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Page added on August 26, 2016

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Not Doomed Yet: Two New Worlds

A dense, important week in planetary science. Two projects that have worked to minor attention for years arrived at important conclusions:

First: the Anthropocene, a span of geological time marked by humanity’s manipulation of the Earth system, began in the 1950s, a working group appointed by the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) has ruled. The group voted that the post-WWII “great acceleration” in industrial CO₂ combustion—combined with the introduction of synthetic plutonium deposited by atomic-weapons explosions—justified the declaration of a new geological epoch, just as the end of the last Ice Age did roughly 10,000 years earlier.

Members of the working group and other scientists will now hunt for an ideal version of this transition in the world’s lake beds and rock record.

Despite the wide use of the term “anthropocene,” the ICS hasn’t formally endorsed the name yet. The ICS will vote on adopting the working group’s plan next year. Some of its members worry that if they fail to adopt the name, they will face a round of tut-tutting press: “I feel like a lighthouse with a huge tsunami wave coming at it,” the chair of the ICS told Paul Voosen, of Science.

Second: Astronomers have located the nearest alien world to ours, a tidally locked rocky planet in the habitable zone of Proxima Centauri B, only four light years away. The planet’s discovery is a crowning triumph of the search for expolanets, as Rebecca Boyle writes in a barnstorming story for this very publication:

No one will ever find a closer alien world than this. This is it. No other faint, cool stars lurk in the abyss between the Alpha Centauri system and our solar system. In a way, the first discovery of a possibly habitable planet in our backyard is also a final discovery. In the hunt for our cosmic neighbors, this planet is as good as it gets.

* * *

In the week beginning August 14, 2016, the Mauna Loa Observatory recorded an average atmospheric carbon level of 401.85 parts per million. At this time last year, atmospheric levels stood at 399.10 ppm. Ten years ago, Mauna Loa measured atmospheric CO₂ at 380.83 ppm. Levels of 350 ppm or lower are considered safe.

In much of the Northern Hemisphere, this is the final week of meteorological summer. The temperate Southern Hemisphere—in the continents, that means South America, South Africa, and much of Australia—will lapse into meteorological spring next week as well.

A new paper in Nature proposes that global warming in the Northern Hemisphere began in the 1830s—much earlier than previously thought—and that it was also caused by anthropogenic carbon emissions.

The American pioneer of the global campaign to eradicate small pox has died. I didn’t know that the USSR pushed WHO to embark on the global eradication campaign, nor that the small pox campaign didn’t work by vaccinating everyone but, rather, by vaccinating only people who had contact with small pox patients and the people who had contact with them. Small pox is still the only disease successfully eradicated from general circulation.

In U.S. politics, the Bakken pipeline, a 1,712-mile project that would funnel oil from oil fields in North Dakota to a river port in Illinois, was approved by the federal government. And more than 1,000 protesters—many from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, whose reservation straddles land otherwise in North and South Dakota—succeeded in halting the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, which would pass beneath the Missouri River.

Bernie Sanders announced that restricting fracking and ensuring climate justice would be policy focuses of his new political group, Our Revolution.

In U.S. policy, President Obama has declared that a privately preserved area near Maine’s Mt. Katahdin, the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail, is a national monument. It is likely the last large expanse of preserved land on the East Coast that will receive national protection. (Why isn’t it a national park? A president can summarily declare a national monument into existence via executive authority, but would require Congressional approval for a national park.)

In energy news, international coal prices have risen through the summer, especially in the Pacific region, on the back of renewed demand from China. Yet some analysts argue that the American coal industry is permanently wounded: “From its peak in 2008, U.S. coal production has declined by 500 million tons per year – that’s 3,000 fewer pounds of coal per year for each man, woman and child in the United States.”

What does the global oil drought look like? In Nigeria, according to the Financial Times, it means that states are canceling the mass weddings they would have previously subsidized:

During the boom years when oil prices were above $100 per barrel, Kano’s state government sponsored several mass weddings for nearly 2,500 couples. The state paid the requisite dowry for the families of the grooms and provided a raft of household items for the brides’ families. … The programme was popular. In the predominantly Muslim state, marriage is seen as critical to maintaining the moral fabric of society.

Does half the world’s population live in a city? Do two-thirds? We don’t actually know (despite the off-cited claim otherwise), and we might never really know, writes Alexandra Lange. “Forced to stop using a readymade, attention-grabbing number as justification should force everyone to think harder about why cities are at the center of our design discourse. Why should everything good flow to the center?”

Atlantic



53 Comments on "Not Doomed Yet: Two New Worlds"

  1. Davy on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 8:00 am 

    Junk

  2. Cloggie on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 8:25 am 

    Very difficult to discern structure in this article.

    Anyway, the discovery of a “neighbouring” Earth 2.0 was of course exiting news and now we can begin to send messages a la that fabulous movie “Contact”, brain child of Carl Sagan and main character Jody Foster.

    I have yet to decide which was the most exiting moment from American cinema, either:

    Spanish arrival in America:

    https://youtu.be/LT9YKjn67Og

    Or Hitler, bounced back from space:

    https://youtu.be/uhIEfxRLiPI

    If you realize that this is a Darwinian universe, perhaps it is better not to take up “Contact” at all with Alpha Centauri.

    Not that it matters much, since there are enough warriors to be found on planet earth where currently a battle is underway between:

    1) George Soros types who want to own the entire planet
    2) Multipolar world consisting of competing “birds of a feather” territories, aka “Great Civilizations”, as predicted by Samuel Huntington, with the Han and Aryan blocks the two main Poles (not refering to citizens of Poland)

    Ghung claims that 1) is losing and for once I agree with him.

  3. onlooker on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 8:48 am 

    The only point made of true significance is CO2 in the atmosphere. 4ooppm is truly a dangerous milestone. Last time Earth was consistently at 4ooppm was about 3.6 million years ago during the Pliocene age

  4. ghung on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 8:50 am 

    The chance that Proxima Centauri B is habitable, and that humans could/would ever go there, is statistically 0.

    http://www.space.com/33834-discovery-of-planet-proxima-b.html

    Face it. Humanity is stuck with itself until it ends itself, or nature and the universe do.

  5. Cloggie on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 9:03 am 

    “The chance that Proxima Centauri B is habitable, and that humans could/would ever go there, is statistically 0.”

    That chance that 2+2=5 AND that you are ever going to beat me in an argument is statistically 0.

  6. joe on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 9:10 am 

    Since all civilisation fails, even ours will one day be waste garbage. Think of all the sacred things. Jerusalem, Mecca, Rome, the US Constitution, human rights etc etc. The Universe doesnt care about you. Then our star will blow up, erasing even the precious Earth. There is no ‘prepping’ for that! Humans pick which animals are clean, humans pick which animals are not. The reasons could be evolutionary, or not. Some people in India dont eat cows but eat pork, some will eat a cow but not a pig. Who cares? Nothing we will ever do will stop the universe unfolding. In the dark corners of our souls, this is still a geo-centric universe. 7 billion foolish apes.

  7. Cloggie on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 9:52 am 

    There are apes…

    https://youtu.be/ypEaGQb6dJk

    …and then there are apes:

    https://youtu.be/q3oHmVhviO8

    (kind regards to Stanley Kubrick)

    While I agree with most of what joe says, his apparent announcement of our death is somewhat premature.

    Call me a solipsist, but the universe IS us.
    And the self-euthenasia of the sun is still a few billion years away, well according to our limited models that is.

    Unless somebody can prove that an impact of a 10 km diameter meteor is immanent, I am somewhat unimpressed by the Lousiana floodings, the few cm of sea level rise by the end of this century or 1 or 2 centigrade temperature increase.

    Could it be we are going to be exterminated by events of global reach? Yes.

    Could it be that we are not going to be exterminated by events of global reach, for instances because these events won’t happen? Yes.

    I don’t know, you don’t know. If we can’t even somewhat accurately predict the date of peak oil, why should we tell ourselves how the climate will develop in the cause of this century, let alone if such a change would be bad or good. Perhaps both.

  8. rockman on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 10:16 am 

    The geologic time scale isn’t based upon human activity or that of any other critter. It would seem anthropocene is likely just an attempt to focus on changes in atmospheric conditions. Which is fine to use as part of pop culture but has zero significance on global stratigraphy compared to much more impactful events that haven’t been singled out. There have been countless events in the geologic record of much greater magnitude and none have been singled out as geologic epochs.

    “The geological time scale (GTS) is a system of chronological measurement that relates stratigraphy to time, and is used by geologists, paleontologists, and other Earth scientists to describe the timing and relationships between events that have occurred throughout Earth’s history. The table of geologic time spans presented here agrees with the nomenclature, dates and standard color codes set forth by the International Commission on Stratigraphy.”

    We are currently in the Holocene EPOCH. There is no basis to create the anthropocene EPOCH. There are epoch subdivisions that were estab!ished long ago (chronozones) that would apply to the current conditions. Here’s a very detailed explanation sure to bore the crap out of almost everyone here. LOL. We are currently in the SUBATLANTIC CHRONOZONE of the HOLOCENE EPOCH. It began about 2,500 years ago:

    “The Holocene is the geological epoch that began after the Pleistocene at approximately 9,700 BCE and continues to the present. The term “Recent” (usually capitalised) has often been used as an exact synonym of “Holocene”, although this usage is discouraged in 21st-century science. The Holocene is part of the Quaternary period. Its name comes from the Ancient Greek word meaning “entirely recent”. It has been identified with the current warm period, known as MIS 1, and can be considered an interglacial in the current ice age based on that evidence.

    The Holocene also encompasses the growth and impacts of the human species worldwide, including all its written history, development of major civilizations, and overall significant transition toward urban living in the present. Human impacts on modern-era Earth and its ecosystems may be considered of global significance for future evolution of living species, including approximately synchronous lithospheric evidence, or more recently atmospheric evidence of human impacts. Given these, a new term, Anthropocene, is specifically proposed and used informally only for the very latest part of modern history involving significant human impact.

    It is accepted by the International Commission on Stratigraphy that the Holocene started approximately 11,700 years before 2000 CE. The epoch follows the Pleistocene and the last glacial period (local names for the last glacial period include the Wisconsinan in North America, the Weichselian in Europe, the Devensian in the United Kingdom, the Llanquihue in Chile and the Otiran in New Zealand. The Holocene can be subdivided into five time intervals, or chronozones, based on climatic fluctuations:

    Preboreal (10 ka–9 ka),
    Boreal (9 ka–8 ka),
    Atlantic (8 ka–5 ka),
    Subboreal (5 ka–2.5 ka) and
    Subatlantic (2.5 ka–present).

    Note: “ka” means “thousand years” (non-calibrated C14 dates)

    The Blytt–Sernander classification of climatic periods defined, initially, by plant remains in peat mosses, is now being explored currently by geologists working in different regions studying sea levels, peat bogs and ice core samples by a variety of methods, with a view toward further verifying and refining the Blytt–Sernander sequence. They find a general correspondence across Eurasia and North America, though the method was once thought to be of no interest. The scheme was defined for Northern Europe, but the climate changes were claimed to occur more widely. The periods of the scheme include a few of the final pre-Holocene oscillations of the last glacial period and then classify climates of more recent prehistory.”

  9. Davy on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 11:28 am 

    “Universe doesnt care about you.”
    Sure the universe cares about you. We are part of the universe and we care about us which means the universe cares about us. If there is complete connectivity then the smallest of connection are as important and also unimportant as the greatest of them. The reason is there is no separation. I agree that the abyss found in the fantasy of our ego and collective ego’s is meaningless to life because it is a facade of a large brain. Yet, I don’t think we can say anything for certain at these levels. Even to say our fantasies are meaningless is open for discussions because they are and they have real consequences. We can express our existential anxieties and spiritual connections but we should be very careful to draw conclusions at any levels above basic existence. This is the realm beyond human understanding. It is where we try to have beliefs, faith, and isms or we seek to attack the lack thereof. It most often is the reason we are failing as a species. We have misplaced notions of what “is” instead of participating in “isness”. We create our own separateness and as we do we get lost. Maybe this is part of nature’s plan of activity by getting lost one opens new doors. All knowing would be paralysis or would it….lol

  10. Jerry McManus on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 11:34 am 

    @Rockman

    Thanks, very informative.

    Is it true that all the coal, oil, and gas we are burning now was initially deposited as plant matter during an epoch when the Earth was 10 deg. C warmer than it is now?

    I seem to recall reading somewhere that fossil fuels mostly originated at a time in Earth’s geologic history when the whole planet was essentially covered in tropical hothouse swamps.

    The word carboniferous comes to mind.
    https://www.google.com/#q=carboniferous+period

  11. Apneaman on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 11:46 am 

    shit4brains, the robustness of science is not based on how impressed with or without it you are. All you have is yet another long winded hand wave/dismissal. IOW – you have NOTHING……again.

    Just your suggestion that the humans would need the sun to burn them up to go extinct is more than enough to indicate to anyone with the most basic understanding of biologly/extinction that you are a clueless fucking moron.

    In addition, that you think an impact of a 10km asteroid could end the humans shows that your knowledge is based on 20th century TV documentaries with cool CGI graphics. The dinosaurs were already dying off before that asteroid hit and then there was major climate change, leading to habitat loss (like today), from massive CO2 releases (like today) from the Deccan traps.

    Study: Dinosaurs were dying out 50 million years before asteroid hit

    “In terms of species, “they were going extinct faster than they could replace themselves,” said paleontologist Manabu Sakamoto of the University of Reading in England.”

    http://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/study-dinosaurs-were-dying-out-50-million-years-before-asteroid-hit-1.2864019

    Great Dying 252 million years ago coincided with CO2 build-up

    “Bottom line: MIT researchers published a study in November 2011 in the journal Science suggesting that the Great Dying – the mass extinction at the end of the Permian period, 252 million years ago – lasted only 20,000 years instead of millions of years. What’s more, they suggest it coincided with a period of increased CO2 in Earth’s atmosphere, comparable to today’s levels.”

    http://earthsky.org/earth/great-dying-252-million-years-ago-concided-with-co2-build-up

    AGW’s evil twin that is largely ignored.

    Ocean acidification drove Earth’s largest mass extinction

    “Volcanic eruptions were particular severe during this time in Earth’s history in the area that is now Siberia—252 million years ago, this land mass was part of the supercontinent of Pangea. Scientists think that massive amounts of CO2 released from these eruptions contributed to the extinction event. Specifically, the oceans would have absorbed much of the CO2, which would have led to an increase in acidity of the seawater.”

    http://earthsky.org/earth/ocean-acidification-drove-earths-largest-mass-extinction

  12. Apneaman on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 11:54 am 

    Humanity is a plague species.

    Deeply Dystopian

    “Overshoot, hand in hand with destruction of the natural world, culminating in societal collapse, war, and migration, is essentially what our species does perpetually and recurringly, with monotonous repetition, over and over. To frame the global precipice we now teeter upon as a recent, especially gluttonous aberration based on the modern financial system and consumer culture is to willfully ignore the pattern that Prof.”

    “Yes, yes indeed it is hopeless. That’s because there IS no hope. Yes, it is deeply dystopian, but preposterous to suggest otherwise since these statements followed one of the most compelling reconstructions of human-caused mass extinctions going back over 15,000 years I have yet to see. The leopard can’t change its spots, and humans can’t avoid the Tragedy of the Commons, because we are hard-wired for short term self-interest and optimism bias…and it is that desperate desire for hope that insulates us from an ability to take the necessary steps to save ourselves and most of the rest of the living things on this planet. Take away the top 1% and there will be a good 75% and probably far more who will happily replicate their level of consumption.”

    http://witsendnj.blogspot.ca/2016/08/deeply-dystopian.html

  13. Davy on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 11:59 am 

    “Philippines drugs war: The woman who kills dealers for a living”
    http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-37172002

    Sounds like the slippery slope to anarchy but at least in the meantime very effective.

  14. Apneaman on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 12:03 pm 

    COGNITIVE DISSONANCE REIGNS IN LOUISIANA – THE TRANSITION FROM MYTH TO REALITY

    “As religious faith, especially of the Christian persuasion, is a pillar of the American landscape, what we are now learning is that close to 40 inches of rain are to be feared a lot more than a biblical (or mythical) rain inundation of 40 days and 40 nights. Will we heed the warning? All signs point to this not being the case.

    And like any time that faith is put before facts, an open, honest conversation about climate change is literally heresy in these times. Yet, the truth is the truth. And the current washing away of Louisiana is proof of this whether anyone wants to accept it or not.”

    http://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2016/08/18/cognitive-dissonance-reigns-in-louisiana-the-transition-from-myth-to-reality/

    What I can’t figure out is if Yahweh is pissed off because of gays and liberals N such how come he don’t drop the rain bombs on San Francisco and New York city? Mysterious ways indeed.

  15. rockman on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 12:18 pm 

    Jerry – Quick and dirty on coal. One statement from thevlink below stood out: “In the last 600 million years of Earth’s history only the Carboniferous Period and our present age, the Quaternary Period, have witnessed CO2 levels less than 400 ppm.” From

    http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Carboniferous_climate.html

    “Most of our coal was formed about 300 million years ago, when much of the earth was covered by steamy swamps. As plants and trees died, their remains sank to the bottom of the swampy areas, accumulating layer upon layer and eventually forming a soggy, dense material called peat.

    Over long periods of time, the makeup of the earth’s surface changed, and seas and great rivers caused deposits of sand, clay and other mineral matter to accumulate, burying the peat. Sandstone and other sedimentary rocks were formed, and the pressure caused by their weight squeezed water from the peat. Increasingly deeper burial and the heat associated with it gradually changed the material to coal. Scientists estimate that from 3 to 7 feet of compacted plant matter was required to form 1 foot of bituminous coal.”

    The coal/climate dynamic is not as simple as some like to think:

    “North America was located along Earth’s equator then, courtesy of the forces of continental drift. The hot and humid climate of the Middle Carboniferous Period was accompanied by an explosion of terrestrial plant life. However by the Late Carboniferous Period Earth’s climate had become increasingly cooler and drier. By the beginning of the Permian Period average global temperatures declined by about 10° C.

    Interestingly, the last half of the Carboniferous Period witnessed periods of significant ice cap formation over polar landmasses– particularly in the southern hemisphere. Alternating cool and warm periods during the ensuing Carboniferous Ice Age coincided with cycles of glacier expansion and retreat. Coastlines fluctuated, caused by a combination of both local basin subsidence and worldwide sea level changes. In West Virginia a complex system of meandering river deltas supported vast coal swamps that left repeating stratigraphic levels of peat bogs that later became coal, separated by layers of fluvial rocks like sandstone and shale when the deltas were building, and marine rocks like black shales and limestones when rising seas drowned coastlands. Accumulations of several thousand feet of these sediments over millions of years caused heat and pressure which transformed the soft sediments into rock and the peat layers into the 100 or so coal seams which today comprise the Great Bituminous Coalfields of the Eastern U.S. and Western Europe.

    Earth’s climate and atmosphere have varied greatly over geologic time. Our planet has mostly been much hotter and more humid than we know it to be today, and with far more carbon dioxide (the greenhouse gas) in the atmosphere than exists today. The notable exception is 300,000,000 years ago during the late Carboniferous Period, which resembles our own climate and atmosphere like no other.

    With this in mind the road to understanding global warming and our present climate begins with an historical journey through a chapter in Earth’s history, some 30 million years before dinosaurs appeared, known as the Carboniferous Period– a time when terrestrial Earth was ruled by giant plants and insects, and glaciers waxed and waned over a huge southern continent.”

    Average global temperatures in the Early Carboniferous Period were hot- approximately 20° C (68° F). However, cooling during the Middle Carboniferous reduced average global temperatures to about 12° C (54° F). As shown on the chart below, this is comparable to the average global temperature on Earth today!

    Similarly, atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the Early Carboniferous Period were approximately 1500 ppm (parts per million), but by the Middle Carboniferous had declined to about 350 ppm — comparable to average CO2 concentrations today.

    Earth’s atmosphere today contains about 380 ppm CO2 (0.038%). Compared to former geologic times, our present atmosphere, like the Late Carboniferous atmosphere, is CO2- impoverished! In the last 600 million years of Earth’s history only the Carboniferous Period and our present age, the Quaternary Period, have witnessed CO2 levels less than 400 ppm.”

  16. rockman on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 12:20 pm 

    JM – Quick and dirty on coal. One statement from the link below stood out: “In the last 600 million years of Earth’s history only the Carboniferous Period and our present age, the Quaternary Period, have witnessed CO2 levels less than 400 ppm.” From

    http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Carboniferous_climate.html

    “Most of our coal was formed about 300 million years ago, when much of the earth was covered by steamy swamps. As plants and trees died, their remains sank to the bottom of the swampy areas, accumulating layer upon layer and eventually forming a soggy, dense material called peat.

    Over long periods of time, the makeup of the earth’s surface changed, and seas and great rivers caused deposits of sand, clay and other mineral matter to accumulate, burying the peat. Sandstone and other sedimentary rocks were formed, and the pressure caused by their weight squeezed water from the peat. Increasingly deeper burial and the heat associated with it gradually changed the material to coal. Scientists estimate that from 3 to 7 feet of compacted plant matter was required to form 1 foot of bituminous coal.”

    The coal/climate dynamic is not as simple as some like to think:

    “North America was located along Earth’s equator then, courtesy of the forces of continental drift. The hot and humid climate of the Middle Carboniferous Period was accompanied by an explosion of terrestrial plant life. However by the Late Carboniferous Period Earth’s climate had become increasingly cooler and drier. By the beginning of the Permian Period average global temperatures declined by about 10° C.

    Interestingly, the last half of the Carboniferous Period witnessed periods of significant ice cap formation over polar landmasses– particularly in the southern hemisphere. Alternating cool and warm periods during the ensuing Carboniferous Ice Age coincided with cycles of glacier expansion and retreat. Coastlines fluctuated, caused by a combination of both local basin subsidence and worldwide sea level changes. In West Virginia a complex system of meandering river deltas supported vast coal swamps that left repeating stratigraphic levels of peat bogs that later became coal, separated by layers of fluvial rocks like sandstone and shale when the deltas were building, and marine rocks like black shales and limestones when rising seas drowned coastlands. Accumulations of several thousand feet of these sediments over millions of years caused heat and pressure which transformed the soft sediments into rock and the peat layers into the 100 or so coal seams which today comprise the Great Bituminous Coalfields of the Eastern U.S. and Western Europe.

    Earth’s climate and atmosphere have varied greatly over geologic time. Our planet has mostly been much hotter and more humid than we know it to be today, and with far more carbon dioxide (the greenhouse gas) in the atmosphere than exists today. The notable exception is 300,000,000 years ago during the late Carboniferous Period, which resembles our own climate and atmosphere like no other.

    With this in mind the road to understanding global warming and our present climate begins with an historical journey through a chapter in Earth’s history, some 30 million years before dinosaurs appeared, known as the Carboniferous Period– a time when terrestrial Earth was ruled by giant plants and insects, and glaciers waxed and waned over a huge southern continent.”

    Average global temperatures in the Early Carboniferous Period were hot- approximately 20° C (68° F). However, cooling during the Middle Carboniferous reduced average global temperatures to about 12° C (54° F). As shown on the chart below, this is comparable to the average global temperature on Earth today!

    Similarly, atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the Early Carboniferous Period were approximately 1500 ppm (parts per million), but by the Middle Carboniferous had declined to about 350 ppm — comparable to average CO2 concentrations today.

    Earth’s atmosphere today contains about 380 ppm CO2 (0.038%). Compared to former geologic times, our present atmosphere, like the Late Carboniferous atmosphere, is CO2- impoverished! In the last 600 million years of Earth’s history only the Carboniferous Period and our present age, the Quaternary Period, have witnessed CO2 levels less than 400 ppm.”

  17. rockman on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 12:28 pm 

    Quick and dirty on coal. One statement from thevlink below stood out: “In the last 600 million years of Earth’s history only the Carboniferous Period and our present age, the Quaternary Period, have witnessed CO2 levels less than 400 ppm.” From

    http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Carboniferous_climate.html

    “Most of our coal was formed about 300 million years ago, when much of the earth was covered by steamy swamps. As plants and trees died, their remains sank to the bottom of the swampy areas, accumulating layer upon layer and eventually forming a soggy, dense material called peat.

    Over long periods of time, the makeup of the earth’s surface changed, and seas and great rivers caused deposits of sand, clay and other mineral matter to accumulate, burying the peat. Sandstone and other sedimentary rocks were formed, and the pressure caused by their weight squeezed water from the peat. Increasingly deeper burial and the heat associated with it gradually changed the material to coal. Scientists estimate that from 3 to 7 feet of compacted plant matter was required to form 1 foot of bituminous coal.”

    The coal/climate dynamic is not as simple as some like to think:

    “North America was located along Earth’s equator then, courtesy of the forces of continental drift. The hot and humid climate of the Middle Carboniferous Period was accompanied by an explosion of terrestrial plant life. However by the Late Carboniferous Period Earth’s climate had become increasingly cooler and drier. By the beginning of the Permian Period average global temperatures declined by about 10° C.

    Interestingly, the last half of the Carboniferous Period witnessed periods of significant ice cap formation over polar landmasses– particularly in the southern hemisphere. Alternating cool and warm periods during the ensuing Carboniferous Ice Age coincided with cycles of glacier expansion and retreat. Coastlines fluctuated, caused by a combination of both local basin subsidence and worldwide sea level changes. In West Virginia a complex system of meandering river deltas supported vast coal swamps that left repeating stratigraphic levels of peat bogs that later became coal, separated by layers of fluvial rocks like sandstone and shale when the deltas were building, and marine rocks like black shales and limestones when rising seas drowned coastlands. Accumulations of several thousand feet of these sediments over millions of years caused heat and pressure which transformed the soft sediments into rock and the peat layers into the 100 or so coal seams which today comprise the Great Bituminous Coalfields of the Eastern U.S. and Western Europe.

    Earth’s climate and atmosphere have varied greatly over geologic time. Our planet has mostly been much hotter and more humid than we know it to be today, and with far more carbon dioxide (the greenhouse gas) in the atmosphere than exists today. The notable exception is 300,000,000 years ago during the late Carboniferous Period, which resembles our own climate and atmosphere like no other.

    With this in mind the road to understanding global warming and our present climate begins with an historical journey through a chapter in Earth’s history, some 30 million years before dinosaurs appeared, known as the Carboniferous Period– a time when terrestrial Earth was ruled by giant plants and insects, and glaciers waxed and waned over a huge southern continent.”

    Average global temperatures in the Early Carboniferous Period were hot- approximately 20° C (68° F). However, cooling during the Middle Carboniferous reduced average global temperatures to about 12° C (54° F). As shown on the chart below, this is comparable to the average global temperature on Earth today!

    Similarly, atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the Early Carboniferous Period were approximately 1500 ppm (parts per million), but by the Middle Carboniferous had declined to about 350 ppm — comparable to average CO2 concentrations today.

    Earth’s atmosphere today contains about 380 ppm CO2 (0.038%). Compared to former geologic times, our present atmosphere, like the Late Carboniferous atmosphere, is CO2- impoverished! In the last 600 million years of Earth’s history only the Carboniferous Period and our present age, the Quaternary Period, have witnessed CO2 levels less than 400 ppm.”

  18. Torch&Pitchforks on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 1:41 pm 

    Hopefully peak oil hits real soon so that we can successfully build a closed off zone of relative prosperity instead of being deluged with externalities that foreign, oft third world countries are trying to dump on us.

    Well, fairly simplistically, politics is what drives everything, and politics, is derived utterly from demographics. Given that politics tends to almost always fissure along ethnic/religious/racial grounds as opposed to the 19th century European cultural export known as a Nation, peak oil will ultimately crimp the delusional and self destructive liberals from utterly wrecking the future prospects of the locals that live in the West once motorized transportation breaks down.

    This may sound like a throwback to a certain 1930’s ideologies, but this is different, because it takes a functional approach, rather than supremacist approach to the dynamics of how the bad side of politics works.

  19. Davy on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 2:23 pm 

    Pitchfork, it sounds wonderful but just more of the endless hopium that is nothing more than a collective bargaining of our way out of death. Death at multiple levels of course. Some of us will be lucky to escape with our lives likely not our shirts. We are all doomed together. The death and destruction will be of relative intensity. Places like Asia have much farther to fall in population. Places like the developed west have a long way to fall down the economic ladder and this will be just as deadly.

    Excess deaths over births is the name of the game soon. On average we need a yearly reduction in population of 200Mil for a generation. That is averaging so expect jagged and extreme events to punctuate the sometimes quiet. This is also the longer drawn out scenario. There is no reason why we can’t get to the vicinity of 1BIL in 2 years. That is a horrible thought but very possible.

  20. HARM on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 3:14 pm 

    “What I can’t figure out is if Yahweh is pissed off because of gays and liberals N such how come he don’t drop the rain bombs on San Francisco and New York city? Mysterious ways indeed.”

    Self-consciousness, critical thinking and intellectual curiosity are not exactly hallmarks of the deeply conservative and religious.

  21. techkno on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 5:00 pm 

    Know why dinosaurs went extinct? They didn’t have a space program.
    Know why human civilization doesn’t have to go extinct? The Green Party!
    Stop laughing…I mean it. Our members don’t want to go quietly into the night. Our Four Pillars are Democracy,Ecology,Social Justice,Peace.
    We are cognizant of the human predicament and we have a 75 page Platform document that spells out in detail how to avert disaster.
    Vote Jill Stein for President of the United States!

  22. onlooker on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 5:14 pm 

    Assuming you may even have answers to these diabolically difficult predicaments humanity faces what makes you think you can break into the impenetrable fortress of corruption, wealth, institutional support and the dumbed down apathetic populace that characterizes the American political system. Then if you did accomplish this that would only translate to change for one country of the many that exist. Sorry to sound cynical but the nature of our predicament warrants it

  23. Davy on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 5:18 pm 

    TechNo, my doom party pillars are deflation, decay, destruction, and dysfunction. Tell me who is more real? I am not promoting them I am achnowledging them. Your party is a lost cause because the status quo is a lost cause and that is what you seek to preserve just in your own image.

  24. Davy on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 5:25 pm 

    TeckNo, I forgot death.

  25. onlooker on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 5:31 pm 

    I like Davy the 5 d’s haha. I think we may have scared off Tech

  26. onlooker on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 5:49 pm 

    Oh and Tech a predicament has no solution. What Davy says will happen is inevitable because we have run out of ways to postpone the effects of our species being out of balance with Nature’s regenerative supporting mechanisms and in fact have irrevocably destabilized these systems for the duration of any time frame relevant to humanity

  27. peakyeast on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 6:27 pm 

    @teckno:
    “Know why dinosaurs went extinct? They didn’t have a space program.”

    They did have a space program – thats why they all disappeared at the same time. Earth was getting too cold for them.

    Later on the reptilians landed here and fucked some apes to improve the breed to a point where they were good slaves…

    Geeez— you really dont know ANYthing do you?

  28. peakyeast on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 6:40 pm 

    Thanks Davy for the link…

    So now you can kill anyone and just put a little sign there and perhaps a bag of dope – and all is fine…

    You are right… It is a fast track to an unhealthy type of anarchy.

    And none of the police chiefs has been killed??

    “He has listed 150 senior officials, officers and judges linked to the trade. Five police generals, he says, are kingpins of the business. But it is those at the lowest levels of the trade who are targeted by the death squads.”

    Doesnt seem like its working to me. More like a free for all killing spree.

  29. Sissyfuss on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 6:51 pm 

    Hey Clogged nasal passages, from the dictionary.”Solipsist;extreme preoccupation with and indulgence of one’s feelings, desires, etc; egoistic
    self-absortion.” Oh yeah baby! That’s you in spades!

  30. Davy on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 7:17 pm 

    Yea Peek, an effective policy like this one will be used elsewhere and before you know it there will be a descent into anything goes for whoever has the power.

  31. rockman on Fri, 26th Aug 2016 11:46 pm 

    Jerry – Some coal/climate info for you. Including a bit of CO2 trivia that might shock some folks:

    “Average global temperatures in the Early Carboniferous Period were hot- approximately 68° F. However, cooling during the Middle Carboniferous reduced average global temperatures to about 54° F. This is comparable to the average global temperature on Earth today!

    Similarly, atmospheric concentrations of CO2 in the Early Carboniferous Period were approximately 1500 ppm, but by the Middle Carboniferous had declined to about 350 ppm — comparable to average CO2 concentrations today! Earth’s atmosphere today contains about 400 ppm CO2. Compared to former geologic times, our present atmosphere, like the Late Carboniferous atmosphere, is CO2- impoverished! In the last 600 million years of Earth’s history only the Carboniferous Period and our present age, the Quaternary Period, have witnessed CO2 levels less than 450 ppm.”

    Some more general facts:

    “North America was located along Earth’s equator then, courtesy of the forces of continental drift. The hot and humid climate of the Middle Carboniferous Period was accompanied by an explosion of terrestrial plant life. However by the Late Carboniferous Period Earth’s climate had become increasingly cooler and drier. By the beginning of the Permian Period average global temperatures declined by about 10° C.

    Interestingly, the last half of the Carboniferous Period witnessed periods of significant ice cap formation over polar landmasses– particularly in the southern hemisphere. Alternating cool and warm periods during the ensuing Carboniferous Ice Age coincided with cycles of glacier expansion and retreat. Coastlines fluctuated, caused by a combination of both local basin subsidence and worldwide sea level changes. In West Virginia a complex system of meandering river deltas supported vast coal swamps that left repeating stratigraphic levels of peat bogs that later became coal, separated by layers of fluvial rocks like sandstone and shale when the deltas were building, and marine rocks like black shales and limestones when rising seas drowned coastlands. Accumulations of several thousand feet of these sediments over millions of years caused heat and pressure which transformed the soft sediments into rock and the peat layers into the 100 or so coal seams which today comprise the Great Bituminous Coalfields of the Eastern U.S. and Western Europe.

  32. techkno on Sat, 27th Aug 2016 9:20 am 

    Onlooker, there have been more than a few moments in history when ‘the powers that be’, at least temporarily got their comeupance. It can happen again. In the 21st century we know a lot of stuff – history, science, anthropology,biology,chemistry,art,literature,politics …on and on.
    Changing the U.S. changes the world. “Our predicament”, presents choices.
    I will tell my granddaughter I chose to try my best.
    Vote Green Party.

  33. techkno on Sat, 27th Aug 2016 9:35 am 

    Davy, I acknowledge your pillars, but there is still time to challenge them. You ask ‘who is more real’, the King of France once said “l’ etat sais moi’, believing that he was all powerful, I suspect King George III was certain he could not be defeated. They were ‘real’ and are no more.
    One hopes that the ‘status quo’ is doomed! The Green Party is the next phase of American political life.
    I doubt that my image is what the future is about, but a Green Image is worth struggling for.
    Vote for Jill!

  34. techkno on Sat, 27th Aug 2016 9:36 am 

    Onlooker, ‘I’m baaaack.”

  35. techkno on Sat, 27th Aug 2016 9:41 am 

    Onlooker, “and in fact have irrevocably destabilized these systems for the duration of any time frame relevant to humanity”.
    Destabilized – yeah, irrevocably? nonsense.
    I suggest that a high frontier could buy us some time to undo the damage.
    Yea Bill NYe and Elon Musk et al

  36. ghung on Sat, 27th Aug 2016 9:42 am 

    Gosh, Techno, the problem isn’t whether or not the Green Party platform is the most realistic, but how to convince more than 4% of the electorate that this is the case. And the problem isn’t just TPTB; the problem is us. We’re used to having our cake,, and all that. Any suggestion that this can’t continue won’t be well received. Our social programmers have done their jobs well, and they control the megaphones.

    Anyway, Greer had some things to say about these things last week, and plans to offer some suggestions:

    ” In an upcoming post, I plan on sketching out how a future movement to stop treating the atmosphere as an aerial sewer and start mitigating the ecological impact of our idiocy to date might proceed.”

    I’m looking forward to that, for all the good it’ll do.

  37. Davy on Sat, 27th Aug 2016 9:51 am 

    TechNo, knock yourself out. You are embracing incongruities mixing tech and green. Your optimism is untested. You sound young and you deserve a chance to shape your future. Good luck.

  38. ghung on Sat, 27th Aug 2016 9:53 am 

    “Onlooker, there have been more than a few moments in history when ‘the powers that be’, at least temporarily got their comeupance…

    …Vote Green Party.”

    Gosh, Techno, the problem isn’t whether or not the Green Party platform is the most realistic, but how to convince more than 4% of the electorate that this is the case. And the problem isn’t just TPTB; the problem is us. We’re used to having our cake,, and all that. Any suggestion that this can’t continue won’t be well received. Our social programmers have done their jobs well, and they control the megaphones.

    Anyway, Greer had some things to say about these things last week, and plans to offer some suggestions:

    ” In an upcoming post, I plan on sketching out how a future movement to stop treating the atmosphere as an aerial sewer and start mitigating the ecological impact of our idiocy to date might proceed.”

    I’m looking forward to that, for all the good it’ll do.

  39. Jerry McManus on Sat, 27th Aug 2016 10:54 am 

    @Rockman

    Awesome, thanks!

  40. onlooker on Sat, 27th Aug 2016 11:29 am 

    I praise you Tech, the ideals of the GREENS are what humanity should always have been about. Be a light along with your party , I simply like Davy feel that the light most needed is the one of unblinking facts. The facts in my case evince to me that very little of the status quo will remain in the future and that is the info I try to shed light on. My own little effort in trying to warn of what is approaching. We can embrace wishful thinking or we can embrace reality

  41. Apneaman on Sat, 27th Aug 2016 12:01 pm 

    Rockman, I’m not in the least bit shocked. What is your point? Oh let me guess – “climate’s changed before”. That’s right, “climate always changes”. Just like it changed during the mother of all mass extinctions, The Permian, when massive volcanic traps in Russia – siberian traps – erupted for tens of thousands of years and burned up massive coal beds and spewed massive quantities of CO2 into the atmosphere causing global warming and ocean acidafication which killed off about 75% of all terrestrial life and 90% of ocean life. Now we are talking tens of thousands of years which sounds like a lot to the individual human, but it is not even a blink of an eye in geological terms. The humans have blow that CO2 emitting speed record out of the water by orders of magnitude. The human are emitting CO2 about 1000 times faster than the Siberian Traps did and speed kills. This is why it is fucking ridiculous to compare climate changes that took place over tens of millions of years – Carboniferous Period lasted from about 359.2 to 299 million – with what is happening with industrialized humans- 1750 – 2016. It’s a bunk comparison. There is nothing in the planet’s history that is even close. Over tens of millions of years or even tens of thousands, living creatures can adjust/evolve to environmental changes, but obviously over 250 years they cannot since they are dying en masse. Dying at a speed not seen since the KT mass extinction. The rate of environmental change is unprecedented in earth’s history. The evidence is written in the rocks. I have presented the evidence for this many times. Rockman you are once again being intellectually dishonest with your bullshit comparisons. I guess lying and deceiving are a part of who you are given your career in the cancer industry. You texass cancer people just can’t help yourselves given how you have been operating with impunity since day one. Anytime you veer away from the technical aspects of the industry the lies start. Methinks the lying and deceiving was as much a part of your career training as the geology.

    Current pace of environmental change is unprecedented in Earth’s history

    http://www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2016/january/pace-environment-change.html

    Earth enters sixth extinction phase with many species – including our own – labelled ‘the walking dead’

    http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/earth-is-entering-sixth-extinction-phase-with-many-species-including-our-own-labelled-the-walking-10333608.html

    A Deadly Climb From Glaciation to Hothouse — Why the Permian-Triassic Extinction is Pertinent to Human Warming

    https://robertscribbler.com/2013/08/12/a-deadly-climb-from-glaciation-to-hothouse-why-the-permian-triassic-extinction-is-pertinent-to-human-warming/

  42. onlooker on Sat, 27th Aug 2016 1:14 pm 

    Thank you AP for once again showing the full magnitude of what awaits

  43. rockman on Sat, 27th Aug 2016 6:58 pm 

    “Rockman you are once again being intellectually dishonest with your bullshit comparisons.” Wow, apeman, you really are paranoid. LOL. I didn’t compare anything to anything…just posted some scientific FACTS. You seem to be so hung up on your own agenda you see enemies behind ever Bush. LOL.

    Either that or you just use any post that might seem to jusity your rants.

    Psss…everyone watch and see if apeman takes my response as a disagreement to his rant. LOL.

  44. Apneaman on Sat, 27th Aug 2016 7:12 pm 

    What agenda is that rockman?

  45. Apneaman on Sat, 27th Aug 2016 7:49 pm 

    Louisiana flooding: What is a 500-year flood and why is it happening so much?

    http://www.whio.com/news/national/louisiana-flooding-what-500-year-flood-and-why-happening-much/0dIHoQcvV3WZvVvsER3E8J/

  46. Apneaman on Sat, 27th Aug 2016 7:50 pm 

    Flash floods ravage Missouri, emergency declared (VIDEOS)

    https://www.rt.com/usa/357359-flash-floods-missouri-emergency/

  47. Apneaman on Sat, 27th Aug 2016 7:50 pm 

    Heavy rain brings flooding to Indianapolis

    http://wishtv.com/2016/08/26/severe-weather-could-strike-again-in-central-indiana/

  48. Apneaman on Sat, 27th Aug 2016 7:52 pm 

    Bellingham sets two temperature records

    http://www.bellinghamherald.com/news/local/article98072687.html

  49. Apneaman on Sat, 27th Aug 2016 7:56 pm 

    Human-induced climate change began earlier than previously thought
    Signs of warming appear as early as 1830 say researchers, whose analysis will help build accurate baseline of temperature before influence of human activity

    “Researchers in Australia found evidence for the early onset of warming after trawling through 500 years of data on tree rings, corals and ice cores that together form a natural archive of Earth’s historical temperatures.”

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/24/human-induced-climate-change-began-earlier-than-previously-thought

  50. peakyeast on Mon, 29th Aug 2016 10:04 am 

    Actually It could be a real game changer this new planet they have found.

    Now if just the 1% world leaders and their ugle henchmen all are put on a spaceship and sent away – then just perhaps there is a chance for this planet..

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