From the University of Southern California
Geologic cycles act as a climate control, releasing and absorbing atmospheric carbon dioxide in a balance that helps keep the planet not too hot and not too cold
Researchers from USC and Nanjing University in China have documented evidence suggesting that part of the reason that the Earth has become neither sweltering like Venus nor frigid like Mars lies with a built-in atmospheric carbon dioxide regulator – the geologic cycles that churn up the planet’s rocky surface.
Scientists have long known that “fresh” rock pushed to the surface via mountain formation effectively acts as a kind of sponge, soaking up the greenhouse gas CO2. Left unchecked, however, that process would simply deplete atmospheric CO2 levels to a point that would plunge the Earth into an eternal winter within a few million years during the formation of large mountain ranges like the Himalayas – which has clearly not happened.
And while volcanoes have long been pointed to as a source of carbon dioxide, alone they cannot balance out the excess uptake of carbon dioxide by large mountain ranges. Instead, it turns out that “fresh” rock exposed by uplift also emits carbon through a chemical weathering process, which replenishes the atmospheric carbon dioxide at a comparable rate.
“Our presence on Earth is dependent upon this carbon cycle. This is why life is able to survive,” said Mark Torres, lead author of a study disclosing the findings that appears in Nature on March 20. Torres, a doctoral fellow at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, and a fellow at the Center for Dark Energy Biosphere Investigations (C-DEBI), collaborated with Joshua West, professor of Earth Sciences at USC Dornsife, and Gaojun Li of Nanjing University in China.
While human-made atmospheric carbon dioxide increases are currently driving significant changes in the Earth’s climate, the geologic system has kept things balanced for million of years.
“The Earth is a bit like a big, natural recycler,” West said. Torres and West studied rocks taken from the Andes mountain range in Peru and found that weathering processes affecting rocks released far more carbon than previously estimated, which motivated them to consider the global implications of CO2 release during mountain formation.
The researchers noted that rapid erosion in the Andes unearths abundant pyrite — the shiny mineral known as “fool’s gold” because of its deceptive appearance — and its chemical breakdown produces acids that release CO2 from other minerals. These observations motivated them to consider the global implications of CO2 release during mountain formation.
Like many other large mountain ranges, such as the great Himalayas, the Andes began to form during the Cenozoic period, which began about 60 million years ago and happened to coincide with a major perturbation in the cycling of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Using marine records of the long-term carbon cycle, Torres, West, and Li reconstructed the balance between CO2 release and uptake caused by the uplift of large mountain ranges and found that the release of CO2 release by rock weathering may have played a large, but thus far unrecognized, role in regulating the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide over the last roughly 60 million years.
This research was supported by USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences and C-DEBI Graduate Fellowships to M.T., NSF funding (NSF-EAR/GLD-1053504 and EAR/GLTG-1227192) to A.J.W., and National Natural Science Foundation of China funding (Grant Nos. 41173105, 91 41102103 and 41321062) to G.L.
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It seems to me that more or less CO2 has little effect on global temperature. So any claim that any earth system that regulates the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is actually regulating the global temperature of the earth is inherently false.
CO2 has little to do with global temperature therefore systems that regulate CO2 cannot regulate global temperature.
This paper may or may not have value concerning the regulation of CO2 in the atmosphere by uprising mountains but when it makes the claim that uprising mountains are regulating the temperature of the earth — IT JUMPS THE SHARK!
Your humble poet
Eugene WR Gallun
CO2…is there anything it *can’t* do?
“And while volcanoes have long been pointed to as a source of carbon dioxide, alone they cannot balance out the excess uptake of carbon dioxide by large mountain ranges.”
And what estimate did they use to make this statement? Estimates of CO2 emissions from volcanoes have increased something like 600% over the past several decades and I’d wager they are still too low.
Didn’t those people ever learn to swim? Didn’t they, at least, ever dip a toe in to check the water? Landlubbers, eh? Last time I checked, this great and beneficent (and sometimes not so beneficent) planet is not covered by mountain ranges, or even land, but by water to the tune of 70% of its surface. Maybe the above research smacks of the researchers’ own anxieties about size. Much as I would prefer to comfort them and inform them that size doesn’t matter the fact of the matter stands that I cannot. Size does matter. The oceans rule.
Now, I know the casual reader of this comment of mine will think; ‘that TomJ guy always has s-x on his mind.’ That may very well be true. But let’s be fair, there’s no denying that all these researchers always have CO2 on the mind.
Now that “we’ve proved” that although there may not be a natural temperature regulator, there is a geological CO2 regulator to keep atmospheric CO2 balanced, can we now admit that anthropogenic CO2 causes geological volcanic and earthquake activity to be less? (/s)
@Mindert Eiting says:
March 20, 2014 at 2:01 am
I agree with what you say. On the broader scale not only AGW “zombies” are the spoilers. In general it seems that crooks and shysters clogged the government supported sciences. This article is an example, just look at the affiliation of authors – Center for Dark Energy Biosphere Investigations?! What does that mean? Cross of Biology and Astrophysics?! No, this is just how shysters make it “sexy” to attract NSF functionaries. No science, just a catchy names and slogans.
http://darkenergybiosphere.org/
Welcome to the Center for Dark Energy Biosphere Investigations (C-DEBI), a National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded Science and Technology Center on the deep subseafloor biosphere. Our mission is to explore life beneath the seafloor and make transformative discoveries that advance science, benefit society, and inspire people of all ages and origins. We are a multi-institutional distributed center establishing the intellectual, educational, technological, cyber-infrastructural and collaborative framework needed for transformative experimental and exploratory research on the subseafloor biosphere. Connect with us via our mailing list, on Facebook and on our discussion forum!
Willian Ruddiman has published several papers, peer reviewed and not peer reviewed suggesting that prehistoric men changed the climate when they started practicing agriculture.
An example: http://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=es&user=vRKtJacAAAAJ&cstart=60&citation_for_view=vRKtJacAAAAJ:BqipwSGYUEgC
Here is a sample of his papers.
http://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=es&user=vRKtJacAAAAJ&view_op=list_works
Isn’t it wonderful that these modern college educated people have “Discovered” this “New” knowledge that I learned 50 years ago in High school. And then they are attempting to coin the term “Goldilocks” principle for it. The “Goldilocks” principle that I learned about had to do with the Energy Zone of the Solar System that allows liquid water to exist on the surface of this planet and not the others. Liquid water that makes this a paradise for life on it’s surface. pg
If a tree falls in the forest and a “greenwashed” scientist is not there to observe it, is it still Mankind’s fault?
jauntycyclist says:
March 20, 2014 at 2:42 am
to get published these day you have to put in a boilerplate man made co2 statement. It would fail their peer review process if they didn’t. i seen a few articles where the co2 statement clearly looks added in and has little bearing on what the paper was about.
Agreed, this paper seems to be an example of that.
CO2 is shown in a positive light here – at least that is progress.
@urederra
Thanks. That paper comes close and reflects the mentality I was previously mentioning.
I had wondered why the AIRS CO2 maps showed such strong CO2 plumes emanating from the Andes: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpeg/PIA11194.jpg
This paper is not the Goldilocks principle but rather the Pollyanna syndrome. Earth processes can definitely take place to buffer effects potentially negative to humans and the Earth could also wipe us out in an instant. The real issue is the human footprint locally and not globally. Until people start thinking locally, nothing will happen other than increased taxation in the name of this global charade.
Joel O’Bryan says:
March 20, 2014 at 2:57 am
CO2 was not ten times higher 50 Ma. More like 2.5 times (~1000 ppm) or less. It was warmer, but the higher CO2 levels were more effect than cause.
IMO one reason for enhanced tectonic activity on earth is the collision which formed the moon, removing a big chunk of crust from the surface of our planet.
urederra says:
March 20, 2014 at 8:58 am
Ruddiman’s argument is that human activity has prolonged the Holocene, not that our species was responsible for ending the last glacial phase & starting our present interglacial, ie the Holocene.
IMO, he’s wrong. The Holocene was bound to last longer than the few thousand years his proposal envisions for its natural duration.
Steve from Rockwood says:
March 20, 2014 at 10:11 am
You are IMO correct that Mother Gaia doesn’t care about humans nor has She made this planet a cozy & comfy place just for us (who have after all evolved adapted to its ambient conditions). However, for whatever reasons, earth is homeostatic & has maintained a remarkably stable environment at least since the last Snowball Earth episode. Roy Spencer attributes this fact to God, but IMO it’s just the way it is, & won’t last forever. The planet is now about halfway through its complex life phase, which might last another 500 million years or so. Unless humans, our daughter species or some other intelligent, engineering terrestrial life form finds a way to extend earth & the sun’s sell-by dates.
@milodonharlani
I believe you are quite correct. Interglacials seem to last about 12,000 years on average.
@Walt The Physicist says:
March 20, 2014 at 8:39 am
Going by the blurb you supplied, it seems like they are invetigating the hollow earth “hypothesis”, but I see by the web site it looks to be more about extremophiles.
Here’s what confuses me – human history and how it relates to the ‘Inter-glacial Temperate Periods’. Homo Sapiens Sapiens appeared a whopping 200,000 years ago and ‘archaic’ Homo Sapiens appeared 500,000 years ago – time frames most would agree is a blink of an eye in geological terms. Even more intriguing is our oldest archeological human cities (Iraqi Tells) date back a mere 8,000 years – which seems to coincide with our current IGTP. Additionally, I believe the fossil record is fairly light (i.e. not many samples) during our various ice ages. So why would anyone argue the Earth is constantly habitable? Why aren’t Milankovitch Cycles part of the AGW debate? They seem to point to an obvious conclusion – it’s likely to get really cold in the near future (geologically speaking)!
And here’s me thinking that water vapor was the most abundant and most significant greenhouse gas.
mwhite says:
March 20, 2014 at 11:50 am
Oh sure, like some chemical substance that can interfere with infrared frequencies & also has the power to change the albedo of large percentages of the planet could have any effect at all.
Dan Charles Derby III says:
March 20, 2014 at 11:33 am
Here’s what confuses me – human history and how it relates to the ‘Inter-glacial Temperate Periods’. Homo Sapiens Sapiens appeared a whopping 200,000 years ago and ‘archaic’ Homo Sapiens appeared 500,000 years ago – time frames most would agree is a blink of an eye in geological terms. Even more intriguing is our oldest archeological human cities (Iraqi Tells) date back a mere 8,000 years – which seems to coincide with our current IGTP. Additionally, I believe the fossil record is fairly light (i.e. not many samples) during our various ice ages. So why would anyone argue the Earth is constantly habitable?
———————————————————————————————————————
The tropics have always been habitable. The great ice sheets did not extend that far south.
Dan Charles Derby III says:
March 20, 2014 at 11:33 am
Even more intriguing is our oldest archeological human cities (Iraqi Tells) date back a mere 8,000 years – which seems to coincide with our current IGTP.
=====================
Sea level was 200-300 feet lower when there was more extensive glaciation. People tend to congregate on shorelines. Much of pre-civilized Man’s remnants are under 200 feet of water.
For all our technology, we really can’t do much exploring 200-300 feet down.
All sounds very mysterious; this Goldilocks principle. At CERN the most esoteric question they seem to want an answer to is: “Why is there more matter, in the universe, than anti-matter ?”
For 60 cents US, I can give them the answer, and buy myself a MacDonald’s senior coffee.
Very simple; only an idiot, would have named the surviving species “Anti-matter”, instead of “Matter.”
But as for Goldilocks; utter nonsense. Life evolved here to exploit the conditions that exist here.
If it couldn’t, it wouldn’t.
And when you look at all of the diverse habitats that life on earth has invaded, some of them are quite bizarre, compared to my living room, so don’t kid yourself, that we live in a special place.
Actually study the separation of continents, and one will note, that during the last ice age, the America’s were not inhabited. Australia had only one known glacial area and that was in Tasmania still then connected to the Mainland of Australia and the mainland to PNG. Honestly I still reel at some outlandish explanations and I know that most humans don’t live in the Arctic other than Inuits, before western or European exploration. They had a metabolism like the cold weather Neanderthals that depended only on protein, fat and little carbohydrate. Other humans independent of race can not live well on a diet like this, we’d die. One archaeological cliche is ‘Human’s propose, but nature deposes’ and it does. I just hope we can adapt to another ice age if it is forming. That will not be a surprise, we have had an interglacial now for over 10,000 years that enabled humans to inhabit most of the planet, including the deserts and arctic circle. They were able to produce domesticated livestock and crops, that allowed them to store food that they couldn’t do when nomadic hunter and gatherers, a fishers..