Temperature

Kanook

When we discuss temperature, we always compare it to a standard, whether

that standard is our comfort or the environment we reside in, there always needs
to be a comparative reference. Today temperature often migrates into normal
conversation, whether it is at dinner time or in school I would imagine that
somewhere someplace someone is debating the effects of differences felt
somewhere close to them.
I know you read or watch the news, and you can bet that publishers and
producers will find a way to let it drift into their reporting. Especially since “global
warming” has become a topic to most all of us…I would like to explore this thing
called “temperature” and examine how it has affected this Blue Marble we use as
our spaceship through the heavens. Keep in mind I am no scientist nor am I a
climatologist, just a curious person assembling a series of notes and jotting down
some observations and stealing some stuff from the web, and unfortunately for
those who read my notes, (if you do) from time to time you will be subjected to my
ramblings.
Most records from the ancient past, and I don’t mean 1945 (how young adults
and children view my silver hair) but dropping back lets say 1,000,000 years or
more, a time span that is hard to imagine, but becoming less difficult as the
number of millionaires spring up across the globe --- the number 1,000,000 seems
to have shrunk a bit… a million years is a long time, no matter the methods used
to slice and dice it. If you are 50 years old (or) so, that is 0.005% of 1 mil.
Most of the talk these days is about how us 6 or so billion humans are
overdoing our efforts to put CO2 into our atmosphere, an atmosphere that used to
be made up of at least 80% of the gas many millions of year ago, and that around
3500 million years ago this CO2 level dropped to about 20%, this they say matches
the time frame when “bacteria” came to life.
When “photosynthesis” finally came around about 2700 million years ago the
CO2 level was about 15% and during the next few years, 700 million years, plant
life and its process of photosynthesis dropped this level to about 8%.
Now in this time frame, Oxygen (“O2”) was beginning to show up and begins its
accumulation, they call this “free accumulation”. At about 600 million years ago
the CO2 level was approaching 1% and O2 levels had reached about 15%. 600

Temperature – April,2007 – JLB Page 1

million years ago
“corresponds” to the end
of the “Precambrian” age
and the beginning of the
“Cambrian” age, or as
they say the end of the
“cryptozoic” and the
beginning of the
“Phanerozic”, or the
beginning of the oxygen-
breathing life on this
planet.
Now the bit I don’t understand. During the Precambrian period we had 15%
CO2 and according to some “experts” volcanoes, earthquakes and just all kinds of
activity on the face of the globe – and oceans of water. According to the
“scientists” today if we increase our CO2 levels to where we upset the balance of
our present atmosphere (which contains about .04% CO 2 we’re going to heat up so
much, we’ll practically melt in our boots.
And on the other hand they tell me that during this Precambrian period the
earth was pretty much covered with ice, now understand that during this time the
continents had not been formed yet as we just had one super-continent called
“Rodinia” [Pangaea], and as far as I can tell Henry Ford had not invented the
Model “T” as of yet.
Next they tell me
that after the
Precambrian period
the earth warmed
up as the CO2 was
going away (took a
vacation) and the
O2 levels begin to
rise. I mean it
warmed up – it
went from 0º C [32º

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F] (ice forms) to 22º C [71.6º F] – this they say happened as the “Proterozoic” age
drew to a close and by the dawn of the Cambrian/Phanerozic age 100’s of million
years of ice was replaced with “balmy tropical seas” of the Cambrian Period within
life just exploded at a rate never seen before or “after”.
You see what I’m having a problem with, lots of CO2 – lots of ice, a reduction in
CO2 we get Hawaii 24-hours
a day and 365 days a year
– supposedly as I
understand it, the build up
of CO2 will act as a reflector
and the planet will not
receive to much heat from
the sun – I understand the
cooling, but the boys with
the brains are now telling
me we’re going to trap the
natural heat from the
planet by dumping at least
another .01% of CO2 in the
air that we breath – and
boy oh boy are we going to
get hot or what? Where did
that natural heat go then,
or was there any? Or did
we have no natural glow,
until something happened
that caused the earth’s
crust to fracture
(continents starting wandering about) and then all went to heck in a hand-basket?
I read the other day that they have calculated the internal core temperature of this
planent at something like 3700 ºC, now that is hot [6,692 ºF].
It is said that the Earth’s climate varied during the next 140 million years or so,
whereas it went from large-scale continental glaciation to where there was no ice
even at the poles and that this “could” have been caused by our spaceship going

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in and out of “galactic spiral arms”, where some were fairly clean sweeps through
an arm, to one where there was plenty of “dust” in space that blocked the ray
from our Sun 93 million miles (92.55 mil) away.
They state that the difference between a fully glaciated Earth to where it is
almost ice-free is about 10º C [18 ºF] and that key requirement was also all the
land mass had to be around the poles, whereas the continents were drifting very
freely and the plate tectonics was so active that
you had a group of “Keystone Cops” running
around to direct traffic.
They do say that it wasn’t only the
continental drift that caused the ice build up, as
how do we explain the tropical plants we have
found evidence of in Antarctica?
Now we get into the debate of the effect of
CO2 in that they do maintain that the changes in
the atmosphere must have had something to do
with the changes in climate, although some say
that the magic of CO2 is not related to the long-time scales of temperature change,
in other words they completely removed it from their equations – where they
maintain there were some massive changes in temperature when there was more
CO2 in the atmosphere and say that the continental shift and the build up of
mountains had more to do with the changing climate.
Others argue this (and
throw it away) maintaining
the CO2 influence has been
underestimated – however
most scientists cover their
you know what, by saying
that the pre-industrial CO2
level at 280 ppm (parts per
million) is not far from the
lowest ever occurring since
life appeared on the Blue Marble.

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 Riding on the bus with these long term climate changes between hot and cold
have been many short-term changes, some similar to the long-term, and in some
cases even more “severe”.
Some go so far as to blame these “short-term” fluctuations, such as the
“Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum”, to a rapid increase of CO 2 by a collapse of
a natural methane reservoir in one of the oceans.
There have been some “severe” climate changes note in the “Cretaceous-
Tertiary”, “Permian-Triassic” and the “Ordovician-Silurian” extinctions events,
however some say it is “unclear” to what degree these changes caused life to die
out, or if they were responding to other processes.
You know, what about an extra-
terrestrial object of sufficient size slamming
into the Earth and blowing its atmosphere
asunder, in any of these time-frames, that
would do, wouldn’t you believe?…Here we
are spinning through the cosmos’s at
approximately 260,000 mph and another
object, lets say about 50 miles in diameter
meets us traveling at about 26,500 mph – would kind of shake this place up – don’t
you think? Blow away the shield of our atmosphere, spew tons of dust in the air
and bingo instant cold… but wait what about the heat from the spewing volcanoes
which would erupt along the tectonic plates – more CO2 mixed with dust, well
you’ve heard it before, we’d have a nuclear winter on our hands. Now they are
saying it’s going to get hotter than heck and we’ll suffer many years of no rain and
unbearable heat.
Taking a few more minutes of your time and looking at the possibility of large
ET impacts on the this planet – recent reports from Ohio State University state
they have located an impact crater in Antarctica that is 300 miles in diameter (250
million +/- years ago) that could have had something to do with a world wide
Permian-Triassic extinction event. Maybe-? Temps were affected also and it is
noted that CO2 levels were on the rise
when this object slammed into earth.
And we are all aware of the theory
that the impact on the “Yucatan

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Peninsula” (Chicxulub) on or about 65 million years ago is blamed for the end of
the dinosaur age, this crater has been measured at about 112 miles in diameter,
compare that to the one found in Antarctica at 300 miles in diameter. It seems
there were a number of impacts during the same time frame (65 million years ago
(+/-), where they have found evidence of a fairly large impact in the Ukraine and
another in the North Sea between Great Britain and Denmark, respectively they
are sized at 15 miles in diameter to 400 feet in diameter, albeit they are smaller
they must have caused some changes in something?
Another impact occurred in Chesapeake Bay about 35.5 million years ago,
which corresponds to another extinction event. Many scientists and experts today
have disassociated any temperature changes from such events. But in using their
cause and effect of increased CO2 in our atmosphere do you not think that these
impacts must have ejected mass amounts of CO2, referring back to scientific
statements that volcanoes and
earthquakes eject massive amounts of
CO2, and fossil plants thawing out above
the Artic Circle as it gets warmer, and
putting massive amounts of methane in
the air.
The controversy in the news today
deals mainly with the rise of
temperature over the past 200 or so
years, and not millions of years ago –
after all, other than the Ice Core
obtained during the last 10-years ago
give us information going back 200,000
years ago (+/-) so we depend on

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