SuperVolcano!
Out of context: Reply #7
- Started
- Last post
- 12 Responses
- paraselene0
the black sea is actually a lake. a really big lake, of course, like lake baikal, but a lake.
carbon dioxide forms at the bottom of lakes as a byproduct of the decomposition process of plant and animal matter that settles at the bottom of them.
in the case of very large lakes, such as the black sea and lake baikal, the carbon dioxide cannot recycle to the surface and escape into the air because the lake is just too damn deep.
so these lakes have become devoid of oxygen and highly acidic, "unable to suport any life beyond the simplest bacteria."
in 1986, lake nyos, a lake with anoxic depths in eastern africa experienced "turnover" which basically means that the strata of the lake reversed themselves.
it's basically a carbon dioxide flood, because co2 is much heavier than air. the gas comes rushing out of the lake at freight train speeds, flattening vegetation and uprooting trees. 'every creatue at ground level for distances of up to fifteen miles died.'
and that was a pretty small lake, comparatively speaking.
if the black sea were to experience turnover, it would cause the greatest natural cataclysm since the last ice age.
both the usa and russia are constantly monitoring the strata of the black sea in a vain attempt to predict if and when this phenomenon might occur. but it doesn't matter. your first lungful of co2 smells like rotten eggs and you don't live long enough to have a second.