Extinction of Species .ORG

ATMOSPHERIC AND OCEANIC CURRENTS

Humanity currently depends on the difference in temperature between the very cold poles and the much warmer tropical and equatorial regions for survival. It is this difference in atmospheric and oceanic temperatures, which create the atmospheric and oceanic currents (weather, wind, storm systems for the atmosphere and oceanic streams, currents and rivers for the oceans). Critical human activity such as agriculture and industry, as they exists at the present time, is almost entirely dependent on these currents to provide rain over landmasses for drinking water, for industrial processes, and critically for agriculture, including crop production as well as animal husbandry. Once Earth is ice-free then these currents will no longer exist, and humanity will have to use massive amounts of energy to produce and transport fresh water to meet its needs, thus creating a ever-worsening climate feedback cycle. Because the atmosphere in such an ice-free Earth will contain much more moisture, solutions to pull H2O out of the air will be possible solutions, but the energy use will be enormous, even if that would partially solve the fresh water transportation problem. Thus, Earth will be headed in the wrong direction with self-reinforcing natural and human feedback cycles which it appears will prevent the return of Earth to a healthy balance with ice at the poles in the thousand-year future.

Much of Humanity also depends on these currents to provide warmth (for example the Gulf Stream keeps Europe much warmer than it would be otherwise) in the short to medium term. Some scientists are still predicting a much colder Europe and other regions should the atmospheric and oceanic currents stop, while others believe that the future higher temperatures necessary to melt Earth's ice will make the return of very cold temperatures improbable to impossible, even though there appears to be consensus about the short term effect of much colder temperatures in places like Western and Northern Europe which depend on the Gulf Stream for warmth.

Some of these Oceanic currents involve vertical currents within the oceans themselves, and as such are invaluable parts of the nutrient cycle and thus the food chain, upon which much of Humanity and basically all other marine-based species as well as some land-based human companions, and animals used in husbandry, all depend for food and thus survival.

As regards the loss of atmospheric currents, this probability should be an urgent call to action on passive air-flow methane removal projects, since removal projects, as is shown later, which rely on using forced air flow, as in fans and blowers, use far too much energy and are far too costly to use for methane removal. Thus, more research should be done on methane removal with passive air flow methods and sorbants, and action must begin to be taken using the best methods, with the best sorbants, while passive air-flow still exists!