The carbon-dioxide gobbling mountains of Indonesia/Wikimedia Commons
Fears of global warming have funded a huge volume of scientific investigation over the past decade, and the more that has been learned the more complicated has become the climate picture.
The latest twists come in the form of carbon-dioxide (CO2) absorbing mountains, and greenhouse-gas producing, leaf-cutter ants.
At an American Geophysical Union meeting in Washington, D.C. last month, Francis Macdonald – a respected geologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara – offered a theory to explain global Ice Ages that tied them to a global thermostat controlled by CO2-absorbing mountains in Indonesia and nearby New Guinea.
“Lashed by tropical rains, these rocks hungrily react with CO2 and sequester it in minerals,” Voosen wrote. “That is why, with only 2 percent of the world’s land area, Indonesia accounts for 10 percent of its long-term CO2 absorption. Its mountains could explain why ice sheets have persisted, waxing and waning, for several million years (although they are now threatened by global warming).”
Voosen’s story on Macdonald’s provocative presentation was headlined “Rise of carbon dioxide–absorbing mountains in tropics may set thermostat for global climate.” The climate twist attracted almost no mainstream media attention despite its suggestion that climate issues might be more complicated than just the human burning of fossil fuels.
“The beauty of his team’s model, Macdonald said at the end of his talk, is that it explains not just why glacial times start, but also why they stop,” Voosen reported. “A hothouse Earth appears to be the planet’s default state, prevailing for three-fourths of the past 500 million years. An Indonesia-style collision may push the global climate into a glacial period, but only for a while. Mountains erode and continents drift. And the planet warms again.”
Macdonald’s theory doesn’t directly contradict the prevailing belief that human-derived CO2 has been significantly boosting atmospheric CO2 levels since the beginning of the Industrial Age, but it does complicate the picture in that there might also be forces bigger than human-kind involved in driving climate shifts.
Planetary norm
“Over the past few years, Macdonald and his collaborators have searched for other times when tectonics and climate could have conspired to open an Indonesia-size CO2 drain,” Voosen observed. “They found that glacial conditions 90 million and 50 million years ago lined up neatly with the collisions of a chain of island volcanoes in the now-vanished Neo-Tethys Ocean with the African and Asian continents. A similar collision some 460 million years ago formed the Appalachians, but it was thought to have taken place in the subtropics, where a drier climate does not favor weathering. By reanalyzing ancient magnetic fields in rocks formed in the collision, Macdonald’s team found the mountains actually rose deep in the tropics. And their uplift matched a 2-million-year-long glaciation. ‘They’re developing a pretty compelling story that this was a climate driver in Earth’s past,’ says Lee Kump, a paleoclimatologist at Pennsylvania State University in University Park.”
Macdonald’s team has been examining sites of past volcanic uplifts over the past half-million years and mapping them to see which might have formed in the tropics before drifting north or south into temperature regions.
Where uplifted rocks are located is vital to CO2 absorption. The CO2 removed from the air is bound to rock as calcium carbonate (CaCO3). The conversion happens most rapidly in warm, moist climates.
Some scientists have for years been studying how humans might duplicate this natural process and use rocks to suck CO2 out of the air. The costs, however, appear prohibitive.
Unfortunately, the Institute added, “dunite – the rock type most discussed amongst experts – contains harmful substances, such as chromium or nickel, that could get released during the process. This is why for the present study dunite is an important benchmark, but the researchers focus on basalt as a more sustainable option.”
The Institute concluded that for humankind to do artificially what the mountains of Indonesia do naturally would be cost prohibitive if mined and ground basalt was used to suck up CO2.
Costs were pegged at about $200 per ton of CO2 removed – more than three times the $60 per ton cost of dunite, which the Institute considered economically viable.
Most European nations now impose “carbon taxes” on fossil fuels. The taxes have pushed gasoline prices to over $6 per gallon in France with taxes accounting for about 60 percent of the cost, the New York Times noted in a December report on the “Yellow Vest” riots in that country.
Climate costs
What will happen with climate in the future is speculative, but there is a scientific consensus that humans have played a role in a well-documented increase in atmospheric CO2, one of three important greenhouse gases that have been steadily rising since the 1800s.
The other two important gases are methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N20), which is where those leaf-cutter ants enter the picture.
They are big producers of N20, a gas which is 100 times as powerful as CO2 in helping warm the planet over the long term. A 2017 study singled N2O out as potentially significant threat to Arctic environments, Scientific American reported.
Like the other greenhouse gases, it is also vital to survival on earth. The planet would be just another cold, dead rock spinning through space without these gases.They let solar radiation penetrate to warm the planet, but slow the release of infrared radiation back into space.
In that way, the gases work much like the glass enclosing a greenhouse with the big exception being that the greenhouse gases are steadily trickling off into space and must be steadily replaced by new gas generated by natural processes on Earth.
“Venus has a much thicker atmosphere than Earth, most of it CO2, and the surface temperature there is above 444ºC (800ºF). Part of that is because Venus is closer to the Sun, but almost 389ºC (700ºF) of it is a result of Venus’ powerful greenhouse effect.”
Humanity evolved to survive in a relatively narrow range of temperatures between not too hot and not too cold.
Madrid and Philadelphia are near 40 North. Mexico City is near 20 North. Los Angeles, Tokyo, Shanghai, New Delhi, Cairo and a host of other major global communities are within the band.
Global warming threatens to upset this balance of human occupation as it exists today. People are concentrated along the coasts, which could be flooded by rising seas as glaciers melt, and in that middle-of-the-planet band where some regions could become too hot for occupancy or suffer from losses of agricultural productivity because of heat and shifts in rainfall patterns.
Our fault?
Many now believe all of this is the result of humans messing with the planetary environment for thousands of years in various efforts to make life better for themselves, but humans aren’t the only animals so engaged.
Those subterranean gardens, in turn, crank out large volumes of N20. Think human farmers, cows and methane, and you’ll get the picture.
“Together, our findings suggest that LCA activities can engineer substantial N2O hot spots in tropical forest ecosystems, actively creating sites with unique physical and biological conditions to support N2O production rates many orders of magnitude greater than those typically observed in natural systems,” concluded Fonia Soper from the University of Montana, Missoula, and colleagues from the University of Nevada and Brown University.
Ant emissions, they reported, appear “comparable to or greater than those produced by engineered systems such as wastewater treatment tanks. Refuse-concentrating Atta species are ubiquitous in tropical forests, pastures and production ecosystems, and increase density strongly in response to disturbance. As such, LCA colonies may represent an unrecognized greenhouse gas point source throughout the Neotropics.”
There is nothing to indicate the ants worry about their pollution, and for most of human history and for all of human prehistory, humans didn’t worry about theirs either. Now, they know better on many fronts, and worry about the fronts on which they don’t really know but believe they can forsee.
Categories: News
The Vostok Ice Core samples are the proof that Global Warming crowd is simply trying to profit from a naturally occurring event.
https://www.collective-evolution.com/2013/02/08/420000-years-of-data-suggestss-global-warming-is-not-man-made/
30 years of bad predictions:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/06/22/thirty-years-on-how-well-do-global-warming-predictions-stand-up/
Sun gets angry, its face breaks out with sunspot acne, the earth warms up. Sun gets happy, sunspot acne clears, earth cools down. Simple. But that is the problem. With simple there is no grant money.
https://www.ktoo.org/2019/01/07/2018-caps-half-a-decade-of-warming-temperatures-in-bethel/
Certainly not “global” but interesting still.
What is funny Bill is those fraud articles leave out the real cause for the warming trend. They got the “half a decade” part right. Rest of the story is BS lies.
Here, let me help clarify things for you.
https://www.ktuu.com/content/news/Fall-and-winter-look-to-be-on-the-warm-side-491149721.html
Opinion correct me if I am wrong but, our sun is a dying star. “Global Warming” will become true once and for all when our sun becomes a Red Giant and swallows the earth in fire – killing everything (bible and astronomy even says so :). Then it will collapse upon itself into a White Dwarf. The End! All the Carbon Taxes will not chamge that.
Bryan you have the picture on global warming. Keep in mind I have completely different views on pollution – air and water ect . That needs attention as it affect s health and genes .
Bill why do you waste your time trying to prove “global warming?” It’s an incredibly silly idea. Yep humans affect the weather a little. Beyond that statement it’s basically vanity and delusion. You really need to dive back into history books . Mass extinctions , changing sea levels on an on . Where you live was probably once a glacier. Parts of.Who’s to blame for that change ? T. rex personal nuclear power plant ? The ups and downs of our planet are phoenominal . Alaska range was once an ocean . Weather/ climate cycles are up and down with innumerable variables. Eventually the sun will go out and then it’s going to get really cold . Go back and read history for a better picture. Quit reading political brainwashing that tries to fear monger and destroy rational thought. Yep we effect weather a little. You mentioned bethel . Have you spoken to someone there this year? River froze up awesome. Snow is great . But you know what bethel is bethel and tomorrow it could rain . Been that way for a long time . Great year for freezing and snow in bethel right now . Someone forgot to call a local long time resident for accurate picture.
Have you some information that I’ve tried to prove “global warming?” I’m fairly confident in the expert scientists that have shown it’s the case, as well as that it’s not that “humans affect the weather a little.” You, on the other hand seem to be confident that it’s otherwise.
We’ll just have to agree to disagree. By the way, science doesn’t much go in for calling “a local long time resident for accurate picture.”
Nicely said Bill ! I’m impressed! To bad we don’t have time to sit down at a table hash it all out on a graph / diagram with supporting proven info . Again well said bill .
So Bill, the fact, and yes, it is a fact that NASA, NOAA, and the IPCC all fudged temp data to essentially tax (penalize) productive nations in the $ trillions to fund less productive nations (redistribution of wealth) bother you? Global Warming is the biggest Ponzi Scheme in history of the world. A SCAM!! But, I am disappointed in you and that Bethel story. You can do better than that hysteria hit piece.
Bryan, your issue is with Alaska’s Energy Desk and the author. It was timely IMO and clearly not a hit piece. If there is something that is untrue in there then by all means point it out. Otherwise stop with the bullchit.
Bill, the Bethel piece was extremely and intentionally misleading. Not to mention full of omission. They knew damn well when they wrote that bogus article that el Nino has been responsible for Alaska’s warming weather pattern the last “half decade”.
Complete bullshit, Bryan!
Bill’s back on the bullshit wagon. Bill, come back to the light. Bullshit is seriously Bills crack, everytime he falls it’s for bullshit, and he falls hard and calls everything he can’t understand and everything he disagrees with bullshit. Come back to the light bullshit Bill
Craig,
So now the “authority” is using the terms “enhanced weathering”?
This is nothing more than Geoengineering and not a new idea by any means.
Geoengineering is defined as:
“the deliberate large-scale manipulation of an environmental process that affects the earth’s climate, in an attempt to counteract the effects of global warming.”
I would say that:
“Also, carbon capture and underground storage (CCS) on an industrial scale is not accepted as safe by large parts of the population. Enhanced weathering, the spreading of rock material on land, may be easier to realize. However, dunite – the rock type most discussed amongst experts – contains harmful substances, such as chromium or nickel, that could get released during the process.”
This fits the definition of Geoengineering….
Sadly, as our state and Trump’s cronies move to cut more old growth trees in SE Alaska, the natural CO2 “suckers” are lost in our world.
I guess cloudseeding has failed and the globalists need a new plan?
How about transition from fossil fuels into a Green Economy?
I know that is “crazy” leftist ideology not to be supported under a global oligarchy of corporate agendas.
“How about transitioning from fossil fuels to a green economy”?
Steve, because fossil fuels reign supreme in an ever growing world. “Green Energy” cannot compete in efficiency, productivity, or price, to nuclear power, cheap coal, oil, or natural gas. I get the whole “fossil fuels are creating Global Warming” hysteria but, since Global Warming is BS, I say pass a bucket of that coal. I’ll burn it with pleasure.
I posted this over a week ago, Bryan: December 30, 2018 at 1:43 pm
This was at the start of today’s “Meet the Press:” https://images.dailykos.com/images/627275/story_image/ssss.jpg?1546194726
Thought you (and Steve-O) would love it!
Enjoy!
Come on Bill – Chuck Todd? Are those CO2 clouds in your coffee?
“Turning to renewables for new power generation is not simply an environmentally conscious decision, it is now – overwhelmingly – a smart economic one”
“Renewable energy will be cheaper than fossil fuels in two years, according to a new report.
Experts predict that investment in green infrastructure projects will lead to decreases in the cost of energy for consumers.”
This will move forward in light of the lack of support by our federal government.
Sale of “future commodities” by global investors will fund new growth in Renewables.
Unfortunately, much of America will be left in the Coal “smoke stack” dust of World Progress.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/environment/renewable-energy-cheaper-fossil-fuels-2020-uk-green-climate-change-global-warming-report-irea-a8160051.html%3famp
Poor, poor Steve.. Have a cigar and relax. The American sky is not falling.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2017/10/24/yes-the-u-s-leads-all-countries-in-reducing-carbon-emissions/#5c8029043535
Bryan,
You are the master of mixed up responses….
I never said the sky is falling,
I am trying to point out how emerging economies will “trump” our old system of “open 4 business”.
(No pun intended)
This is why many investors on Wall Street and accross the globe tell their wealthy clients to look to “futures” and avoid the “blue chips”.
China is investing in huge renewable energy projects (the largest in the world) and this is certain to surpass profits of the old system of burning fossil fuels.
Just like anthracite was replaced with nuclear and hydro power on much of the East Coast in the 20th Century, so too will fossil fuels get replaced in the 21st Century in generating electricity.
The “emerging markets” throughout the world are growing fastest in response to these changes.
Old growth forests sequester less carbon monoxide than new growth. If you care about the planet you would be pushing cutting old growth and replanting new forests, they are a truly sustainable product.
Carbon dioxide, sorry.
“climate issues might be more complicated than just the human burning of fossil fuels” Was this ever in question? I mean other than the fanatics who just repeat what their religious leaders like algore tell them.
Here is the rest of the quote, Steve-O: “The climate twist attracted almost no mainstream media attention despite its suggestion that..”
It is a “suggestion.” You are sounding as if it’s a conclusion.
Nice try though!
Bill,
Good point.
Many have pointed out that even “Liberal” news sources will not report on “Geoengineering” tactics (both in planning and operation).
Even “news” sources like TruthDig and Democracy Now get their funding from the Ford Foundation….just like Propublica (who ADN now gets their outside news from)….
Controlled Opposition in America…
Stay tuned as more geoengineering will be tested on the populations of the earth.
“The climate twist attracted almost no mainstream media attention despite its suggestion that climate issues might be more complicated than just the human burning of fossil fuels.” Was this ever in question? I mean other than the fanatics who just repeat what their religious leaders like algore tell them.
Might as well have the whole quote. Does that make you happy Bill? Doesn’t change any of what I said, but as long as Bill is happy I’m happy.
Next you’ll be telling us that you left off that bit about “a suggestion” to help us all out, huh Steve-O. Heheh!
Bill, since we are critiquing how others quote it should be noted that the quote actually says “its suggestion” not “a suggestion”.
While I might not have included all of the words from that whole sentence in my first quote, at least I didn’t misquote.
The question Steve-O is why did you leave off the first part of the quote. I’m going to suggest it was to deceive, or at least confuse. And my use of quotes was not intended as an actual quote but rather just an inflection. Yours was a “misquote” and deliberate, too.
Seems rather juvenile but guess you have your reasons-maybe you were trying to get Mongo’s attention.
Bill,
I used a direct quote, whereas you misquoted. There is a difference and words have definitions and meaning. I used a partial direct quote of a complete sentence because the first half of the sentence was only supporting language for the second, quoted, half where the subject matter was.
Why did you misquote “its suggestion” as “a suggestion”? Nevermind Bill, I don’t care. Fanatics, like yourself, dismiss any point of view that thinks the climate changing is anything but man made. All hail algore!
Steve-O, you intentionally left off the first part of the quote to mislead. Anything else is bullshit.
Bill, we’ve been over this, just because you disagree with something or don’t understand it doesn’t make it bullshit. I wrote the exact same thing with the entire sentence quoted, just to make you happy Bill. To now claim that I tried to mislead you after having shared the important part of the sentence that I quoted first time and the entirety of the sentence just to make you happy, makes it obvious that you cannot accept the truth. I wasn’t trying to mislead anyone, the quote came from the article directly above. I simply quoted the meaningful part of the sentence. After the operative word “that”, following your misquoted “it’s suggestion”. Break the sentence down Bill, the first half before the word “that” describes what is coming, after the word “that” is the subject of the sentence.
“The climate twist attracted almost no mainstream media attention despite its suggestion” that makes no sense Bill, it leaves the reader hanging, what are they waiting for? They are waiting for the operative word, guess what the operative word is Bill, it’s that! “that climate issues might be more complicated than just the human burning of fossil fuels.” To quote the important part of the sentence with the operative word makes no sense. That’s why I quoted “climate issues might be more complicated than just the human burning of fossil fuels” No misleading, no misquoting, no bullshit.
It’s embarrassing to have to explain this to you. I’m not an English major and have never claimed to be a scholar, but there is basic English that we use to communicate and perhaps that is where the problem is Bill, could it be that you do not understand basic English?
Yes, ye ole Cult of Catastrophe is back!!!! The Sky is Falling, the Sky is Falling! If the climate don’t get you, the fracking will, or the economic collapse, or the EMP, oh don’t forget the always threat of those dang Russians! Or is it the Chinese?
Ordo Ab Chao! Just trust the elites to save you why don’t you?
I do miss Art Bell and his Earth Changes and Alien invasion radio, it was imminently more entertaining that this crap!
Forgive me for inserting HAARP here.
Oh, I dunno, maybe this might help? Bit dated, but you get the point. Just a shame when NOAA, NASA, and the IPCC feel the need to fudge their temp. data and lie about it.
http://www.climatedepot.com/2015/11/04/no-global-warming-at-all-for-18-years-9-months-a-new-record-the-pause-lengthens-again-just-in-time-for-un-summit-in-paris/