Slashdot Mirror
Global Anoxia Ruled Out As Main Culprit In the P-T Extinction
Garin writes "The late Permian saw the greatest mass extinction event of all-time. The causes for this extinction are hotly debated, but one key piece of the puzzle has recently been revealed: while the deep-water environments were anoxic, shallower waters showed clear signs of being oxygenated. This rules out global anoxia, and strongly suggests that other factors, such as the Siberian Traps vulcanism, must have played a dominant role. From the article: 'Rather than the direct cause of global extinction, anoxia may be more a contributing factor along with numerous other impacts associated with Siberian Traps eruption and other perturbations to the Earth system.' See the full research article (behind a paywall) here."
To this day, we're all still very wary of Siberian Traps.
I read anoxia as anorexia.
Gorilla glass, what's that?
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
or not...
Since we do not know much about extinction events prior to multicellular life, we should not be calling P-T extinction as largest ever. It's just just the largest (so far) in the last ~500 million years.
We are also living though another great extinction which is caused by ourselves, directly. And this extinction is quickly accelerating.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/05/0515_030515_fishdecline.html
Who knows. Maybe by the time we are done with this planet, P-T will look like a cakewalk in comparison.
Anoxia, something to teach to our kids so that they at least know what they are going to die from. Once all trapped CO2 will be released, the tropical lungs of the planet devastated, and the ocean saturated in co2 (and acid)... Making us struggling for water and gasping for air, in the name of progress, will be the great achievement of mankind : in just about 3 centuries doing as much damages as one huge volcanic activity.
I knew Dr. Spock was the one that killed the dinosaurs, "Captain, these giant bird-lizards are highly illogical and must be disposed of."
Monstar L
Search Amazon for the book "Hubris Ark" by William Bradford Cushman
Given that we show every sign of running the CO2-enhancement experiment to completion, it is reassuring to know that this low-probability but extremely-high-cost outcome is that much more unlikely. (To my warmist comrades -- given a choice between losing a toe, a leg, or a life, we know which choice we would most want to avoid, but that does not mean the remaining choices are good. Anoxia is among the worst of the outcomes, far worse than the middle of the US becoming uninhabitable or the seas rising 100 feet. And to you denier bozos -- greenhouse science is cut-and-dried stuff, with only the detailed outcomes unclear, but it's also clear that between natural human greed and your foolish efforts, we will almost certainly burn all the fossil fuels we can until something truly alarming occurs. Perhaps we have overestimated the effects of the current CO2 levels -- but that's okay, we're just going to keep on burning it till we see an effect, and a big and unambiguous one.)
I don't care actually, I just bought a new car with a big engine.
Why?
Because I don't have children and I don't love your kids or your grand-kids.
And I am laughing and you ignorant deniers, because you're the ones whose kids are going to suffer.
Thought it said "Global Anorexia Ruled Out ..." and thought, "The late Permian has fashion models?"
Just eat a sammich, Girl!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
We worry about the impact of the loss of single species, think of the impact on the ecosystem of species losses on this scale.
I am still trying to gasp that.
RK
"Many vertebrate species would have to evolve about 10,000 times faster than they have in the past to adapt to the rapid climate change expected in the next 100 years, a study led by a University of Arizona ecologist has found."
The rate of change we are facing could put more than half of all species in danger of extinction. And because this rate of change is so unnaturally fast (unprecedented), this assessment is more than likely "conservative" (i.e. erring on the side of irresponsibility so as not to appear "alarmist"). You may want to read Prof. Peter Ward's book on greenhouse extinction events, "Under A Green Sky".
Incidentally, the Great Dying wiped out about 90% of all life (by biomass). What TFA indicates is that the alternative theory that the event was driven by a change in the ocean is probably untrue; The extinction event was probably driven by the release of greenhouse gasses which had the side effect of changing most of the ocean chemistry.