Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 05/07/2009 6:11:46 AM PDT by decimon
COLLEGE PARK, Md - Geologists may have uncovered the answer to an age-old question - an ice-age-old question, that is. It appears that Earth's earliest ice ages may have been due to the rise of oxygen in Earth's atmosphere, which consumed atmospheric greenhouse gases and chilled the earth.
Alan J. Kaufman, professor of geology at the University of Maryland, Maryland geology colleague James Farquhar, and a team of scientists from Germany, South Africa, Canada, and the U.S.A., uncovered evidence that the oxygenation of Earth's atmosphere - generally known as the Great Oxygenation Event - coincided with the first widespread ice age on the planet.
"We can now put our hands on the rock library that preserves evidence of irreversible atmospheric change," said Kaufman. "This singular event had a profound effect on the climate, and also on life."
Using sulfur isotopes to determine the oxygen content of ~2.3 billion year-old rocks in the Transvaal Supergroup in South Africa, they found evidence of a sudden increase in atmospheric oxygen that broadly coincided with physical evidence of glacial debris, and geochemical evidence of a new world-order for the carbon cycle.
"The sulfur isotope change we recorded coincided with the first known anomaly in the carbon cycle. This may have resulted from the diversification of photosynthetic life that produced the oxygen that changed the atmosphere," Kaufman said.
Two and a half billion years ago, before the Earth's atmosphere contained appreciable oxygen, photosynthetic bacteria gave off oxygen that first likely oxygenated the surface of the ocean, and only later the atmosphere. The first formed oxygen reacted with iron in the oceans, creating iron oxides that settled to the ocean floor in sediments called banded iron-formations - layered deposits of red-brown rock that accumulated in ocean basins around the worldwide. Later, once the iron was used up, oxygen escaped from the oceans and started filling up the atmosphere.
Once oxygen made it into the atmosphere, Kaufman's team suggests that it reacted with methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, to form carbon dioxide, which is 62 times less effective at warming the surface of the planet. "With less warming potential, surface temperatures may have plummeted, resulting in globe-encompassing glaciers and sea ice" said Kaufman.
In addition to its affect on climate, the rise in oxygen stimulated the rise in stratospheric ozone, our global sunscreen. This gas layer, which lies between 12 and 30 miles above the surface, decreased the amount of damaging ultraviolet sunrays reaching the oceans, allowing photosynthetic organisms that previously lived deeper down, to move up to the surface, and hence increase their output of oxygen, further building up stratospheric ozone.
"New oxygen in the atmosphere would also have stimulated weathering processes, delivering more nutrients to the seas, and may have also pushed biological evolution towards eukaryotes, which require free oxygen for important biosynthetic pathways," said Kaufman.
The result of the Great Oxidation Event, according to Kaufman and his colleagues, was a complete transformation of Earth's atmosphere, of its climate, and of the life that populated its surface. The study is published in the May issue of Geology.
Breathe easy ping.
Oxygen is a pollutant. Cap and Trade is the answer.
No wonder we're so confused.
Sounds like those who warship the “global warming religion” are just trying to cover their rears so they can say climate change, weather it get’s hotter, or colder, is our fault.
They’re trying to have it both ways.
Actually, oxygen is an enemy ... more oxygen means less carbon dioxide (the alleged goal of the climate change fascists) ... less carbon dioxide means global cooling, thus .. ice age.
But if anyone really tried to analyze all of this logically, you'd be forced to come up with the elimination of all life on Earth .. both green and nongreen.
Too many insane people have positions well beyond their ability to comprehend and certainly more money influenced power to make them dangerous to the earth and all her inhabitants, including four footed, flying, swimming creatures God gave us.
I have an idea what we can do, but It'd be at least a life sentence if we carried it out.
Wired News is reporting a new, massive solar flare. Can’t post Wired at FR.
'warship', 'worship'...either works. ;-)
The next Ice Age will be Algore’s fault.
“global warming religion”
The operating term is religion. Whether it is warming, cooling, what have you, it is just a veneer for what the hard core greenies realy believe: Humanity is a virus infecteing the Earth Mother Goddess Gaia. Humanity needs to be wiped out (with the exception of the chosen elite of course - who have never been in the wilderness and would not have a clue if they were left all alone).
THE SUN IS STIRRING: NASA's STEREO-B spacecraft is monitoring an active region hidden behind the sun's eastern limb. On May 5th, it produced an impressive coronal mass ejection (movie) and a burst of Type II radio emissions caused by a shock wave plowing through the sun's outer atmosphere. STEREO-B's extreme UV telescope captured this image during the explosion:
Activity continued apace on May 6th with at least two more eruptions. Furthermore, recent UV images from STEREO-B reveal not just one but two active regions: image. At the root of all this activity is probably a complex of sunspots. The region is not yet visible from Earth, but the sun is turning it toward us for a better view. Readers with solar telescopes should keep an eye on sun's northeastern limb for an emergence on May 7th or 8th.
Yeah, I found that and posted it here: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2246092/posts?page=23
Silly me LOL!
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Thanks decimon. Cue the old Sweet hit... |
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Don't count on this happening again as long as there are liberals on earth.
We've discovered the problem!
Life is deadly!
I remember my first day in high school chemistry being told that we were being oxidized to death. From the moment we are born, we are doomed!
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