Slashdot Mirror
Mathematical Formula Predicts Global Mass Extinction Event in 2100 (vice.com)
Kate Lunau, writing for Motherboard: A new paper in Science Advances finds that a mass extinction period mirroring ones from our planet's ancient past could be triggered when humanity adds a certain amount of carbon to the oceans, which are home to the majority of all plants and animals on our planet. The paper pegs that amount at 310 gigatons. According to lead author Daniel Rothman of MIT, based on projections from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, we're on course to hit that number by 2100. After that, we enter "unknown territory." [...] Previous mass extinctions have happened over the course of thousands or millions of years, but the period of change we're in right now has lasted centuries at best, making it hard to compare them. Although plenty of experts say Earth is already experiencing a sixth mass extinction, that remains "a scientific question," Rothman, who is professor of geophysics in the MIT Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, told me. Once our planet hits the threshold he identified in this paper, he explained, it will kickstart changes that will "amplify" everything that came before. These same changes, to reiterate, have been associated with all previous mass extinctions on Earth.
there was a whole lot of shareholder value created before the extinction period hit.
We must save our knowledge with a library on a remote planet.
The possibility of a catastrophic feedback is indeed the wild card in global warming calculations: there is a lot of carbon dioxide and methane trapped in frozen soil and in undersea clathrates, and it is indeed possible that there is a threshold above which these will be released, dramatically increasing the temperature. It has happened in the past.
When people talk about the uncertainty in global warming predictions, this is one uncertainty that is often left out: the possiblility that the models are accurate about short-term warming but significantly underestimate long-term warming.
But this is also extremely hard to model.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
In the past the usual suspects who claimed we were all doomed DOOMED I SAY were stupid enough to make predictions with 5 or 10 year time horizons.
Now don't get me wrong, there's plenty of people who will try to shove any doomsday prediction that doesn't come true down the memory hole via the usual dodges of "They never *really* said that!" or "OMG they were totally right because [insert vague allusion to a statistic here]!" even though it turns out everybody is strangely still not dead.
My personal favorites are the climate models that are completely wrong that are used as the basis for doomsday scenarios. When the scenarios don't come true, anybody with the temerity to point out that the Human Race hasn't gone extinct is attacked for being anti-science because some *completely different climate model* didn't predict doomsday. Therefore: 1. The models were *always* right (because they predicted every possible outcome and one of the outcomes happened). And 2. If you disagree with our *new* Doomsday prediction then you must be anti-science because guess what... the models are *always* right (see above where the "correct" model that didn't predict Doomsday turned out to be correct).
However, even with the usual propaganda machine in full swing it's hard to literally predict a mass extinction in 2015 and then accuse everyone who points our your inaccuracy in 2017 of being an anti-science big oil shill. So instead they've just pushed the Doomsday date far enough out into the future that they won't have to worry about it. Well played, well played.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
Look, China, India, the UK, the EU, Canada, Japan, and the Northeastern and Western US are all AHEAD of where we needed to be on renewables to avoid this. We met and exceeded the 2025 renewables goals in 2016.
...
Starting in 2018 more than 80 percent of all cars and trucks sold worldwide will be electric only or plug-in electric hybrids with a biodiesel option.
This sounds completely made up. Any links to support it?
Water is everywhere, our bodies are mostly water by weight, and yet you somehow want me to believe that if I'm submerged in water for just a few minutes I'll die? That makes no sense to anyone with a shred of scientific understanding of our bodies, or indeed basic biology.
I read the internet for the articles.
We're in the middle of a mass extinction event already, how is this one 83 years in the future going to be different?
I read the internet for the articles.
Here's the reason:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The key there is the number of mass-extinction events in our fossil records are directly connected with exactly these same events.
When methane vents open up under the ocean from various gethermal processes, they make this kind of gel (methane clathrate) that builds up at the ocean floor and sediment. There's a LOT of this stuff.
Anyway, when this gel reaches a certain temperature, the methane that was 'frozen' in it gets released relatively quickly. Methane already is like carbon pollution on steroids, and the scale of this release is literally world-changing, compared to say cow gas releases.
Again - this has happened several times already, taking out the large swaths of species of the planet each time. To the point that the ground leftover looks completely different across the entire planet.
It's kind of a big deal.
Ryan Fenton
I cannot believe how freaked out everyone is about carbon, when it is a basic and abundant element of the planet...
Nobody is worried about carbon, after all we are carbon-based lifeforms. However, people are worried about carbon dioxide.
the amount in the atmosphere is minuscule to begin with, never mind whatever we are adding in being a tiny fraction of what it is already.
Doubling the amount of naturally occurring carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is not minuscule. Also, have you seen how thick the Earth's atmosphere is? It's a tiny bubble around the planet surface.
It is so sad to see rational people get lost in a death cult that makes absolutely no sense to anyone with a shred of scientific understanding of the climate, or indeed basic material science...
Feel free to point out exactly where the calculations have gone wrong. You'll be the world's savior and petrol companies would pay you billions for that proof.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
When has anybody advocated anything like that? The only thing I've seen advocated was alternative solutions to the same energy issues.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
I'll be dead anyway so why should I change my behavior?
This is the pinnacle of selfishness.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
So, no links to support it.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
You want to stop ths from happening? You have to change hearts and minds of pretty much everyone on the planet, first. Good luck with that, by the way. We can't get people to stop doing much simpler things (like killing each other over stupid things like this-or-that-so-called-god, or the color of someones skin, and so on) so I don't expect you'll get much traction over something that's going to happen a full lifetime in the future. What'll happen instead, is people will have their hearts and minds change when things get so bad that they can't ignore it anymore -- and even then some of the greedier piece of shit people will still be trying to rob everyone, and of course the religious zealot types will just be talking about it being 'gods will', and trying to recruit people into their stupid faith. Seriously, some days I begin to think that the reason we haven't seen sure signs of alien civilizations in our galaxy is because they did the same stupid shit that we're doing right now, and fucked up their own planet so bad that they all went extinct.
I cannot believe how freaked out everyone is about carbon, when it is a basic and abundant element of the planet...
People are "freaked out" about carbon-- specifically, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere-- because it is known to absorb outgoing infrared radiation, so the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere affects the temperature balance of the planet. This is an effect that has been known for a very long time (here's a good review from the American Institute of Physics: https://history.aip.org/climate/co2.htm), but only recently has the amount of carbon dioxide put in the atmosphere by humans been enough to make the effect visible.
You're correct that it is "basic and abundant", although I'm not sure why that's relevant
the amount in the atmosphere is minuscule to begin with,
Correct. It was the great discovery of Tyndall in 1859 that extremely small amounts of trace gasses can affect the infrared absorption. https://earthobservatory.nasa....
never mind whatever we are adding in being a tiny fraction of what it is already.
Humans have increased the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere by about 45% since preindustrial times, most of that in the last century (graph: https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/...). Depends on whether you call that a "tiny fraction."
But, indeed, the natural greenhouse effect of about 30C (ref) is about much larger than the human contribution. That's one reason we understand the greenhouse effect; it's large enough to be easily measured.
The entire ecosystem of the Earth is built to process carbon, to consume carbon, to use carbon to sustain life.
Correct again. Over a period of few hundred thousand years, this will undoubtably be removed from the biosphere.
It would be lot faster than that, except we're cutting down trees a lot faster than we're growing trees.
It is so sad to see rational people get lost in a death cult that makes absolutely no sense to anyone with a shred of scientific understanding of the climate, or indeed basic material science...
I will assure you that I have a pretty good scientific understanding of climate, and also of basic materials science. This is how we understand the atmospheres of all the planets, not just Earth. The basic physics of the greenhouse effect is quite well understood science, and the absorption coefficients of trace gasses in the infrared are all well measured.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
hmm, if only there were these plants that could grow and used carbon dioxide as fuel......
...and if only we weren't cutting them down at a rate of about 13 million hectares a year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
I don't know what is worse, your comment full of dumb or the fact you got modded up for it.
The OP is making an Appeal to Stupidity. AGW is complicated, and he doesn't understand it, so therefore it can be flippantly dismissed as a non-problem.
The argument is surprisingly effective, and is also impervious to logic, facts, and evidence, since the validity of those has been dismissed a priori. It is especially effective among people that have a vested interest in accepting it.
How much, exactly, are hominids to blame for this and what penalties should we apply to individual ones?
Exactly enough to make all the difference. We shouldn't penalize people or corporations for releasing CO2, we should charge them the amount of money that it costs to clean up their mess. If you put 30 tons of CO2 into the air, then you have to pay to have it removed. We have the technology to actually do this, it's not hypothetical.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
"These same changes, to reiterate, have been associated with all previous mass extinctions on Earth"
Really?
Timeline of (major) Mass Extinction Events:
http://www.worldatlas.com/arti...
1 Holocene extinction - Present
2 Cretaceousâ"Paleogene extinction event 65 million years ago
3 Triassicâ"Jurassic extinction event 199 million to 214 million years ago
4 Permianâ"Triassic extinction event 251 million years ago
5 Late Devonian extinction 364 million years ago
6 Ordovicianâ"Silurian extinction events 439 million years ago
So the 'extinction events' are approx 65mya, 200mya, 250 mya, 360mya, and 440 mya?
Then we look in https://wattsupwiththat.com/20... for this: (CO2 vs time chart) https://wattsupwiththat.files.... ...which shows us (purple line) ...no clear correlation at all. CERTAINLY not that CO2 changes have been associated with "ALL PREVIOUS MASS EXTINCTIONS". That's bullshit.
65 mya- no CO2 spike (it had been falling steadily 60+ million years)
200 mya- yes CO2 spike
250 mya- no CO2 spike (it had been steady for about 60+ million years)
360 mya- no CO2 spike (a spike about 20my before this, though)
440 mya- CO2 rise over previous 20 my
In fact, that chart shows that current CO2 levels are much lower than the bulk of the last 500 million years.
Further, this chart would serve as pretty serious disputation of ANY correlation between CO2 and warming, frankly. CO2 spikes seem to result in no impact to temperature or plummeting temperatures.
-Styopa
As usual, someone misinterprets data for their own personal agenda. When the ratios of C02 and/or light are changed, plants food production changes. Increasing light or C02 makes plants create more sugar and less vitamins , proteins and important nutrients. Plants are becoming less and less nutritious as the C02 level raises.
http://grist.org/briefly/veggi...
hmm, if only there were these plants that could grow and used carbon dioxide as fuel......
Plants cannot remove the amount of CO2 being emitted daily. Also, when plants die, they release almost all of the sequestered CO2. If they didn't, don't you think they would have run out of CO2 long before humans arrived on the scene?
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Wrong. Price of renewables today is under 6 cents.
It's 2017 not 1967, sunshine. China manufactures entire solar farms that look like giant panda bears the size of Rhode Island. Nobody is waiting for you. Walmart literally built more solar PV in the US than was built before 2010. You can scream fake news until the cows come home, and then wonder why we are more competitive than you are. Because we build it in the West. We use it in the West. We have cheaper energy and we're eating your shorts. Capitalism 101.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Do your own searches, lame ones.
OK, I did. Shockingly, you're completely full of shit.
Climate change and rising CO2 are altering the behavior of land plants in ways that influence how much biomass they produce relative to how much water they need for growth. This study shows that it is possible to detect changes occurring in plants using long-term measurements of the isotopic composition of atmospheric CO2. These measurements imply that plants have globally increased their water use efficiency at the leaf level in proportion to the rise in atmospheric CO2 over the past few decades. While the full implications remain to be explored, the results help to quantify the extent to which the biosphere has become less constrained by water stress globally.
http://sci-hub.io/10.1073/pnas...
Except the models have NOT been "proven wrong by observation." I've been graphing prediction versus actual, and the model predictions are still very close to spot on.
You linked the Independent article from yesterday morning, but I notice you didn't link the one from yesterday afternoon: http://www.independent.co.uk/i...
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
These are classic examples of "straw man" arguments: assert that the people you disagree with said something absurd, and then attack that absurd statement.
Of course, the answer Is to go back to living in a cave like a hunter-gatherer while the Al Gore and the rest of the elites can reign over us on high like the Greek Gods from their Mount Olympus.
People are suggesting a switch to technologies that reduce carbon emissions. Nobody is claiming we need to go back to living in caves like a hunter-gatherer. That's a straw man.
Considering how badly the elites simply want to eradicate roughly 90% us from the Earth,
People are suggesting reducing the rate of population growth. Nobody is suggesting "eradicating 90% of us from the Earth." That's a straw man.
Yes, it's easy to demolish absurd straw-man arguments that nobody makes. It doesn't help the argument.
http://www.fallacyfiles.org/strawman.html
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
If you truly believe global warming due to carbon dioxide emissions is occurring, and you truly believe it's going to cause mass extinction in less than 100 years, then you want to prevent it in the most effective and expeditious method we have available - nuclear power.
If you think this is just an opportunity to advance renewable energy development, then you do not truly believe one of those things. Either you think global warming is not really happening, but you can use it to scare the world into adopting your preferred energy source. Or you believe it's happening but it's not really that serious, so we have plenty of time to develop renewable energy sources and phase them in.
Nuclear power doesn't have to be our final energy source. All we need is to use it to immediately arrest climate change, buying us more time to develop cleaner energy sources. Then we can phase out nuclear power in favor of renewables. Trying to jump straight to renewables is like being on a sinking ship, and insisting that nobody is allowed to use the existing life rafts. Instead you want us to research, design, and construct new life rafts to save ourselves, even if that might take more time than it takes for the ship to sink.
There's a possibility it might work. But why take that risk? Why gamble with all life on Earth? Implement the solution which is guaranteed to work (get on the existing life rafts / switch to nuclear power). Then once the immediate threat is over we can work on developing the ideal solution (develop new life rafts / develop renewables). If there's mass extinctions starting in 2100, it's going to be the fault of the environmental movement - who prevented us from immediately turning off fossil fuels and switching to nuclear, and insisted that we instead had to roll the dice and develop new unproven energy sources which still have problems with scalability and consistency.
Starting in 2018 more than 80 percent of all cars and trucks sold worldwide will be electric only or plug-in electric hybrids with a biodiesel option.
That's demonstrably false. None of the world's major automakers are selling anywhere near a majority of their vehicles as electric or hybrids.
I don't respond to AC's.
Why don't you ask a botanist what happens to plants in greenhouses when you add more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere?
(Here's a hint, they grow bigger!)
Or you could ask a botanist a relevant question, like what happens to marine life when the amount of dissolved carbon dioxide is increased.
The answer is, it depends on how tolerant the organism is to decreased pH levels. Dissolved CO2 creates a small amount of H2C03, AKA carbonic acid, which makes the water more acidic. Photosynthesizing sea life may well benefit from higher CO2 levels... if the increased acidity doesn't kill it. And of course there is also lots of non-photosynthesizing sea life that doesn't benefit from more CO2, and is also potentially harmed by acidity.
There are probably other effects on ocean life as well. A greenhouse isn't a useful analogy.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Actually why don't you ask an actual botanist? Because I can tell you haven't.
Anyone with basic scientific literacy understand that plants live in ecosystems where they compete with other plants; furthermore any gardener will tell you that many plants are much more nitrogen and/or phosphorous limited than carbon limited. This means that the diversity of plant species will drop under higher CO2 scenarios as CO2 sensitive species outcompete less CO2 sensitive ones. High CO2 will be especially beneficial to plants like poison ivy that grow quickly and need lots of carbon for their cellulose structure.
Plant extinctions are easily deducible from a basic knowledge of ecology and gardening. Experimental work on CO2 impact is not promising either, indicating that many food species will produce more cellulose and other carbohydrate and less protein per pound. Plants experimentally grown in high CO2 environments develop abnormalities in their insect defenses that open them up to predation.
Understand by an "mass extinction event", we don't mean the extinction of all life. We mean a catastrophic loss of biodiversity. In a few million years, the Earth will be right as rain.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
There is no information on Bloomberg (or anywhere that I can find) to support your statements. You are wrong. The largest automakers in the world are not selling many electric cars right now, and will not be in 2018.
https://cleantechnica.com/2017...
I don't respond to AC's.
You said:
So which is it? Warming from atmosphere affecting the water or carbon added to the oceans?
It's both. Increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increases the absorption of infrared light, which results in warmer temperatures that radiate mainly into the oceans. Increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere also increases the carbon content of rain, which precipitates mainly into the oceans increasing acidity. Both affect global patterns in different ways and both are unlikely to be friendly to our current mode of civilization.
"Starting in 2018 more than 80 percent of all cars and trucks sold worldwide will be electric only or plug-in electric hybrids with a biodiesel option."
80 percent, you say.
"Despite their rapid growth, plug-in electric cars represented only 0.15% of the 1.4 billion motor vehicles on the world's roads, up from 0.1% in 2015." - Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Hmm.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
Overpopulation has been dismissed in the same manner
Hogwash. Overpopulation was recognized as a problem by nearly everyone. The debate was about what to do about it, not whether the problem existed.
Today there is a broad consensus that the solution to overpopulation is peace, prosperity, and low infant mortality. Once you have those, birthrates drop to replacement levels (or below) in a generation.
The ocean is a buffered solution. It's average pH isn't going to wonder off into extremes as you suggest. ... but they can also have none if it has been used up). So, just because a water mass is cold it does not mean it has a lot of dissolved gases. This concept is a little tricky but just remember that the amount of dissolved gases in seawater depends more on the types of life forms (plants and animals) that are present and their relative proportions. ...
http://www.marinebio.net/marin...
"The amount of dissolved gases varies according to the types of life forms in the water. Most living species need oxygen to keep their cells alive (both plants and animals) and are constantly using it up. Replenishment of dissolved oxygen comes from the photosynthetic activity of plants (during daylight hours only) and from surface diffusion (to a lesser extent). If there are a large number of plants in a marine water mass then the oxygen levels can be quite high during the day. If there are few plants but a large number of animals in a marine water mass then the oxygen levels can be quite low. Oxygen is measured in parts per million (also called ppm) and levels can range from zero to over 20 ppm in temperate waters. It only reaches 20 when there are a lot of plants in the water, it is very sunny with lots of nutrients, and the wind is whipping up the surface into a froth. In any water mass there is a maximum amount of dissolved gas that can be found (after which the gas no longer dissolves but bubbles to the surface). This maximum amount increases with a decrease in temperature (thus cold water masses can hold more dissolved gases
pH is a measure of the acidity or alkalinity of a substance and is one of the stable measurements in seawater. Ocean water has an excellent buffering system with the interaction of carbon dioxide and water so that it is generally always at a pH of 7.5 to 8.5. Neutral water is a pH of 7 while acidic substances are less than 7 (down to 1, which is highly acidic) and alkaline substances are more than 7 (up to 14, which is highly alkaline). Anything either highly acid or alkaline would kill marine life but the oceans are very stable with regard to pH. If seawater was out of normal range (7.5-8.5) then something would be horribly wrong. "
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
in the text of many articles. latest BBC rediff from Nature Geoscience quotes it. latest CBC rediff on podcasts today and last night CBUT Vancouver shows it.
do your own work.
I'd like what you say to be true, and I spent the last five minutes searching but was unable to find a single article making that claim.
Perhaps my Google-fu sucks (which it normally doesn't). In any case, you're going to have to either provide some citations or be dismissed as full of shit, because what you're claiming is a truly massive shift in transportation production and it's just not believable that it's going to happen next year.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
And then there's morons like you who will find any excuse to not change a single aspect of their selfish and gluttonous lifestyles because their pride and ego won't let them. For some reason they need to prove to everyone how immutable they are because they lack any real character and have nothing else to base their identity on.
As long as you don't admit that the models are wrong, you're opposed to science.
Oh the irony.
Sigh. Fine, we'll do this again. Yes, of course the models are not perfect - they do not (and cannot) predict every last short-term wiggle. To a "black and white" viewpoint then that means they're *always* wrong - even when they reliably nail the long-term trend for over thirty years. This of course does not mean they are not still very useful to climatologists that know how to use them (and as long as you don't admit that, you're opposed to science, yes?)
So with that out of the way, when the models don't match closely to what we observe, we want to know why, so that we can improve them. From your own first link (again):
..both internal variability and external forcing contribute to the ‘slowdown’. The externally forced contribution is due to the combined cooling effects of a succession of moderate early twenty-first century eruptions, a long and anomalously low solar minimum during the last solar cycle, increased atmospheric burdens of anthropogenic sulfate aerosols, and a decrease in stratospheric water vapour
As you point out, internal variability (ENSO etc) alone is very unlikely to account for the discrepancies, but your own citation says that internal variability and the short-term external forcings listed above are responsible for the so-called "pause" (in tropospheric warming specifically), and the models do not adequately account for these (again, no surprise to actual climatologists). Meanwhile, other (and more important) climate models are tracking nicely; for example, "ocean warming estimates over a range of times and depths agree well with results from the latest generation of climate models" (which is accelerating rapidly).
if you think the cause was volcanoes and solar activity, this paper talks to you. You'll have to find some other explanation.
So when your first link from 2017 explicitly calls out volcanoes and solar activity (among other things) as significant factors, you cite a paper from 2013 (four years out of date) to claim that it can't be those - despite that same paper explicitly not ruling out external forcings like those as being a factor. You really need to read your own citations more closely.
Seriously, do you look at this and say, "Oh yeah, that's right"? If so, what is wrong with you?
I look at that and say, "I see it's 5 years out of date, big surprise". Then I say "what is that graph even representing? There's no labels". Then I look at more up-to-date data. (NB I'm assuming from your example that you're fine with linking to images on blogs, but at least try to use something current and well-sourced?)
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?