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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.'"
...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
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.
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.
I'm reasonably sure that increased dust levels would likely subside within a few years, maybe a few decades. Radical increases in CO2 and the ensuing acidification in the oceans would take considerably longer to return to something approaching normal levels. That's rather the point. There are multiple ways that CO2 can be barfed into the atmosphere in vast quantities in a relatively short period of time, but getting rid of that CO2 may take a lot longer, and the effects of that rise in the amount of solar radiation reaching the surface might take centuries or millennia.
Why is it so very hard for people to accept that increases in CO2 in the atmosphere, whatever their source, is not a good thing for a lot of species?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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.
Why is it so very hard for people to accept that increases in CO2 in the atmosphere, whatever their source, is not a good thing for a lot of species?
Higher CO2 concentrations and higher temperatures were the staple of the greatest periods of growth in biomass and biodiversity our planet has ever seen. I'm actively working to pump more CO2 into the atmosphere to accelerate this process. Existing species are boring. Lets get some new ones. Don't you liberals like evolution? Why would you actively work against it?
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.
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.
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?
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
Don't you liberals like evolution? Why would you actively work against it?
Depends on whether or not you're one of the survivors. Hard to know which side of the fence you will fall on when the shit hits the fan. Evolution changes the biosphere, evolution doesn't care whether your DNA and the rest of your corporal assets happen to get passed along.
There are lots of losers in evolution. You just might be one of them.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Why is it so very hard for people to accept that increases in CO2 in the atmosphere, whatever their source, is not a good thing for a lot of species?
oft times it is because they believe their livelihood depends on their not understanding.
So you reject out of hand the Permian report, you know, an actual geological example, because of some vague notion that higher-than-now CO2 was great for dragonflies?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
When the earth gets too hot, the extreme plant growth leads to the rise of giant animals like dinosaurs. We don't want to be eaten by dinosaurs.
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Actually, it took 32768 years. Then its short int turned negative and killed the dinosaurs.
Flourescent (adj): smelling like ground wheat.
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
".. 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.
Not like the dinosaurs are missing, really. I have a dinosaur feeder in my backyard, and it's usually pretty busy with the branch of dinosauria that survived. My favorites are the yellow-butted warblers....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
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()
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.
Those giant dragonflies and other large insects existed when the oxygen level of the atmosphere was considerably higher than it is now. It wouldn't be possible for them to get that big at the current level of oxygen because of the limitations of insect respiratory systems.
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.