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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The biosphere is carbon limited.. Carbon is the money supply in the biological economy. The oceans are the federal reserve. Cool them, they tighten the money supply, warm them they expand it.
Weathering is lunch money. There are several kinds of weathering. We believe silicate weathering is predominant, and it consumes CO2. Certain limestones can be subducted and they will recycle carbonate in magmatism. Others are too light to subduct and get buried in accretionary prisms where the carbon is taken out of circulation for a very long time.
Cycles of volcanic activity and mountain building may correspond with warming not because mountains are weathered, but because enormous amounts of new mineral water and CO2 are added by volcanism. New printed money. The warming also loosens the federal reserve.
There is no balance sheet. The vast majority of the time the planet has been warm. The question is how may glacial periods we can afford.
All Humans can adapt, provided they have adequate shelter, and energy source, and enough food and water. Talking about food, I have a very nice Tasmanian salmon piece waiting to be cooked. Nite folks and keep fighting the idiots.
“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.”
I’ve worked as a nautical archeologist. You’re wrong. Search for Robert Ballard’s work at Sinop, Turkey. While this work does support your premise that people settled near shorelines by demonstrating the likelihood of buildings 300′ below the Black Sea. I recommend you look up this work on the Nat Geo website. Three problems with your statement. 1) the theory is the Med was 300′ higher that the Black Sea about 8K years ago when the Med broke through the Bosphorus Straights. 2) Extensive Sonar, visual and magnetometer survey have occurred at previous, ice age shorelines by the various navies of the world to make sure enemy subs can’t hide along our shores. No documented examples of human habitation exists other then Ballard’s discovery. 3.) people settle along rivers and have for millenniums. So while habitation might be heavier near oceans, great and ancient cities have existed well inland – Ur, Jerusalem, and Timbuktu come to mind.
Finally, from Wikipedia: “Peter B. Bennett is credited with the invention of trimix breathing gas as a method to eliminate High Pressure Nervous Syndrome. In 1981, at Duke University Medical Center, Bennett conducted an experiment called Atlantis III, which involved taking divers to a depth of 2,250 feet (685.8 metres), and slowly decompressing them to the surface over a period of 31-plus days, setting an early world record for depth in the process.[8]”. Plus I personally know a Retired Navy Captain who has been to a depth of more than half that record – and not in a sub, though he did go deeper in Alvin. Again, while not extensive we have explored the 2-300′ depth and there is no evidence of human habitation.
bushbunny says:
March 20, 2014 at 7:28 pm
“…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.”
Isn’t it better to say: “…WE were able to produce domesticated livestock and crops, that allowed US to store food that WE couldn’t do when nomadic hunter and gatherers, and fishers.”
“Dan Charles Derby III says:
March 20, 2014 at 11:39 pm”
What sort of evidence of hunter gathers would you expect to find? They did not build stone edifices. That came with agriculture. They inhabited caves and overhangs. They left small piles of shards as they chipped their points. Their middens, burials and art will not survive 50,000 years in the mill of the marine ecosystem.
Got it. But we do have archeological evidence in caves going back about 50,000 years and more. But you miss my point entirely. We continue to talk about global climate change in terms of modern homo sapiens sapiens history – a history which is almost a blink of the geological eye. It does’t matter if we found evidence of human habitation 300′ feet below sea-level – because at most it would only go back 200,000-500,000 years. What intrigues me is: 1) how does a species evolve this quickly? 2) Why did cities only develop 8,000 BP? 3) Why did the advent of agriculture develop a mere 12,000 BP? 4) Do these developments relate to the Holocene? 5) Why is there no evidence of human growth or activity during the Eeman Inter-Glacial Temperate Period? 6) Why are we debating AGW when we have only been measuring global temperatures and humidities since the 18th century and accurately measuring for the last 30 years given the knowledge we have of the Milanovitch cycles?
Unless there’s an attractor.
There is archaeological evidence that the flood (Deluge) mentioned in the bible was caused by a land bridge of the black sea collapsing. This would have flooded a fresh water lake that lay behind it, that has some evidence of human occupation in the area and they moved. Around 6,000 – 7000 years ago. But there is evidence in the English channel of mammoth bones. So at one time this land bridge was inundated between the continent and Great Britain. Whatever, this interglacial has benefited human kind as far as exploiting resources, food production and technology. Too late to go back to those Holocene days (sarc) of inter-tribal wars over territory, superstitious nonsense to explain nature’s quirks, (oh, well not exactly it still goes on) but whatever remedy they come up with it will not change the weather? Nor can they stop volcanoes.
There is evidence that Mount Ararak exploded during the Bronze age and buried a village. Then there is Vesuvius, that also buried a bronze age settlement well before 79 AD. Toba 70,000 years ago was supposed to create a nuclear winter that killed all life near by. Thera 1300 -1600 BC, and the Chinese chronicles dated around the same period, that reports that there was frost in summer, and the sun didn’t shine for years, causing a famine. Anyway just adapt fellow earthlings, there may worse to come.
Endnote. Tim Flannery owns a home on the Hawkesbury river. We were thinking of buying the same place decades ago, accept the only feasible access was by boat.(Great holiday home though) Otherwise you had to travel miles along a bush track to get on to the main roads to Sydney. I wonder if he still owns it with his scares about sea levels rising, etc. LOL.