The Earth’s climate has never stayed the same. When the dinosaurs roamed the Earth, there were no ice caps, the oceans around the Equator literally boiled, and the sea level was much higher than to day.
On the other extreme we have the ice ages. Lower temperatures, great ice caps and lower sea levels.
Increase in CO2 causes the Earth to warm, ice to melt and sea levels to rise (Increasing the ocean surface levels and volume. With more oceans, more CO2 is absorbed by the ocean and turned into calcium carbonate. The Earth cools, sea levels drop and less CO2 is absorbed. Could this be a cycle?
As you pointed out, ocean currents play a big factor in our climate. As the continents drift, they can cause a change in the ocean currents. Fortunately this is a slow process.
Anyway, the Earth’s climate is always changing. The problem is, we humans don’t like quick changes. And with established cities and growing populations, we don’t like to see the sea level rise.
How much change us humans are causing is the big question. We should, IMO, be as clean a species as possible and pollute as less as possible regardless of its impact on the environment. It is just the right thing to do.
The Earth can handle us, but can we handle the Earth. If we really want to stop climate changes, we could theoretically accomplish it by controlling the solar radiation reaching the Earth. This could be done in orbit, but we need a better understanding about how our climate works and we need more advance technology. We need to know things like if we cut the sunlight reaching a hurricane to rob it of its energy, how will that effect the climate. If it is a negative effect, can we compensate for it.
But such knowledge and technology could help serve us elsewhere. We could use it to help us terraform Venus and Mars.
In the meantime, we need to pollute as less as possible and keep studying the climate.
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re: Global warming - NATO freezes
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- Global warming - NATO freezes
- re: Global warming - NATO freezes
- Serious question: How do they tell what the past tempature of Earth was from an Ice Core?
- It is impossible to tell anything about the earth at all...
- re: Serious question: How do they tell what the past tempature of Earth was from an Ice Core?
- I still don't see why it's temperature dependent. (n/t)
- 'Heavy' water molecules will evaporate from the ocean at a different rate than light ones
- R.L. That makes sense; however, is that truely indicative of "global" tempatures or just "polar region" tempatures?
- A pretty good article at Wikipedia
- There are also small chemical differences in how differing isotopic water compositions react
- I knew that. I was just too dumb to think of it. (n/t)
- 'Heavy' water molecules will evaporate from the ocean at a different rate than light ones
- Thanks for the info.
- I still don't see why it's temperature dependent. (n/t)
- Conveyors
- "Even now, for some reason, modern temperature changes and warming seem to be mostly confined to the northern hemisphere."
- re: Global warming - NATO freezes
- re: Global warming - NATO freezes
- Chaos
- re: Global warming - NATO freezes
- re: Global warming - NATO freezes