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To: cogitator

So then you take it to mean that the end of result of the tipping point is that we will have seen our last Ice Age and now the planet is on an ever warming path to a time when we enter our first Steam Age?


55 posted on 08/28/2007 9:42:28 AM PDT by Old Professer (The critic writes with rapier pen, dips it twice, and writes again.)
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To: Old Professer
So then you take it to mean that the end of result of the tipping point is that we will have seen our last Ice Age and now the planet is on an ever warming path to a time when we enter our first Steam Age?

May I speculate? Thanks...

Based on something Wally Broecker said ages ago, if every bit of fossil fuel was burned and the CO2 ended up in the atmosphere, it would take about 10,000 years or so to get back to equilibrium, as natural processes removed the excess CO2 from the atmosphere. The main way this happens is ocean absorption and neutralization by marine calcium carbonate. It takes that long because the marine calcium carbonate is on the bottom and the water with the excess CO2 absorbed from the atmosphere has to get down there.

Based on Milankovitch forcing, the next likely glacial period isn't due for another 30,000 years after that. So the CO2 concentration of the atmosphere won't be a factor. And because we are a wet planet, not Venus, I'm not worried about a runaway greenhouse.

But an enhanced greenhouse, the path we're on now, has potential problems in the short-term, which for me is from now until 2200. Those problems have been, and are being, discussed at length elsewhere.

57 posted on 08/28/2007 10:58:40 AM PDT by cogitator (Welcome to my world!)
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