james_nicoll ([info]james_nicoll) wrote,
@ 2006-01-08 20:38:00
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New Oligocene Earth
Earth's climate in the Oligocene

A neo-Oligocene climate would be somewhat hard on the US farming industry. It seems to me, though, that without that bothersome humidity, a good chunk of the US could be turned over to solar power stations and since there's a crap load of power infrastructure there already, the region is preadapted to move energy around. Given that farming is an increasingly tiny share of the US economy, might this not end up a net plus for the US?

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[info]dewline
2006-01-08 08:57 pm UTC (link)
And how hard might it be on our economy, I wonder?

Irrelevant Sidebar: James, could you contact me via e-mail? I've got a question for you re: possible weblog linkages.

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[info]james_nicoll
2006-01-08 09:02 pm UTC (link)
Depends a bit how well we weather the events in our largest trading partner. Even if we switch from the US to China, look at what's happening to China's climate.

Better improve trade with India.

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[info]james_nicoll
2006-01-08 08:59 pm UTC (link)
Say, that's not going to be good for the lemurs, unless they get off Madagascar before the desertification sets in.

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[info]malada
2006-01-08 09:06 pm UTC (link)
Years ago there was a cartoon with a man behind a desk and the words went like this:

"Do you want power from hydro-electricity? We own all the dams.

Do you want power from coal? We own all the coal mines.

Do you want oil? We own all the oil wells.

Do you want nuclear power? We own all the power plants.

Do you want solar power? We own..."

-pause-

"Solar power isn't viable."

:-P

-m

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[info]scalarparty
2006-01-08 11:09 pm UTC (link)
how you figure we're going to get back to that climate regime? isn't that the one that was good for elephants and polar aligtors?

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[info]james_nicoll
2006-01-09 04:24 am UTC (link)
Greenhouse gases and lots of them. None of this weak tea CO2, either. We'll need methane.

Luckily, there's a light on the horizon:

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/earth/mg18725124.500

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[info]mishalak
2006-01-09 07:19 am UTC (link)
So I need to hurry up and move to Canada before America becomes like Arabia in climate and culture, eh?

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[info]scalarparty
2006-01-09 02:14 pm UTC (link)
cool link. there's a bunch of em, as more and more roads and infrastructure crumbles under melted permafrost --might have to find a new name for than huh, (once-permafrost?). and personaly ""i believe there's gold in thar mucks!!" seriously all you haveta do is get some sort of membrand and cover the PFrost and then as the methan gets released u can sell it to people for using in their "natural gas" cars or shove it through PME membranes for the fuel cell set..

but as far as returning to crocodile days-- eh, my money is on a new galcial era. to begin with the last intergalcial ended with a rise in CO2 much liek we're watching today, but also before it gets that hot, it gets warm enough to snow in the winter in arctic (which snowey as it may seem , the north pole is a dessert (anual snowfall appx 5mm)-- or was until a few years ago).. one reports that no one want to talk about that confirms this is that the glacier on western greenland has been growing at a rate of 12Km a year

..and thats not even taking into account the thermohalien conveyor belt, where the downwelling sites have dropped off by 30% average (some down by 75%) when that thing flips, western europe will drop by 6 degrees C

my moneys on a new ice age

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[info]scalarparty
2006-01-09 05:25 pm UTC (link)
...and i hate to sound like a broken record, but in the movies i have interviews with a number of pretty heavy geology professors who've written peer-reviewed articles about ohw increased GH gasses leads to glaciation....

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[info]tavella
2006-01-10 10:36 pm UTC (link)
There seems to be general agreement that global warming will sooner or later shut down the north atlantic thermohaline circulation, triggering a local ice age in Europe until it reboots itself (ie, when the layer of freshwater salts up enough); that doesn't translate to a global ice age, though.

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[info]scalarparty
2006-01-10 11:49 pm UTC (link)
rebooting is consensus? i never heard about that....

also if you went back say 10 years ago you coudln't find consensus on the guld stream flippig or shutting down... in fact until the CGMs started to get it together (reducing the gridscale below 500 square miles, integrating ocean circulations)... no one would agree with you about the thermohaline at all--- you'd get your ass kicked by a bunch of very concerned physicists...

the only person i believe in this is Thom Yorke

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