4 ms·

The author at the link suggests many possible mechanisms for getting heat from within the earth to the oceans and atmosphere. I can't comment on the geology, bu

The author at the link suggests many possible mechanisms for getting heat from within the earth to the oceans and atmosphere. I can't comment on the geology, but this from the link: "Abyssal ocean conveyance belts pull novel heat content from small-footprint yet now much hotter contribution points exposed to the asthenosphere – and convey (not conduct, convect, nor radiate) this novel heat content through oceanic advection and upwelling systems to the surface of the ocean. Abyssal ocean currents (and consequently surface ones as well) speed up from the discrete addition of kinetic energy. Arctic and Antarctic polar ice sheets melt from the bottom up. Land dessicates more quickly and wildfires erupt earlier and out-of-season, especially near heat plumes." I'd have to do the math (actually, a comment above says 10.9 Zetta Joules), but to get the kind of contribution suggested by this, it seems that these hot areas would have to be quite large and therefore observable - this would literally look like the ocean boiling (upwelling actually). If they were small, there would have to be areas of bottom warm-water-to-surface heat transfer occurring. As far as I know - as someone fairly familiar with the data - this has never been observed. Meanwhile, we have a very simple, very reasonable model for what is going on, that works quite well.

defrost 3y ago
The key part of that wall of "and so to ..." handwaving is: Part of The Heat May Indeed Be Coming from Beneath Our Feet which is absolutely 100% true. The earth's core used to much hotter, its slowly cooling (over a very long timescale). The earth's crust used to have active natural fission reactors from masses of uranium - they've all cooled and are not longer active (although still with higher than usual gamma spectrum activity). The bearing of any of that on the current climate issue though is essentially none. nada. zilch. Over the past 1000 years the change in cooling rate (transfer of heat from below to atmosphere) has been infintessimal (as a global average) there's been no sudden increase in rate of heat from below. Similarly, on average in the same time period, there's been no real meaningful change in the energy coming in from the sun. Increased energy trapped in the sea | land | troposhere layer is just about entirely due to increased thermal insulation caused by increased CO2, methane, and water vapour. ie same energy from above and same from below - the change in the past 100 years has been the amount of energy trapped. Our "very simple, very reasonable model" for bulk coarse behaviour wrt energy inputs, transfers, outputs for the sphereical onion layer in which we live is robust, well measured, and includes the sun and core as inputs. The tricky part these days is refining the "small details" of how increased energy will drive changes in and between the earth's climatic cells.

defrost 3y ago

The key part of that wall of "and so to ..." handwaving is: Part of The Heat May Indeed Be Coming from Beneath Our Feet which is absolutely 100% true. The earth's core used to much hotter, its slowly cooling (over a very long timescale). The earth's crust used to have active natural fission reactors from masses of uranium - they've all cooled and are not longer active (although still with higher than usual gamma spectrum activity). The bearing of any of that on the current climate issue though is essentially none. nada. zilch. Over the past 1000 years the change in cooling rate (transfer of heat from below to atmosphere) has been infintessimal (as a global average) there's been no sudden increase in rate of heat from below. Similarly, on average in the same time period, there's been no real meaningful change in the energy coming in from the sun. Increased energy trapped in the sea | land | troposhere layer is just about entirely due to increased thermal insulation caused by increased CO2, methane, and water vapour. ie same energy from above and same from below - the change in the past 100 years has been the amount of energy trapped. Our "very simple, very reasonable model" for bulk coarse behaviour wrt energy inputs, transfers, outputs for the sphereical onion layer in which we live is robust, well measured, and includes the sun and core as inputs. The tricky part these days is refining the "small details" of how increased energy will drive changes in and between the earth's climatic cells.