| CC:
Well, in regards to online publication, I think I alluded a hope for the
same thing, the question being how to get there from here.
Certainly, there
appear to be many good online publications already. (Wish I had one at hand as
an example, but am currently engrossed in
Origin of
Species. Fascinating, but topic of another thread.) I have recovered much
seismological research online from Center for Wave Phenomenon, Madagascar
Project, and Claerbout's Classroom.
I too was piqued to find the current
discussion behind a paywall. However, the Online Abstract did sufficiently
indicate the authors and subject was global ecology. I would have liked to read
it, but I am at present swamped by an ongoing effort to collate online articles
documenting global warming and our species' contribution to the impending
disaster.
With which I'd be myself remiss if I were to leave you without at
least some documentation:
Warming gas levels hit
'troubling milestone'
CO2 hits
400ppm across the Arctic, April 2012.
Every year since 1959, when David
Keeling of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography made the first accurate
measurements of CO2 in the atmosphere, the concentration of the greenhouse gas
has increased. In the early 1960s, it rose about 0.7 ppm per year. For the last
decade, it has been rising at about 2 ppm per year. That observed increase,
independent of the seasonal ups and downs described above, is due to the
accelerating pace of emissions from human activities, particularly the burning
of fossil fuels.
Carbon dioxide is not the only greenhouse gas. NOAA
calculates the Annual Greenhouse Gas Index every year, which takes into account
the heating effects of other gases that are emitted from human activities (e.g.,
methane, nitrous oxide, and chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons). When those
gases are also considered, the global atmosphere reached a CO2 equivalent
concentration of 400 ppm in 1985; and 450 ppm in 2003. Atmospheric CO2 levels
are currently higher than they have been at any time during the last 800,000
years. Watch a NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory animation of carbon dioxide
levels for the past 800,000 years on YouTube
here.
Admit
tedly, this is troubling only if one is a cold-blooded ice-loving Neanderthal
troubled by the prospect of life in the tropics. Dinosaurs thrived for several
hundred million years in their supposed paradise. But what was their
impetus? What had they to show for it? Where is the
paleo-poetry?
Geologically, the current ice age in which we now live began
about 3.4 million year ago. Don't let the recent
10m years ago there was less CO2 - but the Earth was WARMER" red herring
mislead you: "Warmth and carbon 'decoupled': 'A surprising finding'" is anything
but. An ice age was not possible given the ocean circulation prior to the
closing of the
Central American Seaway about 5mya.
To be sure, there have been
other ice ages stretching much further back in the
earth's past. But the earth and its global circulation were vastly different
during those epochs due to
continental drift.
The current
ice age has oscillated in and out of glacial periods. Previous oscillations were
apparently forced by the
Milankovitch
cycles, reinforced by positive feedbacks in the carbon cycle. Atmospheric
C02 concentrations oscillated between roughly 165 and 295 ppm. It is not known
(to me) whether the cycle stability can survive our present anthropogenic CO2
forcing. The aforementioned YouTube animation of C02 concentration the past
800,000 years,
Time history of atmospheric CO2, shows a rather disconcerting brick wall
at our end.
Ed Leaver
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