Probably a cooler version of Venus. (No lead lakes on Earth’s surface, but no oceans either. - just a very high pressure steam atmosphere. - Like trying to live inside a fired-up supper industrial boiler, which required steel walls a foot or two thick to avoid exploding.) No one knows, certainly I do not, but it may already be too late to avoid this fate. The stored methane in ocean floor hydrates and in the first few feet of the newly exposed artic shore lines is now being released in self accelerating process. Man may not now be the main cause* of global heating. - Perhaps man was “only the match” that lit that boiler's fire.Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! ------------------------------------ *This time the warming may not be self-limiting, as in the past, because in the past, even though the CO2 was sometimes higher, there was not the load of methane stored to be released. - It has been made by living organism, to a large extent and is being released too quickly for low temperature oxygenation. Methane is much more effective green-house gas than CO2, perhaps 40 CO2 molecules equal one of CH4. (No exact ratio exist as how high up they are, how dense they are, etc. change this ratio number. - The first few are more effective than the last as you can only absorbe 100% within their absorption bands.) Yes, Baron Max, if you are reading, it is time to at least get out, clean and test your suicide gun again. I guess it is too much to hope GWB is reading (assuming he can).Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
We may be lucky and only melt the Antarctic ice, flood NYC, etc but have the temperature rise saturate and begin to cool off again this cycle. No one knows. We also might get lucky and the "dark visitor" of my disguised physics book arrives from space just in time. (I think we can survive the rapid onset ice age that causes, but not the high pressure steam atmosphere.)
I think we should start sending monkeys off in spaceships so that life will carry on elsewhere in the universe...
True - I'm being provocative...apologies. You make a good point in that until e.g. Roman pollution of European Rivers, there was no real environmental damage but then even 9,000 years ago (in Britain) there were massive forest clearances for agriculture. But I guess one large volcano would cause the same damage.
I think I used the figure 11 times the CO[sub]2[/sub] GWP in my M.Sc. thesis. Have estimates really gone up that much now?!
Below is a link to what is supposed to be a leaked draft of an IPCC report do out in April. April (IPCC) report It doesn’t sound very promising.
I have seen all sorts of numbers. I think it is safe to say:"CH4 is at least an order of magnitude stronger absorber of Earthshine IR than CO2 is." Not hard to get a number by measuring the transmission thru thin slab of either at one atmosphere, but that is only part of of a very complex story as atmospheric residence time, (including oceanic absorption rate, much higher for CO2), various energy transfers, some catalitic of other reactions, etc. are important. - I do not know a great deal about this, but probably more than the average bloke posting here.Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Pffftt, global warming will mean nothing if the supervolcano under Yellowstone errupts. The volcanic winter should cool us down a few degrees Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! .
Humans will adapt, just like they have for a gazillion years. Global warming ain't gonna' happen overnight, we'll have plenty of time to do whatever we need to do to survive. Part of the problem with the idea of global warming or ice ages or whatever the fuck ...is the problem of sensationalism! We actually cause more problems by sensationalizing the issue, thus making it even harder to believe. Personally, I hope things happen so as to kill off all humans on Earth, but spares the other animals. Humans have caused the Earth more problems than all of the other animals combined. Humans don't deserve to live. Baron Max
Earth has gone through periods with higher greenhouse gas concentrations- without dire catastrophe (at least from a geologic perspective).
It is difficult to say how things will go I think. Back when egypt was a lush green land the global temperatures were higher then they are now. I think it depends on how quickly things heat up.
