Very Bad News: Southern Ocean Saturated With CO2

Very Bad News: Southern Ocean Saturated With CO2

www.cnn.com

The Southern Ocean around Antarctica is so loaded with carbon dioxide that it can barely absorb any more, so more of the gas will stay in the atmosphere to warm up the planet, scientists reported Thursday.

Human activity is the main culprit, said researcher Corinne Le Quere, who called the finding very alarming. The phenomenon wasn't expected to be apparent for decades, Le Quere said in a telephone interview from the University of East Anglia in Britain.

(visit the link for the full news article)



[edit on 17-5-2007 by lombozo]

[edit on 17-5-2007 by UM_Gazz]

This is very alarming. They're finding things like this 50 years earlier than they thought. Things like this are the beginning to a quickly growing snowball.

If you watch a pond for 50 days. Every day an algae bloom doubles in size slowly covering the pond. On the 50th day the pond is completely covered. When is the pond only halfway covered?

On the 49th day.

This really is very bad news.

www.cnn.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Yes exponential growth is alarming but so is exponential decline too. I doubt that CO2 grows exponentially although the rate of increase is rapid all the same.

Since that little group which owns the oil industry is so desperate to reap as many profits from their investment as possible I don't expect any major change soon to the oil biz.

But the timeline is short for the coming solar system changes anyways.

The Antarctic Ocean is not isolated from all oceans.

The intake of CO2 will be spread around the oceans by the "Global Conveyor Belt".

It is only natural for colder oceans to absorb and contain more CO2, because cold water absorbs CO2, meanwhile in warm waters this is what happens.

RELEASE OF CARBON DIOXIDE FROM THE EQUATORIAL PACIFIC OCEAN
INTENSIFIED DURING THE 1990S
.............................
“The results of our study show that the intensity of CO2 release from the western equatorial Pacific has increased during the past decade. By 2001, this reduced the global ocean uptake – about 2 billion tons of carbon a year – by about 2.5 percent, ” said Takahashi who directed the study that provides a clearer picture of the importance of PDO events on the Earth’s carbon cycle. “This is on top of the CO2 emission and absorption fluctuations seen between El Niño and La Niña years, which occur on shorter timescales.”

www.publicaffairs.noaa.gov...

Another little fact which is not being presented in that article is that even if CO2 levels were to double the present level, the increase in temperature would only be 0.014C.

Water vapor has more than twice the heat trapping capacity than CO2, and it is more abundant. During warming cycles natural occurring GHGs which include H2Ov (water vapor) Carbon Dioxide, and Methane increase in the atmosphere.

Yes, mankind is also releasing CO2, but even in the last 150-200 years CO2 levels only increased 0.01% of total gases in the atmosphere, while water vapor also increase yet it is not being blamed for Global Warming.

The current warming cycle began in the early 1600s for most of the world, and in some parts of the world it started in the early 1500s, CO2 levels did not start increasing until at least the 1860s, and some estimates put it closer to the 20th century.

It is only obvious the current warming was not caused by CO2, CO2 always lags temperature increases. Meaning the increase of CO2 levels has always been an effect of Global Warming as the Geological record has shown.

[edit on 17-5-2007 by Muaddib]

So all you ``global-warming is man-made`` crowd. you're surely for cutting all trees, they are producing CO2! Or kill 90% of the population, they produce CO2! Please do some science and understand that CO2 is good for earth and forests. Of course the earth is warming up, we're coming out of an ice age.

Stop BS, CO2 is NOT a pollutant.

Originally posted by Vitchilo
So all you ``global-warming is man-made`` crowd. you're surely for cutting all trees, they are producing CO2! Or kill 90% of the population, they produce CO2! Please do some science and understand that CO2 is good for earth and forests. Of course the earth is warming up, we're coming out of an ice age.

Actually trees remove Carbon Dioxide from the atmosphere and replace it with oxygen. So it would help if we stopped cutting down trees.

[edit on 5/17/2007 by Alien42]

Actually trees remove Carbon Dioxide from the atmosphere and replace it with oxygen.

I know. But some scientists are saying the contrary and people are buying it.

Here it is

And trees are not the thing that produce the most oxygen, it's the oceans.

[edit on 17-5-2007 by Vitchilo]

When I read the information on this subject and the posts it can be really frustrating. I am no scientist so I usually have to take people at their word on this subject. But it always seems that there are people "for" the information and people "against" the information. I am going to try and educate myself on this topic but who the hell is right? Is this a big deal or not?

Originally posted by Alien42
Actually trees remove Carbon Dioxide from the atmosphere and replace it with oxygen. So it would help if we stopped cutting down trees.

[edit on 5/17/2007 by Alien42]

This is one of the reason why so many people are ignorant about this topic.

Trees take CO2 during the day and release oxygen, but at night they take in oxygen and release CO2.

one of the reasons why it is recommended that you don't have a forest in your closed room at night...

Originally posted by Moserious
When I read the information on this subject and the posts it can be really frustrating. I am no scientist so I usually have to take people at their word on this subject. But it always seems that there are people "for" the information and people "against" the information. I am going to try and educate myself on this topic but who the hell is right? Is this a big deal or not?

Not really, the Earth has had 4,000 to 4,400 ppm CO2 level, right now it is at 380 ppm, during the entire Ordovician period and temperatures were very similar to the present.

The Earth even had 7,000 ppm at one time, and the Earth did not have "runaway global warming".

There have been only a few times when the Earth has been CO2 "deprived", and this time is one of them.

For most of the Earth's existance CO2 levels have been much higher than now and life thrived.

Climate Change will continue to happen, but anthropogenic CO2, neither natural CO2 are the main cause of the current warming.

Experiments have shown that a doubling of CO2 levels in the Earth's atmosphere will only increase temperatures by 0.014C

A change in albedo will alter the absorption and
re¯ection solar radiation. A modifed albedo can result
from all of the factors investigated, although it is obvious
that the 2 x CO2 radiation impact would be minimal as
it is addressed in this study.
..........
The contribution to maximum temperature is small for
2 X CO2 radiation, with a mean of 0.014 °C, while the
2 X CO2 biology indicates a relatively large cooling
contribution of 0.747 °C.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Sorry folks....you have been "punked" by the "let's blame mankind' crowd"...

You know what you should be worried about?...

The Sun is going active again with sunspots, a full year before it was supposed to do so....

RADIO-ACTIVE SUNSPOT: "After a long quiet spell, the sun is making noise again," reports Thomas Ashcraft of New Mexico. On Maqy 15th, using a 21 MHz ham rig, he recorded the roaring sounds of a Type III solar radio burst: listen.

A broadband radio telescope at the University of Florida Radio Observatory detected the same burst. The plot, below, shows how energy was spread across the shortwave spectrum:

David Thomas of Lynchburg, Virginia, recorded yet another outburst on May 15th using his RadioJove amateur radio telescope: data.

The source of all this activity is young sunspot 956. The sunspot emerged near the sun's eastern limb less than 48 hours ago and has been growing at breakneck speed every since. In addition to the radio bursts, the sunspot also produced a beautiful coronal mass ejection: movie.

www.spaceweather.com...

A month ago or two NASA and other scientists were claiming the next Solar Cycle would begin at the beginning of 2008, so the Sun is going beserk again sooner than it should be doing...

For years the sun has been doing just this, yet there are people who don't want to see the connection and keep trying to blame "mankind"...

Blaming "mankind" allows for a certain crowd of people to always make "regular citizens" feel guilty, hence being more open to "Global Taxes on CO2"...

Soon there will be some sort of announcement for more "Global Taxes to stop the evil of mankind from releasing more of the evil CO2".....

the majority of carbon dioxide is found in the deep oceans...so this isnt very surprising to hear.

Originally posted by steve22
the majority of carbon dioxide is found in the deep oceans...so this isnt very surprising to hear.

Of course, after all the oceans hold 98.5% of all CO2 that exists in the ocean-atmosphere...

But that's another little fact the "let's blame mankind" want to keep hidden so they can tax you and make you feel guilty for something no man has control over...

global warming is not that big of an issue. The Earth will range between two extremes, either hot or cold. The extremes will last close to 5,00 years per period of time, and a good 25-30 thousand year period between extremes . The last Ice Age was close to 10,000 years ago. Which means that we are just now 'recovering' from the last Ice Age. This means that the Earth is consequently heating up. What we do to the Earth has little effect on the temperature, really.

I'll post again on the ozone layer in a little bit after I get some dinner =).

-Aspen

Very interesting read.

So how do the sun spots affect us on Earth? Is this something that is going to make drastic changes here on Earth? I am aware this will affect our satellites, but what else?

They all worry about CO2 and making up looooong estimates for this and that... Let's wait for the methane lurking inside the permafrost to come up. Methane is a greenhouse gas 'only' 60 times worse than CO2.

All those 50-100 year projections suddenly change to 5-10 years.... or worse.

Originally posted by Alien42
Actually trees remove Carbon Dioxide from the atmosphere and replace it with oxygen. So it would help if we stopped cutting down trees.

[edit on 5/17/2007 by Alien42]

i second that !
We must stop with non sense,using paper like we do ain't good at all and could probably solve 70% of the global warming problem

I still don't understand the "lets not worry about global warming" argument. To be honest, I see no problem with trying to be more environmentally friendly. What do we have to lose? If we reduce our emissions and it doesnt do a thing to stop global warming, or even slow it down, we will still come out on top because of the reduced amount of pollutants that we are breathing and ingesting.

By killing our planet, we are only hurting ourselves. We can't live like this forever, so why not start being environmentally friendly right now?

Originally posted by Muaddib


But that's another little fact the "let's blame mankind" want to keep hidden so they can tax you and make you feel guilty for something no man has control over...

Mankind has no control over? Sure nature has change earth dramatically in the past, but you really think our industrialization of the planet has no effect?

You have to be totally delusional if you really believe that.

We need to not contribute to the problem, industrialization left unchecked will eventually make this earth uninhabitable for people. Add to that the effect of nature and you have problems.

Mankind has no control over? Sure nature has change earth dramatically in the past, but you really think our industrialization of the planet has no effect?

He was talking about global warming, not pollution. Pollution and many other aspects are FAR WORSE than global warming... still let's talk about global warming so we can have a world tax! Yay!

Originally posted by UnholyP
They all worry about CO2 and making up looooong estimates for this and that... Let's wait for the methane lurking inside the permafrost to come up. Methane is a greenhouse gas 'only' 60 times worse than CO2.

All those 50-100 year projections suddenly change to 5-10 years.... or worse.

No, it's only 23 times worse than CO2, averaged over 100 years. Though in 20 years it has a potential 63 times that of CO2.
Emissions of Methane

So we are producing more than nature is, but most of it is still counter acted by nature as well. The problem is, that as the earth warms, whether it be by nature or mankind, is that it is theorized that due to higher temperatures, the methane held deep in the sea in the form of Methane Clathrate may be released into the atmosphere. It is possible that this has happened before, in the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum.

If these large amounts of methane were to be released, rapid warming could occur as a result of this. The theory also states that;

this will greatly affect available oxygen content of the atmosphere

, and also that:

Experiments to assess how large a rise in deep sea temperature would be required to sublimate solid methane hydrate suggested that a rise of 5°C (10 F) would be sufficient.