Global Climate Status Report

[babe]

If you haven’t looked into what’s happening on the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, then sober up and do some research. Startling. We’re barreling toward 4 degrees of warming.

I haven't. I believe the Russians are using the Arctic sea for commercial shipping already, but I'll check it out. The Arctic sea ice has never been all that thick, nothing like the Antarctic where besides the latitude there is substantial elevation. We are near the usual, so far as estimates of interglacial warm maximum temps seem to be for past cycles. I think the interglacial warm periods are part of a cycle that is self-limiting. We no longer have anything near the CO2 levels that in past geologic ages kept the poles warm enough to be cold rain forests. At .04 % yp 0.10 % CO2 we will still be locked in the Ice Age cycles. Look at the oceanic thermoclines. When the icepack is gone and the supply of fresh 4C water "dries up", the warm period comes to a quick end because of the rapid onset of polar precipitation, which with warm oceans to supply the precipitation will rapidly restore the ice shelves and close the polar sea once again.

It is believed by many that the fresh water from Arctic icemelt and the many rivers that flow into the Arctic sea, with the relatively restdricted mixing channels of the Bering and North Sea, drives our El Nino/La Nina weather patterns. The vertical saline mixing currents determine surface sea temps. But with deep sea warming we will have profound climate change. You know, a new ice age. It's counter-intuitive, but the fact is Ice Age onset needs warm oceans to supply the polar snowfall. Cold Oceans mean Arctic and Antarctic "desert" climates which just don't get enough winter snowfall to keep up with summer melting.

 

[babe]

By that definition, I'm far too cynical to be a progressive hack. I don't believe in a better future (outside of technological advancements). We don't know enough about the future to plan for anything. All we can do is address the evils of today.



This is true. However, the only way to have to make things better it to try things, see what works today, and abandon the rest.



That's my opinion, as well. No wonder we disagree so amiably, most of the time.

If you haven’t looked into what’s happening on the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, then sober up and do some research. Startling. We’re barreling toward 4 degrees of warming.

What I see in the Google-Approved fare is some stuff about methane in the Arctic ice. I've seen articles about that in the past. At cold temperatures, methane will actually form a distinct crystalline structure with associated water molecules..... hydrogen bonding to the oxygen atom in the water molecule. Scientists are measuring and calculating how much methane there is in that area which is being or will be released into the atmosphere.

The Arctic Sea is a former rain forest area in the geologic epochs of carboniferous ages before we had polar ice. Continent have in geologic time experience changes in elevation that practically mean some sea areas we have now were once above sea level. Here in Utah we have two great geologic areas, east and west of the deep fault feature that runs from the Sea of Cortex between Baja California all the way up into Canada somewhere, which have alternately risen and fallen in manner that has left vast salt deposits from sea water repeatedly trapped inland and left to evaporate in desert climate.

Under the vast Siberian and North American permafrost zones, a lot of organic matter is decomposing, releasing methane, which is entrapped under ice and even stored in large quantities of clathrate type crystals. Good if we could utilize it instead of just let it go into the atmosphere.... but pretty impossible in terms of quantity and extent.

CH4 decomposes in sunlight and oxygen atmospheres, with a believed chemical mechanism that puts OH- ions in the seat as rate limiting. OH- is generated from water in the air by uv light reactions. The net result is we have methane being our second in importance greenhouse gas, and part of various cycles which affect our atmospheric temp and composition.

The issue is a lot bigger than just surface ice melting.....

 

[babe]

So I've been looking for information about the deep blue sea and how it plays a major role in our climate, including climate cycles and such.

I think the "Science" community is missing the point. The sea is the gorilla in the room everyone is ignoring.

As a "heat sink" or a modulator of atmospheric conditions.

 

[babe]

My angle of attack on the subject of the sea is the question of oceanic thermocline cycles or changes. The surface sea temp is generally, for a few feet..... pretty close to air temp, relatively speaking..... but the temp drops rapidly to around 4C, with most of the ocean volume near that temp. The source of 4C water is polar ice melt. The 4C water is the maximum density water, so it tends to sink or flow along the sea floor and build up or pool there..... but it is now most of the ocean water.

I question how this can be. The Ocean is 71% of planet Earth's surface. It absorbs and holds heat radiated from the Sun. Well, most of the heat goes towards evaporation and generation of storms, and precipitation. It is the source of most continental rainfall. So the Sun's radiation drives all that physical transport of water.

If the surface temp in the tropics gets to 28C to 30C, it is considered "favorable" for hurricane/typhoon development. Those tropical storms are heat transfer engines that convert tropical ocean heat to wind and preceipitation that eventually moves towards subtropical lattitudes. So considering.... there is a temperature "tipping point" in our climate where, if the ocean temps go higher, we get exponential returns on precipitation or storm events. The SST is actually in effect a system of moderating changes in the energy balance that affects our climate.

But it is affected not only by our Sun but by the huge deep sea it is in contact with.

To be clear, this is a system that is large in relation to atmospheric temperature and composition, large in comparison with our fossil fuel budget or atmospheric heat balance. I think it is what we really need to understand first.

 

[babe]

Looking at deep well borehole temps, some scientists report warmer temps generally observed with changing depth. The situation is variable with some geologic areas that are underlain with near-surface features of hot rock or plumes. The area of the Western US and Canada has experienced a geologic uplift in geologic time scare in the past. The Great Basin domain is now subsiding as the liquid hot rock is generally retreating back towards the subduction zone of the Pacific Coast. What that means is that we are "rich" in geothermal terms, with vast economic potiential for geothermal electric generation plants, based on pumping water into the hot rock a few thousand feet down, or less, and generating steam to drive electric turbines. So there is some effort to drill holes and look for convenient geothermal plant locations.....

But our area is not a good place to look if we want to get data on thermal flux from the core. We are a "hot spot". The Antarctic is a "hot spot". The Pacific Northwest and virtually the entire Pacific offshore is "hot" relative to the average.

The average thermal flux from our core, worldwide, is thought to be about 1 degree F per 100 ft. in depth towards our core. The Earth's surface temp on average, with a disproportional amount of low-lattitude surface, about 12 C. The core reaches about 6000C. The heat coming to the surface is going mostly into the 4C deep ocean water. If there were no ice melt, the temp would rise....

It is my theory that when the polar ice melts, the deep blue sea will warm up. When the deep blue sea starts to warm up, the SST will rise much faster than any amount of atmospheric CO2 will cause due to "global warming" caused by human fossil fuel use.

So the loss of polar ice or glacial ice at polar lattitudes will be a "tipping point". Imo, that "tipping point" will mean the onset of a new Ice Age due to increased polar precipitation.

So, the whole thing amounts to a most significant cycle that is orders of magnitude more important than human fossil fuel use....

 

[babe]

At the average oceanic depth of say 6000 ft, the heat-flux earth temp would be say 60 degrees F warmer than sea level surfaces which average say 60F already. 60 plus 60 is 120 F. Like Death Valley on a hot day. Of course there is a zone of equilibrium with the 4C water, but the logic here insists that there is a much higher flow of heat into the ocean bottoms than comes to us at sea level surfaces. This heat flow must be more than balanced by supplies of melting ice year after year.

Pretty sure the scientists of today, aggravating about the immediate doom and gloom, have not understood this. We have a dominant climate cycle. The cycle gives us a relatively brief "warm" interglacial epoch one every hundred thousand years or so. If we burn everything we have, we might extend our "warm" cycle a few years, with the result of having a more powerful cold epoch following.

We don't really have much fuel to burn. The real answer is to develop an economy that does not depend on fossil fuel. More local manufacture rather than world trade. People making local decisions rather than globalists jetting around bossing the rubes. Economies of scale in production are a sort of addiction we have to get off from.

The real reason we should not subject ourselves to global governance is that we are just stupid, really. But at least we could be stupid on a smaller scale, and we'd be a lot happier, and much better off.

 

[babe]

So, in view of our important fossil fuel reserves being actually irreplaceable, we should not just burn them up. It would be better if we went to geothermal electric generation where ever we can do so economically. I'd say that is the premier investment opportunity.

Solar generation requires too much disturbance of critical environmental areas. yah.... OK on rooftops where the surface is ruined anyways.... but even there, If we build our houses with rooftop gardens it would be better. cooler in summer, warmer in winter.... all that. Still, the raw resources will mean costs will continue to decline for 20 years or more, and the real issue is whether we want land surface glassed over frying our migratory birds and starving our desert turtles and lizards. For me, that's a HELL NO.

nuclear.... fission like U or Th.... can be done safely but with initial design and construction costs that are not competitive on a short term economic decision. You have to accept a 40 year investment to do it, but you will get a hundred year return.

LENR, which is a real thing, has potential over a thousand times greater than anything else we know about. The deep blue sea is thought to have elevated content of Deuterium in the water there. Heavy water sinks.....D2O is going to collect there.

But even surface values for Deuterium in water is comparatively off the charts in potential energy we could use for electric generation, and we can build plants anywhere there is water, with practically no transportation issues. Generate deuterium onsite with every plant we build for electric generation.

At the present time, we have not come near any practical way to exploit LENRs. In a sense, this has the same scale of difficulty as building a hot fusion reactor. At the present time, the science is looking at plasma contained by say magnetic forces and such since it's just too hot it'll melt any container, and drawing out the excess heat generated to run steam turbines all the same. So in practical terms, it looks to me like LENR will have to move towards the hot fusion technology to become :"practical".

Looking at the Nature report I linked above, described core reactor involved iron/deuterium under pressure and heat of core conditions. The fact in nature of many metals being capable of incorporating large volumes of hydrogen gas.... deuterium gas if you do the work to concentrate that isotope of hydrogen.... means there is an immense field of possibility here. The "crystals" of metal which can be formed under enough pressure, even at high temps, provides a matrix for the fusion. A sort of catalyst structure....

Well, folks, go on with your fear-mongering. I have a new business.

 

[babe]

It's not just Greenland melting this year. Look at the news from Alaska....

https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/Baked-Alaska-State-Endures-Warmest-Month-Record?cm_ven=cat6-widget

 

[babe]

So, the El Nino died down already, well as usual. We have a sort of "Four Corners High" that gave us a mudslide near Salt Lake City..... but it is more of "Panhandle High" centered in north Texas this year. Still it is pumping some Gulf moisture up towards Utah. The East Pacific has had a lot tropical storms, but they have all gone out by Hawaii before moving north. Still we have had some rain come all the way here from them.

Overall, the SST reports still show above average temps on the broad scale.

 

[Heathme]

So dumb...

Wouldn't eating less meat mean more cows, which means more cow farts??

 

[babe]

So dumb...

Wouldn't eating less meat mean more cows, which means more cow farts??

Actually, it's even dumber than that.

If grass dries or rots, it's emitting methane and other greenhouse gases that are more powerful in their effects than CO2. Within a year or two, the grass is mostly gone. A little humus remains in the soil.

When cows eat grass, they respire and emit CO2, mostly. Yes, some farts. A lot of Carbon is incorporated into tissues as carbohydrate, and the turnover rate is longer, two or three years. The cow is then slaughtered and frozen, eventually butchered or processed. It's a long net cycle.

It means the more cows we have, the less greenhouse gases. Really.

Cows may be termed Trees on the Hoof. Biomass in general, of every kind, is like that. Increasing the earth's biomass counters combustion. Increases in plant growth, in net photosynthesis, counters combustion.

 

[babe]

So, I've been going over recent reports on SSTs and such. oh the warmists are out in all our agencies this year. The oceans are alimost 1 degree warmer than 140 years ago, world wide.

I started this thread with the notion that maybe there is another reason Oceans may be getting warmer, rather than just storage of sun radiation.... looking for information on trends or changes in temp data taken from deep wells.... trying to see if there is a trend....

I've been looking for information on heat flux from within the earth.

some great stuff about "hot spots" and regions with higher thermal flux associated with plate tectonics.

today I found some new---to me--- information on our oceanic thermoclines studied along with "haloclines" and mixing currents. The idea there is that our models are messed up because we don't have data on the deep oceans, and there is evidence for decadal cycles in mixing currents.... where surface heat is carried to the deeps and SSTs "inexplicably" decline even in the face of higher solar cycles.

stuff supports my general resistance to enthusiastic fear mongering. There are big issues we know little about. Not time yet to give our destiny to Al Gore and his corrupt cronies.... who will likely prove as morally despicable as any of our political honchos.

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