’s all our fault.

We might screw up the environment worse than a meteor ever could if we continue poisoning the earth, at least then what grows out of the ash won’t be radioactive.

In a realist sense, mark the probability of getting hit by a meteor against the probability of us ruining future life worse than a meteor, there you will have the answer to the question “is the earth better off without us”

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the probability of a meteor hitting earth before the sun engulfs the planet is probable enough to call near certain.

and thats an easy question to anwser for anyone familiar with mass extinctions and geographical time. Extinctions are more sure and they’re more devestating.

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We have been hit by a meteor before which has caused mass extinctions.

But the earth has recovered and here we stand.

Now what if we could screw the eaarth up worse than a meteor?

nuclear winter? what if we destroy the earth ourselves… worse than a meteor…

I’m not talking about mass extinction, i’m talking about complete extermination… And yes, It’s possible.

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Success doesn’t mean anything to anybody but mankind. Some animals may have some consciousness that would give them a perspective on what is “better” and “worse” for them, but only a very few that are close to us in the evolutionary tree. Even granting they had some idea of what was better or worse, “all other life on this planet” would have no unified perspective on what direction they would prefer the planet take. Some would like it colder, some hotter, some full of volcanoes and sulfur, some full of radioactive waste, etc.

Each of these scenarios would have their own brand of diverse thriving life; how do you decide which one is “better off”?

13

Nuclear winter is a pretty big fantasy. Nuclear winter = drake equation.

For all the shit that carl sagan ranted about, evidence, rationality, ,he dropped the ball big -time on that. and some other things like that too.

every part of the equation that made scientists believe in nuclear winter, every single part of the equation, was unknowable guesswork. random, arbitrary feelings from the gut.

14

Yea i have no idea what nuclear winter even is (if not the earth being engulfed by a dust cloud).

Well the explosions themselves are still pretty feirce… Whats the by product of a nuclear blast anyway? is it CO2?

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crichton-official.com/speech … rming.html

crichton articles, touches on nuclear winter if you’re interested.

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quantity, diversity, rate of growth.

even complexity and strength (resistance and endurance from oblivion of course)

I know what you’re getting at so perhaps you could temporarily adopt these 2 premises.

Existing is successful

Ceasing to exist is not successful

Cheers.

17

Who cares how close they are to our evolutionary tree? how close somthing is to our evolutinary tree isn’t an accurate description of how consciousness/self-aware the animal is, which is the only standard worth caring about. Though, by chance, the ones closest to us might have the best ‘theory of mind’ and ‘self-awareness’ well, its not by chance.

B ut other creatures not primate, have been shown to engage in theory of mind over monkeys which would be closer to us. monkeys may bot be studied enough because plenty of them are elite too, though. my main point is awareness can exist stronger in animals not as close to us, even if so far, a lot of close relatives have shown crazy abilities. I’m sure i could find lots of monkeys maybe even apes, that can’t pass mirror recognition tests when dolphins can, they can also use tools.

self-awareness could also evolve so another species could enjoy the planet.

but anyway, certainly i don’t care about all these animals in relation to humans, i’m not going to say we should doom ourselves to save them, even if our progression is destroying them. (i think we’re more beneficial in the long run) but even if we weren’t i wouldn’t suggest giving it up for animals. their lack of consciousness *compared to humans, even if they can appreciate somthhing, is too large a difference.

18

The irony out of all of this is that our extinction is mostly likely looming over our heads and still we work for our foolish dreams as if nothing is happening at all.

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What else can you do? Even if extinction was likely, why stop working, risking existence continuing on and ending up dead broke because you suspected the worst? Would it make sense to not chase your dream?