Actually mass extinction events are a bit more common than that. Wikipidia has a list of them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_event graywolf wrote: > keith_w wrote: > >> graywolf wrote: >> >>> Well, I do not feel all that sorry for you. If sea level was to rise a >>> half-meter half or Flordia would be gone, if it rose a meter there would >>> just be a few little islands where millions of people now live. And they >>> would only be a small percentage of the people effected through out the >>> world. A lot of Holland, I understand, is actually below sea level. >>> >>> On the other hand, here is some homework for you. How many gallons of >>> water would have to be added to the worlds oceans to raise sea level 1/2 >>> meter? Next question, how many gallons of water are in the worlds ice >>> caps. >>> >> You mean above sea leel? >> > > No all of it, after all ice is bulkier than water. > > >>> Now last question, if the worlds mean temperature went up 10 >>> degrees, how long would it take to entirely melt the ice caps. >>> >> TEN degrees? F? Almost unthinkable. I mean, it would never do that short >> of a genuine Armageddon. World flips poles, stuff like that! >> Rises we have to worry about, if we want to do that, are more in the >> order of 1/2 to 3/4 degree! That does enough all by itself. Even 1 >> degree is unbelievable... I know of no mechanism that would cause that. >> >> > > I picked that 10 degrees because that has been suggested as the maximum > that would leave the world generally habitable. Yes, short of the sun > suddenly going hotter it is almost impossible to conceive. And a degree > would cause a change so slow that none of us would be alive to see the > results. > > >>> One of the things that we forget is just how big a place the world is. >>> We think in terms of our town, our city. I have crisscrossed the US by >>> car, train, bus, and a lot of it on foot. Even with that experience it >>> is so big I have a hard time imagining it. The US is a only a small >>> portion of the land in the world. The oceans are 3 times as big as all >>> the land combined. Think of that. >>> >> That's just surface area! >> > > Of course it is. So some home work for you, Keith what would the > reduction of land area be in this case? > > My whole point was that people believe or disbelieve things without > doing any sort of check on even the possibility of it. Most of these > disaster scenarios require some kind of miraculous condition that there > is no know way of ever happening. "The sky is falling" is so much human > nature that there are thousand year old folk tales about it. > > Sudden global disasters are so rare that there is only evidence of it > happening twice since the world was born. Both times it wiped out most > of the life on earth. So, yes, it could happen a third time. If it does > we will have no control over it, unless we have already left the solar > system. However these occurances seem to happen in time frames of > hundreds of millions of years and since the last was only 65 million > years ago, I doubt we need worry about it right now. Ice ages seem to be > on something like a 20 thousand year cycle and probably have more to do > with variations in the sun's output than any local effect. > > Of course all that evidence is bullshit because the world did not exist > until I was born, and will cease to exist at my death. <GRIN> > > >>> Oh yes, and quit watching disaster movies. >>> >> keith >> >> > > -- Things should be made as simple as possible -- but no simpler. --Albert Einstein -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
