Norman, you did not address either of my arguments. You only claim that web pages show a correlation between the time of Neanderthal population decline and the TOBA eruption. I tend not to put much faith in web-posted “facts,” but if you can give a peer reviewed journal reference, I will try to look at it but, at best, it will only be someone’s theory (He was not there and can’t be sure.) and someone else with more knowledge of the physics I give below surely has published the contradictory theory. So lets not bother to get into an argument about whose peer-reviewed expert is correct, even if you can find one who thinks TOBA caused an ice age. Correlation does not establish a causal relationship. If it did, you could conclude that fire trucks cause fires near them. To establish your claim that TOBA was the caused an ice age that killed most of the Neanderthals, you must both describe some mechanism that selectively killed these “hairy hominids” (your description) and yet spared my nearly hairless ancestors and also refute the physical mechanism that I claim establishes heating, rather than cooling, as the more probable effect of TOBA on climate (not next week’s weather which might have been colder.) My mechanism for claiming that TOBA probably warmed more than cooled is based on the greenhouse effect of electrically polarizable molecules like H2O, SO2 and CO2 which volcanoes produce in quantity and which strongly interact with heat radiation (absorb it) to reduce the normal radiative loss to space. I. e. if TOBA did anything to the climate, it made Earth more like Venus, which gets much less sun at the surface than Earth does yet is much hotter at the surface because of the greenhouse effect. Refute this physics and Venus example, if you can. Until you do so, it is your bubble that has burst. Stick as many webpages as you like that say “correlation” on my bubble and it will not burst.
We had this discussion in Edufer's good-news-thread, where I mentioned an alternative hypothesis for Venus, which incidentely was develloped here over a year ago. But I wasn't challenged to reveal the mechanism for that and additional evidence supporting that unrevealed mechanism. But there is plenty. The lack of magnetism for instance and the high corrolation -unlike Earth- between local gravity and topography. Venus has been melted due to a hot brake mechanism -despite the apparant angular momentum problem- and is still cooling after that event. Here is the concept abstract of my paper - work in progress:
It's obvious your so-called theoretical analysis of the the earth warming after the Toba eruption reminds me of the same kind of thinking that took place during the late Jurassic period????...........It only takes a simple mind to comprehend the impact of an eruption on the scale of Toba. Toba (circa: 72,000 BC) released a total of approx. 2,800 km of ejected magma with particles remaining in the earth's atmosphere for over 6 years (www.volcanolive.com/toba.html) resulting in temperatures being reduced 5 to 10 deg. C worldwide. Likewise, it's also apparent that there was a 1,000 year long iceage that followed the Toba eruption during the late Pleistocene age. There is also genetic evidence to show that the world population at that time fell to approx 10,000 or less hairy hominid individuals (your immediate relatives) (www.bradshawfoundation.com/evolution/). The Toba eruption also created a longer term global climate cooling which was caused by a highly reflective sulphuric haze that remained in the earth's atmosphere for several years. Even ice core samples has implicates that the Toba eruption created the coldest millennium in the late Pleistocene period. Also the Toba eruption ejected more sulphur that remained in the earth's atmosphere for a longer time (6 years) than any other vocanic eruption in the last 110,000 years and probably caused the complete deforestation of southeast Asia. I could add another 10 or even 20 websites of scientific data illustrating the after effects of the Toba eruption, but I don't your primative hairy hominid mind could handle it, let alone understand it. So for starters, I gave you a couple of simplistic views (websites) of the what some of the experts found............If you want to learn more about the Toba near-global exinction evidence, then take some courses on reading (I know it may be difficult at first) and learn something new! Yob Atta Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Just to make sue I get the correct numbers in my previous post: Toba released 2,800 cubic km of ejected magma with particles remaining in the earth's atmosphere for over 6 years........... Yob Atta
Norman: I am not disputing that Toba may have caused a period of cooling, a “Nuclear Winter,” that lasted a few years longer than the period in which it was throwing up opaque dust rapidly enough to replenish that which was settling to Earth. (Dust does settle, as Andre pointed out.) What I pointed out is that several molecular species (CO2, H2O, SO2 etc) are also produced in abundance and may have lasted a little longer. These molecules differ from O2 and N2, the dominant constitution of the atmosphere, in that they are “greenhouse gases.” When these non-symmetric molecules vibrate they produce an electric dipole moment which strongly interacts with IR radiation. This is why they are “greenhouse gases.” In the case of H2O, the electric dipole moment is permanent because the angle between the hydrogen (really more like between the two protons as their two electrons are filling the “holes” in the oxygen’s outer or valance shell) is 105, not 180 degrees. I am not a physical chemist. I don’t know about CO2 and SO2. Perhaps they are “inline” molecules. Even if they are, when they vibrates like O——C—O on one half cycle of the vibration and O—C——O on the next half cycle, there is an oscillating electric dipole because the negative charge centroid is mid way between the two oxygen atoms. They can also flex and make IR interacting electric dipoles, but that is not easy to illustrate here. This easy electric dipole is why these gases are strong “greenhouse gases” and O2 and N2 are not. This explanation is probably wasted on you, but other readers may benefit. Despite my stating that reference to a web-page “facts” would not persuade me, that is all you gave. I am open to logical reasoning also. I erroneously assumed you would be also, when I asked you to explain was why the ice age selectively killed the Neanderthals, “hairy hominids” by your own description, and yet my nearly hairless ancestors survived the cold. Since you provided neither logical argument nor non web page reference, I tried to become better informed independently by searching at www.sciRus.com where I can restrict the search to only peer reviewed journal articles (using Neanderthal + Toba for the search). I got only one hit, which I admit may support, in part, your view. I was able to read the abstract, not the full article that appeared in J. of Human Evolution Vol.34, No.6 p623-651 June 1998. The author (S.H. Ambrose) was at Un. of Illinois. He is an anthropologist, probably not an expert in physics of greenhouse gases, etc. He himself described his idea as only an “alternative hypothesis” to the more standard “weak garden of Eden model” (by Harpending et. al. 1993, if you want to search) for explaining something that anthropoligist refer to as the “bottleneck,” which I gather is the fact that genetic data supports a relatively small human population about the time of Toba. Note also that Ambrose does not speak of “ice age” in the abstract. Instead he mentioned “nuclear winter,” which in 1998, was still in the news, so I won’t hold this fact against you. After reading the abstract, I hit the “related articles” button and found Hardy and Harcourt-Smith’s 2003 paper in the same journal (Vol. 45 No 3 p231-237) by the title: “The super-eruption of Toba, did it cause a human bottleneck?” Unfortunately J. of H.E. is not so generous about 2003 articles. I could not even read the abstract for free, but one can be confident their answer was “No.” I say this because Ambrose quickly responded in the same journal with “Did the super eruption of Toba cause a human population bottleneck – Reply to Hardy and Harcourt-Smith.” (Also no reading of even abstract for free.) But I think it is fair to surmise that Ambrose is still “hanging in there,” fighting for some credibility for his self admitted “alternative hypothesis.” From all this I conclude that the view of Toba CAUSING the demise of the Neanderthals as you claim (“not enough caves, food” etc.) is: 1) Certainly is not “established fact” only something one can selectively find web page support for or very slightly, perhaps, in one man’s “alternative hypothesis.” Note, even he is not talking about a “Toba induced” ice age, only about Toba’s as a possible “alternative hypothesis” to standard theory to explain the “Human Bottleneck.” (I admit he must have discussed Neanderthals somewhere in the article as the search required this. For all I know, he may have remarked that part of the pressure on humans (the “bottleneck”) came from the Neanderthals, whose furry bodies gave them a slight competitive edge during the nuclear winter period after Toba. – just the opposite of your illogical claim.) Have you been to the Flat-Earth Society’s page, if it is still up? They prove the Earth is flat! – (From that you should understand my rating of web-page “proofs.” I.e. they often fall flat, and if valid, they will appear in a science journal. ) Again: give me a journal reference and I will try to read it, if I can without cost via the internet. – I live in São Paulo and so do not have access to minor journals, even in the best university libraries. I will trust you to quote sections without distortion. 2) Inconsistent with the physics of greenhouse gases copiously emitted by volcanoes. 3) Fails to explain why hairless humans survived the cold, but furry Neanderthals could not. Points 2 & 3 were my original questions for you and I am still awaiting for a creditable response, not a web page “fact.” - I don’t waste my time reading through the crap that is common in non-peer-reviewed web pages. Don’t misunderstand me. I think that most of the volcanic greenhouse gases also were removed from the atmosphere, but probably more slowly than the dust. (Thus, I am NOT claiming that human selectively survived Toba’s “heat wave,” which killed off the Neanderthal because Gillette was not yet selling razors for them to remove their fur coats.) I am completely willing (on the bases of ice core and other evidence, not dying Neanderthals) to believe that around the time of Toba the Earth became colder,even went into an ice age. This CORRELATION, as I pointed out in prior post, does not prove cause and effect, (your claim: “Toba’s ice age killed the Neanderthals.”) Do you also believe that fire trucks cause fires near them when they park outside the firehouse, based on that very strong correlation? Again I say: To establish that a Toba caused ice age was the cause of the Neanderthal extinction, you need to say something about the mechanism by which it could be the cause. Andre pointed out the rapidly falling dust did not do this, but maybe it did, if Neanderthals lacked nose hairs to filter the air they breath (at least, that would be a logical argument in favor of your claim). All I was doing in my first post was to note that the longer lasting gases are greenhouse gases and warm, not cool. You logically could have used the absence of fur coats on humans as a mechanism to explain why only humans survived Toba’s “heat wave,” but neither you nor I think Toba caused a “heat wave.” Where we differ is you think Toba CAUSED an ice age and this selectively CAUSED the extinction of the Neanderthals. I admit you did not include the word “selectively” as then even you would think your claim illogical, I hope, but fact is Neanderthals died and humans did not during the post Toba period. I.e. something selective happened, perhaps related to Toba. I would put a dollar on the “nose hair” cause before I would put one cent on the illogical ice age cause of this selective extinction. I won’t argue more about it as I can’t argue if logic is ignored. Certainly, any Toba caused ice age can not be used as the mechanism to explain the extinction of the furry Neanderthals while it was only a “bottleneck” for furless humans, but logic does not seem to be your strong point, so I will stop beating you with it and not respond more to your illogical claims. EDIT (for readers benefit my post to which Norman replied is reproduced in his second post below. Its time stamp is 09-15-04, 01:44 AM in case you want biggeer type.
Billy Quite true, especially when talking about the explosive type of eruption. However the exact mechanism of greenhouse gas effect is carefully hidden by the global warmists and with good reason because it would collapse the global warming hype. The point is that the greenhouse gas effect is rather complicated. The best approximation is that greenhouse effect is about logaritmic proportial to the concentration. The first 10 ppm of a certain greenhouse gas has far more greenhouse effect than the increase from say 360 ppm to 1000 ppm. Simply because the bandwidth gets saturated, in which the gas is effective. Check this. Consequently the effect of releasing enormous amounts of greenhouse gasses has not nearly the same effect as other mechanisms. Incidently I do neither recall a sudden CO2 spike in any ice core around 71,000 years nor a dramatic change in water isotope ratios (d18O, dD) in the same. The last are assumed to indicate paleo temperature but to me with big question marks. Yet there are indeed some records of glaciation in Siberia that ended some 60,000 years ago. Nothing decisive though and a hint of the coldest era in the last glaciation is strongly exagarated. The Last Glacial Maximum for instance (22,000 - 18,000) was definitely something else, at least in Europe. That's where and when the Neanderthaler dissapeared BTW. Not during the Toba event.
Better get your facts right dude...No one said that the neanderthals disappeared or became extinct after the Toba eruption.........DNA reseach on the subject of the Toba eruption indicates there was a reduction of the world population of hairy hominids fell to approx. 10,000 or less individuals........And there is "no" exageration about glaciation during the last glacial period. It's just a fact that it was the "coldest glacial period"......... Try majoring in "Fast Foods" instead.......It would be more challenging for you instead of trying to educate yourself by reading these threads........ Yob Atta Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
"Try majoring in "Fast Foods" instead.......It would be more challenging for you instead of trying to educate yourself by reading these threads........" By your rudeness to one of the most intelligent posters here you show your own value (or lack of). You would be very clever if you had 1% of Andre's brain.
Thanx Cat, Norman Again, No. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Notice the vertical bold face line at 71,000 years intersecting the alleged "temperature" graph not nearly at the coldest point. Notice also that the downwards trend started some 15,000 years earlier. Hence Toba could not have caused that. Notice that the Last Glacial Maximum was even colder as well as the several coolest areas shortly before the interglacials, 140,000 years ago, 265,000 years ago and 330,000 years ago. If we are looking at temperatures of course.
No, DNA research can only tell us that there was a reduction in the world population of not so hairy homo sapiens at that time...... We don't have any living homo neanderthalis on which to carry out out DNA tests to establish whether they too went through a bottle neck Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
I think a warming trend is happening ! WATERWORLD is the FUTURE! Unfortunatly Kevin Kostner won't be around to see it!
Hominids (two legged) Hairy (hair on some or all parts of body) Get your act together.......There was no mention of neanderthals in my previous post even though neanderthals were around during the Toba eruption and so were some not-so-hairly homosapiens. Undoubtably both groups experienced a reduction in numbers after Toba erupted! Yob Atta Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
To Norman: Andre posted on 9-28-04 a graph shown that the coldest period proceeded Toba by thousands of years and the temperature was rising and continued to rise, perhaps at even a faster rate, for thousands of years after Toba event. In this post you claim not to have mentioned Neanderthals in prior post but that is how you started off your “Toba. as killer of Neanderthals etc.” postings. I copy one for you to read. As far as I can tell, re-reading it, you have not been proven to be totally wrong. Back then there probably were not enough socks to go around. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Norman’s post of 9-2-04: I think the TOBA eruption had a big effect on the population at that time. No place for the neanderthals and hairy hominids to go and hide except caves. Research has shown that the hairy hominids population at that time dwindled down to approx. 4 or 5 thousand after TOBA erupted. Not to bad considering the total hairy hominid population was probably around 4 to 5 hundred thousand prior to the eruption.......What killed them off? Probably the climate change. It definetly got colder after the eruption and not enough fur coats, hamburgers and warm socks to go around in those days (circa: 72,000 BC). Yob Atta
I'll put it into terms your neanderthal mind (it could be a hairy hominid mind too, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt on that one. Homosapien? Not sure on that one) might possibly understand.....If you have so much confidence in the correctness of your so-called ice age theory and and want your name to become a household word, then send your theory to National Geographic and/or at the very least, create a website. If they don't buy it, then no one will! Other than that, don't waste your time trying to impress anyone here in this forum unless you have something that can be tested with science other than something that was created by a figment of your imagination............Get the picture dude? Keep trying and maybe someday you'll be able to get some business cards with name on it. Atta Boy
Unless something's seriously fucked up with the planet, we are still coming down from the last ice age, not heading into one. It's not like earth is in its normal state now, it still has alot of thawing out left to do.
All the information presented by Dr.David Suzuki suggests that a BIG warming trend is on the way, we are already feeling the effects of this trend that currently is in full swing. Melting polar Icecaps, rising C02, and warming equiatorial waters are just some of the many examples!
Forget about it. A few cycles maxes are just about coinciding (NAO, THC, etc). The polar ice caps are not melting but appear to be growing. The warming of equatorial waters is a result of an increase of speed of the Thermohaline Current (Gulf Stream) and has nothing to do with global warming on the contrary, a popular version of Global warming wanted to shut down the conveyor belt instead. Well the opposite is happening. The weather balloon data and satellite date have never shown any warming and the warming of the ground weather station has stalled ever since 1998.
It doesn't really matter what happened in the last 2 years, or hundred or even thousand years. Over a much longer time period the polar caps have been receeding, and should gradually continue to receed, possibly with some minor fluctuations back and forth.
Make sure any stock up on some warm winter clothing in the next 14,000 years..........You'll need them. Atta Boy
