Deep Sea Volcanos Replace “Consumers” as Blame For Global Warming/Climate Change

Like hot springs and geysers on land, hydrothermal vents form in volcanically active areas – often on mid-ocean ridges, where Earth’s tectonic plates are spreading apart and where magma wells up to the surface or close beneath the seafloor. Ocean water percolates into the crust through cracks and porous rocks and is heated by underlying magma. The heat helps drive chemical reactions that remove oxygen, magnesium, sulfates and other chemicals from the water that entered the ocean through rain, rivers, and groundwater. In the process, the fluids also become hotter and more acidic, causing them to leach metals such as iron, zinc, copper, lead, and cobalt from the surrounding rocks. The heated fluids rise back to the surface through openings in the seafloor. Hydrothermal fluid temperatures can reach 400°C (750°F) or more, but they do not boil under the extreme pressure of the deep ocean. (Woods Hole)

Decades after rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations was blamed on the industrial revolution, scientists discovered geological regions of volcanic activity on the ocean floor that emit – among other things – methane and carbon dioxide.

Even as vast new sources of greenhouse gas emissions were being discovered from within the ocean, the politics of Global Warming to blame “consumers” had already been decided.

In 1977, scientists diving in the submersible Alvin made a stunning discovery on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean: vents pouring hot, mineral-rich fluids from beneath the seafloor. In addition, they also found the vents were inhabited by previously unknown organisms that thrived in the absence of sunlight. These discoveries forever changed our understanding of Earth and life on it.

Commercial mining of Hydrothermal Vents and more aggressive oil drilling techniques deeper into magma regions adds additional risk that CO2 and/or methane (natural gas) will find its way into the atmosphere.

Deep sea gold rush: World’s hydrothermal vent fields
In late 2013 Nautilus Minerals of Vancouver, Canada, began mining for copper and gold at a hydrothermal vent field known as Solwara.  Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, this lies in Papua New Guinea’s exclusive economic zone, but similarly valuable deposits may lie in international waters, where mining claims are regulated by the International Seabed Authority. How many vent fields contain enough ore to be worth mining remains unclear – and the number will vary depending on metal prices. (New Scientist)

Perhaps in an effort to ward off yet another long cold winter, officially-sanctioned climate science has been pumping out hot air at exponentially-increasing rates of late. An IPCC report in September, 2013 told us that global warming “paused” unexpectedly in 1998, and shows no sign of resuming. Actually, the work that went into that report found that warming had stopped altogether, but the wording was altered to describe it as a “pause”.

You’d think that a pseudo-acknowledgement like this from on-high would dampen the Global Warmists’ enthusiasm, but you’d be wrong.

Their driven need to ‘fit the facts around the policy’ is illustrated by a couple of recent articles that caught our eye. Here USA Today reports on the findings of a study that claims:

Some parts of the Pacific Ocean have warmed 15 times faster in the last 60 years than they did during the previous 10,000 years.(Source)

This finding is more consistent with an increase in Deep Sea volcanic greenhouse gas emissions than the initial, less educated guess that increased CO2 is the exclusive result of the so-called “Industrial Revolution”.

MORE:  The following is from a Nov., 27, 2013 article by Doug DiPasquale and Niall Bradley at SOTT.NET   *** Continue