Could Generation Z be the last generation?

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magz - Well let me take a crack at this. [To bad WrongPlanet isn't user formula friendly with subscripts and superscripts. Well I guess I will try and make do.] Essentially we are looking to compare the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the carbon dioxide in the oceans.

Mass of the ocean water is around 1.4 x 10 (to the power of 21) kg
Source: Mass Of The Oceans

The region between the surface and 200 meters is defined as the epipelagic zone. The region between the 660 feet and approximately 3,300 feet is called the thermocline. The temperature of the seawater at the top of the thermocline is around 13 degrees C and at the bottom around 4 degrees C.
Below 3,300 feet to a depth of about 13,100 feet, water temperature remains constant. At depths below 13,100 feet, the temperature ranges from near freezing to just above the freezing point of water as depth increases.
Source What is a thermocline?

The average depth of the ocean is about 12,100 feet .
Source: How deep is the ocean?

So most of the ocean is around 4 degrees C as a rough approximation. So plugging that into the formula in the engineering toolbox means that in an ocean saturated with carbon dioxide. The weight of the CO2 in a kilogram of seawater would be approximately 3 grams.
Source: The Engineering Toolbox

So applying this to the ocean as a whole.
1.4 x 10 (to the power of 21) kg (times) 3 grams of CO2 per kg seawater yields 4.2 x 10 (to the power of 21) grams of CO2
or 4.2 x 10 (to the power of 19) kilograms of CO2.

So in a saturated state the oceans can contain around 4.2 x 10 (to the power of 19) kilograms of CO2

Now let us turn our focus on the atmosphere. According to the Wikipedia, "The total mean mass of the atmosphere is 5.1480×10 (to the power of 18) kg .
Source: Atmosphere of Earth

Current CO2 level is around 400 ppm (by volume). But we are not dealing with volume. So somehow we need a conversion factor to convert this to mass.
So I came across a link that tries to make that conversion. Here is the link.
How much CO2 by weight in the atmosphere?
So according to this link the conversion factor is 1.52. So I won’t swear by this but it seems like that is a good approximation.

So putting that together we have:
5.1480×10 (to the power of 18) kg (times) 400 part per million by volume CO2 (times) 1.52 volume to mass conversion gives us 3.13 x 10 (to the power of 15) kg CO2

So the amount of carbon dioxide in our present atmosphere is approximately 3.13 x 10 (to the power of 15) kg CO2

So lets compare the carbon dioxide in a saturated ocean with the carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. That would be 4.2 x 10 (to the power of 19) kilograms of CO2 in the ocean divided by 3.13 x 10 (to the power of 15) kg CO2 in the atmosphere or 13,419.

That is quite a large sink. That means that our oceans can hold around 13,500 times more CO2 than presently held by the atmosphere.

But that is an ideal state when the oceans were completely saturated. So in reality the actual present number would be less.

As the oceans warm they will release carbon dioxide into Earth’s atmosphere and because the oceans represent a massive CO2 sink, a small temperature change in the oceans can produce a substantial atmospheric change.

This sentence is false. The oceans are not saturated with CO2. Actually, quite far from it.

They are not saturated and their capacity to solve CO2 is governed by Henry's Law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry%27s_law not by solubility.
The solubility would become the main factor if the CO2 pressure in the atmosphere would push the oceans to their limits, like in a closed soda can.
We are far from this. There is way too little free CO2 in the world to saturate the oceans - luckily for all the organisms to which it is poisonous in big doses, like humans, fish, molluscs and virtually anything that breathes with oxygen.

To paint carbon dioxide as a poison is disingenuous. Carbon dioxide is an essential component in our atmosphere. It is plant food. Without carbon dioxide in our atmosphere our ecosystem on Earth would not even exist.

According to the CDC, the Immediately Dangerous to Live or Health Concentrations (IDLH) is 40,000 ppm. That is quite a far cry from the 400 ppm of CO2 in our present atmosphere.
Source: Carbon dioxide

The world is not static but rather is in an equilibrium. As carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere it produces greater plant growth. One of the first things taught in biology class is that animals breathe in oxygen and exhale CO2, while plants take in CO2 during the day and release oxygen. In a process called “photosynthesis,” plants use the energy in sunlight to convert CO2 and water to sugar and oxygen. The plants use the sugar for food—food that we use, too, when we eat plants or animals that have eaten plants — and they release the oxygen into the atmosphere. If it were not for plants, we would have no oxygen in our air!

And this is actually happening and observable. From a quarter to half of Earth’s vegetated lands has shown significant greening over the last 35 years largely due to rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide.
Source: Carbon Dioxide Fertilization Greening Earth, Study Finds

The Pleistocene Ice Age began 2.6 million years ago. Plant life was abundant before the ice age conditions. Even Antarctica was covered with plant life. Carbon dioxide levels were in the 400 ppm range or greater during that time. Eventually on the other side of the ice age, life will return to a warm Earth. The sea level will be 10 to 20 meters higher than today. Global annual temperatures will be 2 to 3 degrees C. higher than present and the world will team with life. It will go back to the pre-ice age equilibrium. But we are not there yet.

Tell it to the crew of Kursk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_s ... rsk_(K-141)

It is true that there is a lot more (by mass) CO2 in the oceans than in the air. No one denies it. But the increase in CO2 in the air did not get from the oceans as a result of global warming - quite the opposite is true, a lot of the CO2 made by burning fossil fuels have dissolved in the ocean.

The fossil record links past global warming periods with mass extinctions of benthic marine organisms - it happened during the Premian extinction, Triassic-Jurassic boundary, Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum. Other forms of life may also go extinct (Permian) or fluorish (PETM).

We don't really know where the current climate change is heading. The press tends to dig up the most drastic scenarios because they sell the best. Both the nature and humans are very adaptive and we will most likely ultimately adapt to the new equilibrium.

I am old enough to remember the last major climate scare. It was a global cooling scare. The temperatures declined significantly in the 60's and 70's which in turn spawned a global cooling scar. Man was again identified as the culprit. But this one involved primarily sulfur gases in man-made pollution as the primary culprit. This scare met its demise when temperature began to rise.

There was actually a scientific consensus in the 1970's focused on Global Cooling.
Source: Massive Cover-up Exposed: 285 Papers From 1960s-’80s Reveal Robust Global Cooling Scientific ‘Consensus’

For example, Newsweek on 28 April 1975 published an article called the Cooling World. The article began:

There are ominous signs that the Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production – with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth. The drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only 10 years from now. The regions destined to feel its impact are the great wheat-producing lands of Canada and the U.S.S.R. in the North, along with a number of marginally self-sufficient tropical areas – parts of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indochina and Indonesia – where the growing season is dependent upon the rains brought by the monsoon.

The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it. In England, farmers have seen their growing season decline by about two weeks since 1950, with a resultant overall loss in grain production estimated at up to 100,000 tons annually. During the same time, the average temperature around the equator has risen by a fraction of a degree – a fraction that in some areas can mean drought and desolation. Last April, in the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded, 148 twisters killed more than 300 people and caused half a billion dollars’ worth of damage in 13 U.S. states.

That brings to mind a few old sayings and proverbs:

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
and
"Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me."

To use the Kursk submarine as an example of dangers of carbon dioxide is an extremely poor choice for examples.

On the morning of 12 August, Kursk prepared to fire dummy torpedoes at the Kirov-class battlecruiser Pyotr Velikiy (Peter The Great). These practice torpedoes had no explosive warheads and were manufactured and tested at a much lower quality standard. On 12 August 2000, at 11:28 local time (07:28 UTC), there was an explosion while preparing to fire. The Russian Navy's final report on the disaster concluded the explosion was due to the failure of one of Kursk's hydrogen peroxide-fueled Type 65 torpedoes. A subsequent investigation concluded that high-test peroxide (HTP), a form of highly concentrated hydrogen peroxide used as propellant for the torpedo, seeped through a faulty weld in the torpedo casing. When HTP comes in contact with a catalyst, it rapidly expands by a factor of 5000, generating vast quantities of steam and oxygen. The pressure produced by the expanding HTP ruptured the kerosene fuel tank in the torpedo and set off an explosion equal to 100–250 kilograms (220–550 lb) of TNT. The submarine sank in relatively shallow water, bottoming at 108 metres (354 ft) about 135 km (84 mi) off Severomorsk, at 69°40′N 37°35′E. A second explosion 135 seconds after the initial event was equivalent to 3-7 tons of TNT. The explosions blew a large hole in the hull and collapsed the first three compartments of the sub, killing or incapacitating all but 23 of the 118 personnel on board.

So the accident onboard the Kurst submarine caused a massive explosion that sunk the submarine and killed or incapacitated 95 sailors. They were likely killed by the force of the explosion or drown.

Kursk carried a potassium superoxide cartridge of a chemical oxygen generator, used to absorb carbon dioxide and chemically release oxygen during an emergency. However, the cartridge became contaminated with sea water and the resulting chemical reaction caused a flash fire which consumed the available oxygen. The investigation showed that some men temporarily survived the fire by plunging under water, as fire marks on the bulkheads indicated the water was at waist level at the time. Ultimately, the remaining crew burned to death or suffocated.

Then a chemical fire occurred when the chemical oxygen generators reacted with the seawater flooding the ship. This fire consumed all the oxygen so the remaining crew were either burned to death or suffocated due to lack of oxygen. So it was a lack of oxygen rather than any elevated concentration of carbon dioxide that caused these deaths.

Source: Russian submarine Kursk (K-141)

I remember that. We had it preached on our news in the UK during the latter half of the 1970's. They were trying to find ideas of how to stop the planet cooling.

Okay, my point is, CO2 in concentrations that would saturate the oceans would be toxic for oxygen breathing life, if not for any other reason, then because these life forms dissolve their excess CO2 from metabolism in the water around them. They couldn't if the water was saturated in CO2.
The oceans aren't, and at least since the Great Oxygenation, never were, saturated in CO2. The engineering handbook model you created does not apply to them because of it.

The news always dramatize and create catastrophe. They did it then, they do it now. Usually the journalists who talk to scientists completely misunderstand what the scientists are saying. Been there, got a T-shirt and a short footage about gravity that still makes some weirdos contact me.
Add some dramatization and you get millions of imminent doom scenarios out of a scientist trying to figure something out and considering different possibilities.

I can buy into that.

the fabulous decade was nothing more than sweeping the dust under the mat followed by two another crazy decades now we have menniallials gen z and gen gamma or what we would like to call the mass weapons of deconstruction pokemon to the polls

Last edited by mapetitemelancholie on 04 Jun 2019, 1:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.

This
signed, Gen X'er

obv someone has very trouble to distinguish between marx critique of capitalism and marxism.

I just cannot take anyone seriously who bases his beliefs and/or arguments upon the Bible, of all things. If that is all you have, then no, "Generation Zed" will not be the last.

I think theres a very very very large generational gap starting around the 90s , becuase .. that means elder politicians no longer understand what this world is or will be all about, therefore , fiasco. Qed. Ditto.