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Post by speakertoanimals on Jun 29, 2011 12:52:00 GMT 1
This is just usual way of phrasing things in science -- it isn't maths after all, with definitive proofs. A very weak attempt at an argument, on a level akin to 'evolution is JUST a theory' from the creationists.
Well, then you've misunderstood totally if you think this event in any way supports your position!
Heat from within the earth is already included, we already knew it was patchy, just that the size of this transient event is significant, and the large-scale circulation is significant because of mineral and larval dispersion, NOT to global heat budget as you seem to think.
As before, you'd be better off trying to learn the basics of the topic under discussion, rather than just (mis)-interpreting everything based on your predefined agenda.....................
Focus of the discussion can change, I was sticking to the heat and the megaplumes at present, as far as I can recall.
No one said that. Its a cycle.
It's not some empty claim, as you'd know if you went and looked at the (rather dry) geology literature. Measuring the CO2 in magma, and carbon content of various layers of the oceanic crust is just a case of drill the damn thing and measure it! It isn't the alarmists that are claiming this, just the boring ole geologists who are trying to understand the exact process of the creation, aging, and subduction of oceanic crust. Not exactly a sexy topic.
And then again, you just ignore the isotopic analysis data, relying on the stuff by your mate Casey, which I've already shown is based on a totally mistaken reading of the papers of others.
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Post by speakertoanimals on Jun 29, 2011 13:53:25 GMT 1
Tot hose who still mistakenly think mid-ocean ridge volcanism and these megaplumes are some sort of unexpected and previously unknown addition to the earths energy budget.
What does Murton say?
Fair enough. Except what do mid-opcean ridges DO? Create new oceanic crust. We KNOW how much crust, we can MEASURE how fast the various tectonic plates are moving.
So, energy content, is average volume of oceanic crust created, plus a quick estimate of how much heat energy is going to be involved.
All that happens with these megaplume events is that rather than coming out slow and steady, we have the energy from twenty million cubic kilometres of lava all in one event. Because the Carlsberg (yes, it IS apparently named after the brewery!) ridge is slow-spreading, they didn't expect such a big event.
So, we haven't got the amount of crust formed way wrong, we can after all MEASURE exactly what the plates are doing. So all that is happening with these megaplumes etc is that the distribution of where and when the energy is released is patchier than we might have thought, or that some emerges in rather interesting ways (black and white smokers and the rather exciting varieties of life we find there).
But what isn't going to change is the TOTAL energy involved, because that is based on how much oceanic crust is created per year.
So, we still have solar energy at 173 petawatts (peta is 10^15), whereas geothermal at about 50 terawatts. And of that 50TW, only 0.7% is volcanic anyway.
The point being, you can't just posit a massive increase in submarine volcanism and claim (as some idiots on the web do), that you can thereby 'explain' any supposed warming. Nor can use extra volcanism to try and 'explain' CO2 increase, because of the properties of magma, and the measured properties of oceanic crust. Leaving isotopic analysis aside for the moment, as M always does.
So, what are we left with? Misunderstood and misleading wittering on about megaplumes, and the propensity to (mis) understand any piece of writing based on an existing belief system.
Plus the frankly irritating -- someone that can be misunderstood and twisted to support my view is lauded as a master of clarity in terms of the written word, whereas anyone who DARES to disagree is either a) stupid b) a liar and c) part of the conspiracy anyway........................................
This isn't to say that MASSIVELY increased volcanism hasn't effected climate in the past. It has -- things like the deccan traps (one explanation for which is a mantle plume, not to be confused with the oceanic megaplume..................) did effect climate -- it cooled by two degrees due to sulphur dioxide.
Deccan traps imvolved around 512 thousand cubic km, erupted over perhaps as little as 30 thousand years. Which gives 17 km^3 per year, whereas current plate tectonic activity at mid-ocean ridges estimated to involve about 4km^3 per year. Except different sorts of magma, and submarine rather than subaerial.
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Post by marchesarosa on Jun 29, 2011 14:19:27 GMT 1
Spurious accuracy, to coin a phrase, spurious accuracy!
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Post by marchesarosa on Jun 29, 2011 14:28:57 GMT 1
If I remember correctly, STA, YOU are the only one who uses the words stupid, liar and conspiracy on this board. But that is not surprising because these are the stock in trade of alarmists trying to discredit anyone who thinks their explanations are lacking in a certain je ne sais quoi - oh, yes, a couple of minor lacunae - the scientific method and adequate empirical data.
No-one is suggesting the undersea sources of CO2 or heat are new or additional. They are just unquantified and probably unquantifiable - geddit? Any source of CO2 or heat allocated to these "uncertain" sources through enhanced knowledge and understanding automatically reduces the proportion allocated to other sources - anthropogenic ones being the ones in question here. And in this regard I am certainly not convinced either that isotopic allocation of CO2 to diverse sources is as accurate as it pleases you to believe.
It's a matter of proportions. And who is to say that there is not also natural cyclical variations in these volcanic sources either? How long have we been able to measure the output of volcanoes on land OR under the sea? Are these estimates anywhere near accurate?
We just don't know and people who claim we do are humbugs or bullshitters.
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Post by speakertoanimals on Jun 29, 2011 15:09:23 GMT 1
Not so. Used by others and in more cases implied. Stop trying to hide what you're actually saying by a cloak of politeness.
Exactly WHAT figures are you trying to doubt? The order of magnitude of geothermal compared to solar? The order of magnitude of deccan traps versus current sea-floor spreading? You don't NEED to be incredibly accurate when the difference you are talking about is several orders of magnitude.
You can't just 'add in' some vast amount of unseen submarine volcanism, or 'add-in' some extra sea-floor spreading, that's the point. Of course, it just looks to me like you've no actual idea HOW the geothermal stuff is computed. In short, we KNOW the proportions of radioactive elements, hence the MEASURED figures for average energy flow have to match what we also know about radioactivity, tidal heating, friction, etc etc. You can't just add-in a whole load of extra energy without being able to say where it came from.
WRONG! The source of atmospheric CO2 is perfectly quantiifable, as I keep telling you. Isotopic analysis. And the fact that your mate Casey got it wrong. Hence we can quantify how much of atmospheric CO2 is derived from fossil sources. If it fits in with measured volcanic CO2 as well, then that's even better. Remember, factor of a hundred (I think) between volcanic versus anthropogenic -- you can't just hide it under the sea, it don't work!
Ditto this supposedly 'unquantifiable' extra heat you'd like to add -- it isn't there, we KNOW what is going on as regards geothermal, we KNOW enough about the proportions of radioactive elements etc to make a decent estimate, we can MEASURE actual heat flows etc etc., You can't just ADD-IN massive, unseen submarine volcanism to try and close the gap, there isn't a source for the energy.
Nice to see that yet again, you appear blithely unconcerned by your own misinterpretation of the megaplume stuff. As usual, a fog of obfuscation and misunderstanding is something the supposed sceptics find preferable to actual science and learning.
So, we are back again to -- maybe we have got (add source of choice) wrong by several orders of magnitude, hence we can all ignore AGW.........................
The whole of science, from geophysics to plate tectonice, isotopic geochemistry to volcanology and all the way to oceanography and climate science, doesn't work like that. The orders of magnitude argument won't wash. THAT is science, as opposed to your wishful thinking.
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Post by speakertoanimals on Jun 29, 2011 15:48:13 GMT 1
Just to look at some figures. I have 4 cubic kilometres as estimated ocean crust created per year.
1 km = 10^3 metres, so that is 4 x 10^9 cubic metres per year.
The megaplume figure mentioned was 20 million cubic metres, or 2 x 10^7. Hence 200 such events per year would explain current crust creation. Although, of course, this was the LARGEST event they had seen for Indian ocean, so presumably many of the other events were smaller.
There are plenty of papers on observing eruption events on other mid-ocean ridges (faster spreading than Indian Ocean), which talk about rapid diking events and hydrothermal event plumes. It is a known pattern of the way events happen at mid-ocean ridges, just seems to me they hadn't expected such large events in the slow-spreading Carlsberg ridge. Which ISN'T the same as claiming that eruption figures for mid-ocean ridges are so far out of whack that the geothermal energy budget is wrong by orders of magnitude.
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Post by marchesarosa on Jun 29, 2011 18:07:34 GMT 1
"Plenty of papers" does not translate to plenty of knowledge or plenty of understanding, STA, and the standards of peer review - well we know all about them!
We are scratching at the surface of understanding our planet and whilst we may know something we know very little with any certainty. We know very little about natural cycles because we have not been and still are not in most cases, able to MEASURE them, nor are they receiving appropriate research effort.
It is an insult to everyone's intelligence that thirty years of weather is now defined as "climate", and that a trace gas is claimed to be the conclusively important "driver" of climatic change - an utter insult.
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Post by speakertoanimals on Jun 30, 2011 13:52:04 GMT 1
No you don't. What about the standards of your chums on their blogs? Because despite doing my little informal reviews of their contributions, you just keep IGNORING their glaring errors!
And the rest of your argument:
Just the usual argument from incredulity -- it can be made to SOUND daft, hence it is daft.
Let's face it, as a standard of argument, it is TOTALLY akin to the creationists -- random chance, how can THAT produce complicated structures like the human eye, and its an insult to our intelligence to claim that it can!
A gas that is only present at parts per million amounts, how RIDICULOUS to suggest that that can have any GLOBAL effect......................Naive incredulity and plain stupidity, plus a big dash of head-in-the-sand hope.
I note that you have resorted to general blather, rather than attempting to actually address any of the misconceptions and misunderstandings indicated by the very articles you chose to post.
So, megaplumes AREN'T indicative of any great unknown undersea volcanism, just unexpected, sporadic and transient events -- a few big farts, rather than a slow, silent release, if I may be slightly crude. Amount expelled still as expected.
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Post by marchesarosa on Jun 30, 2011 14:41:07 GMT 1
Even the land still has its unexplored spots.
When submarine exploration and understanding can rival that of the more accessible parts of the planet I may pay attention to it.
Isn't it amazing how people whose reputation depends upon their appearing clever can be so gullible?
As for STA's scathing reference to blogs it is from reading blogs that I keep up to date with the research going on into climate-related matters in the "academic" world.
Wonderful - a real education and real peer review! And one learns how NOT to swallow a camel, too.
Sod off to the religion boards, STA, since you are so keen on arguing with creationists. I can assure you there are none here.
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Post by speakertoanimals on Jun 30, 2011 16:01:39 GMT 1
What exactly happens at mid-ocean ridges is actually totally fascinating, life without sunlight, powered by heat and interesting chemicals. An indication, perhaps of how life might have started. An indication that life could be present in locations that we never expected it could be present. That the life we see out here in the sunshine isn't the whole story, and isn't necessarily how it all started.
So, we have the true dynamic nature of our earth, the bouncing about of the continents, the complex interplay of land surface, ocean flow, and climate, and life.
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Post by speakertoanimals on Jun 30, 2011 16:06:04 GMT 1
All well and good, but USELESS unless you read them critically, and allow for the possibility that someone elses interpretation can be wrong (as was chiefio, as was Casey), even if their interpretation fits in with your agenda.
Granted, but a rather alarming similarity in terms of style of argument and level of misunderstanding of the actual science.
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Post by speakertoanimals on Jun 30, 2011 16:26:29 GMT 1
Ah, I meant to say this earlier, but forgot!
Let's not forget the understanding we now have as to WHY there are oceans in the first place -- I mean in terms of the fact that oceans aren't just there because that happens to be the lowest bits of some relatively uniform surface, but because oceanuic crust is structurally totally different to continental crust! Ocean basins are BASINS because the crust is denser, hence 'floats' lower.
Hence submarine volcanic processes aren't just like ones on land (not that ones on land are that simple!). There is a reason why the greatest percentage of volcanic activity is undersea at mid-ocean ridges, and we have to understand the details of that before we can say anything about possible effects as regards heating and CO2. And the very nature of the oceanic crust being created at those ridges is different to what we find with subaerial volcanoes, and the story as regards CO2 is different as well.
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Post by marchesarosa on Aug 11, 2011 10:30:05 GMT 1
Image of bubbles of liquid carbon dioxide floating out of the seafloor at Champagne vent on Northwest Eifuku volcano in the western Pacific Ocean July 13, 2011 First Large Antarctic Undersea Volcanoes Discovered in Southern AtlanticVoice of America News A British research team has discovered a chain of 12 undersea volcanoes near the remote South Sandwich Islands in the southern Atlantic Ocean. It is the first group of large undersea volcanoes ever found in the Antarctic region. Scientists from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) say that seven of the massive volcanoes are still active. Some of the mountain peaks rise three kilometers above the ocean floor, nearly tall enough to break the water’s surface. The collapsed craters of others measure five kilometers across. more www.voanews.com/english/news/science-technology/First-Large-Antarctic-Undersea-Volcanoes-Discovered-in-Southern-Atlantic-125500268.htmlWhen undersea volcanoes erupt or collapse, they can trigger powerful natural phenomena, such as tsunamis. The BAS team says its discovery will help researchers better understand that process. Volcanic hot water vents on the ocean floor also create rich and unique ecosystems for many species of marine life found nowhere else on the planet. The BAS research team found the undersea mounts while using specialized sonar technology to create a high-resolution map of the ocean floor during Antarctic survey voyages in 2007 and 2010.
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Post by marchesarosa on Aug 11, 2011 10:43:52 GMT 1
Undersea volcanoes might be more common than previously thoughtAugust 11, 2011 by Anthony Watts wattsupwiththat.com/2011/08/11/undersea-volcanoes-might-be-more-common-than-previously-thought/#more-44880Reader “Mark” in Tips and Notes writes: Surprise Underwater Volcanic Eruption Discovered news.yahoo.com/photos/surprise-underwater-volcanic-eruption-discovered-1312946145-slideshow/%0AExcellent 3D graphic representation of the lava in link above. “An undersea volcano has erupted off the coast of Oregon, spewing forth a layer of lava more than 12 feet (4 meters) thick in some places, and opening up deep vents that belch forth a cloudy stew of hot water and microbes from deep inside the Earth. Scientists uncovered evidence of the early April eruption on a routine expedition in late July to the Axial Seamount, an underwater volcano that stands 250 miles (400 kilometers) off the Oregon coast.” “At first we were really confused, and thought we were in the wrong place,” said Bill Chadwick, a geologist with Oregon State University. “Finally we figured out we were in the right place but the whole seafloor had changed, and that’s why we couldn’t recognize anything. All of a sudden it hit us that, wow, there had been an eruption. So it was very exciting.” In addition to producing hardened lakes of blobby lava, in places more than a mile (1.6 km) across, the eruption changed the architecture of the region's seafloor hot springs. "There are more vents, they're higher temperature, and there are microbes living in them that are usually deep in the crust that come up to the surface in these events," Chadwick told OurAmazingPlanet. Eruption predicted The Axial Volcano rises 3,000 feet (900 m) above the seafloor, the most active of a string of volcanoes along the Juan de Fuca Ridge, a plate boundary where the seafloor is slowly pulling apart. Chadwick and colleagues have been keeping tabs on the peak since it last erupted in 1998. Thanks to a monitoring system they developed to measure the mountain's minute movements, the team predicted the volcano was due for another eruption sometime between 2011 and 2014. "So for me, it's a very exciting thing that this worked!" Chadwick said. The instruments kept track of the movement of the seafloor, which very gradually inflates and deflates like a giant, magma-filled balloon, Chadwick said, collapsing suddenly after an eruption, and rising, in this case, by about 6 inches (15 cm) per year in the lead up to an eruption. Scientists have long known about the existence of subsea volcanoes, but information on their behavior is relatively sparse. Eruptions were first observed in the 1990s, and, although technology has improved, getting to the underwater peaks to study them is difficult. Data from the Axial Seamount's recent eruption will provide the first long-term picture of a subsea volcano from one eruption to the next. Chadwick said scientists are still trying to figure out how seafloor volcanoes differ from their terrestrial counterparts. It could be it's easier to predict ocean eruptions, Chadwick said. It's possible that because the crust is thinner there, and magma is in ready supply, the mountains' slow inflations provide a good analogue for knowing when eruptions will occur. However, he cautioned that a single successful prediction wasn’t enough to forecast what the future holds. "At Axial we've only seen this once, so we don't know for sure it's going to be reliable," Chadwick said. "So we'll certainly keep making these measurements, and hopefully be around to see what happens next." cms.livescience.com/15474-vent-underwater-volcano.html
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Post by StuartG on Aug 11, 2011 12:42:21 GMT 1
Major Deep-Sea Smokers Found—"Evolution in Overdrive" Teeming with strange animals, volcanic vent field is North Atlantic first. Brian Handwerk for National Geographic News Published August 8, 2011 "Deep under the North Atlantic, scientists have discovered a rare system of smoking volcanic vents and three-story "chimneys," according to scientists aboard the research vessel Celtic Explorer." "A hotbed of "evolution in overdrive," the site teems with strange animals that have been living there "perhaps for a millennium," said marine biologist Jon Copley. "And we're the first to see this place."" "The vent field lies along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, an undersea mountain range extending the length of the Atlantic that's created by the slow separation of tectonic plates." news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/08/110808-hydrothermal-vents-volcanic-animals-ocean-deep-sea-science-alien/
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