FAQ: New Energy Act gets green light

TalkBack 16 of 30:

Next »

« Previous

• Thread View
• Flat View

Cycles and

Yes, there are natural cycles, long, short, overlapping ... And, yes, warming of the oceans will cause increases in CO2 in the atmosphere . But in all the cycles previous to, say, 5000 or so years ago, these natural cycles were all there was (except for the occasional astronomical catastrophe). What carbon was underground, stayed underground, barring tectonic plate buckling and glacier scraping. As far as we know, the dinosaurs did not drill for oil or mine coal.

But now, Man is on the scene, and we're transferring that buried carbon back out into the atmosphere as CO2 and it is the first time *ever* that these hundreds-of-millions (coal) or billions of years old (oil) deposits have been recycled. The potential maximum level of CO2 in the atmosphere rises with every barrel of oil or shovel of coal we collect, especially since that's where most of it goes directly. If we were still in the "Little Ice Age" of 500-1000 years ago or the big ones before that, a little extra heat wouldn't be so bad. But now we're adding this extra CO2 load to an already increasing CO2 load from a natural cyclic ocean warming, and the positive feedback loop just gets accelerated (self-catalytic is another term appropriate here).

It does remain to be seen if whatever natural forces which have caused reversal of the warming in the past can still do it, but I'd be a lot more comfortable if we could take ourselves back out of the equation, or at least had the intestinal fortitude to minimize our disruptive impact.

Posted by: cd2_z   Posted on: 12/20/07 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

Alert moderator to an offensive message

Subscribe to this discussion via Email or RSS

SponsoredWhite Papers, Webcasts, and Downloads

• Reducing Server Total Cost of Ownership with VMware Virtualization Software VMware VMware virtualization enables customers to reduce their server TCO and ... Download Now
• Virtualization: Architectural Considerations And Other Evaluation Criteria VMware Of the many approaches to x86 systems virtualization available in the ... Download Now
• Three Steps You Need to Know to Stop Data Loss Varonis Sensitive data exposed to misuse or loss... it is the stuff of nightmares ... Download Now