[fifeboy]

Canadian_Mind wrote:

The climate of earth is effectively divided into bands of arable and non-arable land. The highest and lowest of course being the polar tundra's. Then you have boreal forest that turns into prairie and goes all the way to about the mid-USA, where it turns into dessert until you get to southern mexico. Then once again it's arable land all the way to the Equator and beyond. One more dessert, one more patch of arable land, then the southern arctic circle.

Course I could be wrong. Not an expert.

Tell me if I'm wrong, but (in the U.S.) if you go east from the Mojave Desert, far far east, you are in Mississippi (did I spell that right? ). Not exactly a desert environment. North of the Mojave are the cold deserts and east of them are Ontario and other non desert environments.

[Canadian_Mind]

fifeboy wrote:

Canadian_Mind wrote:

The climate of earth is effectively divided into bands of arable and non-arable land. The highest and lowest of course being the polar tundra's. Then you have boreal forest that turns into prairie and goes all the way to about the mid-USA, where it turns into dessert until you get to southern mexico. Then once again it's arable land all the way to the Equator and beyond. One more dessert, one more patch of arable land, then the southern arctic circle.

Course I could be wrong. Not an expert.

Tell me if I'm wrong, but (in the U.S.) if you go east from the Mojave Desert, far far east, you are in Mississippi (did I spell that right? ). Not exactly a desert environment. North of the Mojave are the cold deserts and east of them are Ontario and other non desert environments.

I was giving a general analogy. Of course it's a tad more complex then that. It's not like mother nature took a ruler and a sharpie and drew straight lines where the deserts weren't allowed to go past.

Here is pretty much what I was following:


Effectively, there are three green arid bands, and 4 dessert bands, 2 hot near the equator and 2 cold near the poles.

[ShepherdsDog]

Actually the Sahara would disappear, or at least shrink dramatically, if there is a warming trend. The currents, both wind and air, would cause precipitation to shift back onto the north African Coast. As for a lot of the other stuff I've seen posted here, I'm torn between labeling it


or

[Scape]

Canadian_Mind wrote:

Scape wrote:

Same people who put man on the moon. The scientists, thinkers and the political elites of society.

The same folks who are repeatedly demonstrating they are wishing to alter the data to support their theories? I don't have any faith in a scientist that makes up fact. It's fraudulent.

There are people who have issue with outcomes that do not favor their preconceived notions and there are also incompetents who do not follow the basic discipline for scientific theory however if you want to talk fraud then let's be frank is there an exception to the rule? Most science is good science and the proof is in the results otherwise we would not have atomic energy, electric cars or manned space flight. However, there is some delineation on what is established fact and what is unverified hearsay. If one quibbles as to what is cold hard fact and what is unverified hearsay then the problem may be there is no firm grip on what is scientific theory itself. Science is a discipline, you test and retest again and again until you can get the same results that you can then base more complex theories upon. Note your not proving without a shadow of a doubt that theory is sound under all possible scenarios but that you have tested that theory to the best of your ability with the means available to you.

Physicist Richard Feynman has a great way of explaining this:



So science by its very nature is in flux. There are no absolutes in science just probabilities. If I shoot you in the head with a shotgun your probably going to die but you could live and if you live does that mean that all shotguns are useless? In the same token there are frauds and people with agendas out there but the science that they are espousing upon is based upon hundreds of years of science and they are taking their contemporary theories and applying it to established science. Their conclusions may not be conclusive because there are just so many possible outcomes but to denounce it all as fraudulent is impractical.

Canadian_Mind wrote:

What would cause the entire atmosphere to change from something thats 79% nitrogen to mostly methane?

If the worst case scenario comes to pass and that which was in development of millions of years to bring us to this level of development then the atmosphere itself will revert to a pre-oxygen/nitrogen state.

Oxygenation of the earth’s atmosphere

Quote:

It is now generally accepted that the earth’s atmosphere first had free oxygen around 2300 million years (m.y.) ago (Kasting, 2001), and there is no doubt that this change in conditions changed the course of evolution. Prior to that time there might have been small pockets of free oxygen – just as there are localized oxygen-free environments now - but there was no widespread occurrence of oxygen - as the gas O2 - in the atmosphere.

Quote:

The crucial point to consider here is that the vast majority of the hydrogen on earth is tied up in water. Other hydrogen-bearing phases include free hydrogen (H2) methane (CH4) and ammonia (NH3) but methane is the only one of these that has ever been present at significant levels in our atmosphere. Water vapour concentrations decrease dramatically with altitude in the atmosphere because of the decreasing temperature. The upper troposphere (approximately 18 km up) has a temperature of around -60º C, and there is virtually no water above this altitude. Methane, on the other hand, is not “frozen out” by the low temperatures of the troposphere, and it can diffuse into the upper atmosphere. When methane molecules are broken apart at this altitude, the hydrogen can escape because the high velocity of the tiny hydrogen atoms can exceed the earth’s escape velocity.

Quote:

Before the methanogens got going there was not enough atmospheric methane for significant escape of hydrogen to space and, according to Catling et al., the potential for oxygenation of our atmosphere did not exist. Now that the atmosphere is oxygenated, methane cannot exist in significant amounts in the atmosphere (methane quickly breaks down in an oxygen-rich environment) so the rate of hydrogen escape has dropped back to a very low level.

The oxygen/nitrogen construct we have inherited was developed over eons. O2 is not something that is created naturally we have a huge process in place creating it and if it fails then methane (or some other heavier gas) will take its place.

[Canadian_Mind]

Scape wrote:

There are people who have issue with outcomes that do not favor their preconceived notions and there are also incompetents who do not follow the basic discipline for scientific theory however if you want to talk fraud then let's be frank is that the exception or the rule? Most science is good science and the proof is in the results otherwise we would not have atomic energy, electric cars or manned space flight so there is some delineation on what is established fact if one quibbles as to what is cold hard fact and what is unverified hearsay does not have a firm grip on what is scientific theory itself. Science is a discipline, you test and retest again and again until you can get the same results that you can then base more complex theories upon. Note your not proving without a shadow of a doubt that theory is sound under all possible scenarios but that you have tested that theory to the best of your ability with the means available to you.

Physicist Richard Feynman has a great way of explaining this:



So science by its very nature is in flux. There are no absolutes in science just probabilities. If I shoot you in the head with a shotgun your probably going to die but you could live and if you live does that mean that all shotguns are useless? In the same token there are frauds and people with agendas out there but the science that they are espousing upon is based upon hundreds of years of science and they are taking their contemporary theories and applying it to established science. Their conclusions may not be conclusive because there are just so many possible outcomes but to denounce it all as fraudulent is impractical.

The Global Warming/Climate change debate has become so politicalized that it seems like no one is in it for legitimate science anymore. Hence why I simply don't give a damn what all the models say at the moment. Until someone or some group develops an undeniable truth based on scientific data that isn't fraudulent, I'm not going to listen. I'm simply going to prepare for the consequences of what would happen if the worst were to come. And for the life of me I don't understand why everyone else doesn't have the same mindset. Man-made Global Warming and climate change have not been conclusively proven, so why waste billions of dollars trying to stop something we may not even be responsible for? Or, better yet, maybe it is our fault, but it wasn't carbon dioxides fault. Then we've simply wasted billions of dollars and many years of effort chasing a ghost while we completely forgot about the real problem.

Again, this is why we should be focusing on preparing for climate change until such time as we know conclusively exactly what is causing it, and if their is any economically sustainable means of stopping or slowing the change if the change is in fact, our fault.

Scape wrote:

If the worst case scenario comes to pass and that which was in development of millions of years to bring us to this level of development then the atmosphere itself will revert to a pre-oxygen/nitrogen state.

Oxygenation of the earth’s atmosphere

Quote:

It is now generally accepted that the earth’s atmosphere first had free oxygen around 2300 million years (m.y.) ago (Kasting, 2001), and there is no doubt that this change in conditions changed the course of evolution. Prior to that time there might have been small pockets of free oxygen – just as there are localized oxygen-free environments now - but there was no widespread occurrence of oxygen - as the gas O2 - in the atmosphere.

Quote:

The crucial point to consider here is that the vast majority of the hydrogen on earth is tied up in water. Other hydrogen-bearing phases include free hydrogen (H2) methane (CH4) and ammonia (NH3) but methane is the only one of these that has ever been present at significant levels in our atmosphere. Water vapour concentrations decrease dramatically with altitude in the atmosphere because of the decreasing temperature. The upper troposphere (approximately 18 km up) has a temperature of around -60º C, and there is virtually no water above this altitude. Methane, on the other hand, is not “frozen out” by the low temperatures of the troposphere, and it can diffuse into the upper atmosphere. When methane molecules are broken apart at this altitude, the hydrogen can escape because the high velocity of the tiny hydrogen atoms can exceed the earth’s escape velocity.

Quote:

Before the methanogens got going there was not enough atmospheric methane for significant escape of hydrogen to space and, according to Catling et al., the potential for oxygenation of our atmosphere did not exist. Now that the atmosphere is oxygenated, methane cannot exist in significant amounts in the atmosphere (methane quickly breaks down in an oxygen-rich environment) so the rate of hydrogen escape has dropped back to a very low level.

The oxygen/nitrogen setup we have inherited was developed over eons. O2 is not something that is created naturally we have a huge process in place creating it and if it fails then methane (a heavier gas) will take it's place.

Ok, so the worst case scenario the planet goes extinct, so we're fucked no matter what we do. Why not prepare for the worst survivable case (ie there is things we can do to help ourselves).

And further, oxygen is something that is created naturally. Damn near every living plant and plankton on the planet takes carbon dioxide (that horrible gas) and turns it into oxygen. And a miracle of nature at work; the more CO2 their is in the atmosphere, the more O2 the plants and plankton produce. It may seem like an overly complex system, but the concept of photosynthesis is one of the simplest chemical reactions out there, and it has been a very successful system for 2.3 billion years. No system has more built-in redundancy than the ecosystem. We will never run out of oxygen until every living piece of organic material has been wiped clean off this planet, so methane taking over the atmosphere is not an issue, it's a tin-foiler argument.

[Scape]

Plankton may create oxygen but the system that allowed plankton to exist in the 1st place was a construct that came into being over millions of years. Earth did not have an oxygen atmosphere during it's infancy. That construct itself is at risk here. If it fails then the fundamentals of our atmosphere itself are up for grabs and all bets are off. We may revert to some hybrid of an oxygen atmosphere but there are no guarantees. We could end up like Venus and never see the sun again.

[Scape]

Canadian_Mind wrote:

It may seem like an overly complex system, but the concept of photosynthesis is one of the simplest chemical reactions out there, and it has been a very successful system for 2.3 billion years. No system has more built-in redundancy than the ecosystem. We will never run out of oxygen until every living piece of organic material has been wiped clean off this planet, so methane taking over the atmosphere is not an issue, it's a tin-foiler argument.

Your putting the cart before the horse here. We did not get an oxygen atmosphere because of our ecosystem we got our ecosystem because oxygen was the only game in town and if you wanted to exist you had to work with it so of course everything evolved along that path.

If we take O2 out of the mix we die and so does most life on earth. We are not going to suddenly grow gills. We will make tools so we can extend our existence but we do not have the ability to terraform by design only by accident.

[Canadian_Mind]

The system that was constructed over millions of years has now existed for billions of years. It's survived everything from asteroid and comet strikes to massive super-volcanic eruptions, and everything else that risks us in outer space including the sun going haywire, inter-planetary collisions, the chance of our solar system getting all knocked out of whack by another nearby passing solar system, a black hole gobbling us all up, etc.

Statistically, with all the risks there are to us and our planet that are so much bigger than we are, we shouldn't exist. But we do. I have little worry about the atmosphere rapidly degrading into methane over the next 500 years. I'm more likely to be struck and killed by lightening at this very moment... hmm, I'm still alive, fancy that.

Stop fear mongering. Methane isn't an issue. And wont be for some time.

[Scape]

How many other planets are there in this solar system alone and how many of them have an atmosphere of O2 like ours?

None.

We are a fluke, we are at just the right orbit, with just the right amount of moons and just the right distance from the sun. Even that does not guarantee life or a breathable atmosphere. Why doesn't Mars have a breathable atmosphere? It's not that cold, there is water so why isn't there life?

Asteroids are sucked up by Jupiter/Saturn all the time that could have hit us. Our relatively small size has made it so that most asteroids do not hit us but some still do that are larger then the atmosphere can burn away. We have been lucky so far geologically speaking as far as major impacts are concerned but if we were to get hit by an ice rock that could end up shifting the fundamentals of our planet. Our oceans themselves are supposedly a result of being hit by once such asteroid early in Earths development. Imagine what would happen if that same event were to occur today, never mind the impact but if the asteroid wasn't made of water but of some other material? Such a large and sudden infusion on the ecosystem could end up eradicating it.

I'm not a fear monger here but look around, do you see any other Earth like planets out there? There are lot's of atmosphere out there but none like ours and we have to seriously think as to why that is.

[Canadian_Mind]

Scape wrote:

Your putting the cart before the horse here. We did not get an oxygen atmosphere because of our ecosystem we got our ecosystem because oxygen was the only game in town and if you wanted to exist you had to work with it so of course everything evolved along that path.

If we take O2 out of the mix we die and so does most life on earth. We are not going to suddenly grow gills. We will make tools so we can extend our existence but we do not have the ability to terraform by design only by accident.

As far as I recall, the first organisms were anaerobic, meaning they exist without oxygen and lived of of energy from sulphate & methane. Further, bacteria has been found to produce oxygen from methane. Probably came to be that way back when there was only methane in the atmosphere, and is a logical argument for the existence of oxygen. Therefore, it is you putting the cart before the horse. Do your research.

Further, do you even know the use of gills? They are used by fish and amphibians to collect oxygen from water. so if we run out of O2, growing gills aren't going to help.

And what cataclysmic event is going to cause the O2 to go away? The level of oxygen in our atmosphere has been rising since they started recording it in modern times.

[Canadian_Mind]

Scape wrote:

How many other planets are there in this solar system alone and how many of them have an atmosphere of O2 like ours?

None.

We are a fluke, we are at just the right orbit, with just the right amount of moons and just the right distance from the sun. Even that does not guarantee life or a breathable atmosphere. Why doesn't Mars have a breathable atmosphere? It's not that cold, there is water so why isn't there life?

Asteroids are sucked up by Jupiter/Saturn all the time that could have hit us. Our relatively small size has made it so that most asteroids do not hit us but some still do that are larger then the atmosphere can burn away. We have been lucky so far geologically speaking as far as major impacts are concerned but if we were to get hit by an ice rock that could end up shifting the fundamentals of our planet. Our oceans themselves are supposedly a result of being hit by once such asteroid early in Earths development. Imagine what would happen if that same event were to occur today, never mind the impact but if the asteroid wasn't made of water but of some other material? Such a large and sudden infusion on the ecosystem could end up eradicating it.

I'm not a fear monger here but look around, do you see any other Earth like planets out there? There are lot's of atmosphere out there but none like ours and we have to seriously think as to why that is.

I hope you're not about to throw the creation argument at me.

You are a fear mongerer. So far you've suggested that we are on the bring of losing all the O2 in the atmosphere and having it all replaced with methane, without backing it up at all.

[Scape]

All I am pointing out are some of the basics of the whole argument here. I am not drawing the conclusions myself just outlining them.

The Rise of Oxygen

Quote:

Oxygen has not always been as abundant as it is today. Most scientists believe that for half of Earth's 4.6-billion-year history, the atmosphere contained almost no oxygen.

An alternative explanation is that oxygen built up because there was a reduction in gases - hydrogen, for example - that react with and thus "soak up" oxygen. Pennsylvania State University atmospheric scientist Jim Kasting proposed a decade ago that Earth gained an oxygen-rich atmosphere because molecular hydrogen belched out by volcanoes diffused into space.

So an O2 rich atmosphere is not something that just happens, it is a construct. Something that happens over millions of years.

Early Earth and the Evolution of the Atmosphere

Quote:

1. Early Earth probably had an atmosphere dominated by carbon dioxide similar to the atmosphere of Venus today.
2. There are a group of one-celled organisms that can live in an oxygen free environment. These are the bacteria or prokaryotes. They do not have a nucleus and reproduce only by cell division. These creatures are the earliest evidence of life on earth. They were the first organisms to develop photosynthesis. Photosynthesis today is balanced by oxygen using respiration.
1. Hypothesis: Oxygen was nearly absent in the atmosphere of early Earth so photosynthesis would have created a net gain of oxygen first in the ocean and later in the atmosphere. Eventually with sufficient oxygen in the atmosphere respiration would have balanced photosynthesis except when burial removed the organic material from the oxygenated water or air. Before oxygen could build up in the atmosphere it must have oxidized reduced ions in seawater.

The system that created O2 is no longer here. The Earth's youth had far more volcanic activity and that has long since passed. It is now supported by the ecosystem but that ecosystem itself can no exist without O2. The fundamentals of climate change are not just a rise in temperature, what they are really concerned about is a shift in what has created the atmosphere itself.

The oceans are becoming more acidic at a faster rate than for 65 million years as a result of climate change, a report warns.

Satellite data indicate that carbon storage by plants is decreasing despite climate warming.


These articles here cite that the oceans have become acidic and that the lungs of the earth such as the Brazilian rain forests have been chopped down and when it warms they will burn becoming a carbon sink. These systems are the fundamentals that maintain the planets biosphere and if they were to fail then the creation of O2 itself would be in doubt and we would revert to a more primitive carbon atmosphere. However, we would be looking at a mass extinction event and as such methane would be the primary result of that so we may end up with a methane atmosphere instead as there will be no filter to stop and process it. Now the process will eventually revert as the methane will in turn rise and take the carbon with it but that will be a process that will take a very long time and we have no volcanic activity to restart the process and the O2 would be started in the oceans 1st, not in the atmosphere.

[fifeboy]

Canadian_Mind wrote:

Of course it's a tad more complex then that.

No Really We had no idea

Canadian_Mind wrote:

Here is pretty much what I was following:


Effectively, there are three green arid bands, and 4 dessert bands, 2 hot near the equator and 2 cold near the poles.

Ocean currents, mountain ranges,distance from the ocean and alien spaceships, where are these?