Old Carbon Stories, Managua, Lizzie Gillett

Carbon
I hate to side with skeptics, but the ocean-acidification leading to no-sea-shells nor coral argument seems rather extreme.
The coral story is confusing, seems that reefs have been building for aeons, but different species...
First it was aragonite, now they say all shells are threatened ... well how many sea shells in the past?
geocraft

Late Carboniferous to Early Permian time (315 mya -- 270 mya) is the only time period in the last 600 million years when both atmospheric CO2 and temperatures were as low as they are today (Quaternary Period ).
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If 45 ton predators were cruising the Jurassic oceans, then the oceans must have been productive.

Leedsichthys
Of course down here in Aotaeroa, we are biased, we still see people catching marlin and broadbills on rod&reel, 90% of big fish are gone from the world as a whole.
•Paleoclimatology generally says
•Warm = wet = forests
•Cold = dry = deserts
but the coming 4-6°C rise is supposed to move Hadley cells polewards, drying out current wheat lands, opening out more poleward plains.
Dont know how droughts in North China and Argentina fit this model.

Maybe the world will be net more productive, but the intervening crop disruption looks set to trigger world wars unless we all suddenly get a lot nicer.
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Peas
Watching a video of a pea harvest. Peas to the horizon, a million dollar harvester spewing peas into trucks which speed off to freezing plants. A marvellous system, dont know how much Roundup required. The young harvester driver says, he doesnt eat much peas. He flies to England in our off season, to drive harvesters there.
Huge fields, huge capital. Possibly that harvester would still be economic to drive with oil at $200/bbl. But would the rest of the system still function? ... Tractor tilling, Haber-Bosch Urea, trucks, freezers, supermarkets with high intesity spotlights heating as freezers chill? Cars to drive there?
Or simpler yet .. as oil hits $200, maybe the entire enterprise collapses ... sure seemed that way in the early practise run of 2008.


nb this is not a Zero based graph, the system may have a bump left - eg if that Cuba field really has 20Gb extractable...
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glgroup
Six miles deep, 50 miles from the Florida Keys ... expect those embargoes to go ...

Then there's always those "events"...
nature

In the Jurassic period, the Early Toarcian oceanic anoxic event (about 183 million years ago) is associated with exceptionally high rates of organic-carbon burial, high palaeotemperatures and significant mass extinction....We propose that—as has been suggested for the Late Palaeocene thermal maximum, some 55 million years ago7—the observed patterns were produced by voluminous and extremely rapid release of methane from gas hydrate contained in marine continental-margin sediments.

An "event" to a geologist may be 10,000 years ... or who knows, maybe a bad month of methane eructations?
4 °C -> ice-free Greenland ->6 to 7 meters sea rise but is that your grand children or your great-great grandchildren who will never see London? Do you care?


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global food production, it says, is “very likely to decrease above about 3°C”(16)
. IPCC, 2007b. ipcc pdf 16. ibid, Table 19.1.
ncemag

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Nitrogen fertilizer



For me, the amusing thing about this graph is that in 1962 I was in 4th form (= 9th grade?), the world population was 2.5B. I had a postal subscription to "Scientific American", which has a September special edition on population. I used that issue in our "class project" to give a talk on population growth, typically bolshie behaviour in a priest-ridden school.... if only the world had listened to me then ...

wolfatthedoor
Wolf at the door compares NKorea and Cuba after the collapse ...

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Banded Iron seen at 3.46Byears ago?? ciencemag

I recently held in my hand a 'banded iron' rock from WAustralia. The bands are smaller than I thought, only a few mm.
2.7B y old, according to the geologist who collected it. 3.46B is way old for photosynthesis, if it is confirmed.
I wonder about the cycles implied in the bands rather regular ... ages of photosynthesis, interspersed with ages of none? Early Medea/Gaia climactic breathing?

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Managua regrets

Managua was like that in those days - a point of extraordinary global convergence, where one went from a meeting of barrio residents organizing local food distribution to hobnobbing with the international political jetset. Next door to the Intercontinental is a military complex where one night I found myself pushing aside Bianca Jagger and Billy Bragg to get to the free salad bar during, I don't remember, some fucking journalists bar-b-queue do. I didn't dare push aside Daniel Ortega, also lingering around the catering stand, with his gang of hardcore guerilla pals. His wife Rosary gave us a lift home that night. No really, now it sounds totally implausible, but so it was -a young anarcho dirt-bag like myself was driven home by the nations first lady!

CentrAm after Reagun
indymedia

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Look surprised! ... sexy robot?
jps
nationalgeographic

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ageofstupid
ageofstupid
Age of Stupid
Lizzie Gillett is a producer, born Auckland 1978 ... greens

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uwmc
Vaccines .. some good graphs ... I had measles, not the vaccine, but I'm an Aspie anyway. Some suggestion that my corugated sub-incisors indicate intra-uterine measles exposure?

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Flechettes
Ensuring maximum casualties in Gaza
electronicintifada.net
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