Absence Of Clouds Caused Pre-human Supergreenhouse Periods

ScienceDaily, Apr. 11, 2008 — “In a world without human-produced pollution, biological productivity controls cloud formation and may be the lever that caused supergreenhouse episodes during the Cetaceous [sic] and Eocene, according to Penn State paleoclimatologists.

Kump and David Pollard, senior research associate, Earth and Environmental Systems Institute, looked for another way to create a world where mean annual temperatures in the tropics were above 100 degrees Fahrenheit and polar temperatures were in the 50-degree Fahrenheit range. Changing the Earth’s albedo — the amount of sunlight reflected into space — by changing cloud cover will produce supergreenhouse events, the researchers report April 11 in the journal Science.

According to the researchers, changes in the production of cloud condensation nuclei, the tiny particles around which water condenses to form rain drops and cloud droplets, decreased Earth’s cloud cover and increase the sun’s warming effect during supergreenhouse events.

Normal cloud cover reflects about 30 percent of the sun’s energy back into space. Kump and Pollard were looking for a scenario that allowed in 6 to 10 percent more sunlight.”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080410140531.htm

This is interesting to me because of my familiarity with the Book of Genesis, where it says things like …

Gen. 2:5b, 6 “… for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.”

implying a significant difference in the world hydrological cycle prior to the Flood. Also,

Gen. 1:7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.

There are also literary hints that the four seasons as we know them with their extremes of cold/ice/snow and hot had a definite beginning point in history. Some Bible commentators take this passage

“Gen 8:22 While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.”

as a hint that there was a significant change in seasons after the Flood. A history buff that I debate with online mentioned this recently …

The Greek and Roman story of Persephone relates to the formation of seasons. Basically the Earth was supposedly “fruitful” all year round until Hades abducted Persephone to be “his wife” and as a result the Earth became barren ,while she was away ,either due to her being a goddess of fertility or her mother Demeter being one depending on the version of the story. The story continues to say that once she was returned to Earth, Hades tricked her into eating 6 (or 3 ) pomegranate seeds, which forced her to return to him for one season of the year (Winter) which is the supposed explanation of why nothing grows then. http://www.rantsnraves.org/showthread.php?p=257942#post257942

Some may laugh at literary info such as this, but some mainstream scientists are finding nuggets of truth mixed in with the mythical and questionable stuff. See my recent articles …

The Budding Discipline of Geomythology, and
North and South Poles Were Once Tropical!

Some of you may be familiar with a fairly well known creationist book entitled “The Waters Above” (Joseph Dillow 1982) championed at the time by ICR and viewed as a serious possibility by creationists. The model was later shown to be flawed as everything would have been fried on earth. But at least Dillow was on the right track … i.e. he believed that there was literary evidence for a ‘supergreenhouse’ period on planet earth at some point in the past.

Apparently he was right although he was wrong about the exact mechanism and he would differ with these authors on how long ago this period occurred.

6 Responses to “Absence Of Clouds Caused Pre-human Supergreenhouse Periods”

  1. lordkalvan says:

    I wish I could see something more than hopeful speculation in the absence of any confirming evidence whatsoever that there is anything but wishful thinking in this contrived connection between the quoted Science article and Genesis. But I can’t.

    To use your first chosen quote from Genesis to support the idea that there was ‘a significant difference in the world hydrological cycle prior to the Flood’ seems to be driven by the conclusion that you wish to make. I would make the same point about your second and third biblical references.

    I also note that the ‘history buff’ you went on to quote subsequently pointed out at http://www.rantsnraves.org/showpost.php?p=257975&postcount=9 that

    ‘…this mythology of a “Golden Age” when the Earth was fruitful all year round is common and is reflected in the equally mythical Garden of Eden.’

    I have commented previously on your remarks about geomythology and the tropical poles and see little purpose in repeating them here. The simple fact is that there is absolutely no evidential support in the science and research you reference here for the mythical and legendary ‘history’ in Genesis.

  2. dhawkinsmo says:

    I’ll grant you that the third Genesis passage is a bit tenuous. But why do feel that way about the 1st and 2nd? They seem fairly clear to me.

  3. lordkalvan says:

    Thanks for your reply.

    Granting, for the sake of this argument, Genesis as an accurate account rather than a moral allegory, there seems to be little in the first two chapters that allows anything other than a very speculative guess as to what the climate either pre- of post-Flood may actually have been. The words used are undefined and very much subject to personal interpretation. The terms ‘mist’ and ‘divided the waters’ seem somewhat tenuous evidence on which to draw conclusions on a global climate.

  4. lordkalvan says:

    For anyone interested, I see that you are engaging in a somewhat desultory debate on this subject at IIDB. Anyone interested in can follow the story so far here;

    http://iidb.infidels.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=241544

  5. lordkalvan says:

    This is prompted by curiosity: I see your article on Lake Suigestu has its comments closed. Why is this particularly?

  6. Mats says:

    ‘…this mythology of a “Golden Age” when the Earth was fruitful all year round is common and is reflected in the equally mythical Garden of Eden.’

    In other words, since one is a myth, the other has to be a myth also. It doesn’t follow logically. The commom elements should hint to something in it.
    Legends and myths don’t grow in mind air. MOstly, they are made up to explain real events, or real historical figures. The belief that Garden of Eden is a myth is reflective of the philosophy of the speaker rather than from the empirical evidence.