Could Earth's Reversing Magnetic Poles Accelerate Climate Change? (cnn.com) 91
A team of researchers from Sydney's University of New South Wales and the South Australian Museum have investigated how the reversal of Earth's magnetic pole about 42,000 years could have changed earth's atmosphere. CNN reports:
"Using the ancient trees we could measure, and date, the spike in atmospheric radiocarbon levels caused by the collapse of Earth's magnetic field," Chris Turney, a professor at UNSW Science, director of the university's Earth and Sustainability Science Research Center and co-lead author of the study, said in a statement. The team compared their new timescale with site records from caves, ice cores and peat bogs around the world. Researchers found that the reversal led to "pronounced climate change." Their modeling showed that ice sheet and glacier growth in North America and shifts in major wind belts and tropical storm systems could be traced back to the period of the magnetic pole switch, which scientists named the "Adams Event."
"Effectively, the Earth's magnetic field almost disappeared, and it opened the planet up to all these high energy particles from outer space. It would've been an incredibly scary time, almost like the end of days," Turney said. Researchers say the Adams Event could explain many of Earth's evolutionary mysteries, including the extinction of Neanderthals and the sudden widespread appearance of figurative art in caves worldwide... [T]he ionized air would've increased the frequency of electrical storms — something that scientists think caused humans to seek shelter in caves...
In the paper, published in the journal Science, experts say there is currently rapid movement of the north magnetic pole across the Northern Hemisphere — which could signal another reversal is on the cards. "This speed — alongside the weakening of Earth's magnetic field by around nine per cent in the past 170 years — could indicate an upcoming reversal," said Alan Cooper, honorary researcher at the South Australian Museum. "If a similar event happened today, the consequences would be huge for modern society. Incoming cosmic radiation would destroy our electric power grids and satellite networks," he said.
Human activity has already pushed carbon in the atmosphere to levels "never seen by humanity before," Cooper said. "A magnetic pole reversal or extreme change in Sun activity would be unprecedented climate change accelerants. We urgently need to get carbon emissions down before such a random event happens again," he added.
"Effectively, the Earth's magnetic field almost disappeared, and it opened the planet up to all these high energy particles from outer space. It would've been an incredibly scary time, almost like the end of days," Turney said. Researchers say the Adams Event could explain many of Earth's evolutionary mysteries, including the extinction of Neanderthals and the sudden widespread appearance of figurative art in caves worldwide... [T]he ionized air would've increased the frequency of electrical storms — something that scientists think caused humans to seek shelter in caves...
In the paper, published in the journal Science, experts say there is currently rapid movement of the north magnetic pole across the Northern Hemisphere — which could signal another reversal is on the cards. "This speed — alongside the weakening of Earth's magnetic field by around nine per cent in the past 170 years — could indicate an upcoming reversal," said Alan Cooper, honorary researcher at the South Australian Museum. "If a similar event happened today, the consequences would be huge for modern society. Incoming cosmic radiation would destroy our electric power grids and satellite networks," he said.
Human activity has already pushed carbon in the atmosphere to levels "never seen by humanity before," Cooper said. "A magnetic pole reversal or extreme change in Sun activity would be unprecedented climate change accelerants. We urgently need to get carbon emissions down before such a random event happens again," he added.
Betteridge's law of headlines... (Score:1)
might be appropriate here.
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Short answer is a resounding "yes". New compasses will have to be made, devices will have to be replaced and code will have to be reprogrammed. That's got to have some net positive carbon contribution, considering it's a lot of work to get us back to where we are right now. Plus additional entropy, don't forget the entropy.
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How would you change the compass?
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How would you change the compass?
WE WOULD FORCE THEM WITH WE-SNOT (West/East-South/North Orientation Transpositioning) [Or just SNOT for short, people.]
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That snot funny
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NO compasses for quite a while. The poles do not just reverse, people have got the wrong idea about what is going on done there in the melty centre, seperate layers of molten metals, some dense and with low vicosity, some with much higher, different layers. Just because the crust spins one way, pretty much as it has for quite some time, does not mean the core does and likely has a peturbating spin align with the sun, magentic fields and friction trying to spin it with the crust and of course the moon throwi
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Hmmm, educate this geologist what you mean by that, apart from the discontinuity between the molten outer core and the solid overlaying base of the mantle and underlying solid surface of the inner core? Or do you just mean one molten layer?
There is moderately good evidence for density layering in the solids above the outer core (we can see reflections and phase shifts in seismic waves). But variations
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Or focus on consequence mitigation instead of disaster prevention. The cat is out of the bag, doesn't matter what caused it, it *will* happen and we should focus on adapting to the new reality instead of trying to stop it.
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Because we can't do both at the same time?
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Oh, sure, we can do half as much of each instead, splitting the budget, and end up with the disaster and unprepared.
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You speak as if it's all a zero sum game.
When you're baking a turkey, and doing the laundry, do you sit on your ass waiting for the stove or dryer to finish, one after the other? Or, can they both be done in parallel? What do you do when one person knows how to do the laundry, and another is an ace chef? Put them both on the same task, one at a time?
It also isn't helpful to just throw your entire budget at one task because you can. Many things don't happen faster just because you have more budget for th
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You're speaking of it as if it consisted mostly of doing nothing and waiting; the laundry machine does your laundry, the oven bakes your turkey and you sit fiddling your fingers.
These things take money. BIG money. Money so big they can sink entire countries' economies and kill whole industries. Doubling that budget is impossible. Splitting it in half will achieve neither of the goals.
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I've managed multi-million dollar projects prior to retiring as an engineering manager. There are many functions where you're waiting on one task to complete while another is going on. This is why the Navy developed PERT charts years ago, and why you have "critical path" on project charts. What do you do with all of the other resources while you're waiting on the ones on the critical path to complete? Often, there's nothing you can do with them other than put them onto another program. This scales no m
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Ah, Navy. Not much care about budget there.
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You clearly have no understanding of large projects or budgets, and simply refuse to listen to how the real world works. Have a good day.
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Yeah, and you certainly know how to manage two projects of order of quadrillion dollars each, in parallel.
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Just because the boat is sinking doesn't mean it's helpful to drill more holes in the hull.
Hundreds of millenia; centuries, what's the dif? (Score:2, Informative)
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The larger problem is how we recover from high-speed particles bombarding the Earth in this day and age of control of almost everything by integrated circuits. Whether it's a solar flare, galactic X-Ray or human-caused EMP event, the loss of all electronics would send us back into the 1800's at best.
A solution might be what NASA has proposed for Mars. The lack of a magnetosphere has far ranging consequenses for a planet, such as the one you mentioned, and in a long term loss, results in atmospheric stripping - obviously really bad. The NASA proposal was to create an artificial magnetosphere vis satellites at Lagrangian L1 point might be a very helpful antidote to a temporarily missing natural magnetosphere https://phys.org/news/2017-03-... [phys.org] . And not even that strong of a magnetic source, 1 or two Te
Lava tubes (Score:2)
As a side note - it is nothing short of amusing that Musk and his cult are all agog about going to Mars in a few years. If that is to be anything other than a high risk party trick, those artificial magnetosphere satellites need to get there years before he and his minions try colonizing the place.
Lava tubes, dude. Moon and Mars. :-)
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those artificial magnetosphere satellites need to get there years before he and his minions try colonizing the place.
Actually: no.
First of all, the Mars still has an atmosphere.
Secondly: the first habitats obviously will be shielded.
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those artificial magnetosphere satellites need to get there years before he and his minions try colonizing the place. Actually: no. First of all, the Mars still has an atmosphere.
Not much of one. Almost all of it was stripped away from early Mars by the solar wind that accelerated the elements in the atmosphere to Mars escape velocity. There is zero point in attempting to terraform Mars without a functioning Magnetosphere. It will be stripped away just like the early one was. So settlers, unless they stay in the ships, are going to have to live in pressure suits.
Secondly: the first habitats obviously will be shielded.
So where are the habitats? What are the habitats? Musk claims he'll have a Rocket going to Mars in 2024, and people there
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Not much of one. Almost all of it was stripped away from early Mars by the solar wind that accelerated the elements in the atmosphere to Mars escape velocity. There is zero point in attempting to terraform Mars without a functioning Magnetosphere. It will be stripped away just like the early one was. So settlers, unless they stay in the ships, are going to have to live in pressure suits.
You are mistaken. If you magically make a new atmosphere there with 500hecto pascal, half of earth, it will last half a bi
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Not much of one. Almost all of it was stripped away from early Mars by the solar wind that accelerated the elements in the atmosphere to Mars escape velocity. There is zero point in attempting to terraform Mars without a functioning Magnetosphere. It will be stripped away just like the early one was. So settlers, unless they stay in the ships, are going to have to live in pressure suits. You are mistaken. If you magically make a new atmosphere there with 500hecto pascal, half of earth, it will last half a billion years before it is uninhabitable ...
Yeah - magic.
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And not even that strong of a magnetic source, 1 or two Tesla.
So we only need one more then. [cnet.com] EzyPzy.
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And not even that strong of a magnetic source, 1 or two Tesla.
So we only need one more then. [cnet.com] EzyPzy.
Ha! well played sir - well played indeed.
Re:Hundreds of millenia; centuries, what's the dif (Score:5, Interesting)
No. We go to hardened electronics. Which work just fine on spacecraft that we have been operating well outside of the Earth's magnetic shield. For years or decades even.
Yeah. This might require that we take a few steps back in our efforts to downsize the manufacturing process. But not nearly as bad as reverting to toobz. A few people will be dissapointed when their 5G state of the art Apple pocket computers will have to be scaled back to 3G flip phones. Tough. Industrial controllers don't have to be state of the art. And maybe we'll compensate by writing software with less bloat.
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Whether it's a solar flare, galactic X-Ray or human-caused EMP event, the loss of all electronics would send us back into the 1800's at best. :D or do you say cellar in this case?
No worries, I still have my old trusty Apple ][+ and it is even in the basement
Re: Hundreds of millenia; centuries, what's the di (Score:1)
We also donâ(TM)t have any yearly-scale measures for previous changes. At best we are looking at an average for 100-1000 years at a time in the historical record and comparing that to a 1-10year pattern/streak in the modern history.
For a while we thought weâ(TM)d be heading back into an ice age, then a greenhouse effect, now climates just changing back and forth wildly between cold and hot.
The earth will survive as will life, whether humans and technology will survive is a question and whether it
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Oh, wonderful argument there, genius. Looks to me like you're the one trolling, you ignoramus.
The Relationship (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: The Relationship (Score:1)
Re: The Relationship (Score:4, Informative)
Don't be a douche. I did read the article and the only thing in it is:
To me, that sounds like an opinion, unless you can deduce the magnetic poles reversal being a "climate change accelerant". But, even then, who's to say that is won't counter the effects of increase CO2 in the atmosphere? Where's the science behind it? I'd surmise this is another grand scientist thinking his "theory" is the one.
The paper link is paywalled, so I can't read the paper.
Death by GPS (Score:2)
But, even then, who's to say that is won't counter the effects of increase CO2 in the atmosphere?
It might increase death by GPS and save us from the environmental impact of those particular humans. :-)
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Well it could confuse some creatures sense of direction.
Whatever did all those creatures do during each of the previous switches. As for the fragile species, Darwin has a plan for them, no?
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But, even then, who's to say that is won't counter the effects of increase CO2 in the atmosphere? Where's the science behind it? I'd surmise this is another grand scientist thinking his "theory" is the one.
And from the article: "Researchers found that the reversal led to "pronounced climate change." Their modeling showed that ice sheet and glacier growth in North America... could be traced back to the period of the magnetic pole switch..." Ice sheet and glacier growth. So, a colder climate. The very thing that the AGC community wants to achieve. But we need to double down on our efforts to reduce our CO2 emissions. Apparently, the changes aren't going to be enough. If having the Earth itself dropping temperat
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Re:The Relationship (Score:4, Interesting)
No.
Now, if we magically or otherwise halted CO2 emissions now, in 100 years we'd be in a better position. If there's a disaster, we'd be better positioned to deal with it. If there isn't we'd be in a better position to do whatever we want with the trillions we're not spending on climate disaster mitigation.
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I'm sure there is a relationship between reducing CO2 emissions and the magnetic pole, but I'm not seeing it.
Well if its not climate change then its white supremacy. There can't be any other possible explanation. :-(
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I'm sure there is a relationship between reducing CO2 emissions and the magnetic pole, but I'm not seeing it.
Well if its not climate change then its white supremacy. There can't be any other possible explanation. :-(
Not so fast, there's always misogyny, anal seepage, and erectile disfunction to consider.
planning ahead is NOT gonna happen (Score:5, Insightful)
If that happened today, the CFC industry would donate a few million dollars to a couple internet troll farms, and hire some "experts" to go on with Tucker Carlson. And that would be that. Nothing would have happened. That's where we stand today. The chances of us planning for the future of the planet are absolutely zero, until something major happens. Like losing entire coastal cities, or entire breadbasket regions collapsing into desert. Until it gets that serious, our species has a full-blown case of "head-up-ass-itis". The science is here. Most people are just choosing to ignore it. It's a species-wide toddler tantrum - the worlds biggest case of "I don wanna".
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It's actually even worse. Maybe I wanna bitcoin. Maybe even Elon Musk wants me to want bitcoin. Maybe even dogeon. Maybe their values are going steady growth of tens and hundreds of percent in a short timespan. Maybe it makes sense to burn more of the fossil fuel to dig these digital bits of high desire.
To suffocate in this creepy digital orgasm.
Re:planning ahead is NOT gonna happen (Score:5, Insightful)
50 years ago we discovered a massive hole in our ozone layer that was being caused by CFC chemicals. The entire word got together and agreed that there needed to be rules about certain refrigerant gases, and entire industries were required to change. For the sake of the planet.
If that happened today, the CFC industry would donate a few million dollars to a couple internet troll farms, and hire some "experts" to go on with Tucker Carlson. And that would be that. Nothing would have happened. That's where we stand today. The chances of us planning for the future of the planet are absolutely zero, until something major happens. Like losing entire coastal cities, or entire breadbasket regions collapsing into desert. Until it gets that serious, our species has a full-blown case of "head-up-ass-itis". The science is here. Most people are just choosing to ignore it. It's a species-wide toddler tantrum - the worlds biggest case of "I don wanna".
One of the challenges is that with your CFC example is that while we "came together", we didn't have to change our behavior. Sure we had to shift the chemical process for refrigeration, but we didn't have to give up refrigeration or use less of it. The average person didn't have to change their lives at all.
Science says that to reduce climate change (and related catastrophes) we have to drastically reduce the amount of CO2 we release. Doing so will require a change in behavior for average people - this is really hard.
Re:planning ahead is NOT gonna happen (Score:4, Interesting)
It's not either/or. Some of the things we need to do to address CO2 emissions are easier and some are harder. Some that are hard (e.g. things we use concrete for) could get easier with new technology.
The problem is we've started late on this. We should have been taking baby steps 20 years ago so that today we'd be making great strides. But even slowing the rate of change is a worthwhile goal.
There are market oriented ways of doing this which don't involve the government picking winners, but the government does have to at least discourage people from externalizing costs by dumping pollution into the atmosphere.
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Well, a lot of spray bottles went to the pump style. People hated that. There was so much eye rolling. Then people realized the pump bottles were kind of nice.
I don't really see that we're going to have to change our behaviour to reduce our CO2 emissions. The tech for alternative energy sources is pretty mature, to the point where it's cheaper than the old ones. Storage isn't quite as well worked out, but it's coming along well. The biggest issue was transportation, but the end of the eye rolling on that on
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The tech for alternative energy sources is pretty mature, to the point where it's cheaper than the old ones.
Allright, but then you increasingly pour this cheaper into bitcoin mining (since it is getting ever more desirable), ending as a heat waste and produced digits of desire.
What gives? What rational gain, but added warming?
And since it is still competitively cheap to throw coal burning into that in China, it is not even clean as per dreaming.
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It may be necessary to *avoid* changing our behaviour in certain ways, sure.
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Doing so will require a change in behavior for average people - this is really hard. ... what would _you_ need to change to release less CO2? Probably nothing than living in a better insulated house.
Actually not really
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Doing so will require a change in behavior for average people - this is really hard.
Actually not really ... what would _you_ need to change to release less CO2? Probably nothing than living in a better insulated house.
At this point I would need to make additional lifestyle changes.
I have already taken several actions to reduce my CO2 footprint, many of which were not difficult due to my fortunate circumstance of having a higher than average level of disposable income. Many of these actions would be difficult for “average” people not in my financial position. I absolutely acknowledge that because of both living in the First World and also having a disposable income, I have a higher carbon footprint than avera
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Electric cars really aren't all THAT different, unless you view the gas-station experience as an integral part of the American experience.
There will be a lot of behind-the-scence changes to industrial processes, but again, that will be hidden from most people.
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One of the challenges is that with your CFC example is that while we "came together", we didn't have to change our behavior. Sure we had to shift the chemical process for refrigeration, but we didn't have to give up refrigeration or use less of it. The average person didn't have to change their lives at all.
Science says that to reduce climate change (and related catastrophes) we have to drastically reduce the amount of CO2 we release. Doing so will require a change in behavior for average people - this is really hard.
Perhaps you are missing the point that we may NOT have to change drastically.
Cooling devices simply changed their refrigerant. Vehicle industry can as easily change to EVs now (and generally are).
The CFC industry had to change. We can easily change our grid to renewables.
I am not sure that I agree with your premise.
Re:planning ahead is NOT gonna happen (Score:4, Insightful)
If that happened today, the CFC industry would donate a few million dollars to a couple internet troll farms, and hire some "experts" to go on with Tucker Carlson. And that would be that. Nothing would have happened. That's where we stand today. The chances of us planning for the future of the planet are absolutely zero, until something major happens. Like losing entire coastal cities, or entire breadbasket regions collapsing into desert. Until it gets that serious, our species has a full-blown case of "head-up-ass-itis". The science is here. Most people are just choosing to ignore it. It's a species-wide toddler tantrum - the worlds biggest case of "I don wanna".
The problem with your argument is that there is the rest of the world. If the US decides to keep going as per the path of Texas third-worlding itself, it just means we will descend in to irrelevancy. The rest of the world has caught up, and we're busy sitting in a closet and selling our hats to each other thinking we're the shitz.
Roll on deodorant vs Quality of life (Score:2)
If that happened today, the CFC industry would donate a few million dollars to a couple internet troll farms, and hire some "experts" to go on with Tucker Carlson. And that would be that. Nothing would have happened.
Actually the CFC industry would switch to a different propellant in aerosol cans and use lots of green coloring and words on the new cans. Still progress.
Back to reality, asking people to switch from aerosol deodorants to roll on deodorants is a little different than asking them to take a step or two backwards on quality of life. There is going to be more resistance to the later. A much greater burden of proof. Now before you get "climate denier" outrage, the proof is in regard to whether a proposed solu
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I know I shouldn't feed a troll, but there is an explanation that you wouldn't have thought of yourself [wikipedia.org]
This only matters if it's our fault too. (Score:1)
Anthropogenic magnetic field change.
Upvote please for the above (Score:2)
Obviously we've caused the poles to flip because of interference from electric motors.
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Anthropogenic magnetic field change.
Silly boy - it was those wind turbines in Texas that caused all of it. Tucker Carlson told us, but would we listen?
Windy City (Score:2)
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Ban braces!
Well, this sounds of world-class importance ... (Score:3)
... but the Science article is paywalled.
the solution (Score:2)
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We just need to produce billions of magnets and align them along lines of longitude about every 10-15 degrees. It sounds like a massive engineering task but when you consider all the plastic we've distributed around the world it's not so hard.
I know you were joking, but you're mostly correct. An artificial magnetosphere satellite at a Lagrangian L1 point with a few Tesla magnetic field will work a trick.
https://phys.org/news/2017-03-... [phys.org] They are talking about doing this on Mars.
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Re: the solution (Score:1)
Don't get them any ideas.
The only good thing about that drivel (Score:2)
...now I know that there are actually 43000 year old trees on this planet.
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They're not.
The trees had tree rings, allowing them to say "this event (recorded in the isotopes of the tree's rings) happened X years before that event (recorded similarly)". That is a relative date : "this is so much older than that".
Distinctly, they used some other form of dating (they seem to have got around Sci-Hub, which is annoying) to approximately position the (sub-)fossil tree's dates on the general geochronological timescale with an absolut
Related novel: Sunfall; Field flips more frequent (Score:4, Interesting)
I think magnetic field reversal driving climate change is a plausible event. The Sci-fi novel Sunfall, written by a physicist, describes a similar scenario with rapid decay of the earth's magnetic field coinciding with the earth being hit by Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) from the sun. It's grim reading - millions of deaths, people nuked where they stand, supercyclones and storm surges caused by cosmic ray and CMEs pumping huge amounts of energy into the climate system. Eventually, with the magnetic field near null, the earth is at risk of losing its atmosphere (literally, the atmosphere boiling off into space). A scientist and science populariser, the author, Jim Al-Khalili , claims the risk of this happening is quite real.
https://www.goodreads.com/en/b... [goodreads.com]
I believe in a ~6000 years old earth (I am what's called a young-earth creationist). I think magnetic flips are both more likely and frequent than thought. Here's a good overview:
https://answersingenesis.org/a... [answersingenesis.org]
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I believe in a ~6000 years old earth (I am what's called a young-earth creationist).
You are what's called an idiot.
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So if it reversed many times before, how come we still have an atmosphere?
I won't comment on young-earthism. I gave up on Flat Earthers, too.
We Didn't Cave Dwell Much (Score:2)
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Neanderthals are gone ? Could've fooled me (Score:1)
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You have no fucking clue what you're talking about.
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"We indeed show that the absence of Neanderthal mtDNA sequences in Europe is compatible with at most 120 admixture events between the two populations despite a likely cohabitation time of more than 12,000 y. "
Besides, this article tried to claim the magnetic event as killing Neanderthals but didnt mention Cro Magnons or HS which doesnt make sense..
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Well, ya gotta love when people just toss shit out there like they expect it to be something insightful in spite of all the scientific study that's been done for decades.
Terrifying! (Score:2)
I need to run out and buy a Tesla immediately to fix this problem.
The Universal Answer (Score:2)
Here is the answer to every headline that asks a question:
"No."