Neo, when CO2 is going down, it goes down 5ppm in 6 months. To get back to "background" levels it would take only 10 years at that rate.
My point was not that the rate would be that fast because, quite obviously and not really needing stating, a lot of it is sent back into the atmosphere when plants decompose and are eaten.
My point was that there is a very rapid absorption process going on.
If the human CO2 was stopped, my point was that while the rate wouldn't be only 10 years to get back to "normal", it certainly wouldn't be 100 years.
The yearly cycle does in fact subtract a LOT of net CO2 when it's above the "normal" "background" levels [which of course are neither normal nor background because there is no normal CO2 - it ranges a long way and was 2000ppm not long ago. Long before that, it was low after the Carboniferous era stripped carbon from the ecosphere].
You can see how much extra is removed by comparing human emissions with the extra amount that ends up in the atmosphere. The increase in C02 levels is a lot less than the amount humans are producing. If all the human CO2 was staying in the atmosphere, the CO2 concentration would be increasing a lot faster.
On time to ice age, it is fast. Here's why. Snow is highly reflective. So are clouds. So are deserts. There are what are called tipping points, cusps. As deserts gradually expand [the Sahara was once savanna] they reflect more light. As snowlines recede, more light is absorbed as more green grows, countering the increased reflection. As clouds reduce in equatorial regions, reflection reduces. They increase in colder regions.
There is a shift towards the poles. When the tipping point is reached, the deserts are maximum and reflection is maximum. The warm water from the equatorial regions is dumped in the colder regions as snow, rapidly covering greenery. The deserts are still deserts, so the total reflection rapidly increases. Cooling things more, and making more clouds [water being a tremendous greenhouse gas but turning to a freezer liquid/solid when it condenses] results in even faster snow deposition, which means more reflection, more clouds, more snow.
Oceans absorb a lot of light, but when they are white from ice and snow cover, they don't.
In a short time [like 10 years] the snowline will have moved so far that it's game over Rover. The glaciation will have begun.
Being at the top of the 100K temperature cycle you mention is like being at the top of the stock market or housing boom. That is exactly when you should NOT expect that the process will continue. That is precisely the WORST place to be in relation to ice ages and continued financial stability [as was discovered in the Biotelecosmictechdot.com bust and is now being figured out in the credit and mortgage ice age].
Yes, 2 and 3 years ago, it was the 100K year top of the housing boom and swarms of people who believed house prices never decline were going crazy buying houses with huge loans at 40 year low interest rates. But now they are looking at the ice age as their mortgage repayments are frozen and their jobs are turning to deserts.
You might think the housing boom was the safest place to be financially, and the equable climate we enjoy now is an entitlement, "normal", "background". In fact, the climate we are enjoying [for 10,000 years] is abnormal and suicidal Gaia is just taking a breather, stripping more CO2 from the ecosphere, burying it on the ocean floors, before going back into the ice age.
At best, humans have prevented a return to ice, temporarily. Gaia will soon remove our CO2 efforts and the annual steep reduction in CO2 shows just how determined Gaia is to get carbon buried. It can be fast.
Mqurice |
