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#1 2022-12-04 14:01:59

Void
Member
Registered: 2011-12-29
Posts: 6,976

Climate and human activities.

I am attempting to start this topic, because I think I wish to get a bit outside of the topic "Index» Not So Free Chat» When Science becomes perverted by Politics."  (I will likely draw on recent materials from that topic).

I am much more interested in the science of it but want to have the liberty to speculate to a large degree.

It does appear that Mars shares many features with Earth, so at least those two planets can be included.

As far as human activities go, I put that in as it might be a future feature.

Just now, I am interested in partially focusing on Antarctica, and seeing if it can be likened to a relaxation oscillator. (Electronics)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relaxation_oscillator

I found this today, which I think will be supportive: https://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/feature/fe … with-iron/
Quote:

“Give me half a tanker of iron, and I’ll give you an ice age” may rank as the catchiest line ever uttered by a biogeochemist. The man responsible was the late John Martin, former director of the Moss Landing Marine Laboratory, who discovered that sprinkling iron dust in the right ocean waters could trigger plankton blooms the size of a small city. In turn, the billions of cells produced might absorb enough heat-trapping carbon dioxide to cool the Earth’s warming atmosphere.

Alaska_250_57457.jpg
A plume of dust from Alaskan glacial sediments blows far into the Pacific Ocean. Storms like this, or from vast deserts such as the Sahara, are the natural way that iron gets into oceans to fertilize phytoplankton blooms. (NASA image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center)

Never mind that Martin was only half serious when he made the remark (in his “best Dr. Strangelove accent,” he later recalled) at an informal seminar at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in 1988. With global warming already a looming problem, others were inclined to take him seriously.

At the time, ice-core records suggested that during past glacial periods, natural iron fertilization had repeatedly drawn as much as 60 billion tons of carbon out of the atmosphere. Laboratory experiments suggested that every ton of iron added to the ocean could remove 30,000 to 110,000 tons of carbon from the air. Early climate models hinted that intentional iron fertilization across the entire Southern Ocean could erase 1 to 2 billion tons of carbon emissions each year—10 to 25 percent of the world’s annual total.

At this time I am more interested in what Antarctica may already do, naturally.

I will continue in post #3

Last edited by Void (2022-12-04 14:12:31)


Done.

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#2 2022-12-04 14:08:54

tahanson43206
Moderator
Registered: 2018-04-27
Posts: 16,749

Re: Climate and human activities.

For Void re new topic ...

Best wishes for success with this new topic

You are hereby carried over the dread zero replies hurdle!

(th)

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#3 2022-12-04 14:12:03

Void
Member
Registered: 2011-12-29
Posts: 6,976

Re: Climate and human activities.

Thanks (th).

To make it rather quick, a summary first.
-Antarctica drains the water under it, which puts fertilizers into the water.
-Plankton remove CO2 from the atmosphere.
-Things start to cool, and ice expands.
-As ice expands, and ice surfaces cool, water vapor evaporation is reduced, so water vapor's greenhouse effect is reduced.
-Further cooling causes ice to freeze down to the seabed, damming the fresh water from flowing from under the ice sheet, so fertilization ends. or is reduced.
-As the ice sheet thickens and expands, bodies of water are sequestered inside of it.
-The glaciers flowing over this water also grind rocks into glacial till.
-Sea Levels fall, causing the flow of ice to increase.
-Eventually an ice dam ruptures, and we reset back to the beginning.

That at least is a rough notion.

The rest of the world has activity as well, and Antartica and the rest of the world influence each other.

As I have mentioned elsewhere, the rain and snow cycles will be influenced by the size and temperature of the evaporation off or hydrated areas such as sea water, ice and of course wet vegetation areas.

A more glacial planet is a less humid planet, and of course the reverse.  More rain and snow mean more flow of fertilizers into the oceans.

Deserts are a special case where presumably even in dry glacial times windstorms can deliver fertilizers to the oceans.  So, that is almost opposite.  The dryer the planet the more wind-borne dust.

I think I will rest and do other things for a while.

But, in the scale of history human activity is just a blip.  Not that we should not seek better options, but adaptation is a very important human trait that supposedly led to our survival.

Getting panicky about climate is a bad behavior.

Done.

Last edited by Void (2022-12-04 14:25:12)


Done.

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#4 2022-12-04 18:54:20

Void
Member
Registered: 2011-12-29
Posts: 6,976

Re: Climate and human activities.

I received this post in: "Index» Not So Free Chat» When Science becomes perverted by Politics." (Post #644)

Quote:

kbd512
Administrator
Registered: 2015-01-02
Posts: 6,239
Email
Void,

https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/news/warming- … tter-earth

According to NOAA, this now warmer / wetter Earth is seeing more big precipitation events, which also cools the land and ocean surface during / immediately after the rain falls.  So, global warming heats up the Earth, the water vapor generated comes back down within a week or so, and then we have a brief cool period.  Beyond that, more and more clouds would change the Earth's albedo over time, reflecting more of those pesky photons back into space before they can enter the densest part of the atmosphere for CO2 to produce its strongest insulation effect.

That's probably some new kind of emergency for these people, assuming that the net effect is that the temperature is neither up nor down.  If the temperature becomes more uniform / stable, then the climate is once again changing, hence the reason that the jargon was changed from global warming to climate change.  It's becoming more of the same old / boring stuff that we used to call "weather", and if the goal is to terrorize people to get them to spend money or work endlessly without an achievable end goal in sight, then status quo doesn't accomplish that.

Before the average person in Western society became disabled to the point that both their brain and legs no longer worked, if they observed that the water started rising where they lived, then they would do this crazy thing called "evacuating".  Normally, that entailed moving away from the danger zone at best possible speed.  They'd also work with others to facilitate the evacuation, and this was known as "cooperating".  We still do this aboard ships today and it still works, believe it or not, as antiquated as evacuating may seem to an outside observer with a teleporter.  If the people in question knew a century ahead of time that they'd need to evacuate to higher ground in the future, then we would call the activities / prep work to facilitate that, "planning for the future", rather than a catastrophe or emergency.  It's the same reason I have a fire extinguisher in my home.  I don't plan on a fire starting, but I also don't pretend that it can't happen to me or that it's entirely avoidable, or if I had "only" made my house out of something unattainable like granite and marble (same concept as electronic everything with current tech), then fire was no longer a problem.


It is helpful when I am not the only one saying these things.

Done.

Last edited by Void (2022-12-04 18:58:42)


Done.

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#5 2022-12-04 19:01:50

Void
Member
Registered: 2011-12-29
Posts: 6,976

Re: Climate and human activities.

In posts #1 & #3, I think it becomes apparent that what some people see as disaster, I consider quite appropriate.

This for instance: https://www.livescience.com/river-under-antarctic-ice
Quote:

Enormous river discovered beneath Antarctica is nearly 300 miles long
By Stephanie Pappas published November 02, 2022
The hidden river could accelerate ice loss.

Quote:

A river longer than England's Thames flows beneath the Antarctic ice sheet, draining an area the size of France and Germany combined, new research reveals.

This under-ice river was discovered using ice-penetrating radar mounted on aircraft. In a series of aerial surveys, researchers discovered a river system snaking 285 miles (460 kilometers) and draining into the Weddell Sea.

"When we first discovered lakes beneath the Antarctic ice a couple of decades ago, we thought they were isolated from each other," study co-author Martin Siegert, a glaciologist at the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London, said in a statement. "Now we are starting to understand there are whole systems down there, interconnected by vast river networks, just as they might be if there weren't thousands of meters of ice on top of them."

Now rejoice!

Nature is doing what environmentalists will not allow to be done.  Adding nutrients to the Antarctic Ocean.

Oh my GOD! It's a runaway fertilization CRISIS!

I am not going to go so far as to attribute it to an intelligent planet, but I will say that the Earth has feedback mechanisms that keep it in control.  That is why we exist at all, probably.

The nutrients will fertilize the water, and sunlight will further nourish the plankton.  Some of the organic materials will fall to deep prolonged sequestering at the bottom of the ocean, and so then take Carbon out of the surface of the ocean and the atmosphere.

This will also happen with Greenland.

And increased rainfall will erode riverbeds and move nutrients into the oceans elsewhere, likely promoting a similar effect.

Feedback mechanisms will very likely handle the problem well enough.  Maybe some people will have to move over time, but it's not like we are going to burn up on an Earth turned to Venus.

Done.

Last edited by Void (2022-12-04 20:42:01)


Done.

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#6 2022-12-04 19:18:25

Void
Member
Registered: 2011-12-29
Posts: 6,976

Re: Climate and human activities.

I have wondered what an ice age space age situation might have been like.

I think it is possible that we escaped a return to the "Little Ice Age" with Carbon emissions.  Maybe.

The Little Ice Age: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age
Quote:

The period has been conventionally defined as extending from the 16th to the 19th centuries,[5][6][7] but some experts prefer an alternative timespan from about 1300[8] to about 1850.[9][10][11]

The Industrial Age: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Age
Quote:

The Industrial Age is a period of history that encompasses the changes in economic and social organization that began around 1760 in Great Britain and later in other countries, characterized chiefly by the replacement of hand tools with power-driven machines such as the power loom and the steam engine, and by the concentration of industry in large establishments.[1][2]

sad Oh! I am so ashamed....It is true our people can never do anything good, even accidentally.

Anyway, at this point if our societies do not act stupid, I can see how a space age society might do pretty good in an Ice Age.

A Map: https://vividmaps.com/coastlines-of-ice-age/
Map Quote: https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-aUdEuKEwqAw/ … ce-Age.jpg

So, it would be a dry world, and so rather sunny.  At the coasts the atmosphere would be significantly denser than what sea level is now.
I don't know if some coastal people from that age would have had trouble adapting to a thinner atmosphere.  Probably not too much trouble.

The Great Basin would have large lakes in it.  Our society is almost at the point that ice caps could be inhabited as well.

Wind powered station in Antarctica: https://www.antarctica.gov.au/magazine/ … d-station/

And with Geo storage and perhaps Geothermal, it would be even more habitable.  Solar energy would be significant most likely, but seasonal.  But if you had seasonal storage, you might do OK.

I won't go too much further than that, except that there is some suspicion that there might have been sea fairing peoples at that time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xozP0GS7k0

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn … ilippines/

Maybe there were developed peoples back then.  But then there was a flood.  smile

Well, we don't know, but we have a tendency to be conceited about ourselves I would say.

Done.

Last edited by Void (2022-12-04 19:42:09)


Done.

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#7 2022-12-04 20:41:09

Void
Member
Registered: 2011-12-29
Posts: 6,976

Re: Climate and human activities.

So, where does the heat come from that melt's rivers under antarctica?

This for instance: https://www.livescience.com/river-under-antarctic-ice
Quote:

Enormous river discovered beneath Antarctica is nearly 300 miles long
By Stephanie Pappas published November 02, 2022
The hidden river could accelerate ice loss.

Quote:

A river longer than England's Thames flows beneath the Antarctic ice sheet, draining an area the size of France and Germany combined, new research reveals.

This under-ice river was discovered using ice-penetrating radar mounted on aircraft. In a series of aerial surveys, researchers discovered a river system snaking 285 miles (460 kilometers) and draining into the Weddell Sea.

"When we first discovered lakes beneath the Antarctic ice a couple of decades ago, we thought they were isolated from each other," study co-author Martin Siegert, a glaciologist at the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London, said in a statement. "Now we are starting to understand there are whole systems down there, interconnected by vast river networks, just as they might be if there weren't thousands of meters of ice on top of them."

I thought it might pay to look at that again.

Pressure helps to keep it liquid in places perhaps, but to exit the ice cap that would not help, I think.

There can be geothermal heat.  Also, the flow of the ice scraping on rock might heat ice to water?

But I like electricity as well.

Electricity from snowfall: https://www.sciencetimes.com/articles/2 … lectricity.

Blowing Snow: https://link.springer.com/article/10.10 … 2045818907
Quote:

These results should help improve models of energy transfer in the planetary boundary layer during blizzards and sandstorms.

Now think about Mars.....

Whiteouts and Katabatic winds, Antarctica: http://www2.umaine.edu/USITASE/teachers … 20pressure.

Well, a new word: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telluric_ … %20pattern.
Quote:

Telluric current

Lightning inside the snow or ground.  Even:
Quote:

Description
Telluric currents are phenomena observed in the Earth's crust and mantle.

So, lets go to Mars.
https://phys.org/news/2022-09-evidence- … s%20height.
Quote:

An international team of researchers has revealed new evidence for the possible existence of liquid water beneath the south polar ice cap of Mars.


The researchers, led by the University of Cambridge, used spacecraft laser-altimeter measurements of the shape of the upper surface of the ice cap to identify subtle patterns in its height. They then showed that these patterns match computer model predictions for how a body of water beneath the ice cap would affect the surface.

So, I suspect that the dust storms of Mars can melt the interior of ice bodies on Mars using "Telluric Currents".

And an ecosystem might exist, as there are organisms that feed on electricity: https://earthsky.org/earth/scientists-s … ectricity/
Quote:

These bacteria eat and breathe electricity

And radioactivity can also support life by giving chemicals in the sea floor sediments: https://www.uri.edu/news/2021/02/uri-re … e-process/
Quote:

February 26, 2021
Share:
Twitter
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URI researchers: Microbes deep beneath seafloor survive on byproducts of radioactive process
Results have implications for life on Mars

So, now about Europa?  Other liquid water in the solar system?

Done.

Last edited by Void (2022-12-04 21:03:52)


Done.

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