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Scientists Study Permian Mass Extinction Event As Lesson For 21st Century
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "About 252 million years ago, cracks in the Earth's crust in Siberia caused vast amounts of lava to spill out and blanket the region with about 6,000,000 cubic kilometers of molten material—enough to cover the continental U.S. at a one mile depth. It triggered a huge change in climate, causing a mass extinction event that killed roughly 90 percent of life on earth. Now Helen Thompson writes in the Smithsonian that a team at MIT has focused its efforts on this major extinction event, which marks the end of the Permian period and the beginning of the Triassic period. Their results suggest that the die-out happened a lot faster than previously thought — perhaps over a span of only 60,000 years. The shorter time scale means that organisms would have had less time to react and adapt to changes in climate, atmospheric CO2 and ocean acidity. Without the ability to adapt, they died. Other mass extinction events have also been narrowed down to short timeframes. The asteroid impact that killed the dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous period only took about 32,000 years. A similar study of another mass extinction triggered by volcanic eruptions at the end of the Triassic period suggests it lasted less than 5,000 years. Even though all of these extinction events were caused by different things, the ecosystem collapse happened very quickly. 'Whatever the causes of the extinctions may be, and it looks like there are very different causes for some of them, the biosphere may collapse in very similar ways once it gets beyond a tipping point,' says Doug Erwin. Some scientists see the end of the Permian as a lesson for the 21st century (PDF) and say that understanding the conditions leading up to, within, and after a mass extinction event may help us to avoid human-induced ecosystem collapses in the future. As Erwin puts it, 'you don't want to start a mass extinction, because once a mass extinction begins, the prognosis is pretty grim.'"
Is the lesson "let 90% of all life forms die out so the re-filling of ecological niches leads to greater biodiversity, and the possible re-emergence of the dinosaurs"? Because if so, dinosaurs are indeed pretty badass.
...like a mass-extinction party cause a mass-extinction party lasts between 5,000 and 60,000 years, and is pretty grim.
s/[stupid comments]/[intelligent discourse]/gi
1) Super Volcano
2) Asteroid
3) Intelligent life evolves.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
That's why it's called a "mass extinction".
Aren't we already in a human caused mass extinction? How many life forms have been wiped off the planet in the last 2000 years? Faster than the natural rate I'm sure, and it's ongoing.
These extinctions always seem to take place at the transition from one period to another.
So I'd recommend being extra double careful round those times.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
If you aren't concerned about this subject, you should be. It is possible that a 4C increase would lead to a 10C increase, wiping out nearly everyone and everything. A good BBC summary of the Permian mass extinction can be found here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
For a really unsettling update:
http://guymcpherson.com/2013/0...
The Death Penalty: Killing people to show others that killing people is wrong.
With such a massive volcanic eruption, doesn't mass extinction result mainly from dust in the atmosphere, which is blocking sunlight and stopping photosynthesis? And they still find something that can be compared to 21st century?
Self-inflicted extinction event from anthropogenic activities could be seen as natural negative feedback mechanism. The equilibrium is restored.
I understand the future for the humanity and multitude of ecosystems may be grim but the nature will thrive nevertheless.
There are certain boundaries and one is that there's only one Earth. We can affect our future, and it's impossible to escape the consequences.
Crump, Michigan misses out again.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I don't think a lot of scientists say the end of the world is nigh. You seem to be confusing scientists with activists. I ignore the latter, but pay a great deal of attention to the former.
What these researchers are trying to say is that there are consequences to large amounts of CO2 entering the atmosphere. Now I can't say that human activity will produce as radical an increase as massive volcanism on the scale described in this article, but still, it ought to make you pause to think that maybe, just maybe, puling out millions of years of sequestered carbon into the atmosphere in the space of three centuries is probably not a great idea, and while the consequences likely won't be that 90% of life dies out, it will have some serious consequences for us and many of those critters we happen to inhabit this planet with.
But hey, I guess it's probably more comforting to make nasty accusations against scientists. That way, you don't have to do a thing and you can feel all clever and righteous. Those stupid scientists, how dare they remind us that we don't live in a vacuum. They must be crooked grant seekers.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I'll bite. The video describes the problem of a 4C increase in temperature that then causes methane trapped as ice in the permafrost and oceans to melt and go into the atmosphere. It's a positive feedback loop that results in at least a 10C increase (methane being a much more efficient greenhouse gas than CO2). The first step is warming by CO2, which then results in warming by methane. Several scientists are predicting a 20C increase by 2050 if the methane is allowed to escape into the atmosphere, which is essentially a planetary extinction event. The only thing that seems likely to prevent this scenario is total economic collapse, immediately. More details available in the second link. Hope that helps.
The Death Penalty: Killing people to show others that killing people is wrong.
Funny how fast science can turn into outright doomsday panic when grant money is involved.
Grant money or Al Gore.
So what was the difference between thevolcanic eruptions at the end of the Permian, and the ones at the end of the Triassic?
I just got the book The Sixth Extinction, and am starting to read it.
Environmentalists certainly want you to believe that. It's funny how a group can hate humanity as much as they do and yet not commit mass suicide.
They are the ultimate hypocrites. They want the REST OF US to starve without GMO crops and transportation of food. But they themselves are far too heroic to die, of course.
Strawman
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
Perhaps that's because you don't have the faintest idea what the scientists are talking about. Have you even read the IPCC reports or any of the primary literature?
How are you any different than a Creationist at this point? Simply declaring "Those scientists are just spouting a religion" any different than what the kooks at Answers in Genesis say about biology?
Grow the fuck up. The universe doesn't give one single fuck about your ideology or pseudo-skepticism. Be a fucking adult and accept the reality that barfing massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere is not some neutral practice.
Fucking hell, people like you piss me off. So fucking lazy that you just latch on to the kooky green activists and make believe in your pathetic fact free minds that Al Gore somehow represents the climatology community.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The most destructive event was the evolution of blue-green algae, which killed off almost everything living on the planet at that time because of their poisonous waste product (oxygen).
Seems like we have only about 5000 to 50000 years to work this out. Better get busy then :)
Just put the hose extension of a Dyson on every rooftop and wash the filter daily. Atmosphere will be dust free in a matter of years. You can power the Dysons via solar in a matter of months.
5,000 years? 32,000 years? 60,000 years?
What about next month? Next year?
In the long run, we'll all be dead. Call me when they figure out how to avoid that, and then we'll talk about thousands of years.
Al Gore has little or nothing to do with actual research, and if grant money is your accusation, well then pretty much all publicly-funded science can be thrown out the door; everything from archaeology to high energy physics research. Are you that determined to reject climatology that most of the science that goes on in the world is disposable?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Volcanoes emit CO2, though currently not at a rate even close to what we are emitting. However, with a long trend rising intensity of volcanic eruption, volcanoes can emit enough CO2 to substantially warm the planet.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
Have you even read the IPCC reports
Are you talking about the detailed IPCC reports, or the IPCC summaries written by non-scientist politicians that skip over the uncertainties and trumpet disaster as if it were a certain thing?
Screw it. Might as well give up and end it all now, knowing that there may be a mass extinction sometime between 5,000 and 60,000 years from now. What's the point?
Grant money
Because the NSF has so much more money to spend than ExxonMobil.
Al Gore
DRINK!
Ooh, moderator points! Five more idjits go to Minus One Hell!
Delendae sunt RIAA, MPAA et Windoze
...at the end of the Cretaceous period only took about 32,000 years.
Wow, that was one slow-moving asteroid!
Comet impacts lasted 32,000 years and writing /. stories took 50 seconds.
Nope, I've just becoming more and more suspicious that Global Warming isn't science at all. It looks more to me these days like religion. It's got its apocalypse, its satans, its prophets and saviors.
Please realize that "global warming" is not a single entity. There are many climate scientists. Some are given to hysterics, others are very conservative in their estimates. They don't speak with a single voice any more than (some group of people you like) are all idiots because (an idiot in that group) is an idiot and says (idiotic thing they say).
And it seems to be based on an unfalsifiable hypothesis, which I'm pretty sure isn't a part of any empirical "science" that I've ever been taught.
It is falsifiable. We're doing the experiment now. It's dumb to be DOING the experiment when we only have one climate is the point. There are many sub-hypotheses that are validated as well. CO2 absorbs heat, coal plants and cars put out a lot of CO2, the amount of CO2 has increased and is continuing to increase, and changes to the system have negative consequences in the short term for anything dependent on them, like people. These are all falsifiable hypotheses that have been extensively tested.
The situation is a bit like evolution. The theists who oppose the large theory ignore the tested hypotheses or at best come up with hand waving to explain them away. Then they say there's no evidence for the grand theory, and declare it to be religion, not science, because it doesn't work exactly like textbook scientific theory as it is explained in grade school. They resort to ad-homenim attacks on the scientists. They focus most of their efforts on going around the science though, which is telling.
Actually, it took 32768 years. Then its short int turned negative and killed the dinosaurs.
Flourescent (adj): smelling like ground wheat.
60,000 years? 5,000 years?
In a couple of hundred we'll be dead or gods, either way directly by our own hand. I am unconcerned about sea rises over hundreds of years, much less downstream extinctions over thousands to tens of thousands of years.
And we survived ice ages over those periods of time, with far greater disruptions. Heck, just the difference in technology levels between now and a hundred fifty years ago vastly outweighs these differences, as far as quality and length of life are concerned. Extinction? We're on the brink of species resurrection right now.
I'll take whatever and whatever + 200 years of technological advancement over, say, just 100 years' (over the course of 200 growth-slowed years) worth and a dandy green planet any day. And so should you...if quality and length of life are your concern, which is the professed driver behind most people's politics.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
A) One is alarmist and not scientists, pay attention to the scientists
B) It's been 25 years of mostly no series attempt to correct things. So the timeline has been getting shorter.
C) Scientists have almost always resented the most conservative numbers. This has been a mistak. Not that they should be alarmist, but they should also point out worst case.
D) If you are old enough to remember the 70's you would be aware the alarmists have been going on since then, and probalby even before
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I've read both. As well as the literature.
The uncertainties are not whether or not its happening, it's about the margin of error in the time line. As it is turning out, they(scientist who are an expert in this field) have been mostly too conservative in that.
Do you even understand the basic science of this?
Since you can't seem to look at science, that's look at the real world political practicalities. well, 1 of them.
China has the most to lose with global warming. Yet they agree its also man made. Do you think China is part of some environmentalist conspiracy?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Is someone trying to compare an extinction event that release enough lava to cover the entire earth 12 metres deep to man-made CO2 emissions?
Are you that determined to reject climatology that most of the science that goes on in the world is disposable?
It does make for an easy to swallow, mindless approach to a complicated and scary world. For many people, this is reason enough to go that route.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
".. And it seems to be based on an unfalsifiable hypothesis, .." .. none. You have no idea what the science is, do you?
What. The. Fuck?
You really have no clue, do you? I mean
That would be fine, but then you base your argument on your willful ignorance. Sickening.
Let me break it down.
1) Visible light hits the Earth. Testable and falsifiable. Check
2) CO2 is transparent to visible light. Testable and falsifiable. Check
3) When visible light strikes something, IR is generated. Testable and falsifiable. Check
4) CO2 absorbs IR energy. Testable and falsifiable. Check
5) More CO2 is put into then atmosphere that can be absorbed. Testable and falsifiable. Check
SO genius, explain to me where the energy is going if it isn't warming the atmosphere? Why are the scientific prediction actually happening?
If shit hits the fan, People like you should be the first against the wall.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
So I'll admit my knowledge of the Cretaceous asteroid impact is the simplified version of public education combined with the History Channel. 32,000 years though? I thought it would have been a matter of decades, because the particulate matter thrown in the atmosphere reduced the incoming sunlight, which essentially reduced plant life substantially and having a cascading effect up the food chain. I would imagine that would take a couple of years to decades, but not millenia; what am I missing?
One question the TFA doesn't address is exactly what is meant by impact times. Certainly it's not the case that the event occurred one day and 32000 years later, everything is hunky dory. The volcanism events happened over hundreds to thousands of years, the asteroid impact, a couple of seconds. In the vulcanism scenario, I imagine that things changed pretty gradually, there may have been a 'tipping point' or several. In the impact scenario, the changes happen relatively rapidly with likely a long tail into the new normal.
So I would take the durations with a grain of salt and think more along the lines of geologic time frames. 32K years is just a sneeze. The Anthropocene so far is only 6000 years duration at maximum, likely the most change has occurred in the last 500 years. Not even a blip in the geologic time frame. It may be that several million years from now, the only evidence of Homo industrialis will be a thin layer of concentrated metal and assorted complex compounds sitting in some deep strata.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Most of their arguments for a potential global catastrophy hinge one a hypothetical "tipping point" beyond which the climate will no longer be in stable equilibrium and will spiral out of control. I haven't seen a plausible mechanism for this, but based on what we know about the climate, such tipping points probably do exist. On the other hand, we know this kind of thing has happened in the past without human intervention. The causes cited are always much larger than anything humanity has been capable of (huge meteor impacts, super volcanoes, things like that). Also, it seems that only run away global cooling has been the real problem in that past, and we understand how that can happen: ice sheets reflect a lot of light and result in the earth taking on less and less heat from the sun. If there's too much ice, the sheets will get bigger and bigger every year.
Once food supply for an animal or human is disrupted, die offs are painfully quick.
Egypt once had a massive inland lake and streams that eventually dumped into the Nile thousands of years before Christ. Once the climate changed back toward desert, the entire population of humans disappeared in probably decades to a century in that region.
6,000,000 cubic kilometers of molten material - enough to cover the continental U.S. at a one mile depth.
I don't think the submitter understands math. One mile is about 1.6 km, so 6,000,000 km^3 of lava would cover an area of 3,750,000 km^2. Yet when I check Wikipedia (and Princeton, and the other top 5 Google results), they all say the Contiguous United States has an area of just over 8,000,000 km^2. That's an awfully big mistake. I hope the actual Stanford paper is of better quality than the Slashdot summary.
A recursive sig
Can impart wisdom and truth
Call proc signature()
Any activity with regard to the climate, even no activity, is an experiment. That alone nullifies your "dumb" claim.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Since you can't seem to look at science, that's look at the real world political practicalities. well, 1 of them.
This sentence is a bit hard to parse.
China has the most to lose with global warming.
What does China have to lose? What's the scenario? Rising sea levels? Do you believe in some kind of global human extinction scenario?
Yet they agree its also man made. Do you think China is part of some environmentalist conspiracy?
I really don't pay too much attention to official pronouncements from communist propaganda outlets.
Dude. If you are being paid to post this sort of rubbish please contact me. I want in.
I love the irony of your forming a conspiracy theory about my AGW skepticism.
So why didn't this methane go into the atmosphere when Earth warmed up 10k years ago and generate the 20 C heating effect back then? I think I'd take these concerns more seriously, if they weren't just huge fallacies - here, argument from ignorance while ignoring similar cases in the past that didn't generate the disaster scenario.
"...6,000,000 cubic kilometers of molten material—enough to cover the continental U.S. at a one mile depth." XXX _______ NO, not enough, nor is it even enough to cover continental US one kilometer deep. US is big.
China has the most to lose with global warming.
China evidently doesn't believe you else they would be doing something about it rather than increasing CO2 emissions year after year.
Do you think China is part of some environmentalist conspiracy?
Well, they're certainly benefiting economically from not having the climate change stuff applied to themselves. And it sure looks to me like they used the Kyoto Treaty as a weapon of economic warfare.
What that story is claiming is that the IPCC underestimated CO2 emissions. That's it. It's interesting that they did so and yet somehow overestimated the heating effect of that CO2 emissions over the past two decades despite the higher than expected input of CO2.
Wha? You are a fan of Smurfette with silicon implants?
This space unintentionally left blank.
My biggest problem?
Let's assume they are right, and we're all going to die if we don't do something.
What the fuck would you like us to do, precisely? And is it going to be better or worse than not doing anything at all?*
Few people seem to have an answer to that question. Which means the "answer" is really "Do nothing, pump a bit more money into research".
There. That's our emergency response. Can we all shut up now?
(* I can't actually think of much worse things in the immediate future than, say, oil running low and becoming prohibitively expensive. That's going to have a MASSIVE impact on the way we all live our lives. People will *die* because they can't run motors, pumps, irrigate land, transport goods, etc. Maybe not in a first-world country, but elsewhere. So what, precisely, is the impact of - for instance - reducing our oil use, or putting prohibitive restrictions on emissions that greatly add to the cost of energy production, or any other reasonable measure? Nobody seems to know, nobody seems to even bother to work it out, and nobody yet knows if it will be better or worse than just polluting the atmosphere until we come up with something better).
100% wrong?
Seriously?
Please point out one major error in the WG1 part of AR3 (2001).
Clearly you don't understand the scientists' devious plan.
Step 1: Create the fraudulent religion of global warming.
Step 2: ?
Step 3: PROFIT
I stole this Sig
Although your facts are correct, the reason CO2 causes warming, and the reason it doesn't saturate too, are more complicated.
These complications are the reason why it wasn't until the late 1940s and the advent of high altitude aircraft that these areas of confusion weren't definitively settled.
A better model (one that behaves more like the real world) is to consider the Earth as a black body where the surface is a mile or two up in the atmosphere rather than on the ground.
CO2 (plus water vapour) are what control how high into the atmosphere that surface is.
Because of the lapse rate, the ground will be warmer than the surface of the imaginary black body.
As CO2 increases, the height of that black body surface increases therefore it's temperature decreases. However, if the temperature decreases, the amount of radiation escaping to space decreases while the amount arriving from the sun stays the same, so the ground starts to warm up.
Eventually, the ground warms enough that the black body surface is hot enough to now be in equilibrium with the energy arriving from the sun.
And because that surface raises if CO2 is added regardless of how much CO2 there already is there is no "saturation" point where more CO2 doesn't cause warming.
God said, "div D = rho, div B = 0, curl E = -@B/@t, curl H = J + @D/@t," and there was light.
"So why didn't this methane go into the atmosphere when Earth warmed up 10k years ago and generate the 20 C heating effect back then?"
It did.
Is there anything you can show us that would convince us to take you seriously? anything? any clues as to the mysterious mechanisms whereby anthropogenic emissions don't warm the atmosphere, but "naturally occurring" CO2 does?
No?
Have you any sense at all of how ridiculous that is?
Nope, I've just becoming more and more suspicious that Global Warming isn't science at all.
Should your paranoid suspicions be of any interest to us? Why?
It looks more to me these days like religion. It's got its apocalypse, its satans, its prophets and saviors.
Are your bizarre delusions of any importance outside your own psychoses?
Man that's slow!
Most of their arguments for a potential global catastrophy hinge one a hypothetical "tipping point" beyond which the climate will no longer be in stable equilibrium and will spiral out of control. I haven't seen a plausible mechanism for this, but based on what we know about the climate, such tipping points probably do exist. On the other hand, we know this kind of thing has happened in the past without human intervention. The causes cited are always much larger than anything humanity has been capable of (huge meteor impacts, super volcanoes, things like that).
If a Blue-Green algae can cause the Oxygen Catastrophe, then why couldn't humans cause a similar large change in the environment.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
Or, I don't know... capture it and burn it as fuel? The problem with you climate alarmists is you lack critical thinking skills.
I find it funny that you are claiming others lack critical thinking skills but you have shown a severe lack of thinking yourself. You do know that natural gas is wasted and allowed to escape when drilling for oil because it just isn't worth the effort to capture it. This is in a situation where they already have a well and the gas is coming out of it. Garbage dumps produce methane and it isn't captured and used for fuel because that would also cost too much money. They just burn it. But you are telling us that they will just build a giant funnel over all of siberia to capture all the methane that starts bubbling out of the ground. Like I said, lack of thinking!
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
Well your supposition ("what seems to" you) is wrong. So shutup.
You think you know more, an armchair quarterback with zero scientific knowledge, than the actual climate scientists who actually DO know how the system works, just because you know words like "falsifiable" and "empirical" ??
Here's a clue, just saying those words doesnt make you knowledgeable. It IS falsifiable. It IS testable. These scientists DO KNOW the properties of atmospheric gases and how they affect the rate of energy gain/loss in the atmosphere. They've known for more than 100 years, nearly 200 even!, the first theory of global warming from incerased emissions being created in 1826 by a scientist who pondered what effect all this industrialization and its pumping of pollutants into the air would cause.
You're just another uneducated arm chair denialist who thinks he knows mopre than scientists who actually know what they're talking about. What's next on your agenda? Arguing with Stephen Hawking over black holes?
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
It's a "Mass Extinction", I don't think the prognosis is ever going to be too cheerful.
It's like calling the Ocean "Wet". Technically correct, but a bit of an understatement.
You dismiss the remarks made by "non-scientists" yet want us to believe you when you say you have a theory as to the mysterious mechanisms whereby anthropogenic emissions don't warm the atmosphere, but "naturally occurring" CO2 does.
I never said that, you just made that up. You are guilty of the straw man fallacy, and of (in general) being ridiculous.
Have you any sense at all of how ridiculous that is?
Well, being ridiculous seems to be a specialty of yours.
Since you are blasting me for things I didn't say, why don't I actually say a few things for you to blast:
* Maybe climate sensitivity to carbon isn't subject to the overwhelming, catastrophic feedback effects that have been predicted by doomsayers (and in fact, a mild decade or two suggests it isn't, and that doomsayer models may be flawed; read Richard Lindzen on this).
* Maybe (shock and horror) a warming earth isn't such a bad thing. As long as sea level rise is slow, we will have time to get out of the way. We might have droughts some places, but we also might have a lot more farmable land in places like Canada and Siberia.
* I have never, ever seen a coherent explanation of why an ice age would be preferable to a warm earth. If carbon counteracts an ice age, how is that not a Good Thing?
That's amateur stuff though. The anti-environmentalism side has real teeth to their attacks.
The BBC video explains the Permian Mass Extinction.
Basically, what seems to have happened is a continent-wide rift around Siberia, providing a continent-wide massive curtain of lava. The dust from the eruptions first blocks the sun for the entire planet for some years, then the carbondioxide provides a greenhouse effect afterwards, raising temperatures 4-5 degrees, killing many species, first on land, then in the water.
After this, the raised water temperature melts the till-now frozen methane-hydrate laying just under the seabed, releasing massive amounts of methane.
Methane, being a nice, powerful greenhouse gas then makes sure the planet's temperature is raised a further 4-5 degrees, killing off almost all remaining species.
Total species death from the initial temperature increase of just 4-5 degrees is then 95%.
.
If you're in a hurry, just watch from the 38-minute mark. Most of the previous time is spent exploring other proposed theories, such as asteroid impacts.
.
If you're even more curious though, I recommend reading a book called 6 degrees, which besides mentioning the methane release probability also details other things likely to happen along the way to a 6-degree temperature increase.
If I remember things correctly (no promises), a 2-degree increase melts all arctic ice; this leades to less reflected light, and to the water absorbing the light instead, increasing temperatures 1½-2 degrees. At 4 degrees increase, the Amazon rainforest are likely to get flooded to death - the soil layer is very thin there. The released carbon from the trees of the entire forest is then likely to lead to further temperature increase.
All in all, the story is one where temperature increase does not happen along a smooth line, but is more likely to happen in steps, where each little, tiny risk taken environmentally can lead to an unstoppable plunge into ever more disaster.
.
Read the book though. It has lots of nifty citations and references in the back.
Whatever. It sounds like you have found an easy way to make a few dollars.
Just because you are paranoid does not mean that no-one is out to get you.
Fascinating. Do you think it is a product of the New World Order? Are the Illuminati or Bigfoot involved somehow?
There's no evidence that I'm being paid to post on Slashdot... but come to think of it, the lack of evidence is EXACTLY WHAT YOU WOULD EXPECT!!!!!! *mind blown*
I am sure that the work cited here refines constraints on the timing and duration of the extinction events, and despite any controversy over the root cause, it is the ultimate result which is probably the same. The core idea is not new; these ideas have been discussed in the reviewed literature for a long time and even made it into the trade press as long ago as a decade. The developments have been about the details and the relative importence of intertwined effects. That is the lesson for us, not that the differences between each of the five or so major extinction events in the record makes then unique, for they differ in what percentage of the groups in the record they effected, and which of the recurring effects was most important.
What they have in common is that a disruption of the flow of carbon in the earth's biosphere leads to a collapse of the food chain and that megafauna, animals larger than a cat, generally, are very much more affected than animals who are generalists, can burrow, can scavange, through a food chain collapse. Sudden massive changes in the atmosphere, especially in common greenhouse gasses can have a larger effect that if the combination of effects leads to photosynthesis collapse on land and sea and to global land and sea water warming. When carbonate compensation and methane hydrate stability are upset by ocean warming, the sudden injestion of methane and carbon dioxide can exaggerate greenhhouse effects. The sudden injection of sulfer and nitrates into the atmosphere from any of the posited causes of the ME events has collectively the same result, the disruption of the carbon cycle by acid or aerobic conditions in the sea. These destroy the food chain and the decimation of populations begins an doesn't take more than a few hundred years.
The lesson for us is that the common materials that we think are innocuous can have catastrophic effects when they get out of hand. Even the fear of the effects of all out nuclear war works through the same mechanism, the way a "nuclear Winter" is supposed to work is the way these extinction events work, Effects like putting lots of dust into the atmosphere, adding nitrates causing acid rain, and starting massive fires, are the same, Our economic activity is pushing the atmosphere into some of the milder effects that contributed to MEs including the possibility that the oceans might warm up enough so that methane hydrate is released en mass contributing greatly to global warming. Methane is about 40 times more efficient as a green house gas than CO2. So to listen to the oil and gas companies who have solved some of our near-term energy problems by frackking and developing new domestic reserves of natural gas and oil, sounds rosy, until you realize that burning fossil fuels in that way is pretty close to what happened during each one of these mass extinctions, and do you trust the average politician or business man to know when the runaway effects kick in and it is too late? I'm sorry, but I don't.
#5 the fire next time?
--
We had a halon fire extinguisher. It was nice to have a fire extinguisher that kills people.
You seem to conclude that capturing and burning methane to prevent it from entering the atmosphere is unreasonable.
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw
All you know how to do is parrot what other alarmists tell you. You think inside a closed little box. You can't reason a way to do things for yourself, so you let others do the reasoning for you. You declare the obvious answer to be impossible, rather than work out a way to make it happen. In short, you are a spectator. You are a nobody who shouts jeers from a faceless mob. You guys would circle jerk with your mod points while the whole world burns around you rather than fix a problem with persistence in the face of adversity. I gladly distance myself from a group like yours. Your lack of critical thinking skills, imagination, and initiative predicts what contribution you are capable of making.
Mass Extinction! Conservatively speaking, leading to vast Energy surplus!
Sell your energy shares at the top of the market.
Call 911-555-1212 for best terms an conditions. NOW!!
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You didn't think mass extinction involved a black hole, did you?
Because fanatics like you are dangerous, as are fanatics in any religion. When a person becomes convinced that the fate of the world and all of humanity hangs on the victory of their cause (whether their cause is Christianity, Islam, Global Warming, etc.), they can become gravely irrational and a danger to their fellow man.
If your delusions are uninteresting, then it stands to reason that any delusions you spout to explain your delusions will be similiarly uninteresting. Is it turtles all the way down?
Just look at all of the threads above with environmentalists spewing incredible personal *HATRED* for GW skeptics. Not disagreement, not criticism---but *fanatical hatred*.
Once again, are your delusions supposed to be of interest to us?
Why?
After over 90% of all life was wiped out, for MILLIONS of years, there was only one dominant form of life. This ugly pig thing... Lystrosaurus. They were, seriously, everywhere. Very low biodiversity .. This is what happens if a single animal in the food chain is left unchecked. Let Lystrosaurus be a warning!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
Which is a bit trite to say, really. Otherwise there wouldn't have been a mass extinction.
The rates of climate change that we're experiencing at the moment are substantially stressing the ability of many organisms to move to adapt to the changes. Where organisms meet immovable barriers (e.g. in trying to get away from spreading continent-centre deserts, they come up against the northern or southern coastline ... and either have to learn to fly, or crawl back into the oceans. Or then then become extinct.
Way to go! Humanity. Your first planet trashed and you've only had mechanised power for barely 3 centuries!
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
You dismiss the remarks made by "non-scientists" yet want us to believe you when you say you have a theory as to the mysterious mechanisms whereby anthropogenic emissions don't warm the atmosphere, but "naturally occurring" CO2 does.
I never said that, you just made that up. You are guilty of the straw man fallacy, and of (in general) being ridiculous.
You don't have a theory? So you want us to believe that anthropogenic emissions don't warm the atmosphere, but "naturally occurring" CO2 does, but you yourself cannot think of a reason why on earth this would be true?
Consider me skeptical.
* Maybe climate sensitivity to carbon isn't subject to the overwhelming, catastrophic feedback effects that have been predicted by doomsayers
Is the climate subject to positive feedbacks? If so, what is the scale of these feedbacks, precisely? Justify your results with working and reference your observations.
Maybe (shock and horror) a warming earth isn't such a bad thing.
Is a warming earth on the scale described by the IPCC a good thing or bad thing? Show us the model used, reference the results and model code, precise estimates of emigration, economic impacts and the cost of adaption (infrastructure opportunity cost, etc.) . Refere the economics paper in which your theories are published.
I have never, ever seen a coherent explanation of why an ice age would be preferable to a warm earth. If carbon counteracts an ice age, how is that not a Good Thing?
Why would I care about strawmen?
You don't have a theory? So you want us to believe that anthropogenic emissions don't warm the atmosphere, but "naturally occurring" CO2 does, but you yourself cannot think of a reason why on earth this would be true?
Straw man again, I never said that anthropogenic emissions don't warm the atmosphere.
Consider me skeptical.
A healthy frame of mind to be in - I encourage it.
Is the climate subject to positive feedbacks? If so, what is the scale of these feedbacks, precisely? Justify your results with working and reference your observations.
Measurements suggest that there is a huge and growing amount of carbon in our atmosphere. And yet we haven't seen the warming suggested by the sensitivity in previous models. So a natural conclusion is that those models were wrong. Other ideas being put out are that possibly volcanoes are masking the effects, or the warmth is settling deep into the ocean. Regardless, it shouldn't be controversial to note that the atmospheric predictions have been wrong.
Maybe (shock and horror) a warming earth isn't such a bad thing.
Is a warming earth on the scale described by the IPCC a good thing or bad thing? Show us the model used, reference the results and model code, precise estimates of emigration, economic impacts and the cost of adaption (infrastructure opportunity cost, etc.) . Refere the economics paper in which your theories are published.
I don't need to model it -- I'm just looking at the actual earth. The gloom and doom scenarios from 15 and 20 years ago haven't happened. Yay?
I have never, ever seen a coherent explanation of why an ice age would be preferable to a warm earth. If carbon counteracts an ice age, how is that not a Good Thing?
Why would I care about strawmen?
That was not a straw man, because I didn't try to put any words in your mouth. Those were words in MY mouth which you are free to agree or disagree with. I hope that distinction is clear.
You don't have a theory? So you want us to believe that anthropogenic emissions don't warm the atmosphere, but "naturally occurring" CO2 does, but you yourself cannot think of a reason why on earth this would be true?
Straw man again, I never said that anthropogenic emissions don't warm the atmosphere.
I see. It is a bit of a struggle to sort the things you say/imply from the things you actually think, but I hope we are getting close now. Would the following being an accurate reflection of what you think: You think that atmospheric temperatures are sensitive to CO2 levels (per Arrhenius and others). You think this sensitivity is less than what is commonly thought (3 degrees for a doubling of CO2). You can't state the actual (revised) figure for sensitivity that you would like us to accept. You can't say why we should accept this (unknown) value, you can't demonstrate a flaw in the actual methodology used to calculate sensitivity but instead rely on hand waving and a flawed analysis of the current situation.
In conclusion, you think we should believe that climate sensitivity is unknown but definitely less than what science says, for reasons unknown, based on unexplainable research. mmkay.
Measurements suggest that there is a huge and growing amount of carbon in our atmosphere. And yet we haven't seen the warming suggested by the sensitivity in previous models.
So you are of the view that carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere instantly reaches it's full potential as a greenhouse gas and the re is no lead time (as indicated by previous observations and basic thermodynamics)? Any other laws of thermodynamics that need to be dismissed while we are on the job?
So a natural conclusion is that those models were wrong.
Which models?
Other ideas being put out are that possibly volcanoes are masking the effects, or the warmth is settling deep into the ocean.
Are volcanos masking the effects? show working
Has the warmth settled deep into the ocean? show working
Regardless, it shouldn't be controversial to note that the atmospheric predictions have been wrong.
Allege what you like. Describe whatever marvellous fantasy comes to mind. If you want your theory to be treated with anything other than derision you can describe a theoretical foundation for your hypothesis and then prove it using verifiable observations. Otherwise: derision.
I don't need to model it -- I'm just looking at the actual earth.
So: a new foundational understand of climatology (and thermodynamics) doesn't require science and observation and peer reviewed material. It requires "earth looking". Is "earth looking" like yogic flying by any chance?
The gloom and doom scenarios from 15 and 20 years ago haven't happened.
What scenarios?
You know, I was going to write an extensive reply, but in my opinion, you are being downright silly. Some of your questions were good questions that merit further discussion, but regrettably I am going to sign off here. Cheers! Enjoyed the exchange.