Part 1 Temperature

Temperature Kanook When we discuss temperature, we always compare it to a standard, whether that standard is our comfort or the environment we reside in, there always needs to be a comparative reference.

Today temperature often migrates into normal

conversation, whether it is at dinner time or in school I would imagine that somewhere someplace someone is debating the effects of differences felt somewhere close to them. I know you read or watch the news, and you can bet that publishers and producers will find a way to let it drift into their reporting. Especially since “global warming” has become a topic to most all of us…I would like to explore this thing called “temperature” and examine how it has affected this Blue Marble we use as our spaceship through the heavens. Keep in mind I am no scientist nor am I a climatologist, just a curious person assembling a series of notes and jotting down some observations and stealing some stuff from the web, and unfortunately for those who read my notes, (if you do) from time to time you will be subjected to my ramblings. Most records from the ancient past, and I don’t mean 1945 (how young adults and children view my silver hair) but dropping back lets say 1,000,000 years or more, a time span that is hard to imagine, but becoming less difficult as the number of millionaires spring up across the globe --- the number 1,000,000 seems to have shrunk a bit… a million years is a long time, no matter the methods used to slice and dice it. If you are 50 years old (or) so, that is 0.005% of 1 mil. Most of the talk these days is about how us 6 or so billion humans are overdoing our efforts to put CO2 into our atmosphere, an atmosphere that used to be made up of at least 80% of the gas many millions of year ago, and that around 3500 million years ago this CO2 level dropped to about 20%, this they say matches the time frame when “bacteria” came to life. When “photosynthesis” finally came around about 2700 million years ago the CO2 level was about 15% and during the next few years, 700 million years, plant life and its process of photosynthesis dropped this level to about 8%. Now in this time frame, Oxygen (“O2”) was beginning to show up and begins its accumulation, they call this “free accumulation”. At about 600 million years ago the CO2 level was approaching 1% and O2 levels had reached about 15%. 600

Temperature – April,2007 – JLB Page 1

million

years

ago

“corresponds” to the end of the “Precambrian” age and the beginning of the “Cambrian” age, or as they say the end of the “cryptozoic”

and

the

beginning

of

the

“Phanerozic”,

or

the

beginning of the oxygenbreathing

life

on

this

planet. Now the bit I don’t understand. During the Precambrian period we had 15% CO2 and according to some “experts” volcanoes, earthquakes and just all kinds of activity on the face of the globe – and oceans of water.

According to the

“scientists” today if we increase our CO2 levels to where we upset the balance of our present atmosphere (which contains about .04% CO 2 we’re going to heat up so much, we’ll practically melt in our boots. And on the other hand they tell me that during this Precambrian period the earth was pretty much covered with ice, now understand that during this time the continents had not been formed yet as we just had one super-continent called “Rodinia” [Pangaea], and as far as I can tell Henry Ford had not invented the Model “T” as of yet. Next they tell me that

after

the

Precambrian period the earth warmed up as the CO2 was going away (took a vacation) and the O2 levels begin to rise. warmed

I

mean

it

up

it

–

went from 0º C [32º

Temperature – April,2007 – JLB Page 2

F] (ice forms) to 22º C [71.6º F] – this they say happened as the “Proterozoic” age drew to a close and by the dawn of the Cambrian/Phanerozic age 100’s of million years of ice was replaced with “balmy tropical seas” of the Cambrian Period within life just exploded at a rate never seen before or “after”. You see what I’m having a problem with, lots of CO2 – lots of ice, a reduction in CO2 we get Hawaii 24-hours a day and 365 days a year –

supposedly

as

I

understand it, the build up of CO2 will act as a reflector and

the

planet

will

not

receive to much heat from the sun – I understand the cooling, but the boys with the brains are now telling me we’re going to trap the natural

heat

from

the

planet by dumping at least another .01% of CO2 in the air that we breath – and boy oh boy are we going to get hot or what? Where did that natural heat go then, or was there any?

Or did

we have no natural glow, until something happened that crust

caused to

the

earth’s fracture

(continents starting wandering about) and then all went to heck in a hand-basket? I read the other day that they have calculated the internal core temperature of this planent at something like 3700 ºC, now that is hot [6,692 ºF]. It is said that the Earth’s climate varied during the next 140 million years or so, whereas it went from large-scale continental glaciation to where there was no ice even at the poles and that this “could” have been caused by our spaceship going

Temperature – April,2007 – JLB Page 3

in and out of “galactic spiral arms”, where some were fairly clean sweeps through an arm, to one where there was plenty of “dust” in space that blocked the ray from our Sun 93 million miles (92.55 mil) away. They state that the difference between a fully glaciated Earth to where it is almost ice-free is about 10º C [18 ºF] and that key requirement was also all the land mass had to be around the poles, whereas the continents were drifting very freely and the plate tectonics was so active that you had a group of “Keystone Cops” running around to direct traffic. They

do

say

that

it

wasn’t

only

the

continental drift that caused the ice build up, as how do we explain the tropical plants we have found evidence of in Antarctica? Now we get into the debate of the effect of CO2 in that they do maintain that the changes in the atmosphere must have had something to do with the changes in climate, although some say that the magic of CO2 is not related to the long-time scales of temperature change, in other words they completely removed it from their equations – where they maintain there were some massive changes in temperature when there was more CO2 in the atmosphere and say that the continental shift and the build up of mountains had more to do with the changing climate. Others argue this (and throw it away) maintaining the CO2 influence has been underestimated – however most scientists cover their you know what, by saying that the pre-industrial CO2 level at 280 ppm (parts per million) is not far from the lowest ever occurring since life appeared on the Blue Marble.

Temperature – April,2007 – JLB Page 4

Riding on the bus with these long term climate changes between hot and cold have been many short-term changes, some similar to the long-term, and in some cases even more “severe”. Some go so far as to blame these “short-term” fluctuations, such as the “Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum”, to a rapid increase of CO 2 by a collapse of a natural methane reservoir in one of the oceans. There have been some “severe” climate changes note in the “CretaceousTertiary”, “Permian-Triassic” and the “Ordovician-Silurian” extinctions events, however some say it is “unclear” to what degree these changes caused life to die out, or if they were responding to other processes. You

know,

what

about

an

extra-

terrestrial object of sufficient size slamming into the Earth and blowing its atmosphere asunder, in any of these time-frames, that would do, wouldn’t you believe?…Here we are

spinning through the cosmos’s

at

approximately 260,000 mph and another object, lets say about 50 miles in diameter meets us traveling at about 26,500 mph – would kind of shake this place up – don’t you think? Blow away the shield of our atmosphere, spew tons of dust in the air and bingo instant cold… but wait what about the heat from the spewing volcanoes which would erupt along the tectonic plates – more CO2 mixed with dust, well you’ve heard it before, we’d have a nuclear winter on our hands. Now they are saying it’s going to get hotter than heck and we’ll suffer many years of no rain and unbearable heat. Taking a few more minutes of your time and looking at the possibility of large ET impacts on the this planet – recent reports from Ohio State University state they have located an impact crater in Antarctica that is 300 miles in diameter (250 million +/- years ago) that could have had something to do with a world wide Permian-Triassic extinction event. Maybe-? Temps were affected also and it is noted that CO2 levels were on the rise when this object slammed into earth. And we are all aware of the theory that

the

impact

on

the

“Yucatan

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Peninsula” (Chicxulub) on or about 65 million years ago is blamed for the end of the dinosaur age, this crater has been measured at about 112 miles in diameter, compare that to the one found in Antarctica at 300 miles in diameter. It seems there were a number of impacts during the same time frame (65 million years ago (+/-), where they have found evidence of a fairly large impact in the Ukraine and another in the North Sea between Great Britain and Denmark, respectively they are sized at 15 miles in diameter to 400 feet in diameter, albeit they are smaller they must have caused some changes in something? Another impact occurred in Chesapeake Bay about 35.5 million years ago, which corresponds to another extinction event. Many scientists and experts today have disassociated any temperature changes from such events. But in using their cause and effect of increased CO2 in our atmosphere do you not think that these impacts must have ejected mass amounts of CO2, referring back to scientific statements

that

volcanoes

and

earthquakes eject massive amounts of CO2, and fossil plants thawing out above the Artic Circle as it gets warmer, and putting massive amounts of methane in the air. The controversy in the news today deals mainly with the rise of temperature over the past 200 or so years, and not millions of years ago – after all, other than the Ice Core obtained during the last 10-years ago give us information going back 200,000 years ago (+/-) so we depend on

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