Back In The Really Old Ages Of Pangea

When the continents were still pretty much one linked mass, atmospheric circulations out and about at the time weren't much to talk about. As in not circulating much at all, especially as it relates to what might have been going on, because there was a lot of water everywhere else, but land barriers were in the way. So things got not only pretty hot, but also quite dry, and stayed that way for quite a while.

Of course things seldom happen in complete isolation so why not also kick a whole lot of material into the atmosphere. From a bunch of volcanoes, in this instance, that did what they do for a good long time as well. Something else to make things get hotter. So hot, in fact, that gobs upon gobs of moisture was put into the atmosphere from all that water, everywhere else. So much, in fact, that it could overcome, eventually, the land barriers mentioned above, and come tumbling over into once arid land. Continuously. Because that became the first big circulation change to happen in eons.

That last sentence needs to be repeated:

Because that became the first big circulation change to happen in eons.

After which, of course, things couldn't change to something else until other big factors took effect; like the appearance of a whole new plethora of plant life to start taking out the carbon that was oh so helpful in making things hotter in the first place. And also a new era of waterborne erosion, as well as tectonic plate shifting affects finally pushing the land masses further apart. And of course those changes took their own eons of time to accomplish.

What this serves to illustrate is very simple. We are like the volcanoes mentioned above. Only we've done, in a mere few hundreds of years, what took them a lot longer to do. We put in enough stuff to block infrared radiation from the ground, and air, to radiate back into space. to make things start getting hot again. And now that extra, continuous build up of heat, is leaving ever less ice at both poles of the planet; something that used to reflect a lot of the sun's light, and thus prevent the surrounding ocean from absorbing more heat; which in any body's book is a really bad double whammy.

So what does that leave us with boys and girls? Yes, that's right:

Another coming, very big change, in planetary air, and ocean circulations.

And let's just be clear about what happened in the one described via the posted video link. Terrible floods came; over and over again. Whole species died out. And very little was the same ever again. What will happen this time is, actually quite difficult to predict because it's just too complex a system now to extrapolate beyond a few weeks, let alone a few years (as any weather forecast will confirm). Whatever it will be, though, won't be much good for the lifeforms that have become dependant on the old status quo. And that most definitely includes us.

That dear reader is what we are riding on a terrible accelerator towards. A terrible accelerator because it is Capitalist competition, and excess electrified. And you have all been so befuddled by the mesmerizing, and corrupting, nature of it all, to even care to want to notice all that much, let alone do anything about it. And more's the pity.

That One Time It Rained On Earth For Two Million Years Straight

See Also:

RUNNING ON EMPTY

The Rio Grande Is Drying Up

4 diggs The New York Times Nature

Even in a good year, much of the Rio Grande is diverted for irrigation. But it's only May, and the river is already turning to sand.