Has anyone spotted numbers associated with the amount of heat transfer associated with the newly discovered events?
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Has anyone spotted numbers associated with the amount of heat transfer associated with the newly discovered events?
Yes, they are surprised all the time, and yes, they don't know everything. What bearing does that have on volcanoes and the polar ice? Do you have any argument or information to counter what Mike explained to you? Or are you just playing around? Do you have anything of substance to add?Originally Posted by The Rani
Americans have had enough of glitz and roar . . Foreboding has deepened, and spiritual currents have darkened . . .
THE FOURTH TURNING IS AT HAND.
See T4T, p. 253.
You floated the idea of a BIG volcano as a possible explanation for melting ice caps. That was the context. You said a BIG volcano, not a small volcano or a bunch of vents, but something big enough to do the job.
I said the idea that such a volcano could have erupted and not be detected was equivalent to fairies, and it is still equivalent to fairies.
The reason is an eruption big enough to do the job would have to be at least 200,000 megatons, about 1/500th the scale of the event that wiped out the dinosaurs. The idea that something this big could go down without detection is fanciful
The discovery of a volcano many thousands of times too small to do the job doesn't change anything.
You are being dishonest and misrepresenting my position. You imply that I dismissed the idea that any sort of undersea volcano could exist, which I never did. What I dismissed was the existence of a volcano big enough to melt the ice.
Last edited by Mikebert; 06-29-2008 at 08:40 PM.
The say in the article that it was about the size of the eruption that buried Pompei which was about 20 megatons (2 x 10^16 calories).
Mike, I'm not sure that I'd put as much faith in an estimate provided in a lede-line for the purpose of illustration by a journalist writing an article for a general audience in the popular press as you seem to.
Same thing goes for illustrative examples in popular press books about Pompeii.
In either case, I don't think that this represents the kind of data that Bob's looking for.
"All stories are haunted by the ghosts of the stories they might have been." ~*~ Salman Rushdie, Shame
The biggest weapon we currently have in the inventory has a yield of 25 MT.
Geologists would definitely have noticed the existence of such a large underwater formation. They get orgasms over this kind of stuff. Hard, if not impossible to hide on sonar or seismographs. Not to mention IR blooms on certain early warning systems and ASW patrols...
The volcanic eruption was detected seismically as a massive swarm of earthquakes and unusual seismic activity that started in the winter of 1999 and went on for at least six or seven months. A smaller group of earthquakes and additional unusual seismic activity were detected the same area in 2001.
All of this seismic activity took place along the Gakkel Ridge, so scientists knew that it was related to volcanic activity of some sort. They even knew, thanks to imaging data, that this volcanic activity resulted in lava flows. What they didn't realize that this activity was pyroclastic in nature. That came as a surprise because the scientific understanding of pyroclastic eruptions indicated that it was not only unlikely, it was impossible.
The surprise wasn't that there was volcanic activity down there, it was that this activity formed volcanos that blew their tops instead of becoming vents.
Last edited by Semo '75; 06-30-2008 at 02:15 AM.
"All stories are haunted by the ghosts of the stories they might have been." ~*~ Salman Rushdie, Shame
Something that science said was not supposed to happen actually happened. That's why scientists were surprised. It's kind of a big deal when stuff that's not supposed to happen actually happens.
What wasn't supposed to happen was that full-blown volcanic eruptions took place at depths at which they'd never been observed and science said were impossible. The current explanation for this is that the tectonic activity beneath the Arctic Ocean is unique. The Arctic Ocean is beneath ice that is currently melting at an accelerated rate, and has been since 1999. That's the very same year that the full-blown volcanic eruptions that science said were not possible actually took place at the floor of the Arctic Ocean. Until 1999, it was assumed that the Gakkel Ridge was non-volcanic. Now we know that it is not only volcanic, but that it is uniquely volcanic.
That may very well be relevant to understanding why the Arctic ice is melting. It may not be. I don't know...
...but what I do know is that back-of-the-envelope calculations based on estimates presented in the popular press for illustrative purposes won't convince me that it's not relevant.
"All stories are haunted by the ghosts of the stories they might have been." ~*~ Salman Rushdie, Shame
Why? We are talking order of magnitude here. Whether it is 10 times bigger than the Pompeii volcano or one-tenth the size it's still way way too small.
I think Bob is interested in doing a quantification analysis. How does the heat release from a volcano compare the heat requirement need to perfrom the melting that has been observed? I did this and the difference is around 4 orders of magnitude.In either case, I don't think that this represents the kind of data that Bob's looking for.
You are quoting statements out of context, that's dishonest. You are misrepresenting what was said. You are arguing in bad faith.
Now either you intend to argue in bad faith or not.
Did you or did you not speculate that a "big ole volcano" might be responsible for melting the ice?
Yes or no?
FWIW: This is the semantic BS argument style that tends to piss of the Pope, or at least the other forum members. You argue strictly for its own sake. You avoid goal setting, so everything is open to interpretation.
That's a more appropriate style for discussing literature, the law or what to have for dinner.
My $0.05 (accounting for inflation).
Marx: Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
Lennon: You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.
That's fine. Do you have anything of substance to offer in response to Mike?
Americans have had enough of glitz and roar . . Foreboding has deepened, and spiritual currents have darkened . . .
THE FOURTH TURNING IS AT HAND.
See T4T, p. 253.
Two issues, of which one is acutally important. The petty first:
- Scientific data are or datum is, take your pick. The word 'data' is plural
- You weren't arguing about the data. You were arguing about the meaning of the argument. Perhaps that qualifies as a meta-argument. In any case, it's a never ending spiral, because there is nothing definitive about the English language.
Marx: Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
Lennon: You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.
No I didn't. The context was always about the BIG volcano you hypothesized. The one that doesn't exist.
You are trying to pull a fast one by substituting your volcano (one that could actually be repsonsible for diminished ice caps and which doesn't exist) with this other volcano which is way too small to do the job. That is dishonest.
The estimate from the popular press is irrelevant.
The issue is hundreds of thousands of square miles of ice cover that is gone. That is a LOT of ice. Consider 100,000 square miles of ice 10 feet think is
100,000 x (5280 fr/mi)^2 x 10 f = 2.788 x 10^13 cubit feet of ice
multiple by 28.3 liters per cubit foot and by 1000 ml/liter and you get
7.89 x 10^17 ml of ice. Denisty of aobut 0.9 g/ml so you have 7.1 x 10^17 grams of ice.
Takes 80 cal to melt a gram of ice so to melt this ice you would need
5.7 x 10^19 calories
One meagton is 1 x 10^15 calories
So the energy needed to melt 100,000 square mile sof ice 10 feet thick is about 57,000 megaton.
And this assumes all of the energy is delivered directly to the ice and none to the water between the volcano and the ice. Obviously a lot of the energy is going to go to heating the water and so a lot more than 57,000 megatons delivered at the bottom of the ocean would actually be needed to melt 100,000 sq miles of ice ten feet thick at the surface of the ocean.
But even 57,000 megatons is a really big explosion. That's tens of thousands of H-bombs all going off in one spot. Do you really think an explosion of this scale could have happened in 1999 and nobody noticed?
Yes between between things big enough to do the job (big ole volcanos) and things too small to do the job (like vents).You made the distinction yourself between volcanoes and vents:
The volcano that was recently discovered falls in the category of things too small to do the job, like vents.
You are still switching the focus from something that could actually do a job (which doesn't exist because it would be detected and hasn't been) to something that cannot do the job (which could escape detection).
What that something is called is irrelevant. You are playing word games in an attempt to distract. That's misleading as best or outright deceptive at worst.
Last edited by Mikebert; 06-30-2008 at 05:45 PM.
The North Atlantic Oscillation?
I've been Googling away, trying to find plausible links between geothermal energy and global warming. Haven't found much that would add to the geothermal aspects of this conversation, but I did keep running into references to "The North Atlantic Oscillation."
This is a pattern similar to but apparently independent of the Pacific's El Nino patterns. When it is in its 'positive' cycle, northern Europe gets storms, the Mediterranean is dry, and there are strong trade winds flowing from Africa towards the Caribbean. In the negative phase, Europe and North America get cooler winters, and the Mediterranean gets the storms. Historically, every several years this pattern has switched modes, going from positive to negative and back, much like El Nino.
Last 30 years or so, the pattern has been stuck in positive mode. What caused something that was once unstable, that switched modes every few years, to get stuck in one mode? Of course, somebody has to blame global warming. Alternately, one can look for fairies.
Another aspect of the cycle is polar wind patterns. In the negative phase, polar ice tends to be spun by winds that circle the arctic. In the positive phase, the ice is driven away from Alaska and Siberia towards Greenland and Iceland. Thus, in negative years, the ice stays more or less in place in the north, and gets a chance to thicken in winter. In positive years, more ice gets pushed south into the Atlantic and melts. When the modes shifted every few years, there was decent equilibrium. The amount of ice stayed fairly constant. With the winds stuck in positive mode, there is a persistent push of the ice out of the Arctic. This takes the ice over the ridge where the newly discovered volcanic activity is tacking place, into the warmer Atlantic where it will inevitably melt.
I'm not sure the above will settle anything, but the North Atlantic Oscillation seems to be getting a lot more ink and bandwidth than the geothermal theory. While some models have verified a link between global warming and the positive phase of the Oscillation, many here seem as dismissive of computer models as others are dismissive of fairies.
Anyway, it is one more phrase to Google if one wants to learn a bit more.
Since it happened in 1999 and our discussion happened after that and web searches didn't reveal this at the time of of our discussion, it still qualifies as an undetected ocean bottom thermal source. It did not and does not qualify as a "big ole volcano" because it is too small to be relevant to vanishing ice caps.
If a big ole volcano had erupted anywhere in the Arctic we would have known about it at the time of discussion because it would be simply too big to miss.
Trying to argue that failing to know about this volcano represents a flaw in my statement is dishonest. The context of the volcano was as a possible cause for reduction of the polar ice cap and that means it has to be a really really big energy source. Very big volcanic energy sources make themselves known seismically just as nuclear explosions do. Just as no country on Earth could explode a big nuclear bomb without the US knowing about it, no very big volcano could erupt anywhere on the Earth without the US knowing about.
This is the point on which you were wrong, yet will not acknowledge. You are doing the same thing you accuse Pink Splice of doing.
I do try to acknowledge when I am wrong.
Admitting when you are wrong is an element of a honest discussion, and arguing in good faith. You haven't done so on this issue, nor can I recall you ever doing so on any other issue. Do you think of yourself as something above human and so incapable of error?
I was going to let this go, but it may be a good point to argue after all. No, you aren't interested in "meaning". "Meaning" implies that value has been assessed and assigned. If you are interested in the value of the argument, then you must focus on the substance.If you're saying that I'm more interested in "meaning" than nitpicking, guilty as charged. Prepare the noose.
In the volcano discussion, the substance centers on cause and effect. Mike made a calculation showing that the previously undiscovered or poorly noted volcano was inadequate to generate the purported result. An argument about meaning would argue the facts (i.e. the energy emitted by the eruption or the magnitude of ice to be melted) or the analysis (i.e. it is too simplistic or was in error in some way). You argued the definition of 'volcano'.
Marx: Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
Lennon: You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.
This came to my attention a few years ago. My understanding is that, all things being equal, it makes sense that the NAO would stay positive, or even become "more positive" than usual, due to Global Warming. It is tied to the North Atlantic thermohaline ciruculation (THC) the job of which is heat transfer from the tropics to the high lattitudes and there's a lot more heat to transfer when more sunlight gets absorbed, obviously. So the fun goes to Northern Europe and Southern Europe gets more effects from the Hadley Cell, i.e, it ends up on the northern periphery of the dry zone that creates the Sahara.
However, thing may not be equal for long. The mechanism behind the THC involves the salinity levels of the North Atlantic. As the warm waters of the tropics move northward the evaporation increases the salinity of the water, making it heavier. Thus by the time the water reaches the far north it sinks and is carried back toward the tropics deep under the ocean surfaces, where it rises and the process repeats.
The problem is melting ice in the Artic may be desalinizing the North Atlantic. If that happens to some certain extent, the water will not be heavy enough to fall and the THC will either weaken or stop altogether. It is believed this exact phenomenon caused the Younger Dryas (a 1,000 year return of the Ice Age) and some suspect this process in mitigated form may have been behind the Little Ice Age (though reduced solar energy is an alternative explanation).
So our prospects seems to be a radicalization of the back-and-forth of the NAO. First, very positive. Then, very, very negative, and possibly the latter for a long time.
The bad news is, Europe will become relatively uninhabitable. The good news is, the Sahara will probably become more livable so everyone can just move south.
Kidding aside, without the THC, mid-lattitude storms would probably become unbelievably intense as stark cold and stark warm air clash.
FWIW.
Americans have had enough of glitz and roar . . Foreboding has deepened, and spiritual currents have darkened . . .
THE FOURTH TURNING IS AT HAND.
See T4T, p. 253.
The estimate in the article is irrelevant, but more importantly it's completely meaningless. The 79 AD eruption of Mount Vesuvius happens to be the most well-known volcanic eruption in history, which is likely the reason that the reporter chose it as an example in the first place.
As a thought exercise, The Rani posited the existence of a volcano underneath the arctic ice. For my part, I said that the arctic seabed is uniquely volcanic, which might help us to understand the cause of the spectacular summer melts we've been seeing recently in the arctic. Neither of us has claimed, or even suggested, that the thermal energy given off by the explosive eruption of a single volcano melted all of the arctic ice that you've decided it must have melted.
So you've manufactured a position, attributed it to your opponents, and then you've "disproved" it. But you haven't really even done that, because you've really just performed a few back of the envelope calculations using numbers drawn from some highly questionable sources.
I'm not sure who you're arguing against.
"All stories are haunted by the ghosts of the stories they might have been." ~*~ Salman Rushdie, Shame
A response with substance would require Mike's argument to actually have substance in the first place, which it doesn't. It's a back of the envelope calculation based on dubious figures intended to disprove the argument that the heat generated by the explosive eruption of a volcano melted a huge quantity of ice. Nobody has advanced such an argument and nobody involved in this discussion seems to hold the opinion that this is what took place.
"All stories are haunted by the ghosts of the stories they might have been." ~*~ Salman Rushdie, Shame
There you go again. Stating that avoiding the issue, changing the subject, and refusing to admit when you are wrong is personal stuff. Its describes the style you are employing in this argument. It says nothing about you personally. What it suggests is that this topic is essentially political to you, not scientific.
No it won't.
You suggested that volcanic issues could play a role in the summer melts of the ice. Outside of a single HUGE volcano, they cannot, so you are wrong.Neither of us has claimed, or even suggested, that the thermal energy given off by the explosive eruption of a single volcano melted all of the arctic ice that you've decided it must have melted.
Rani, by specifying a big ole volcano actually hit on the only way volcanic phenomenon could play a role. She could be right, if (and only if) there really was a really big volcano under the ice. But as I pointed about earlier, such a volcano would be huge and so it would be detected. Since it hadn't been, it doesn't exist.
Volcanic thermal effects are way too small to exert any significant effect on climate. This is why you never see volcanic heat even mentioned as a climate driver, because it is too small.
This is why scientists dismiss the whole idea that thermal effects of undersea volcanic activity have any relevance to the melting ice. They know about the huge discrepancy in size of the effects. But you and the Rani don't. You know nothing about the science and cannot give an informed opinion. Yet you take it upon yourself to question this dismissal, even though you don't know enough to intelligently question it. You could do a little research yourself, perform a few back of the envelop calculations as so learn enough to actual understand the issue. But you don't, yet you still have an opinion.
Why my focus on a single volcano?
It is possible to store the tiny amount of volcanic energy that is continuously generated by spreading tectonic plates over a long time and releasing it all at once at a single spot. This of course is a volcano. This energy can also be released as if is generated. This is a vent.
High volcanic activity by itself (say through a bunch vents) cannot do the job, because it releases its energy continuously and so it draws its power from the ongoing volcanic energy output of the earth, which is too small to do anything. So the difference I noted that the Rani quoted between vents and volcanos isn't because vents are small and volcanoes are big. It is between vents which release continuously and volcanos that store the energy up.
Now in the first discussion, I considered what you suggest above because Justin had shown that vents exist along ridges and there was a majorly active ridge under the ice. So I learned about vents and found they released the steady volcanic energy produced by the moving crustal plates. Every year the plate move a little bit and magma wells up though the widen crack, freezing to create new surface and releasing energy. Some of this energy is released by undersea vent. Some of it is not released right away. Instead it is stored and then released over a short period in volcanic eruptions.
Since volcanic energy from moving plates is so small compared to climatic forcings, the only way for it to have an effect (like shrinking the ice caps) is if it is stored for a long time and then released all at once. This could produce significant local warming. If you stored it up for a very very long time, you can store a great deal of volcanic energy.
Now the biggest volcanos, like Yellowstone, erupt very infrequently, many hundreds of thousands of years between eruptions. So they store up a lot of energy. Such a big ole volcano placed right under the ice could exert a significant effect. But if such a volcano released its energy in the last 30 years (which it would have to do to melt the ice) then we would have detected it because the explosion would be huge, so we can be sure that this didn't happen.
And that means volcanic explanations for melting ice caps just won't fly either.
The second calculation is simple arithmetic which you can do yourself. The only value I used is the heat of fusion of water which is a physical constant. There are no questionable figures.But you haven't really even done that, because you've really just performed a few back of the envelope calculations using numbers drawn from some highly questionable sources.
Last edited by Mikebert; 07-01-2008 at 06:44 PM.
But you aren't discussing it.
But this is what you are discussing. You surely aren't discussing the science. First you hint that a volcano could be responsible for the disappearing ice. In effect you are saying that the climate scientists in their enthusiasm to blame all things warming on greenhouse gases, have missed an obvious alternate explanation.If you guys want to start a "The Politics and Argumentive Style of The Rani" thread please feel free ... but beware that it will probably be flagged for removal.
Except it is wrong. Since none of us here is actually a climate scientist, no one could immediately recognize that it was wrong. It certainly seemed to me that a big ole volcano or a whole mess of vents might do the job--as it seemed to you and Justin. But if so, why is it simply ignored by clinate scientists?
Of course, that doesn't matter to you, your whole point is they are lying or at least misrepresenting the evidence. But it did to me, because if volcanic energy might be important then this would be an easy critique to make and so I would expect the skeptical scientists to point it out (except they don't either).
I looked up vents and found a vent with an estimated heat output of 50 MW. 50 MW over 30 years is 11 megatons, a fair amount of energy. Of course as I showed earlier, to melt 100,000 square miles of ice 10 feet thick requires 56,000 megatons. One vent's 11 megatons is way too small. But suppose there were 50,000 vents? That would be 550,000 megatons of energy over 30 years--enough to melt a lot of ice. 50,000 vents is a lot, but if there were 5000 miles of ridge under the cap, then that would be only one 1-2 meter wide vent every 500 feet, so there would be room for that many events.
So that was when I decided to looked into the question of what powers the vents. If you have a value for the source of the heat, then the heat released is limited by this value and you don't need to count vents. And here is where I learned that the source of volcanic energy is spreading plates, which generates a steady amount of energy. There is not enough energy to power 50,000 50 MW vents under the arctic. I posted on this, and this is why I ruled out vents as a source for melting.
Now I did all this work, and posted on it, and you didn't comment on it maybe even read it. Instead you stuck to your same views as if no new information had been brought to light. Now we could just drop it, but YOU brought it up again with a suggestion that you were right about the possibility of a big ole volcano. Except the volcano you pointed to isn't big. And the mechanism that Semo brings up is the same one that I spent a lot of time investigated the first time. One that I, like he, thought made sense, but through actual effort found out that it this was not the case. Semo and you simply dismiss that effort, just as you dismiss the scientists and anyone else you doesn't hold your preferred view of the thing.
