Dimensional Argument Against the Snowball Earth Hypothesis
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A most recent inquiry into climatic change during the ice age and its possibility of reoccurring is the Snowball Earth Hypothesis advanced by Paul Hoffman of Harvard University. Snowball Earth Suggest that before the Ice age, continents ice free at the poles enhanced the reabsorption of carbon dioxide through erosion of silicate minerals, reducing the greenhouse effect making the earth colder until it reached a runaway point. This effect is Hoffman calls albedo, when the atmosphere becomes so cold it can never warm up again. This is what occurred during the ice age, until volcano activity saturated the atmosphere with carbon dioxide to a point that it trapped radiation from the Sun and rewarmed the climate causing glacial thaw. Evidence of this event is cap carbonates that show relative dating at the ice age, found in abundance in several different world regions, at certain levels the cap carbonates would indicate if carbon dioxide was emitted into the atmosphere, by showing carbon levels that would demonstrate how much photosynthesis was occurring. Iron rich rock deposits indicate that absents of oxcidation would mean the atmosphere contain no oxygen, without oxygen their is no life, therefore other evidence of total extinction. So experts dispute the oceans were encased beneath a kilometer thick sheet of ice sheet, or that all life became extinct. The evidence of the Snowball effect is challenged that levels of carbon had not reached those required to satisfy the model and that alternative models are possible to explain the arrival and conclusion of the ice age. Iron had not oxidized because the glacials prevented contact with the atmosphere that would of subjected these rocks to mechanical weathering.
The Snowball Earth Hypothesis bases its theory on an invalid model of earth at that time. Ancient earth of the Proterozoic 750 million years ago existed in a separate dimension then what the model is based upon. There wasnt much of an ocean completely beneath a glacial sheet of ice a kilometer thick. The plate tectonic model of pangaea locates it with Antarctica, this shifts the planetary land of the continents to one hemisphere and connects it with already glacial covered Antarctica. So rather than ice on the ocean around the Antarctica, the glaciation would be linked on pangaea surface; wouldnt this detrital effect sort of conduct the refrigeration and branch out the glacial even further into the continent, instead of a lack of CO2, temperature variation occurs from extended glacial mass that colds everything within reach of its frost thermal gradient, slightly different sort of albedo than Snowball Earth describes. Another possibility is the astrophysics of a primitive earth with a supercontinent covering one hemisphere only and a southern pole. Uranus is said to have a 86 tilt of it axis of rotation is nearly its plain of orbit, and two moons of Jupiter, one Europa is completely frozen over by ice, the other called Io is so close to Jupiter the gravitational pull has caused volcanic activity and suggested the moon is pulled at one side of its surface changing its shape. Might have the same circumstances happened on Proterozoic Earth, in addition to a dimmer primitive Sun, the earth could be holding a different tilt in favor of significant mass all to one hemisphere and pole. Copernicus said the earth had a wobble. If such a wobble existed in Proterozoic time, the wobble could have a velocity to provide a contributing mechanism to quake the continents apart, terminating the Varangian glaciation. The principle of uniformitarianism might superposition the first glacial to thaw at Death Valley, CA since temperature variations show that Death Valley, Ca at least today is the hottest Fahrenheit on Earth at 128 and once covered under a glacier. Physical geology theory states that oceans waters and hydrosphere itself occurred because of comets from outer space colliding into earth. The atmosphere and water vapor said from volcanoes, then why not possible that no oceans existed in the quantify know today, and what filled the oceans and created the hydrosphere was comet impact and glaciation thawing. So while a Snowball Earth could be true, the relative scale of the oceans was smaller in ancient geologic time, not until comets filled the oceans with water and the glaciers