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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.
The Earth has gone through many phases and transitions have been deadly. What do you mean by "historical"? Which historical phase are we talking about? Around 20mil years ago, CO2s plummeted and was around 600ppm. For the past nearly 1mil years CO2 has remained under mostly 250ppm with brief peaks around 300ppm. In less than 100 years, we have gone from 300ppm to 400ppm, which typically took thousands of years. It is one of the quickest increases in CO2 concentrations for the past hundred million years or so, which the other ones were caused by catastrophic events.
I'm less concerned about the number and more concerned about the rate. normally these kinds changes take several magnitudes longer.
The Last Time Oceans Got This Acidic This Fast
Wait - when this 96% extinction happened, where the oceans acidic as they are now, or were they more acidic? As far as I can tell the substance of the article only talks rate of change of acidity, not the actual pH.
So, okay, the ocean pH is going down at a high rate. But that doesn't mean we're looking at the same kind of circumstances as occured 252m years ago.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Well, that's one way of looking at it. If you add acid to something, are you making it more acidic? That's another way of looking at it. Meanwhile, you're successfully shelved the real issue by splitting hairs over a pointless distinction, which is precisely how deep contrarian arguments go.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Exactly; in the future, we'll still have horseshoe crabs, sharks, and cockroaches. No mammals (including humans), though.
I do think one of our last acts as a species should be to build a giant monument on the Moon (where it won't be eroded by the weather) to explain what happened to us, in case any aliens come by, so they can see how we did ourselves in with our stupidity.
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.
Ok, so we slap a huge tax on it and now it's expensive. Result: Most people are now too poor to afford much of anything. Congratulations on massively increasing wealth disparity and lowering standards of living.
Yes, we should ensure that all energy production is forced to internalize its costs so that true economic decisions can be made, no that's not the same as cranking the prices so high no one does any of those things any more.
The rates before human industrialization don't matter because we didn't have trillions of dollars worth of capital to loose and billions of people to be displaced as a result of increased sea levels. Who gives a fuck if CO2 was 10,000 ppm before humans were any significant presence on the planet? It has exactly zero relevance to the current situation.
The argument is:
P1: CO2 levels have been higher than the current levels at other points in Earth's history.
P2: We and all the other flora and fauna are here today despite that.
C: Therefor, there's nothing to worry about.
Let's employ reductio ad absurdum to see how stupid that line of reasoning is:
P1: The risk of fatalities in automobile accidents was much higher in the past.
P2: Myself and many other people are here today despite that.
C: Therefor, there is no need to worry about the danger of a dramatically increasing auto fatality rate.