Re: OT Gas Prices and the Blame Game

On 27 mei, 20:48, Richard The Dreaded Libertarian <n...@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
On Sat, 24 May 2008 18:45:11 -0700, bill.sloman wrote:
A couple of mass extinctions seem to have been caused by runaway
global warming.

Except for the dinosaurs, which everybody pretty much concurs was caused
by global cooling. (Remember "nuclear winter"?)

First the asteroid impact, then the global cooling. For details, check
out Tony Hallam's "Catastrophes and Lesser Calamities: The Causes of
Mass Extinctions" ISBN-10: 0198524978 ISBN-13: 978-0198524977

Mother Nature doesn't have just one way of wiping out all the big,
slow-breeding animals (like us).

And imagine what - Mother Earth seems to have recovered nicely; imagine
your surprise!

It only takes about ten million years, and evolution has replaced the
dinosaurs with mammals who have evolved to occupy much the same
ecological niches.

Getting extinct isn't much fun, even if you've managed organise your
own extinction event, rather than waiting for Mother Nature to come up
with one on her own.

Please explain the mechanism for this alleged "runaway global warming".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane_clathrate

It gets warm. Methane hydrates (also called methane clathrates) are
stable below 0C in arctic tundras, and up to about 2C about 300 metres
below sea level on the continental shelf. When the local temperature
gets high enough, the clathrate comes apart, releasing methane into
the atmosphere. Methane is a substantially more potent greenhouse gas
than carbon dioxide so the weather gets warmer, decomposing some more
methane hydrates. The process run away until all the methane hydrates
around have released all their methane. There can be lot of methane
tied up in these clathrates - in the geological past there was enough
create the Permian-Triassic extinction event, and the Paleocene-Eocene
Thermal Maximum.

The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum was only an extinction event for
oceanic species, but land animals diversified rapidly during this
period, which suggests a substantial change in the environment which
presumably destroyed or displaced a number of ecological niches and
presumably created a few new ones. It wouldn't have been much fun to
live through.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene-Eocene_Thermal_Maximum

And please include the effects of clouds/albedo in your model, if you can.

No need. If higher temperatures produced more cloud, they obviously
didn't produce enough extra cloud cover to stop the run-away at the
end of the Permian or the end of the Paleocene.

We could be luckier, but do you want to bet the planet on it?

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen
.

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