Friday, February 02, 2007

Japanese scientists find monster undersea plateau

B.I.G.

8.8 x 1.7 x .2 == close to 3 CUBIC miles of lava. I wonder how much heat that released into the ocean and atmosphere as it developed...and its still active. 3 cubic miles of molten rock is a lot of rock and a lot of heat. A lot of CO2 and SO2 had to some out along with it too...

Spread out evenly over the land area of the planet, this would be a sheet of 2,000 degree material ~the thickness of a sheet of paper. If there are more of them, the numbers could start to get significant.

Curiously, the global warming crowd's models predicted more even warming, when in fact the warming is apparently concentrated much closer to the surface. Coincidence? I've always felt this planet's geologic history was primarily driven by three forces - impacts, volcanism, and the sun. Not too many large impacts in the recent past, but volcanism is still going strong and Mr. Sun has been more energetic the past couple hundred years.

PPHYSORG.COM
[...]"This is presumed to be not only the biggest lava plateau in the Indian Ocean but also one of the biggest in the world," Ura said. "The vehicle also spotted hydrothermal eruptions on the northern part."

The flat plateau measures about 14 kilometers (8.8 miles) in length and 2.7 kilometers (1.7 miles) in width at a depth of about 2,700 meters (8,860 feet), according to the team from the university.

Ura said the plateau was covered with lava some 300 meters (980 feet) thick[...]

13 comments:

Mrs Xoke said...

I wonder if Al Gore will be trying to stop undersea volcanoes? Just kidding, but it was the first thing popped into my head as I read this as I am sure it can possible raise the ocean temperature and help melt polar ice caps.

Kat said...

I've thought it's very interesting that no one mentions the effect of the suns activities, like gigantic magnetic storms, have on the atmosphere or the temperature of earth.

neither do the real discussions about cyclical ages (ie, ice age, melt down, etc) or the earth's natural orbit around the sun affecting global temperatures.

It's a complete mess of science. It just seems they couldn't get anyone to care about polution until they threatened them with potential death.

ye olde scare tactic.

Chris said...

Avenger, great blog, I'll be back. Thanks for stopping by. You mind if I put a link to your blog in mine?

CT

Anonymous said...

Dear Asshat:

Yeah, you're probably right: since nature does in fact produce sources of warming, humans can probably go ahead and produce more and more sources of warming infinitely and it will have no measurable effect.

Thanks for clearing that up for me, Dr. Science.

In related developments, since your family can use your septic system without immediately overflowing it, it seems logical to assume that everyone in your county can come over to your house and use your septic system and there will be no ill effects. Right?

Now why don't you go back to typing your code and eating your Cheetos? Leave the climate science to the climate scientists who have, unbelievable though it may seem, a different take on this than you have. It may be because they are actually trained in the discipline, whereas you are not; I'm not sure.

Purple Avenger said...

Who melted those glaciers 10,000 years ago Doc? I suppose it was all those SUV's the cave men had right?

The place I grew up in was under 1,000' of ice 20,000 years ago. Now its not.

Splain that to me Lucy.

Purple Avenger said...

See, its like this Doc Asswipe - I know the limitations of the tools I've built for these supposed climate scientists. I'm quite sure I know the tool limitations much better than they do...because I've ummm fucking built the stuff.

And now I've looked the source code for one example of the supposed models and found it wanting. Its use of floating point math was amateurish and made too many assumptions - which is exactly what I'd expect from a "scientist" who doesn't really understand the systems and tools they're using and treats the shit like it were a kitchen appliance.

Anonymous said...

Dear Dumbass:

Nobody has said that climate change is the sole responsibility of humans--the big idea is that human are speeding the process up and possibly spinning it out of control. Didn't you get the memo?

Again, stick with your floating point units and leave the science to the scientists.

Purple Avenger said...

the big idea is that human are speeding the process up and possibly spinning it out of control.

A conclusion based on models that are plainly misusing the tools they were built with.

Why do you have such a problem comprehending GIGO?

Purple Avenger said...

I should add, it may be significant that these models are misusing the tools, or it may not be.

I find it curious that the enviro asshats implicitly trust these models, yet they implicitly distrust electronic voting machines.

Knowing what both are built from, I take the safe position and trust neither.

Anonymous said...

There's a difference.

If we trust the voting machines and they're hacked into and subverted, then the bad guys win the election. (I'm assuming that we can agree that the party that hacks into and subverts the machines--whichever party it is--is the party of the bad guys, by dint of having hacked into and subverted the machines.)

Let's look at the issue of climate change, now. If global warming worrywarts are right and you're wrong, then working to stop buildup of greenhouse gases actually saves the world. If you're right and they're wrong, then we're still left with a cleaner planet and the likely development of energy sources that reduce our dependence on burning hydrocarbons. How can that be bad?

Purple Avenger said...

How can that be bad?

You mean other than lightening the world's wallet by trillions of dollars on a snipe hunt?

The liberal in me is whispering that a few trillion bucks applied to say...poverty relief, pharmaceutical development, scholarships, etc might be enough to really change some people's lives.

But then again, what the fuck do I know...

Anonymous said...

It's not a snipe hunt if you actually catch something.

People are going to go on using electricity and driving vehicles--more and more people all the time. If we find other ways to produce the power that are less destructive than the ones we have now, that's no snipe hunt; that's the brass ring.

Purple Avenger said...

It's not a snipe hunt if you actually catch something.

Indeed! Then fix the models so we can KNOW for certain they're not giving misleading results.

You could start with the POP model who's source code I examined and found lacking any sort of rounding control compensations between its iteration and generations.

Any computational mathematician will tell you that lack of rounding control in iterative calculations will cause bogus results.