Engineering News

I suppose Al Gore thinks the industrial activities of a now extinct pre-human civilization was responsible for causing the global warming back then.

There is very good evidence that the earth was indeed much warmer and in fact the entire earth was enveloped in a "green house". But some amazing calamity occured that we lost our protective greenhouse and the poles were exposed to extreme cold and flash froze mammoths while their bellies were full of tropical vegetation!

There is a very strong group of engineers and scientists at www.icr.org that have studied this thoroughly with sound evidence. Yes indeed the earth was much warmer and also younger than we think it was. You can also google "answersingenesis" for a big Q&A section.

backman2

I don't recommend ICR based on my experience of sampling various sources of information over the years.

I would imagine the same can be said for the Artic as well.

The warth goes in cycles and will with or without human activity. The sun has a huge impact on our climate and it too goes through cycles of higher and lower output - cycles much longer than the 11 yr sun spot cycle.

The earth it's self has periods of time where it belchs out more or less gasses as well as ash. If a volcano were a factory it would never be able to meet the EPA emissions restrictions and would not be allowed to open.

Who's to say that the world climate we have now is optimum? It may be optimum for some species and not for others. Just like in the past the climate will cycle.

Who's to say that the climate we are headed for might not be better for humans than it was in the past?

And tell me, if there were glaciers covering much of North America in the past (which created a lot of lakes too) - what human activity made the glaciers receed all the way from upper North America, all across Canada and stop in what we now call the Antartic? I don't think there were any cars, power plants or factories that caused that.

Travis

I know the post is about the Antartic, but, riddle me this... If oil is made from decayed plants, animals and other carbon matter, how is it that tere is oil way up North in ANWAR?

Could it be that once upon a time it was quite warm that far North? Warm enough to support enough bio mass that has now become a large oil field?

Once again, the earth will go in cycles with or without us.

Travis

That has been a searing question in my mind, as well! Also consider the vast oil reserves of the Middle East, the Gulf of Mexico and the nearly barren region of North Dakota, Montana and Canada. These must have all gone through huge climate changes that were once teeming with life.

Here we go again - more fuel (so to speak) for the anti-climate change crowd! Grow up, guys, the climate is a-changin'! Yes, it happens naturally. Yes, we MAY be influencing the process. But YES, it IS happening! Denial is a river in Egypt...

I haven't read anything here that is denying climate change. I was in Denmark and Switzerland in February. To even discuss or intimate that climate change was positive or that it was not man made was as if to curse a man's mother. The religion of "Man caused global warming" is just that...a religion. People are so paranoid and so blind to the 1000's of scientists that have excellent proof otherwise as to make people violent. There are more and excellent alternative explanations....Carbon credits? now that is a crazy idea!

As for oil. It takes roughly a ton of good quality debris and the right conditions to make a barrel of oil....that implies more tons of decayed biomass than the earth could have produced. The implication is that the oil came then from 2 other possible sources (as well as biomass) What sources might you think that would be?

Over hundreds of millions of years, you don't think there were enough peat bogs, jungle swamps, and continent-wide forests to have formed the coal seams and oil pools we find today? Hmmm. Well I guess from the point of view that "anything is possible", that may have merit. It's not very logical, but I'll not scoff at the notion just now. As for the "2 other possible sources", my imagination (which is usually pretty vivid) can only conjure up:

1. The Grace of God.

2. Crapped out by the alien visitors who actually created this planet and all the life forms upon it.

But since I don't put much stock in either hypothesis, I think I'll stick with the ancient bogs, meadows, and forests as the most likely source.

I guess if the earth really is hundreds of millions of years old and the right conditions were met, perhaps you could make enough oil. But the assumption is that you could make that much "fossil" fuel....and how do you make fossils? Lots of pressure and some heat. Organic matter is replaced by inorganic. You need the right conditions...How much oil is being made right now by degrading forests and dead deer? the answer is "none". So I'll let you think about the other 2 possible sources which are logical and don't involve alien visitors!

Actually, the answer is NOT "none", it is "quite a bit", from all evidence the petroleum chemists and geologists have. About 25 or 30 years ago, there was a chap who theorized oil was made from non-organic materials reacting under vulcanism, but I don't think there was much evidence to back him up. Earth is about 4 BILLION years old, so the hundreds of millions is an easy fit in that span. So do tell, what ELSE is there that is "logical"?

I like your caption about not worrying about what other people think...However, have you ever noticed how entrenched people are on their pet subjects? Whether evidence was good or bad does not matter..it is what "I think" that matters...You cannot supply enough evidence to the man who will not believe!

Abiotic oil is one good answer. I actually think it is a very good answer. Up until recently we have been limited in drilling technology and been unable to tap below the earths' crust (maybe a good thing?) but many of the deep oceanic trenches spew abiotic methane. I believe that if the earth was as old as you guess, that all oil and natural gas pressure would have bled off to atmospheric by now. That is not what we find. Indeed the likelyhood of deep reserves under extreme pressure forcing their way up the crust and into porous formations is really very logical. If the earth were really old, either that event was sudden in the recent past or it is a process by which is continuing even today. To support that theory, is the fact that there have been some very deep hole drilling rigs been recently built and that they will be on platforms soon and drilling to the 50000ft and deeper depths.

In the 70s people were freaked out by the Arab oil crisis. Oil prices went up and the statement of the day was "we have run out of oil"...Well, the drilling industry went crazy and found mega oil and gas. The price dropped to $8/bbl. We will see a similiar pattern, but this time we will see some million barrel/day oil wells found. Oil will be at $30 or less again. Man is so tenacious that he will find what others say can't be found.

As for the second source. Consider the tail of a comet. There is evidence of big destruction years ago and "fire and brimstone" raining down and destroying parts of the middle east. I am theorizing, but should our earth have passed through a comet's tail centuries ago, some pretty interesting deposits may be found. So you said "Grace of God". I suspect a better answer was the "wrath of God".

Later

Comets aren't the wrath of anything - just a chunk of dirty ice flying through space. I have my doubts that there'd be enough surviving residue from a cometary fly-by to be significant. In fact, I think there'd be barely enough to detect, once it had reacted/interacted with the atmosphere.

I made reference to the abiotic oil theory, I never saw any sound backing science for that one though. I don't deny the possibility, it's just that apparently there hasn't been any real basis found to support it. Coal's another matter - plenty of fossilized plant parts found in coal beds to show where it came from. Definitely biotic!

The question is whether "you" have an open mind to alternative logical conclusions.

Yet these same people will insist on freedom of speech, opinion and thought for all, as long as "all" agree with them. Those who disagree are by definition: stupid, ignorant, venal, insane, dishonest and must be silenced, stripped of their employment and according to some, be imprisoned or executed. That does remind one of a certain militant religion.

I do not deny climate change. I just do not believe that Man is responsible for more than an extremely tiny bit of it. I also think that most attempts to reverse it or slow it, by attacking CO2, will be economically ruinous or will fail. There are other more toxic forms of pollution and trash to be solved.

Sounds like Velikovsky in deja vu.

Yes, there is climate change which is 99%+ NATURAL and the climate is warming pretty much on its own and we cannot stop it. Due to continental drift the Antarctic was not at the South Pole 17 million years ago, but it was in a tropical area.

We banned the use of CFCs in plastics, aerosols and air conditioners because it was said to be destroying the ozone over the Poles. According to a recent Scientific American the ozone hole over the Antarctic is now closing and causing the temperature to increase there. Perhaps that means that it is natural for Antarctica to be warmer? What is the historical record of temperatures there, before CFCs were used? Was it warmer then before the industrial age? How about since the end of the Ice Age 10,500 years ago, how has the temperature varied?

When the Vikings colonized Greenland it was green and they could grow wheat there. Then came the medieval Little Ice Age and the Vikings left because it was too cold. In the 1500-1600s the Baltic Sea froze over solid in winter and had to be crossed by sleds, grapes could not be grown north of the Alps, glaciers crushed mountain villages. It was considered a disaster, but people survived and made beer instead of wine. The world has been warming since then, long before the industrial period, entirely naturally and it still continues. Greenland is still too cold to grow wheat.

To some any change is a disaster, but Nature is change and those who could not adapt to change disappeared and those who could were stronger for it.

I read your reply 18 and this one 19. I generally agree with you except for one point. It seems all science is stuck on an old earth and universe and millions and billions of years, if not trillions. Why is that? When science by definition cannot know that. It can't be tested without a bunch of assumptions that also cannot be measured. Does not our mind frame get a little bent when we do that?
Humour me for a moment. How would answer 19 change if it were a fact that the universe was only 6000 years old. Religious discussion is not necessary. But isn't this a test of the truth or integrity of science, To come up with an alternative solution to this puzzle. Let me know.

To assume the age of the universe to be 6000 years, then many things would have had to have happened faster, including continental drift. Even light would have to be faster, which it is not. There are groups of stars more than 6000 l.y. away. While Carbon-14 decays at a predictable rate it can be used to set dates + or - a margin of error for materials that are over 6000 yrs old. Whose definition says science cannot know that the universe is over 6000 yrs old?

My mind frame says that God is so awesome that He created everything just as we see it to be. God made the universe with galaxies that are millions of light years away, created the Earth in stages so that it just as old as it appears and created Carbon-14 to decay at a certain rate. These are not lies by God, or God trying to trick us. Science is the study of God's creation and how it was done and in what order.

Astronomers say that after the Big Bang the universe was dark and formless, then matter collected into stars and there was light. Genesis says the same thing. So who told the writers of Genesis how it was? You cannot date the creation by counting generations in the Bible. The Bible is not meant to be taken literally, but as a parable, an illustration, an interpretation of how God made and did everything. Remember, there would be no evolution without God.

Assuming that the Bible is 100% literally true bends the mind frame too. It bends it narrower and prevents it from realizing just how OLD, HUGE and POWERFUL God really is. It also assumes that God would mislead or lie to us by making the Earth to appear older than it really is. That would make God false, petty and small. I cannot accept that limiting view of God.

So I stand by my previous answer, God has changed the Earth over many millions of years. He took the dust which He created and formed it into stars and planets. The dust of the Earth God formed into many living creatures, living dust, and also after a long time formed the living dust into Man. This is said to have been done in 7 "days", but one of those was prior to the existence of Earth, therefore they were not earths days, but Gods days and we have no idea of how many Earth days or Earth years are in one of Gods days, which could be many trillions of Earth years long.

I do not wish to argue religious opinion. You asked and I answered. You are entitled to your opinion just as I am entitled to mine. We disagree perhaps in the details, but you sound like someone who believes in God too, therefore we are on the same side and should not fight about it.