Mass Extinctions from Global Warming?

uncleO writes "The current issue of Scientific American has an interesting article, Impact from the Deep, about the possible causes for the five major global extinctions. It contends that only the most recent one was caused by a 'dinosaur killer' asteroid impact. Evidence suggests that the others were caused by 'great bubbles of toxic H2S gas erupting into the atmosphere' from the oceans due to anoxia." From the article: "The so-called thermal extinction at the end of the Paleocene began when atmospheric CO2 was just under 1,000 parts per million (ppm). At the end of the Triassic, CO2 was just above 1,000 ppm. Today with CO2 around 385 ppm...climbing at an annual rate of 2 ppm...to 3 ppm, levels could approach 900 ppm by the end of the next century."

Comments

Re:Fearmongering is not the way to do this.

[fyngyrz]

Without going into a great deal of detail, let me provide a couple of pointers you can use to begin hunting stuff up on the net.

First, with regard to storage of nuclear waste. Passivated glass block storage solves all the storage problems. The waste is distributed in the block, the block will last longer than the waste's dangerous lifespan, the production of the block is easy and the stored materials will neither erode, progress chemically, or distribute themselves through the environment any other way. The technology is here now, and all it takes is using it to resolve the problem. In other words, money. The only down side is that once in said glass block, the "waste" is really waste, that is, we can't use it for anything else. This may not be optimum.

Second, with regard to accidents, modern reactor designs don't have those same kinds of problems. Neither do smaller, low-ish power reactors. For instance, look up pebble bed reactors. Good design is important.

Re:Fearmongering is not the way to do this.

[Max von H.]

What about the American dust bowl in the early 1930's? Was that caused by huge carbon emissions or was it a small natural climate cycle that just happens?

That was man made, according to this wikipedia article:

"The Dust Bowl was the result of a series of dust storms in the central United States and Canada from 1934 to 1939, caused by decades of inappropriate farming techniques, with buffalo herds that fertilized the soil displaced by wheat farming, followed by a severe drought. The fertile soil of the Great Plains was exposed through removal of grass during plowing. During the drought, the soil dried out, became dust, and blew away eastwards, mostly in large black clouds. At times, the clouds blackened the sky all the way to Chicago, and much of the soil was completely lost into the Atlantic Ocean."

Get your facts straight, puhleeeaaase! Western civilization and productivist agriculture hold a nasty record in destroying the environment on a wide scale. You can't destroy entire ecosystems without suffering consequenses, short-term and long-term.