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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.
So, this acidic extinction event in the distant past was one of the steps that occurred in the lead up to the evolution of homo sapiens, who nevertheless went on to invent the plow, the novel, the steam engine, the city, radio, television, the airplane, the internet, and Slashdot, right? Why should I be scared of anything?
Strangely enough, global warming is related to a decrease in the number of neurons of politicians denying the Earth is a system with interlocking parts. It is also subtlety related to the Amen Corner of American Politics where some Supreme Deity will do something only when conditions get bad enough to kill off most life rather than before when it might actually do some good.
Ocean acidification is a huge deal to environmentalists - I'm not sure where you're getting your information. And as it's driven by the same thing that causes Global Warming, dealing with carbon in the atmosphere is a twofer.
We know what causes Global Warming?
That much be why all our predictions have been SOOOO accurate.
From Jan 19, 2009:
President 'has four years to save Earth'
Barack Obama has only four years to save the world. That is the stark assessment of Nasa scientist and leading climate expert Jim Hansen who last week warned only urgent action by the new president could halt the devastating climate change that now threatens Earth. Crucially, that action will have to be taken within Obama's first administration, he added.
Soaring carbon emissions are already causing ice-cap melting and threaten to trigger global flooding, widespread species loss and major disruptions of weather patterns in the near future. "We cannot afford to put off change any longer," said Hansen. "We have to get on a new path within this new administration. We have only four years left for Obama to set an example to the rest of the world. America must take the lead."
Hansen said current carbon levels in the atmosphere were already too high to prevent runaway greenhouse warming. Yet the levels are still rising despite all the efforts of politicians and scientists. ...
Can we lose the Chicken Little alarmism please?
Do you have an actual objection to the science
I have an objection to the lion's share of the proposed solutions, which invariably require reductions in the standard of living. The green crowd doesn't seem to be willing to acknowledge the fact that energy is civilization, their desired "green" replacements don't scale well enough to maintain civilization at the current level (and aren't all that "green" anyway), and as an added level of stupid many of them are ardency opposed to nuclear power. The last bit really annoys the piss out of me, you can't profess that mankind's carbon emissions are destroying life as we know it while simultaneously condemning the only scalable carbon neutral energy source available with today's technology.
Earth's climate has never been and will never be static.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.