<Using that logic then, Mq...why aren't ALL of them either receeding or ALL advancing....>
I wasn't arguing that there is global warming. I was just explaining how global warming could increase glacial output.
In warmer climates, where the snowline is higher, global warming would have the opposite effect, causing more rain than snow to fall at the top of the glacier and quicker melting on the way down.
Ice plugs show variation in Earth's temperatures because there have been very large variations. But there is a trend and the trend is to depletion of the atmosphere and freezing of Earth into a giant iceberg.
That's because over eons CO2 has been stripped out and permanently deposited as limestone, coal, shale oil, heavy crudes, gas, and other situations.
Nature is NOT in balance. It is a one way street on a cooling, crystallizing Earth.
The plants and beasties strip O2 and CO2 out of the atmosphere, and minerals out of the ground [such as calcium]. Plants are sometimes deposited as coal. The coal used to be alive and part of the ecosphere. Now it's buried in permanent graves. Some of it is eroded and washed down rivers into the ocean. Animal bones are often buried. Bones have lots of calcium and oxygen. When animals decompose, they form CO2 which the plants eat. While there is lots of recycling, there is a continuing deposition into permanent graves.
In the ocean, the rivers wash stuff off the land and it's dumped at the bottom of the ocean in vast sedimentary layers, permanent graves. Meanwhile, there is a seething ecosphere in the oceans. CO2 and O2 are soaked in from the surface. Fish use the O2 and feed on plants, which produce more O2 and make carbon available to fish, mammals and other beasties.
Fish, whales, and other beasties die. They sink if not eaten. Hagfish deal with sunken whales. Still there is some left. Sediment builds up, burying it all kilometres deep. Meawhile, there are giant conveyor belts [the oceanic tectonic plates] carrying the sediment to subduction zones beside continents. Some is scraped off into flysch wedges but plenty is subducted into the Earth.
On the way down, it is heated and melts and chemically reacts, with bouyant materials floating up, feeding volcanoes and getting stuck in impermeable sedimentary layers. Volcanoes recyle the gases into the ecosphere and the whole process begins again, many millions of years after the plants first sucked the carbon in from the atmosphere. But plenty of material is NOT shot up volcanoes. It's buried as oil and gas, only escaping when humans come along and put it back into the ecosphere where it belongs.
Without humans bringing it back into production, it would stay there permanently as the Earth's crust grows as it cools, with only some recycled during erosion processes when sedimentary layers are uplifted and eroded.
Vast limestone deposits around the world hold stupendous quantities of carbon and oxygen, which was once upon a time alive and helping to keep Earth warm.
Earth is freezing to death. People have stopped the process. But we are running out of oil and I think we are not going to succeed in keeping Earth warm.
When we have depleted the oil, we'll be back where we started, with nearly all of it still stuck in limestone, and what we brought out soaking back into the oceans and oceanic sedimentary layers, with millions of years before it is again available in big puddles of oil and gas after the collection and processing by tectonic plate action, subduction, cooking and filtration into sedimentary layers.
The long-run freezing process will continue after our temporary halt to the process. I'm not even sure that the relatively small amount of CO2 we've added is actually warming us up. There are huge processes such as desertification, and shifts in plants and snow cover which dwarf our energy efforts.
I expect that our greatest risk is sudden ice-age onset because we simply can't produce enough CO2 to cause a runaway over-cooking. The more CO2 we produce, the faster plants and oceans suck it up. Plants have been starved of CO2 for umpty eons. That's why they have great big leaves and do all they can to get more light and CO2 [if they have enough water - cactuses cringe in the desert and conserve all they can, not worrying too much about CO2, or getting sunlight].
Plants run continuous warfare over light and CO2. Plants with inadequate CO2 suckers starve to death, unable to grow to get the light and therefore unable to use what little CO2 they do get.
Ice-ages are fast onset too. That's because of reflection of light from snow and clouds. The more it snows, the more it cools, and the more it reflects, so the more it cools, and the more it snows, and the more it reflects, and snows, burying dark plants and rocks and earth, and freezing dark water.
In about 5 years, Earth would flip into a full-blown glaciation. The ice age was a new phenomenon and glacial periods were getting longer. Maybe we were [or are] about to enter the final freeze. Hopefully, we have put that off with our CO2 production, if only temporarily. Earth as a frozen ball would be very annoying as I quite like ocean swimming and basking on a beach.
So, there you have the short version.
Earth is dying by freezing.
Mqurice |
