In the Pleistocene humans were a small percentage of the biosphere; now human-centric biomass looms large and has replaced original biodiversity and the original biodiversity carbon cycle.
Thanks, Amie, for this excellent analysis and your work focused on our oceans in general. Your focus on the carbon cycle is very important, but don't forget the hydrological cycle and the long established conveyor belt that moves waste heat into outer space. Unfortunately, we are pumping so much heat into our atmosphere that even the 321 million cubic miles of oceans, the melting 1.2 trillion tons of global ice annually (3.3 B per day), and the 1 trillion tons of evaporating water vapor daily has not been able to keep us from overheating. Polymath Eliot Jacobson calculates that we are producing the heat energy equivalent of 20+ Hiroshima yield nuclear bomb blasts PER SECOND, where each one releases 63 trillion BTUs. We have plenty of proof, then, that we are producing too much heat energy, mostly by burning fossil fuels (63 million tons of coal annually, and 100 M barrels of oil PER DAY) for even the ocean's sequestering of 90% of to keep us from overheating. Please keep your chin up and informing us on the challenges facing our oceans and all the diverse life therein. HAPPY HOLIDAYS! Gregg
In the Pleistocene humans were a small percentage of the biosphere; now human-centric biomass looms large and has replaced original biodiversity and the original biodiversity carbon cycle.
Thanks, Amie, for this excellent analysis and your work focused on our oceans in general. Your focus on the carbon cycle is very important, but don't forget the hydrological cycle and the long established conveyor belt that moves waste heat into outer space. Unfortunately, we are pumping so much heat into our atmosphere that even the 321 million cubic miles of oceans, the melting 1.2 trillion tons of global ice annually (3.3 B per day), and the 1 trillion tons of evaporating water vapor daily has not been able to keep us from overheating. Polymath Eliot Jacobson calculates that we are producing the heat energy equivalent of 20+ Hiroshima yield nuclear bomb blasts PER SECOND, where each one releases 63 trillion BTUs. We have plenty of proof, then, that we are producing too much heat energy, mostly by burning fossil fuels (63 million tons of coal annually, and 100 M barrels of oil PER DAY) for even the ocean's sequestering of 90% of to keep us from overheating. Please keep your chin up and informing us on the challenges facing our oceans and all the diverse life therein. HAPPY HOLIDAYS! Gregg