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To: Moominoid who wrote (50102)	5/18/2004 10:09:24 AM
From: Pogeu Mahone	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

Rescued explorer says he found a warmer Arctic By David Ljunggren, Reuters \| May 18, 2004 OTTAWA -- Temperatures in the Arctic have risen at an surprising rate over the past three years, and large patches of what should be ice are now open water, a British polar explorer said yesterday. Ben Saunders, forced by the warm weather to abandon an attempt to ski solo from northern Russia across the North Pole to Canada, said he had been amazed at how much ice had melted. ''It's obvious to me that things are changing a lot and changing very quickly," a sunburned Saunders said less than two days after being rescued from the thinning ice sheet close to the North Pole. ''I do know it's happening, because that was my third time in the Arctic [in the last three years]," said Saunders, who explored the region in 2001 and 2003. An international study last year said global warming would melt most of the Arctic ice cap in summer by the end of the century. Many scientists blame the rising temperatures on human emissions of greenhouse gases; others point to what they say are longer-term natural warming and cooling cycles. ''I had days when I could ski with no gloves and no hat at all," Saunders said. Logs from an expedition in 2001 showed the average Arctic temperature at this time of year was plus 5 to minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit. Saunders said the average temperature this time was 23 to 19 degrees Fahrenheit. ''I saw open water every single day of the expedition, which is not what I was expecting," said Saunders, who had to drag his sled across open patches of water nine times during the 71 days he spent alone. He covered a total of 600 miles before giving up. © Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

To: Moominoid who wrote (50102)	7/18/2004 7:05:02 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

David, you are first person other than me who I've seen even slightly relate plate tectonics to ice ages and carbon cycles. <The real long-run changes seem to be driven by plate tectonics... though that is pretty uncertain... anyway that is much too slow to make any difference to our current predicament.> But I don't think it's uncertain. It's certain. If there wasn't any tectonic activity, including subduction, there wouldn't be any recycling of the ocean sediments. They'd just sit there getting thicker and thicker until the oceans were shallower and the amount of land sticking up above the oceans was nothing much at all. We really would get a watery world. Now that I think of it, the oceans wouldn't get all that much shallower if all the land was washed into the oceans. Now, the 'scientists' have discovered that oceans absorb CO2. The article is written as though these are new discoveries. Next they'll figure out that the ocean floor is a big sink for carbon, in the form of limestone and organic residue from fish and mammals. news.nationalgeographic.com After that, they'll realize that the oceanic plates get subducted and the organic material feeds volcanic activity, [that which doesn't get stored in oil and gas fields]. When there's lots of CO2 in the atmosphere, lots gets absorbed in the oceans and buried in oceanic sediment. It takes 10 million years at 10cm a year for 1000 kilometres of crust to be subducted. So when there has been a period of lots of CO2 and hence deposition of carbon into the oceanic crust due to accelerated biosphere activity in the absence of ice-age, it takes 10 million to 50 million years for that carbon to be recycled back up via volcanoes after subduction. When there's an ice-age, the amount of carbon being deposited in limestone and organic material is lower, because there isn't so much biosphere activity because much of the world is frozen. Mqurice