Early Plants May Have Caused Massive Glaciation

Easy solution by no-body · 2012-02-01 06:24 · Score: 3, Insightful

Everyone put a new flowerpot up and water regularly to fight global warming

Re:Easy solution by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-01 06:31 · Score: 5, Funny

1) We must conserve water
2) Global warming is simply a return to the previous state
3) If you're growing ganja, OK then.
Re:Easy solution by Trepidity · 2012-02-01 06:35 · Score: 4, Informative

A large-scale version of that is sometimes proposed...

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Re:Easy solution by Marxist+Hacker+42 · 2012-02-01 09:35 · Score: 5, Insightful

Better yet, plant Food Forests!
http://www.permaculture.org/nm/index.php/site/Permaculture-Food-Forest/
Then the carbon not only gets locked up in the trees, but in the bodies of animals and people!

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not to mention... by rwa2 · 2012-02-01 06:24 · Score: 5, Insightful

flooding the atmosphere with a caustic, corrosive gas that could, in high enough concentrations, make just about anything burst into flame.

Re:not to mention... by Samantha+Wright · 2012-02-01 07:15 · Score: 5, Funny

Well, at the time there was a major debate about whether or not that would happen. A lot of proto-Earth's top scientist algae were certain that releasing so much oxygen would irreversibly alter the environment and seriously affect non-oxygen-respiring organisms, but there were many plants who maintained that the young planet had already seen worse, and yet life existed in the current day despite that. What the poor, innocent archaeans who bought into all of this didn't realise was that the smooth-talking photosynthesisers were more interested in the production and stockpile of carbohydrates than the well-being of the other clades, and had already convinced themselves that whether or not the planet could support infinite population and ecological growth was not their concern.
Conflict of interest: The author declares that she has no conflicts of interest and is clearly not trolling, nor taking a joke too far to farm karma.

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Re:not to mention... by ColdWetDog · 2012-02-01 07:31 · Score: 4, Funny

Nothing but undeveloped, unevolved, barely conscious pond scum, totally convinced of their own superiority as they scurry about their short, pointless lives.

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Re:not to mention... by ElectricTurtle · 2012-02-01 07:51 · Score: 3, Insightful

I know you are being facetious, but the funny thing here is that if those events had not occurred, there would (very likely) be no large animal or plant life on earth. Radical change of the environment, atmospheric composition, and even the mass extinction of the majority of a whole taxonomic domain were necessary so that all the life we worry so much about today could exist at all. The problem with people today is that they are taught that we are living in The One True Sacred and Immutable Biosphere, and that if that biosphere changes, well, that's just the end of everything. The fossil record shows that time and time again biosphere changes are not only recovered from, but that the net effect is dramatically positive in terms of long term diversity.

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Re:not to mention... by dotancohen · 2012-02-01 09:02 · Score: 4, Insightful

The fossil record shows that time and time again biosphere changes are not only recovered from, but that the net effect is dramatically positive in terms of long term diversity.
That is cute, but I cared about long term diversity of Earth's biosphere up until my kids were born. Now, I am interested in preserving the current state of biology, diverse or not.

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Re:not to mention... by Chris+Burke · 2012-02-01 09:10 · Score: 5, Insightful

The problem with people today is that they are taught that we are living in The One True Sacred and Immutable Biosphere, and that if that biosphere changes, well, that's just the end of everything.
You think the problem is that people believe climate change will result in the end of all life on earth, when in reality is that the biosphere will just keep on chugging. So if we solved this "problem", there'd be no reason to worry about climate change. That's what you're saying?
You don't think the problem is, maybe, what might happen to us? That the one thing that is sacred about our current biosphere is that it's amenable to human habitation and survival?
What I think is funny is that you missed the whole point of that story-- we are the anaerobic organisms. Go ahead and tell them that in the long term the biosphere will recover, and even thrive. You think they will feel better? Why does this make you feel better? Are you one of those hippies who thinks Gaia would be better off if humanity was extinct? Or do you just think our civilizations are so robust that they can weather any storm, even widespread ecosystem collapse, and you'll be fine?

The fossil record shows that time and time again biosphere changes are not only recovered from, but that the net effect is dramatically positive in terms of long term diversity.
Interesting assertion. I think the fossil record simply shows increasing diversity over time, with each mass extinction representing a huge backward slide in those terms, from which the biosphere eventually recovers. I'd like to see some evidence that, say, there was less diversity in the late Cretaceous, and more importantly that there'd be less diversity today if the KT event had not occurred.
More to the point, though, why would this matter either way from the perspective of Tyrannosaurus Rex?

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Re:not to mention... by Chris+Burke · 2012-02-01 10:32 · Score: 4, Insightful

If another animal loses its primary food source, it goes extinct. If we lose a primary food source, we eat something else. We synthesize, design, control, analyze, adapt, repurpose, refine ... everything. We are not dinosaurs with nut-sized brains that can't even control their body temperature.
So I guess everyone who has died or will die from famine is just a dinosaur with a nut-sized brain?
That's a pretty bold statement of human adaptability coming from someone who would probably be unable to feed themselves the week after the grocery trucks stop showing up (or in the unlikely event you can, then from someone who hasn't thought about all their hungry neighbors who can't).
You really don't seem to appreciate all the things that go into making modern civilization work, the long legs that support the technology you appreciate and assume would allow us to survive anything, but in reality could have the legs knocked out from underneath it rather easily.

All we know is what did actually happen, and that is that all mass extinctions have had net positive effects in the long term
Thanks for pointing to evidence that this isn't actually true -- even if I accepted the notion that increased diversity is in and of itself "positive", and even if I accepted that the extinctions have a causal effect .
The graphs on the page you courteously linked to clearly shows several mass-extinctions where diversity recovered to an approximately equal value, but did not regain the same slope and instead leveled off. In at least one case it didn't even recover to the same level. The K-T event shows diversity recovering both the value and the steep slope of the Cretaceous. Which is not bad, but not evidence that the result post-KT was an "improvement".

Even mass extinctions were not causal or catalytic, it is undeniable that they were not preclusive of those positive outcomes
I'd say that the only thing that is undeniable is that over the extremely long-by-geological-standards term, diversity increased regardless of mass extinctions. Looking at periods of a mere 50-100 million years, I think it becomes much harder to argue that most mass extinctions didn't preclude the positive outcome.
Of course that still assumes that more diversity -- when diversity is not already extremely low -- is "positive". That sounds like the same kind of arbitrary application of human value systems to morally-neutral nature that you accuse the "One Sacred Biosphere" people of. Just a different flavor of Hippie.
What's really strange is that this is the second time in under a week that I've heard this same new, and highly bizarre, argument for why Climate Change isn't a big deal.

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And this is how bad memes get started by NeutronCowboy · 2012-02-01 06:33 · Score: 5, Insightful

The headline says "plants MAY have started glaciation". The summary says "plants created a major ice age". The actual article says that some scientists did some experiments that could potentially indicate that the earliest plants may have been at the root of a positive feedback loop that ended in a major glaciation period. The amount of hedging in the actual article goes so far beyond the statement in the summary that I have to think the summary was deliberately written to mislead.

I look forward to reading years from now how in the teens, scientists were all worried that more plants would turn the earth into an ice ball, and that everyone was told to cut down any green things they find.

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Re:And this is how bad memes get started by next_ghost · 2012-02-01 06:56 · Score: 4, Insightful

Typical science news cycle in progress...
Re:And this is how bad memes get started by icebike · 2012-02-01 07:18 · Score: 3, Interesting

The phrase "at the height of" means "the beginning of the end."
I'd be more interested in knowing what the deepest cores show, from the beginning of the last ice age. If they were similarly high, then your question is insightful.
If however the co2 peeked sometime within the ice age, and that was followed by the decline of the ice age we have an interesting coincidence, but still no causation.
The question then becomes where did this co2 come from. Did it come from the much reduced plant intake of co2 due to having significant areas of the planet in a deep freeze? Were the oceans chilled enough such that marine organisms ceased sequestering co2 into reefs?
Or was there some as yet undocumented sources of co2 that were ramping up production?
Or was the output of the sun reduced during this period and any suggestion about co2 merely mistaking the effect for the cause?

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Re:And this is how bad memes get started by ceoyoyo · 2012-02-01 08:14 · Score: 4, Insightful

It's the Internet version of "Telephone." Except with the Internet you can actually follow the links back and see how the message changed with each hop. Fascinating, isn't it?
Re:And this is how bad memes get started by riverat1 · 2012-02-01 12:03 · Score: 4, Informative

Why do the ice cores reveal co2 concentrations at the height of the last ice age at 20 times today's readings?
Where did that come from? Got a reference? From what I know CO2 concentrations were around 190 ppm at the height of the glaciations and today they're around 390 ppm, over twice as high.

More results by mr1911 · 2012-02-01 06:35 · Score: 4, Funny

Scientists have classified these plants as Republicans in order to keep the blame for climate change consistent throughout history.

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Re:More results by i+kan+reed · 2012-02-01 07:00 · Score: 4, Insightful

Yeah, no. Grow up. Scientists don't go around blaming republicans for doing much of anything other than lying about science, and that's just the politically active scientists.

Peter Wards "Medea hypothesis" by peter303 · 2012-02-01 06:45 · Score: 5, Interesting

The Medea hypothesis is the mirror of the Gaia hypotheis. Gaia says life is in ecological balance and self-balancing.

Part 1 of the Medea hypothesis says that life isnt necessarily in ecological balance and sometimes overruns resources nearly killing itself off. Several past mass extinctions, particularly the Permian may have been caused by this.

Part 2 says the ultimate end of life on Earth may be running out of CO2. CO2 has been falling from tens of percent on the early Earth to about one percent in the Phanerozoic to .025% now. (Human activity has temporarily raised it to .04%.) When CO2 falls below .01% then plants cannot survive and neither animals. Just bacteria. This is predicted in few hundred million years. Life consumes CO2 and buries in hydrocarbons and limestone. Unless some imbalance like humans come along, the trend is to pretty much lock up carbon for good.

Geo-engineering CO2 increase is straight forward. Burn limestone to release CO2. There is 100x more carbon in limestone than hydrocarbons.

Re:Peter Wards "Medea hypothesis" by DeathFromSomewhere · 2012-02-01 06:57 · Score: 3, Interesting

Volcanoes release massive quantities of CO2 into the atmosphere that was previously locked up in limestone. In fact the CO2 released by volcanoes is the main reason snowball earth came to an end.

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Re:Peter Wards "Medea hypothesis" by ElectricTurtle · 2012-02-01 07:18 · Score: 5, Informative

Indeed, and it makes me want to slap the shit out of everybody who starts talking about 'carbon footprint'. Carbon is life itself.

Everybody worried about global temperature should really take a look at temperature over geologic timescales. Two centuries ago it was colder than any other time in the last two millennia. That last two millennia have been colder than most of the last ten or so since the last glacial period. Glacial periods notwithstanding, the last few million years have been the coldest in the last hundred million years. Modern, industrialized mankind was essentially born during the coldest period outside of an actual glacial cycle. Modern meteorology/climatoloy started at the bottom of a very cold well, and now that we're starting to get to temperatures that used to be normal, we're freaking out just because we haven't had to deal with it before in a conscious way. E.g. last time it was this warm we were still performing human sacrifices to appease imaginary agents of dubious intent. This whole society needs a clue-by-four to snap them out of the delusion that warming is the end of the world and any more a threat to life than all the other environmental changes that have already killed 99% of all species that have ever existed.

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Re:Peter Wards "Medea hypothesis" by GameboyRMH · 2012-02-01 07:59 · Score: 3, Insightful

Last time it was this warm we didn't have a massive modern civilization to support.
If you're not worried about warming at all - say you live somewhere that will still have a secure food supply and won't be at any risk from harsher weather, and you have a FYGM attitude - maybe you should be worried about ocean acidification. Allowing runaway fossil carbon release because you don't personally mind the heat isn't even a viable option.

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Re:Peter Wards "Medea hypothesis" by ElectricTurtle · 2012-02-01 08:15 · Score: 4, Interesting

I suppose you think the ocean has been the same pH forever too. Life adapts, and ocean life itself has shown an ability to spring back from as much as 90% species extinction. I'm not worried, especially as humans have the technology to build closed systems for environmental control and resource production/management. (Humanity too has sprung back from an immensely small population, as low as thousands at one point. We could lose 99.99999+% of our population and still have precedent for survival.)

The truly ironic thing is that people will now jump up my butt about how cold I am and what about all those people who might die. The same critics who, in a different context would be whining about overpopulation. Let me break it to you, the only way it is physically possible to have less people is for them to die. There is no magical fairy dust that makes population lower without people pushing up daisies. The cognitive dissonance is staggering.

(The double irony is that overpopulation is itself a myth, and anybody who knew anything about the real demographic data that shows that fertility rate has been on a downward rollercoaster for something like fifty years in almost every nation on earth. Population growth is leveling off, but that doesn't sell newspapers.)

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Re:Peter Wards "Medea hypothesis" by Chris+Burke · 2012-02-01 09:42 · Score: 3, Insightful

I suppose you think the ocean has been the same pH forever too. Life adapts, and ocean life itself has shown an ability to spring back from as much as 90% species extinction.
Yeah, and maybe ocean life will adapt in such a way to create a new equivalent to the Oxygen Catastrophe only this time with a gas that is toxic to us. I mean it's not like there would be any other repercussions to a a drastically more acidic ocean, and the resulting collapse of existing ocean ecosystems, am I right?

I'm not worried, especially as humans have the technology to build closed systems for environmental control and resource production/management.
No we don't. There is no such system. Everything that is pretending to be such a system is in reality dependent on an extremely long and broad pyramid of precursors that at many points could easily be disrupted by such mundane things as war or weather. A dramatic change in the nature of the biosphere would practically be a shoe-in for the collapse of broad swaths of civilization. The idea that it can all just be weathered with closed systems is a pipe dream. You might as well say you're not worried because we could just move to Mars.

(Humanity too has sprung back from an immensely small population, as low as thousands at one point. We could lose 99.99999+% of our population and still have precedent for survival.)
Yes it's possible, but if you don't think we got lucky to survive such a population bottleneck, then you're just wrong. Counting on us doing it again is just foolish. And what about yourself? Surely you don't believe you're sure to be one of the lucky 0.0000001% do you?
You aren't worried about the vast majority, even the entirety, of humanity dying.
You aren't worried about the collapse of our current civilizations.
You aren't even worried about your own life.
Uh... that's nice, but maybe we should talk to someone who has a functioning survival instinct.

Population growth is leveling off, but that doesn't sell newspapers
The real irony is that people concerned with population growth are most concerned with those parts of the world where population growth has not leveled off. The parts of the world that are responsible for the rest of the world still having positive population growth due to immigration.

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Re:Peter Wards "Medea hypothesis" by GameboyRMH · 2012-02-01 09:56 · Score: 3, Interesting

So you'd prefer many human deaths, oceanic mass extinction and living in sealed dome environments to being more eco-friendly, and call anyone who thinks being more eco-friendly is a better solution a stupid alarmist.
Maybe you should lock yourself in a room of pure CO2. After all, carbon is life itself, and I guarantee you no stupid alarmists will follow you in.

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Re:Wait a minute here... by GameboyRMH · 2012-02-01 07:27 · Score: 4, Insightful

They're two sides of the same problem, on one hand we're moving more CO2 from the ground to the atmosphere and on the other we're reducing nature's ability to put it back (at the very least, when rainforests are cleared and the trees are burned), but you can't put the blame on one factor and not the other - and if you try you'll find that it's much harder to squeeze the blame onto deforestation.

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Re:Wait a minute here... by scot4875 · 2012-02-01 07:49 · Score: 5, Insightful

Now it looks like you're finally admitting what I've know all along. A little gas is one thing. Chopping down 20% of the rain forest...BIG EFFECT

Yeah, good for you. Have a nice little pat-yourself-on-the-back-for-being-so-smart? Now recognize that both in combination have a greater effect than either one alone, and you'll be right there with the rest of us.

--Jeremy

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three carbon cycles on different time scales by peter303 · 2012-02-01 09:53 · Score: 4, Informative

(1) Biosphere: (medium) abundance of plants and peat deposits, waxing and waning with ice ages. Changes over 10,000s years.
(2) Plate tectonics: (long) carbon capture in limestone, release from subduction volcanoes, possible permanent burial in subduction. Plates change speed, length of subduction zones over 100,000s to millions of years. Limestone contains 100 times the carbon in the biosphere and draining out the atmosphere over 100s of millions of years.
(3) Human: (short) deforestation, extraction and combustion of hydrocarbons. Just centuries. Deforestation will reach steady state soon like in North America and Europe. We are probably midway through 300-400 year "hydrocarbon age" of consuming all the extractable petroleum, natural gas and coal.

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Early Plants May Have Caused Massive Glaciation

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