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| Author | The end of the world |
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| jah i think we are likely to kill ourselves long before mother nature does | In 7.6 billion years th sun will have depleted most of its fuel and will therefore burn less bright, this cooling will allow it to expand, in which case it will engulf the Earth.
The natural evolution of any star. But, for sure I am not going to get worried about what will be in 7.6 billion years. :D
Have you published something? Working in a lab or research facility? What kind of scientist? I am interested.
I suppose he works in astrophysics or related fields.
the global warming is just a myth
Not at all. But nothing abnormal. Earth had even much warmer periods.
There are many correct scenarios related to the subject, but none of them can predict exactly when it's going to happen. | I am just interested because I didnt know we have scientists here, I know just a few people calling themselves scientists, it a rare profession.
Global warming a myth, sure, thats the face the politics want to put to justify wasting oil and gas. But on the other hand, nature will help itself. Even if we are stupid enough to nuke ourselves(which is still more probable than meteor), the scorpions will survive and in 50 000 years evolve into something nice. :-) | | Half-Human, Half-Scorpion :) Intelligent Scorpion with the size of a Human | | Actually intelligence doesnt seem too important in evolution, does it? | In reference to he type of scientist, I am a chemistry teacher, with a degree in biochemistry, so not really so much of a physist (see I can't even spell it).
As for the sun expansion, I feel I have to correct a mistake, that felt wrong even as a wrote it. The sun won't expand due to it colling, rather, over that period of time it will have lost a significant mass due to nuclear fusion, and hence its gravitational pull will be less, therefore the gases in it will be less tightly held, and so will expand. | | Thinking about things, as a scientist I ought to correct a misconception most people have. The reason for flooding as average global temperature increases, is not mostly caused by ice caps melting, though this is the easiest aspect to think about. In truth, the main reason is taht as average sea temperature rises, it will expand. since there is so much water, even small expansions from small temperature rises can have a very profound effect. | | wow i didn't think about that, it actually makes sense when you think about how particles react to heat :o | about how particles react to heat
Sure but thats mostly metal particles and gas. Water shouldnt behave this way(it doesnt seem to expand when I am cooking). Also the higher the temperature, the sooner it becomes water vapor and rain somewhere else, right? | The affect of an increase in evaporation is tricky to calculate. what evaporates will come down again, and the volume of water stored as vapour will not make a significant difference to global water levels. However, water vapour if a greenhouse gas which traps heat. Though clouds block light from reaching the ground, and therefore produce cooling. This is why scientists are always tentative about exactly what will happen. Too many variables to be able to conclude exactly.
As for the expansion effect on heating, it is true for all substances, except for a few strange situations between fairly narrow temperature ranges. More heat, more energy, more vibations, more knocking of particles into each other, more space taken up. | 1.How much will water expand if heated +1 degree of Celzius?
2.How deep can the warming effect go at sea? You know much water, can absorb lots of heat without need to heat the bottom. :-)
3.That vaporation effect its pretty obvious, that should be one of the reasons why ekvatorial parts of Earth doesnt seem so hot and dry and dead as they should be according to simple logic - more sun => more heat, bad, bad for enviroment. After all dinosaurs lived in much warmer enviroment and they grew pretty fat, didnt seem like flooding and all. :-) | I just ha d alittle look, and water expands by 0.21% per degree. Which isn't a lot. However, if you increased the average depth of all the oceans by 0.21% that would equate to a good number of metres.
The whole things gets pretty complicated when you look into details. The risk is setting off feed forward loops. Increasing the temperature of water decreases its solubility for carbon dioxide, so more carbon dioxide is realeased, which results in more global warming - ie a feed forward loop. However, equally as temperature increases and carbon dioxide concentration increases, so does the rate of photosynthesis, decreasing the carbon dioxide levels.
With the warming affect everything is slowed down as water can hold a lot of heat (why the coast is warmer in winter and colder in summer. This means that it will take a long time to heat up, but a long time to cool down.
As for dinosaurs there is a few invalid assumptions about the argument. Flooding is caused by a change in sea level from current, it may well have been that the total landmass for dinosaurs was less, after all the continents were arranged very differently then. Also dinosaurs were lizards, and therefore much better adapted to extremes of heat than us mammals. Fat dinos was due to increased levels of heat and carbon dioxde causing more plant growth, therefore the ecosystem was able to support larger organisms in these areas. | Also dinosaurs were lizards, and therefore much better adapted to extremes of heat than us mammals.
I would argue a little here. Are you sure lizards are better adapted to changing of temperature?
Anyway back to the question, you know, it would take a really long time to increase temperature of water in about 100 meters depth. I mean, sure, coast is nice and warm during summer, but only 5-20 meters deep, right? | | i remember reading the metro that they are encouraging the growth of photosynthetic plankton in the oceans so they can absorb more CO2 freeing up more room for CO2 in the air. i'm thinking this theory is slightly flawed if heat expands water. won't the heat produced by respiration of the plankton counterbalance the benefits. it just doesn't sound like a good use of time that could be used planting more trees... | This seems to be turning into quite a 1 on 1 debate here :)
For lizards, my words were extremes of heat. They are adapted well to hot conditions, not so to cold, hence them mostly dieing out and mammals not, during the ice age.
There is a lot of water, so yes it would take a long time. The difficulty is the multiple effects of increase in temperature, as well as possible causes of this. This means the situation is often simplified, and to which individual points may well be countered, but viewed as a whole it is harder to argue to long time effect.
What can be said it that the amount of carbon dioxide put into the atmosphere has increased and is doing so. Equally that the temperature of the Earth on average has increased over the last 100 years, and is still doing so. We can also show that carbon dioxide does cause increase in temperatures.
The big question is what exactly will the effects be, how significant are there, and is there anything we can do about them anyway. To these questions, there are few hard and fast answers. | won't the heat produced by respiration of the plankton counterbalance the benefits
Honestly, can you imagine putting something in such great amount of water like ocean to encourage growth of plankton and it would work? Only way I would imagine is to genetically improve the existing plankton to be more potent(which would most probably either die or mess up the local nature balance and then die:-)) | | With regard to the growing of plankton. Most photosythesis is done by microorganisms in water. However, the limiting factor for these is nutrients rather than anything else. So you would simply need to dump loads of fertiliser in the ocean. However, the energy needed, and hence CO2 produced to make this fertiliser would likely not be countered by the extra CO2 absorbed by the plankton. All in all, not a realistic plan. Silly Metro. | | i think the only option left is genetically engineering humans to grow wings, then we need fossil fuels nearly as much and the world will be saved. hurrah! | It will al work out. We will use up all our fossil fuels, how quickly we do it I dunno, but use them all we will.
As for what will happen to the world, well we will run out of easy fuels and this age of easy living (relatively) will end. Life will become harder, but survive we will, even if we all have to live on boats. I would go for being able to breathe under water rather than flying. I don't trust my ability not to crash | We will use up all our fossil fuels
I suppose this would be the great crossroad in history. Either break our necks and hunt some children for food or shift to a clean nice era of electricity and fusion power.
the only option left is genetically engineering humans to grow wings, Wont work, many humans have legs but they use cars instead of walking. Flying would be highly uncomfortable too, tiring especially in bad weather conditions, wind, rain and cold.
With regard to the growing of plankton.
Dont you know if plankton uses C3 or C4 photosyntesis? C4 should be more efficient.:-) But it shouldnt solve the nutricient problem.
Also from my understanding, fertilisers contain nitrogen. Nitrogen kills fish. So purging vast amounts of nitrogen in order to kill all fish and promote growth of some green ooze would be really weird. Also it would be a little costy to produce enough fertiliser even for a small private sea 200x200 miles. :-) |
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