Clark, so much for making stuff up as I go - and thanks for correcting me. I already was corrected by a local reader! The delay between sloppy thinking and being wrong is about 2 seconds. Sorry about that folks [re Coriolis forces causing the ocean movement rather than making the ocean move in circles once started due to the driving forces [wind, temperature and salinity density differences]. I should have known better. I should delay the gap between thinking and typing by at least 2 seconds!
More corrections: [I might even have escaped detection on this one] I meant sublimation, not ablation as a means of Antarctic ice getting into the ocean [via the air] though glaciers do erode from ablation. Sublimation would be a water removing process in Antarctica [guessing there!].
Also, when I wrote, < I'm pretty sure that insolation changes are the dominant effect and the expansion and shrinkage of forests [light absorbing greenery], ice cover and cloud cover.> I didn't mean a change in the sun's output. I meant a change in the absorption of that incident light due to light and dark surfaces. With snow and cloud cover, reflection is very large. With foliage cover reflection is low and most of the incident light is absorbed. With deserts, reflection is much more than with foliage. With a water surface on the ocean instead of an ice surface, reflection is low.
So a snowy, desert covered landscape with cloudy cool skies will reflect heaps of light and cause cooling. Hence ice ages, once they have a grip, gain ground quickly as snow cover extends, covering foliage. Again, this is my theory - I don't have a url or source sorry.
Sorry about the sloppy writing, bad thinking and plain wrongness on the Coriolis force causing the ocean currents.
One thing most of us seem to agree on, is there are big climatic changes almost sure to happen, whether caused by people burning fossil fuels or natural causes. These changes could will make things cooler or warmer. Living at sea level if it gets warmer will get you wet!
I don't believe [yet] that the 800 bn Ton per year of fossil fuels is sufficient to drive the effect. It seems far too trivial though that's a lot of oil if you put it in a container and look at it.
We need the figures:
Total tonnes of CO2 in the atmosphere now.
Total tonnes of CO2 per year added by burning 800bn T of oil equivalents.
Let's see if there is a chemist tempted to figure it out.
Then we can figure out the effect that will have. George Gilder has some good stuff on greenhouse effects. I started out trying to argue that there IS a human greenhouse gas effect, but I gave up when I couldn't make a case - not enough oil being burned.
Yes, I know C02 is increasing and I've seen the Hawaii graphs. It's increased a lot longer than since the 1950s too if I recall rightly. Though I'm not sure where those measurements were taken.
Mqurice
PS: How do I type so much? Sloppy thinking helps. I'll try to cut down the mistakes and quantity by not 'making it up so carelessly as I go]. Typing fast helps too. |
