The cold water sinks, and salt water is heavier and has a lower freezing point. Deep ocean water, is at or below freezing but is liquid from the its salinity and great pressure. The ocean waters are never still, they move and change latitudes and longitudes and pour around the contours of the sea floor and continental shelves. The surface temperatures are warmed at the equator. The winds and the currents pump the air and water like a heart from the pull of the moon, the temperature changes of the seasons, and by the changes of night and day. The deep earth vents, and the cold, melted freshwater from land further churn the oceans. Our over use of fossil fuels, the burning and destruction of forests, mountains of trash and manure, loss of green forested land for cement are all contributing to the change of CO2/N over O2....
There were a few other times when our planet went through such changes in a short period of time. The first great death happened when the first organisms to photosynthesize created so much oxygen it killed the methane breathers... Then there was another great death when atmospheric oxygen plummeted from 21% to less then 12 % in only 20 million years. Land vertebrates at sea level had the same amount of oxygen as if they were at present day 9,200 foot mountain ... The Late Permian Early Triassic saw 90 % of the ocean organisms die and 75 % of the land plants and animals die. What a horrible death it must have been for not only did the oxygen vanish, but CO2 increased and with it temperatures. The earth became a steamy hot box with not much to breath...
http://www.uwnews.org/article.asp?articleID=9592
No comments:
Post a Comment