More on Global Warming

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Heh. As a parent and a night worker, sometimes things need to get done during the day which can be done no other time...and can be done by no one but me. When that happens, sometimes I simply don't get a chance to sleep. For me, that was one of those days. I end up needing to skip sleep entirely about once or twice a month, and had I another choice on such occasions, I would not do it. I'm not 18 anymore.

 

Don't try to confuse the issue with facts. Facts have no place on the internet. [/levity, we now return to your regularly scheduled thread]

 

T2Bruno, most of the stuff I've seen and cited is based on erupted mass (or volume), yes, but it is still a decent way to scale from known eruptions to bigger ones like this. If eruption X released Y kg of CO2 with Z kg total erupted mass, and a supervolcano is estimated to release about 10000*Z, the CO2 released is probably somewhere in the range of 10000*Y (though, as I said, there are many other factors).

 

Perhaps, NOG. I think the carbon release is predominantly dependant on the geology of the area. Carbonatite magma is very rare and only occurs in pockets. The majority of volcanic activity is silica based and has relatively low carbon release.

 

I don't actually think the CO2 released has all that much to do with the make-up of the melted stone. I really don't know what the process is, but I'd bet the high-carbon stones don't turn into gas. I mean, of all the elements making up the gasses released from volcanic activity, none of them are terribly common in stone: Hydrogen, Oxygen, Carbon, Sulpher, Chlorine, and Fluorine. These things are much more common in air and living creatures, maybe from melted soil from subduction zones, I don't know.

Anyway, my point was that we could take known values from a known eruption and scale them to estimate the impact of a supervolcano, but the only real number I've been able to get is that Mt. Saint Helen's peak NON-ERUPTIVE daily output was 9.1X10^8 kg of CO2. Its eruption (which may or may not be even closely reflected by that number) was a VEI-5 event, meaning a supervolcano is about 1,000 times more powerful. From this, we can get a VERY ROUGH AND PROBABLY NOT ACCURATE estimate of somewhere in the order of 10^12 kg of CO2 for one eruption.

 

Ummm... all those you listed are quite common in stone.

 

According to this site, oxygen is the only one that's at all common in stone (though a lot more than I thought). A link from there provides the elemental breakdown of igneous rocks (and thus non-gasseous magma) that is similar. Silicon is high on the list; iron, aluminum, calcium, sodium, potassium, and magnesium also come up as noticable amounts, but carbon, chlorine, fluorine, etc are all summed up in an 'All Others' category that composes only 1.5%. In other words, while the area and type of magma do influence the amount and composition of gasses released in an eruption, the actual composition of the melted stone doesn't.

Breaking News: well, sort of. I just talked to my mother, a geologist, and she postulated (unconfirmed, but understandable) that the gasses released in an eruption represent the most likely chemical combinations to result in gasses under those temperatures and pressures. In other words, there isn't much carbon in the crust or mantle (in solid or liquid form) simply because the vast majority of carbon-based chemicals are either gasseous or destroyed at those temperatures and pressures.

Anyway, that's something of a side-track of a side-track. The issue we're (or I'm) trying to settle is how much CO2 would be put out by a supervolcano, and we know the rough estimates of how much of what gasses go in magma from experimental data, so whether it makes sense for it to be there or not, it is.

I also was recently reminded that the ocean floor includes some very large deposits of methyl hydrate, essentially methane gas frozen under cold temperatures and high pressures. Methane gas is 27 times more potent as a greenhouse gas, and these deposits can be released, either gradually or all at once, by things like underwater eruptions, earthquakes, and landslides, basically anything that has the potential to remove some large amount of that pressure. This results in the sublimation of the methyl hydrate into methane gas which bubbles up out of the ocean and into the atmosphere. We talk a lot about the impact of CO2 and its natural release into the atmosphere compared to its unnatural release, but what about methane? Is it possible that a significant amount of natural global warming could be caused by these methane releases? Remember, we know very little about the bottom of the ocean and have no effective way to track, or even really guess, how much of this is being released other than the current atmospheric reserve. Any ideas?

 

http://www.exxposeexxon.com/facts/ExxonSecretsAnalysis.pdf

So. Does anyone have an equivalent document they can point to for the 'businesses which would benefit from going green are funding climate scientists' claim?

 

Somehow, I'm not convinced by an article written by Greenpeace

To me they just seem to be offended by Exxon spending money so that scientists who disagree with Greenpeace can continue their research. Should Exxon publish an article showing how much Greenpeace sends to scientists who agree with Greenpeace's article?

 

So you're not convinced by the Royal Society either, I take it? Do you attribute the same motivation to them that you do to Greenpeace?

 

I'm not sure as to who this "Royal Society" you talk about is. But, if they are a group of scientists, then they are one side of the argument and I'm at least willing to give them a listen to. If on the other hand, they are yet another "group with a vested interest" like Greenpeace or Exxon then no, I would lump them in with the others.

 

Ah. I'd assumed you'd at least glanced at the paper you reject. My mistake. Try this.

I must confess, I do find the notion that Greenpeace and Exxon are equivalent to be amusing

 

Well they are clearly two sides of the same coin. For all of Greenpeace's supposedly altruistic goals, they are like a business. Instead of selling gasoline, they publicize environmental concerns and hope for donations. The more sensational they can make their "advertising" the more they can make.


EDIT:

I had a chance to look at your link. They should be ashamed of themselves. Just like Greenpeace, they feel Exxon should stop funding scientific research, because it disagrees with them. This coming from scientists is reprehensible. Can you imagine the howls of outrage if Exxon had manage to convince the Society's funding to dry up? I get it that the Society believes they are right and that debate should stop, but not everyone feels that way (no matter how many times they try to say it)

 

You rather miss the point. The society doesn't want Exxon to 'stop funding scientific research'. They want Exxon to stop funding groups which have 'misrepresented the science of climate change by outright denial of the evidence"

Which isn't the same thing at all. But then, I suppose this goes back to the conspiracy thing, and I should have known better.

 

See I think it is the same thing. This Society claims they are right and the people who disagree with them are "misrepresenting the science by denying the evidence." Another interpretation (and the way I look at it) is that these other groups look at the same evidence (or other evidence) and have come up with a different conclusion which the society doesn't like. This isn't like addition in which 2+3=5, this is using very complicated computer models and data from many souces and the more you read about this issue the more you come to realize that there have been problems with all of the computer models and a lot of the data is in question.

 

This is a pretty big Necro and I'm sure most of the people I used to spar about concerning this are long gone from this board, but every once in a while I like to come back and remind everyone about the imminent danger

 

You realize you are about a year and a half late on this meme, and that it has already been debunked, right? Gore has had occasion to overstate the case for global warming, but he never said that. When accusing Gore of being a shrill alarmist who plays fast and loose with the facts, you should at least cite your ****ing sources.

 

What "that"?

Haven't gone through the thread and won't have to time today. I noticed the first comment was about Greenland.

As it is Greenland still has ice but more of it has been melting during annual melting periods than in prior years.

http://nsidc.org/greenland-today/

"Comparing the seasonal progression of the four most recent years, the recent tendency for greater-than-average melt extent is apparent, as are the rapid variations in melt extent mid-year. The melt season of 2014 had a series of moderately extensive melt events early on, but did not undergo the expansive areas of surface melt on the high parts of the ice sheet as in 2012.

Relative to the 35 years of continuous satellite measurements, 2014 is tied with 2006 for seventh highest, and is well above the 1981 to 2010 average. Melt area total (the sum of daily melt extents for the entire June through August period) was approximately 100,000 square kilometers (38,600 square miles) above the 1981 to 2010 average. The top eight melt extent years have all occurred since 2002."

Greenland still has ice, but less than average.

 

And the point of all of this is ... What? It's not like you can point at Greenland and say "look - it still has ice" and thus conclude the "myth" of global warming has been thoroughly busted.

I also got a kick out of a congressman a couple of weeks ago who walked on to the floor of congress with a snowball to "prove" global warming wasn't happening. As if a cold snap can disprove GW any more than a heat wave can prove it

 

I have an icemaker ... ice ... get it ICE ... right in my own kitchen! NFW there's any global warming if I can make ice in my kitchen!

The climate is always changing ... it's either warming or cooling (I guess for brief times in history it was on a plateau or in a valley and not changing much). Warming could be caused by natural cycles -- I don't believe that has been examined or even if it can be quantified. But ultimately if we're the load or the final straw does it really matter?

Forty years ago the US embarked on a journey to save the ozone -- and it worked. I think the same effort into climate change would be beneficial.