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The Last Time Oceans Got This Acidic This Fast, 96% of Marine Life Went Extinct
merbs writes: The biggest extinction event in planetary history was driven by the rapid acidification of our oceans, a new study concludes (abstract). So much carbon was released into the atmosphere, and the oceans absorbed so much of it so quickly, that marine life simply died off, from the bottom of the food chain up. That doesn't bode well for the present, given the similarly disturbing rate that our seas are acidifying right now. A team led by University of Edinburgh researchers collected rocks in the United Arab Emirates that were on the seafloor hundreds of millions of years ago, and used the boron isotopes found within to model the changing levels of acidification in our prehistoric oceans. They now believe that a series of gigantic volcanic eruptions in the Siberian Trap spewed a great fountain of carbon into the atmosphere over a period of tens of thousands of years. This was the first phase of the extinction event, in which terrestrial life began to die out.
... they're not becoming acidic, they're becoming less alkaline and are slowly heading towards neutral. Not that that distinction matters to the plankton.
Personally I think this issue and other other pressures on ocean life from man such as pollution and plastic debris is far more pressing in the snort term than global warming but hardly anyone - even the enviromentalists - makes a big deal about it.
Because we've always had volcanoes and the oceans didn't acidify as a result?
And hey, we shouldn't worry about meteor impacts because all life on Earth now is descending from life that survived the one that killed the dinosaurs! Bring on the meteors! Also, did you know that many people in Japan are descending from people that survived having nuclear bombs dropped on them, thus rendering them immune to radiation?
Because this time it will be us making room for the next upcoming species.
Every time this comes up, either a fast-breeder or a thorium crackpot comes out of their holes.
What if we just stop wasting resources?
Take transport: why does it take > 30 kW to move around one ~80kg bag of flesh&bones? Because it's too cheap. Why don't we insulate homes more? Because the alternative is too cheap. Ad nauseam.
So, where are all the environmentalists demanding we build integral fast reactors as fast as we can?
There are actually quite a number of environmentalists who have suggested that we should use nuclear power in order to get off of fossil fuels. I suspect a lot of the problem is political. There are still a lot of people with an irrational fear of nuclear power on one side of the issue, and on the other side there are people who support fossil fuels just to say "fuck you" to "the hippies". And that's before you even get into the lobbying and propaganda from fossil fuel producers.
It's an uphill battle to do anything, even if it completely makes sense and has broad support, because there are always ignorant people and entrenched interests.
I believe that ocean acidification is one of the planet's greatest problems. But I am ignorant about the timing.
The article is about the Permian Extinction. It took place 250 million years ago. When geologists or biologists say that something happened "fast" they might be talking about 10 years, or ten thousand years, or ten million years. That matters. If the scale is long then I don't care because we have *no idea* what life will be like then.
Don't mess with The Phone Company. Piss them off and you'll be using two tin cans and a piece of string.
Actually, the acidification primarily effects animals with shells or bones. So soon you can go for a swim and there will be nothing but jellyfish. No sharks though.
I agree with AC. I can't figure out which one of the the thousands of manmade global catastrophes is going to be the one to take us out any moment now.
That's okay, though, I'm sure that 5,000 years ago they weren't able to figure out which manmade global catastrophe was going to take them out any minute now either.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
There is a large difference between surviving and being fine
Sure, we could lose much of our arable land, drinking water and the oceans as a primary source of food and a small percentage of the population can still survive
But that is a long way from 'fine' since we would lose many of the societal advances of the past thousand years
Wherever You Go, There You Are
F still equals m * a at the scale it was originally claimed to have been tested. Sure, for dealing with sub-atomic crap we needed somebody to come along and figure out that E equals mc^2. True enough. But F=ma is only "wrong" when used outside the original context. For human-scale objects, F=MA is still correct, and a more useful equation than E=mc^2.
Things don't become wrong later. When you think that happens, it means you misunderstood the claims. Not that there were problems in the claims.