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To: Hugh A who wrote (24777)	10/30/2002 9:59:14 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Respond to of 74559

Hi Hugh. Thanks for the links. On <In all of earth's history there have been perhaps half a dozen glacial epochs, each of them lasting perhaps 5-10 million years. If we pick a mean value of 7 million years that means that the earth has been as cool as it is now (we are in an interglacial period) for less than 50 million of the past 4,500 million years of earth history. This means that we are living in the coldest 1-2% of all climates of all times. Statistically, things should tend toward the mean, therefore it is normal that the earth should be warming. The real question is why is the earth as cold as it is now. I have no problem with cutting down greenhouse gas emissions, but don't tell me it will stop global warming. > As you pointed out, we are living in cold times. I explained the reason for that, but maybe it slipped by. Our blanket has been buried for eons. Carbon and oxygen have been stripped from the biosphere ever since plants and animals started eating and breathing them and dying and ending up buried under the ocean. The planet has been gradually dying. If the process continued, we'd have ended in a permanent ice age, probably including the oceans. It would be a white planet, not a blue one with dark green forests absorbing lots of lovely sunshine. Sunshine would be reflected back out through the thin atmosphere. It's false thinking to say that statistically things revert to the mean. That's only true if conditions aren't changing and there's oscillation around a mean. In this case, there is a constant stripping of carbon and the result is constant cooling. As plant cover oscillates, yes there is a reversion to the mean, but that's on a shorter time scale. In the big picture, we have a one way street. A dead end. We oscillate from side to side on the way down that street. Digging up the oil is going to bring the planet back to full blown life. Sure we'll have to make some changes, but some we should make anyway. Such as moving higher above sea level. The reason for that is because comets splashing down will make waves and people living below the wave peak are going to be really unhappy. One will happen pretty soon. Perhaps when we least expect it - maybe due to worrying about the price of fish or oil or something. When anything lower than 30 metres above sea level is drowned [such as Los Angeles], people will stop worrying about Osama and the price of fish. That's my theory! Mqurice

To: Hugh A who wrote (24777)	10/31/2002 10:19:21 AM
From: Moominoid	Respond to of 74559

The Alberta tar sands are also on a continental margin in front of the mountains? Of course there there was at some time subduction beneath the north American plate but they are in a fairly undisturbed area I would think - correct me if I am wrong. Maurice - the Arabian plate was subducted beneath Asia if anything it would seem. The fact that the geology is relatively undisturbed there since the Mesozoic shows that. So no oil is bubbling up from beneath the shield unless you believe in the Thomas Gold theory. I doubt oil would survive in its existing form burial by tens of kilometres in a subduction zone. Deeper deposits usually are methane gas. On global warming it is irrelevant whether the climate was warmer on the whole during world history (it was). Human civilizations evolved in a relatively cool period and are adapted to that situation. A rapid sea level rise in particular will destroy fertile alluvial coastal plains and deltas reduce living space and agricultural land. We could adapt and eventually those landscapes would rebuild (but too slowly for us). From Nature's point of view - it could adapt in the past to a large extent because there weren't human disturbed areas covering the majority of the planet. Ecosystems will find it very hard to migrate in a warming planet today. In Europe tree species are less diverse than North America because of the East West arrangement of the mountains blocking migration in the Ice Age. Also CO2 levels are the highest they have been in millions of years. Over time the sun appears to be getting brighter and CO2 levels going down in balance. Without human induced warming the Earth could be heading back to another ice age phase. David