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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.
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.
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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.
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.
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's not a "wild card," it is considered so unlikely by scientists that after consideration, the IPCC didn't even put it in their report as a reasonable possibility. Nature has a good summary of the research:
Catastrophic, widespread dissociation of methane gas hydrates will not be triggered by continued climate warming at contemporary rates (0.2C per decade; IPCC 2007) over timescales of a few hundred years. Most of Earth's gas hydrates occur at low saturations and in sediments at such great depths below the seafloor or onshore permafrost that they will barely be affected by warming over even 10^3 yr.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
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
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.
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...
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...
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.
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.
"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.
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.