The smoke and fumes from this fire are effecting the entire planet. Smoke from the fires can already be seen over IOWA in the USA via satellite pictures. Those small particles will float around in the atmosphere for a long time. They reflect sunlight back into space and also absorb sunlight in the form of heat. They both heat up the atmosphere though absorption of light and cool down the earth by reflection of other light rays. They decrease the visibility in the air though light scattering in many different directions.Originally Posted by kygorski
Everything has some type of impact on everything else. As the sun and moon have impacts and influence the earth the Earth in turn has an influence on the moon. Some impacts are huge and very obvious to us mortal humans. Other's are more subtle and harder to see. But they are still there none the less. The earth's ecosystem in complex as is the web of life.
Remember that to convert Ice into water you need to add heat energy. There is a phase change from a solid back to a liquid and it takes more energy to convert from one form to another as opposed to just heating up water or heating up a solid. The solid (ice) absorbs heat and the ice's temperature rises until it's approaching zero deg C or 32 deg F. But to go to 33 deg F the ice has to change phase into a liquid and it takes more heat energy to do this. After the phase change the temperature of the water starts to rise as you add more heat energy.
It only takes a couple of degrees to rise ices temperature and turn it into water. Water is frozen at zero degrees Celsius and it's a liquid at 1 degrees Celsius. So it does not take too much energy to melt the polar ice caps and cause the frozen land based water to melt and flow into the oceans. We know from historical records in the earth that the ocean levels have risen and fallen over the past millions of years. In Geologic Time things change more rapidly. Remember that time is relative. The problem is that millions of years ago when the ocean were much larger and higher and the land was lower there were not many human beings on this planet. Today there are over 7 billion of us using huge quantities of fossil fuels and releasing tremendous amounts of Carbon Dioxide into the Atmosphere. Humans are definitely having a huge impact on the plant we call home. One has to close their eyes and cover their ears and plug up their nose to not see this fact. It's unimaginable to me to not think that 7 billion people don't have an impact on our planet. Just look at the deforestation and slash burning that's going on in South American today. And the same thing happened in Europe many years ago. Also the land was cleared on the North American Continent when the Europeans started living here. We have been chopping down trees for a very long time. And they don't all grow back fast. Some old growth trees take hundreds of years to reach maturity. Other's such as yellow pine can grow back much faster but they grow these forest in a mono-culture environment and that's not as good as a diverse hard wood forest that has many different species of trees and other plants in various stages of their life cycle.
Fortunately the rains have returned to our Northern Neighbor and hopefully they can help bring these vast fires under control. Fire is natures way of reclaiming the land and putting nutrients back into the land that were tied up in the trees. Fire and regrowth are also part of nature. But nature didn't expect to have 7 billion humans on the land either. So our homes and other structures get consumed by the fire and many people have to rebuilt after the flames have died down. And this cycle will repeat itself over time. Again I'm talking Geologic time or in thousands or hundreds of years not just a few minute or hours. The earth will have to circle the sun a few more hundred thousands time for this cycle of life to repeat itself. Now the real question that I ask myself is this? How many humans will still be her in another hundred thousand years. What will our children find when we are all gone? And what about their kids and their grandkids etc etc. And how many times have this Geologic Cycle happened already. I think it's been going on much longer than even the Geologist are telling us based on the geologic rock cycle and the presently know age of the oldest rocks on earth.
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