Tectonics and the weather.

[Daecon]

I suppose the title of this thread is somewhat misleading...

 

Tectonics is responsible for earthquakes and tsunamis, right? And we all know the weather is responsible for hurricanes...

 

I would like to know what the effect would be for the Earth if both the tectonic system and the weather (meterological?) system of the planet were "stopped".

 

I'm guessing that erosion would become a major problem for the landmasses, but what other catastophic situations would arise if there was no tectonic plate movement (and thereby no earthquakes) and no weather system (so no storms or hurricanes or tornadoes etc.)?

[silkworm]

I think I can answer this but first I must ask, by no weather system do you mean that it could not rain?

 

And if it could not rain, do you mean to imply that solar radiation could not cause water to evaporate?

[Daecon]

Yeah, a system where it could not rain - thereby eliminating dangerous weather systems such as thunderstorms, etc. which could endanger aeroplanes (sp?) and ships at sea, etc.

 

If that would mean that solar radiation woudl be incapable of evaporating water to make this situation physically possible, then so be it.

[silkworm]

Okay. Then I would say that our current freshwater reserves would become so stagnate they would swarm with all types of bacteria and other critters that it would become undrinkable without serious amounts of treatment. Also, we'd have to desaliniate massive amounts of seawater in order to irrigate to feed our plants, animals, and our selves, and even participating in that only the plants we focused on wouldn't die out eventually. So there would be a massive loss of vegitation. The composition of the atmosphere would change gradually by most assuredly without correction because there would be no rain to grab any of the gasses up there on its way down. Most prevalent would most likely be CO2 because of our dying vegitation and so eventually we'd most likely suffocate, if we haven't already starved. Also, due to one of the conditions were that solar raditiation could no longer cause water vapor, be prepared for extreme temperature changes between night and day because the process of water trapping heat is important for temperature regulation.

 

If the earth became geologically dead there would no longer be a magnetic field, no volcanos to create new land, and all of the very deep ocean animals who living off of the energy supplied by thermal vents would die. If this geologic death implies that somehow all of the rock under the crust solidifies, I can not anticipate the problems that would cause.

 

I'm sure there's a lot calamity I'm missing, but that's all I could think of off of the top of my head.

[Daecon]

I thought the magnetic field of the Earth was due to the rotation of the outer core, and nothing to do with plate movement?

[silkworm]

What do you think drives plate movement? Think about it.

[Daecon]

I thought it was a type of Brownian motion caused by the crust being on top of the liquid mantle.

[silkworm]

Hmmm.

 

I don't know what Brownian motion is, but the way I understood it is that it was driven by the convection engine that is the Earth.

 

OH, I just realized you said outer core. Sorry, I was thinking you mean the mantle. I think the word rotation made me think mantle. Stupid mistake, sorry.

 

As far as I know it hasn't really been well established where the Earth's magnetic field comes from. But we'll go with the idea that there is a super dense iron nugget at the core, if the earth were geologically dead under that model it would because the nugget chilled out and wasn't driving geologic activity.