natsci 3
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- Avg american as compared to avg world in gdp, energy, and co2
- 1:4
- co2 molecule
- atoms covalently bonded (shared electrons)-- oxygen is powerful electron grabber so c atom is not as energized as in other molecules
- why is co2 waste gas?
- burning it puts it in a lower energy state than before (in fossil fuels, in our bodies)
- importance of structure of co2 molecule
- molecules with 3 or more can be ghgs because can stretch and vibrate-- can absorb and rerelease infrared wavelengths
- greenhouse gases
- co2, h2o, ch4, n2o, o3, cfcs
- greenhouse effect
- earth is 15c/59f, emits infrared radiation, co2 absorbs infrared and releases some up and some back to earth
- biggest problem with climate predictions
- clouds-- absorb infrared and reflect sunlight
- Mauna Loa
- Charles David Keeling-- peak in may, low in sept/oct b/c land plants, avg co2 levels rising
- bicarbonate ion
- neg charge, most abundant form of c in oceans
- ch4
- 30 x more potent as ghg than co2, much less abundant, comes from methanogens (archaea, microbes- anaerobic, found in flooded rice patties& guts of cows and termites) and from leaks in nat'l gas pipelines and landfills
- what are jakes?
- young turkeys in new mexico fighting
- mauna loa and south pole data
- co2 rising at same rate, sp 1.2 yrs behind b/c takes 1 yr to mix atmosphere and hadley cells kind of keep hemispheres seperate, but not completely
- barrow alaska and samoa data
- barrow huge oscillations and samoa hardly any b/s diff in land ecosystems
- proof for fluctuations due to land plants
- carbon-13 is stable rare isotope, c-12 is most common form, [c-13/c-12] ratio for plant is less than ratio in atm. b/c plants depleted in c-13 as it moves more slowly in metabolism. it was found that the atm. [c-13/c-12] ratio also oscillates, but opposite from the co2 oscillations (up in sept, down in may) b/c plants are pulling in c-13. also the overall ratio is going down b/c fossil fuels added
- coal
- buried land plants and ancient swamps-- low [c-13/c-12] ratio
- oil
- buried marine phytoplankton-- low [c-13/c-12] ratio
- natural gas
- methane from oil & coal- when oil and coal is cooked under ground, ch4 released, better b/c less co2 per unit energy (about 1/2 of coal)
- natural releases of co2 into biosphere
- limestone rock- calcium carbonate & vocanoes-- total 400 mil metric tons or .4 gigatons C/yr
- natural system to remove co2
- limestone and volcanoes release .4 gt-c/yr, c goes into ocean and caco3 taken up as coral and other marine shells and gas exchange total .4 gt-c/yr
- bioturbation
- microbes mix soil
- co2 exchange in oceans
- need equilibrium-- fish filter o2 out of water, once co2 in oceans becomes hco3 or co3, phytoplankton take up co2 as biological carbon, copopods (zooplankton) eat algae/phytoplankton and fish eat copopods, both emit co2 in breath, bacteria emit co2 in deep water
- biological pump
- ocean 4 km deep- photosynthesizers near ocean surface take in co2 so less co2 in surface water, respirers in the rest give off co2 so theres more co2 in deep water
- pools/bowls/reservoirs of carbon (from most to least)
- deep ocean 35000 gtc, soils 2000 gtc, surface oceaan 100 m deep 800 gtc, atmosphere 800 gtc, landplants 600 gtc, marine life 2 gtc
- npp- photosynthesizers
- land plants 60 gtc/yr, marine life 40 gtc/yr
- why such diff in efficiency btwn land and ocean?
- in ocean, h2o everywhere, and land plants need to build structures to hold photosynthesizing parts up
- residence "turnover" times
- how long atom of c will stay in pool-- mass in pool of c/input or output
- total C in biosphere & residence time
- 40,000 gtc, residence time is 40000/.4= 100,000 yrs
- total amount of C in atmosphere and residence time
- 800 gtc, 4 yrs
- law dome
- back to year 1000 ad, constant at 280 ppm until 1850s
- taylor dome
- back to 10,000 bce fluctuates only 20 ppm (260-280)... 20,000 yrs ago, last ice age, low co2, co2 half responsible for ice age
- vostok
- co2 oscillates w/ ice age-- every approx 100,000 yrs, determined bio. pump of ocean changes during ice ages
- ice age- where ice spread and ave temp
- n. america down to nyc & chicago, through europe-- avg temp 5 degrees c colder, tropics didnt change too much b/c ice-albido feedback, sea level 100 ft lower, anatomicall modern humans during ice age
- where did coldness in ice age come from?
- half highly reflective ice (ice- albedo feedback), half reduced greenhouse effect/co2 levels
- anticipated global temp?
- 3 degrees c warmer
- what is the concern with coral?
- coral is being bleached, losing the plankton/ algae inside them, co2 is acidifying the ocean and will prevent caco3 shells from forming
- giga
- global industrial growth automaton-- gwp growing 3.1% per year
- giga projections for 2050
- gwp 4x today, global pop 8-9 bil people, per capita gwp about = to todays europe/japan
- what are todays avg countries in terms of gwp?
- china, turkey, mexico, romania
- what is different about europes wealth as compared to us?
- creates wealth w/ less energy/co2-- more mass transit & communal living
- china relationship btwn gdp & co2
- just reached world avg per capita, but co2 emissions higher b/c coal
- why is coal particulary bad?
- very little hydrogen
- co2/energy's overall growth in relation to gwp
- growing, but not as much.
- constant airborne fraction
- about 40% per decade increase in atmosphere as compared to total emissions
- projected ppm raise in 2050
- 100 ppm
- positive feedback loops
- worrisome-- ex C in permafrost
- fossil fuel energy servants
- bangladeshi emits 70 kg-c/yr, food intake is 90 kg-c/yr, so less than 1 energy servant. us emits 5300 kg-c/yr, so about 60 servants! global avg has about 13 ff servants
- which latitudes temp will change the most
- higher latitudes will change b/c ice-albedo feedback
- negawatts
- conservation/ efficiency in use
- nuclear fission, probs, amount in use
- controlling split of uranium atom, probs nuclear waste & uranium 235 is limited resource, 1/5 of us electrical, 800 billion kilowatt hrs/yr
- total us electrical output
- about 4200 billion kilowatt hours
- nuclear fusion
- H+H=He, done it in labs and H bombs, still developing, no where near being commercialized
- carbon capture & storage(sequestration)
- pipe deep into oceans, aquifers/salines (nondrinking water), oil wells offshore (norway), coal mines (coal absobs co2)
- hydroelectricity
- current (2007) annual hydroelectric output for u.s.: about 250 billion kilowatt-hours --we have dammed what we can dam
- 1 btu=
- amnt of heat to raise 1 lb of water 1 degree f
- wind power
- 32 bil kilowatt hrs, less than .1% electricity energy
- solar power
- more expensive than wind, used more for heat, less than .1% of nuclear generated, 1/60 whats being generated by wind, .08% total energy consumption
- parabolic trough
- reflects sunlight into tube and heats water-- concentrates sunlight to heat it up
- biomass
- use of wood and other biological materials-- more than wood, less than nuclear-- total (heat+electric) 3.6%
- by excluding starfish as predators, did mollusk biodiversity inc or dec?
- decrease?
- why is horseshoe crab blood blue
- copper
- in which biome are plants with most biomass most likely to stay green all year?
- boreal forest
- hudson river has tides all the way to albany.. what is the hudson river?
- estuary
- which is growing slowest in % change per year-- wild catch or aquaculture?
- wild catch
- decline of what creature dlayed in role of decline in chesapeake water quality
- oyster
- has the fact that humans prefer higher trophic level fish led the avg trophic level of fish catch to increase ?
- no.
- a more recent theory of biodiversity than theory of island biogeography
- theory of metapopulations
- is human appropriation for global npp more than 10%?
- yes
- endangered species act--yr
- 1973
- mva
- minimum viable area
- how many species currently known?
- 1.5 million
- what percent ofspecies defined are insects?
- haf
- can aspen trees reproduce asexually?
- yes
- what do parasites/ disease causing organisms have to do with current theory of benefits of sex?
- if animal inflicted, only half genes go to child
- what is unusual about relatinship btwn sex and death in pacific salmon?
- many die in process
- 4 bases of dna
- tagc
- how long ago did life originate?
- 3.9 bya according to isotope evidence
- 3 main largest groups of life
- bacteria, archaea, eukarya
- how would geologists most precisely date ancient rocks
- half-life of radionuclides
- for most of earths history, land life would be most similar to what?
- cryptogamic soils
- stromatolites
- structures built by ancient microbial cells
- for what span of lifes existence on earth were organisms like bacteria most advanced forms of life
- half
- the atmospheres of venus and mars are mostly what?
- co2
- oxygen becomes a net extra amnt in atmosphere what what is buried (leaves biosphere)?
- carbon
- how long ago did initialrise in atmospheric oxygen occur?
- 2 billion years
- tiktaalik
- fossil of creature btwn fish and amphibians
- geological time period when land plants evolved from tiny mosslike plants called cooksonia into giant trees
- devonian
- how many years did it take for evolution to push tinymosses into giant trees?
- 20 million years
- dickinsonia
- strange fossil, multicelled flat creature that lived prior to cambrian explosion is found in edicarian hills
- tetrapods began with ancestors of todays what?
- frogs
- how many yrs ago did giant asteroid wipe out dinos?
- 65 million ya
- what key discovery led to the idea that an asteroid killed dinos?
- found a layer of rock dated to time of k-t mass extinction which contained iridium, found mainly in space
- the most direct ancestor of mammals are..
- mammal-like reptiles
- at 4 mya, had primate lineage that led to humans already diverged from chimps?
- yes
- footprints made 3.5 mya
- made by austrolopichecus
- how many times larger is human brain then chimps/gorillas?
- 3 x
- what was not found in paleolithis cultural explosion?
- stone tools
- how long ago did sapiens and neanderthal split?
- 500,000 yrs ago
- eearliest symbolic art found where?
- africa
- where is hydrogen from
- not in stars, hydrogen been around since after big bang
- what does red shift show about universe?
- accelerated expansion
- what is earths circumference?
- 24,000 miles
- picture of deep sky taken by cobe shows what?
- temp diff soon after big bang
- current avg temp of universe close to what?
- freezing pt of water
- how many years ago was earth formed?
- 4.5 bya
- how much ordinary matter, dark matter, and dark energy in universe?
- om- 4%, dm- 23%, de- 73%
- how can we know about presence of specific elements such as ca way out in space
- its photon print on e-m spectrum shifts