CAN GLOBAL WARMING BE AN EXTINCTION EVENT?

When a 9.0 earthquake devastates a region, or generates a tsunami, you can't blame global warming.  If a Chicxulub-size asteroid plunges into Planet Earth, the one that killed off the dinosaurs, that has nothing to do with carbon dioxide or methane in the atmosphere.  Which leads me to share some info I found about life-extinction visitors from outer space:

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  Probably the largest know asteroid was the one that struck Vredefort in South Africa 2 billion years ago.  The diameter was between 6 and 9 miles.  The resultant crater was 190 miles across.  Of course life on Earth was severely compromised.  Of course, it was all microbiological, for first fungus did not come until around a billion  years ago.  We live on a dangerous planet, for 99% of all life species have expired.
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  The 6-mile diameter asteroid that caused the 110-mile Chicxulub Crater of Mexico killed off the dinosaurs around 66 million years ago.  75% of all plant and animal life also disappeared.
• NASA tracks asteroids, and said there is no chance of anything dangerous striking our planet into the foreseeable future.  A 1-mile wide asteroid hitting us would be like a 1 million megaton bomb.  

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  How large is that?  Well, an asteroid the size of a house would be equivalent to the Atomic Bomb that was detonated over Hiroshima.  This explosion was 20 kilotons, or 50 million times smaller. 
• The largest was the Soviet Union's Tzar Bomba (right) at more than 50 megatons.
• A 1-mile diameter asteroid striking New York City would flatten everything from Washington, D.C. to Boston, and cause serious damage as far away as Chicago.
• A one-sixth of a mile asteroid cruised past us on March 21, but it was more than a million miles away.

Now that you can store away forever any fear of asteroids affecting your life, let's get back to global climate warming.  Do you think this man-made phenomena had any link to the once in a thousand-year flood that swept Germany and other European countries, killing at least 165, with hundreds still missing?  What about those repeating heat waves over Canada and American West?  Certainly there is a high subsequent correlation with frequency and size of forest fires.

Last year the Atlantic spawned a record number of ocean storms, with Theta being #29.  Remember Hurricane Harvey over the Houston area a couple of years ago.  Into the late 1960's hurricanes typically lost 75% of their intensity in the first day of landfall.  These days, the decay is only about 50%.

There is a reason why the North Atlantic (or any ocean region in the world) has no hurricanes in the winter.  The surface temperature is cooler.  The warmer the temperature, the more favorable for the formation of cyclonic storms and stronger monsters.

Incidentally, there is potential for the Blue Revolution to enhance the environment by extracting carbon dioxide from the atmosphere (with the concomitant addition of iron--Martin hypothesis--that's John Martin to the right) and cooling the water surface to minimize the formation and strength of hurricanes.  Thus the need for something like the Pacific International Ocean Station to test out these concepts.

About that question:  Can global warming be an extinction event?  Yes, for maybe 20% of certain species, like the Mediterranean Monk Seal or plants in the Amazon.  But surely us Homo sapiens will eventually do something about this.  Unless this warming triggers release of methane from the ocean floor and tundra.  Then, The Venus Syndrome.  So yes, global warming can end life on Planet Earth.

This is shaping up to be a most interesting week, with the flight  into space on Tuesday (July 20, date of when Neal Armstrong first walked on the Moon in 1969) of Jeff and Mark Bezos, Wally Funk (82-year old pilot, who was one of the Mercury 13 women--and will become the oldest person in space, replacing as #1 John Glenn, who went up at the age of 77) and Oliver Daemon, an 18-year old student, who will become the youngest (Gherman Titov of the Soviet Union then 26 is now the youngest).  The following day, July 21, begins the Tokyo Summer Olympics with soccer and softball.  I'll report on both tomorrow.

If you live in Hawaii or ever came for a visit, surely you had Aoki's shave (the tense might be wrong, but this is how it goes here) ice and a bento plate at Rainbow Drive-In.  Here are before and today photos:

You would think Aoki's has been forever in Haleiwa, but it only first opened in 1981.  Rainbow Drive-In started in 1961, so is 60 years old.

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