Global Warming and Snowball Earth

Ironically, the warming of the Earth bringing about melting of polar ice–which decreases the salinity of polar waters thereby slowing and possibly even halting the North Atlantic Conveyer current which brings the warm Gulf of Mexico waters up past the British Isles–sets up the British Isles for winters lasting through the year, for years, as it did during The Little Ice Age–the result of the failure of the North Atlantic Conveyer back in the time of the first Elizabeth and lasted up into Victoria’s reign.

The more saline the water is, the heavier it is compared to fresher waters. That NA Conveyer is driven by the flow of those warm surface waters northwards where, normally, their salinity causes them to sink beneath the cooler, less salty arctic waters. Those waters that sank in the north then flow southwards at the bottom of the ocean, and the cycle continues. The North Atlantic Conveyer is only part of a much larger system of water movements about the whole Earth, as, logically it would, all the oceans being connected.

We live such tiny spans of time within the whole of Earth’s time, that unless we have very specialized education, most of us are at best only vaguely aware of the dynamics of this place where we live, where we keep our stuff. Humankind has lived with earthquakes, for instance, for all our generations, yet it is less than one long lifetime since we have understood ‘plate tectonics’ which tell us the why and how of earthquakes. We’ve learned only in the past couple of centuries how to understand the stories the Earth tells of itself.

Do you know how many times life nearly failed on this planet? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extinction_events)

…that there was a time some 700 million years ago when the planet was totally encased in ice: “Snowball Earth”? (https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/03/world/life-survive-ice-age-snowball-earth-scn/index.html)

…that lava flowed constantly for 2 million years, over 3 million square miles, 7 million square kilometers, of the lands we now call Russia, and contributed to the greatest of the extinction events over 250 million years ago? (https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2017/october/scientists-find-evidence-that-siberian-volcanic-eruptions-caused.html)

…that 90 million years ago part of Antarctica was a lush rainforest? (https://www.livescience.com/ancient-rainforest-antarctica.html)

And here we are today, with the dubious distinction of confronting that we ourselves, here so briefly yet so cleverly, are contributing to the next great extinction of life on Earth. Ignorance has always been one of our major flaws, and the tendency to seek our own comfort over all other considerations. Humankind, on another scale, are in a typically self-centered adolescence, on the very verge of maturity. We are up against all the selfishness, impatience, and determination to win of the adolescent, energetic and brilliant, but short-sighted.

Whatever end we bring ourselves to, and possibly a major portion of life on this Earth, the planet will go on as it has all these millions of years, changing and rebooting and creating its stories.