The following article has some good information about the Greenhouse Oceans.This has been Published in the World Future Society's Futurist Update of June 2011.Very interesting.Quoted below in its entirety.Thanks to the World Future Society.(New World)
"Researchers Warn of Greenhouse Oceans"
The world’s oceans may be more vulnerable to climate change than previously thought. As more dead zones (patches of ocean severely deprived of oxygen) are being discovered, scientists exploring prehistoric mass marine extinctions now believe another round of extinctions is likely.
“What’s alarming to us as scientists is that there were only very slight natural changes [in the Late Cretaceous period] that resulted in the onset of hypoxia in the deep ocean,” says Martin Kennedy of the University of Adelaide’s School of Earth and Environmental Sciences. This suggests a vulnerability to the more-rapid increase of CO2 that is predicted over the next 50 years. It’s like “hitting our ecosystem with a sledgehammer,” he says.
Nature may have its own cure for “greenhouse oceans,” however. Kennedy and fellow researcher Thomas Wagner of Newcastle University observe that certain minerals in soils help in collecting and burying organic matter dissolved in seawater. And burying the excess carbon helps to restore marine oxygen concentrations and to cool the planet-oceans and all.
Source: University of Adelaide http://www.adelaide.edu.au/news/news45241.html
“Clay mineral continental amplifier for marine carbon sequestration in a greenhouse ocean” by Martin Kennedy and Thomas Wagner (posted May 16, 2011) is available from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/05/12/1018670108.full.pdf+html?sid=31daf44c-6579-4b6a-b08d-7606a300a4ca"
"Researchers Warn of Greenhouse Oceans"
The world’s oceans may be more vulnerable to climate change than previously thought. As more dead zones (patches of ocean severely deprived of oxygen) are being discovered, scientists exploring prehistoric mass marine extinctions now believe another round of extinctions is likely.
“What’s alarming to us as scientists is that there were only very slight natural changes [in the Late Cretaceous period] that resulted in the onset of hypoxia in the deep ocean,” says Martin Kennedy of the University of Adelaide’s School of Earth and Environmental Sciences. This suggests a vulnerability to the more-rapid increase of CO2 that is predicted over the next 50 years. It’s like “hitting our ecosystem with a sledgehammer,” he says.
Nature may have its own cure for “greenhouse oceans,” however. Kennedy and fellow researcher Thomas Wagner of Newcastle University observe that certain minerals in soils help in collecting and burying organic matter dissolved in seawater. And burying the excess carbon helps to restore marine oxygen concentrations and to cool the planet-oceans and all.
Source: University of Adelaide http://www.adelaide.edu.au/news/news45241.html
“Clay mineral continental amplifier for marine carbon sequestration in a greenhouse ocean” by Martin Kennedy and Thomas Wagner (posted May 16, 2011) is available from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/05/12/1018670108.full.pdf+html?sid=31daf44c-6579-4b6a-b08d-7606a300a4ca"
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