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The Sedcarb Model of continental CO2 production

Image: The Sedcarb Model of continental CO2 production

from Peter Ravenscroft, 04.08.09

This map is the foundation document of this Sedcarb model, unless someone else has launched it already, always likely. Stands for "sedimentary basin biosphere-produced northern spring atmospheric CO2 high", which would be SBBPNSACD, but we won't bother with that again, I think.

Sedcarb is proposed to replace the model that says that the high annual peak levels in CO2 in the troposphere in the northern spring (March-April) are the result of photosynthesis by surface plants. That earlier model underpins interpretations of the Keeling Curve of CO2, derived from the Hawaii Mauna Loa CO2 data. And it hence also underpins the anrthropogenic greenhouse warming model of climate change, currently still popular.

The contention here, based on the map given, is that most of the annual northern hemisphere spring CO2 rise is from warming and hence degassing sedimentary basins, and that the source is (probably) the deep biosphere in the permeable sediments there. When groundwater warms, like any other warming water it releases dissolved CO2 if present, plus which, when the ground warms the deep biosphere makes use of that extra energy and grows.

There is a lot of heat, for instance, in the sands of the Sahara, but a touch too much on the surface for most lifeforms. At depth conditions are ideal, as water condenses in tiny amounts around each sand or silt grain at night, and in the day some of that water will trickle downwards under gravity before it evaporates. The Qanat system of deep wells and channels has been used to tap that groundwater below the Sahara for thousands of years. The AIRS (Atmospheric Infra Red Sounder) data from NASA's AQUA satellites shows a huge pulse of CO2 being produced in March, in the Western Sahara. I think it is far too large to be the result of oilfield flaring. And there are not a huge lot of surface plants in the western Sahara.

In March, I think, the more northerly sedimentary basins have not yet warmed. They do so in later months, and then emit their CO2 in turn.

The picture is modified in China, by the huge natural coal outcrop fires, which burn incessantly. there are hundreds of them extending over an arc of about 3,000 kms.

To back this set of guesses up, an abstract

"The Deep Hot Biosphere. T Gold, Cornell university, Ithaca, new York Published in em>Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. PNAS July 1, 1992 vol. 89, no. 13 pages 6045-6049

Abstract

There are strong indications that microbial life is widespread at depth in the crust of the Earth, just as such life has been identified in numerous ocean vents. This life is not dependent on solar energy and photosynthesis for its primary energy supply, and it is essentially independent of the surface circumstances. Its energy supply comes from chemical sources, due to fluids that migrate upward from deeper levels in the Earth. In mass and volume it may be comparable with all surface life. Such microbial life may account for the presence of biological molecules in all carbonaceous materials in the outer crust, and the inference that these materials must have derived from biological deposits accumulated at the surface is therefore not necessarily valid. Subsurface life may be widespread among the planetary bodies of our solar system, since many of them have equally suitable conditions below, while having totally inhospitable surfaces. One may even speculate that such life may be widely disseminated in the universe, since planetary type bodies with similar subsurface conditions may be common as solitary objects in space, as well as in other solar-type systems"

Just in case you are sceptical that life lives deep underground, there is this:

"The Witwaterstrand Deep Microbiology Project, for example, a multinational effort led by Princeton geomicrobiologist T.C. Onstott, sampled groundwater in fractured rock from 3-kilometre-deep gold mines in South Africa and found a wealth of microbial diversity in the deep continental crust.":

See here for the rest. It deals mostly with life beneath the seafloor, but is very relevant here also. It is very well written. 

The Yanks, as we know, discover everything. they even recently discovered the waterboard and have probably now patented it. But I can vouch for that Wits deep life story above. I have worked 2 kms vertically down in one of those mines, .Doornfontein to be precise. In 1970 we knew of that bacterial life and I think it was published in a Geological Society of South Africa journal decades before, not sure now. Most likely, miners not being blind, it was known in the 1880's, as soon as the first deep shafts went down. And by deep miners elsewhere in the world, long before that. But who was listening? As a trivial note, I wrote some time back to Tullis Onstott, who graciously replied and said knowing of the deep bacterial and other life was what set him on a course for the Witswatersrand in the first place. So, this is not something new and speculative, this deep continental life. The question is, how much of it is there, and how do we find out? This deep sedimentary basin ecosystem may host the biggest patch of life on this planet. With its extent first suspected and detected by a little beaut of a cut-price satellite, NASA's AQUA. Maybe.

The Wits conglomerate, is now metamorphic rock, but it was originally of course a sediment, down where the gold and uranium occurs. It has been prime real estate for two billion years plus some. Imagine the compound inflation! 

This sedcarb model links to and complements CO2 production from warming and de-pressurising seawater. Between them, as the AIRS maps show, there is not much CO2 left over to be accounted for by human industry and/or excess.

It is a model for non-climate change by carbon dioxide from any source, as the maps of where the warming is happening globally do not at all match where the CO2 in the air is being produced,

As said before, the geomagnetic z or vertical fied trend maps do very closely match where the earth is warming. The geomagnetic field is currently developing a second north pole, so magnetic field flux lines are getting tangled. When that happens more than usual on the sun, in the solar atmosphere, we get sunspots and the temperatures at those spots go up by millions of degrees, So, when magnetic lines of force start to get tangled here, why do we look surprised when the regions right where it is happening warm by a few degrees?

Last time the magnetic poles flipped, it seems the continental icecaps melted totally, as we have seem to have no continental ice older than that flip about 800,000 years ago. What is happening now is not a magnetic pole flip, most likely. It is simply a shift in the location of the north pole, which regularly tours between the Canadian Arctic and eastern Siberia.  .

This article is in the public domain

Peter Ravenscroft

Closeburn, Queensland, Australia.
First draft, 4 August, 2009.

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Derived from

NASA and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. July 1, 1992 vol. 89, no. 13 pages 6045-6049

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