The Last Time Oceans Got This Acidic This Fast, 96% of Marine Life Went Extinct 417
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.
Strictly speaking... (Score:5, Insightful)
... 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.
Re:Strictly speaking... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Strictly speaking... (Score:4, Insightful)
They might do better to focus on issues like this. "You are killing the earth's food supply, including your own" probably goes farther with more people than "It will get a degree or two hotter over the next 100 years".
Re:Strictly speaking... (Score:4, Insightful)
There's always a new problem to be solved.
I think that describes life in general, don't you think?
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I somewhat agree with you, but at the same time, you dont want a factory pumping their sludge directly into a river either. There should be reasonable effort to prevent as much pollution as you can, i.e not idling your car for 5 minutes, regulations on smokestack industries, etc. But yes humans have evolved and most people dont want to go back to caveman era, where even they of course were still effecting the environment.
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The Stupid is STRONG with this one.
Re:Strictly speaking... (Score:5, Insightful)
The "ice age" theory never had much support as I recall, and was more an artifact of the cesspool that is science journalism.
Do you have an actual objection to the science, or just yet another tired rhetorical objection "Oh you see, a few scientists were wrong, therefore all scientists are wrong..."
Re:Strictly speaking... (Score:4, Insightful)
So you in fact have no issue with the scientists, but with other non-experts.
Except for your last sentence, which indicates you are denier playing yet another tired rhetorical trick and imagining that it somehow just wipes out all the science.
You just don't like bad news, and are too fucking infantile to get a grip
Re:Strictly speaking... (Score:4, Insightful)
I fail to see why the willfully ignorant need be treated with respect.
Re:Strictly speaking... (Score:5, Insightful)
Willfully ignorant? Fuck you. I accept the underlying premise that the climate is changing and mankind's activities are contributing a non-zero amount to that change. Pointing out the fact that the climate has changed before does not make me a denier and it speaks volumes about you that you feel the need to attack someone who largely agrees with you because they don't completely toe the party line.
Incidentally, the only things I don't accept are the doomsday rhetoric about the consequences of climate change and the proposed "solutions" that will ultimately accomplish nothing. Well, that's not entirely true, they'll massively increase energy bills in the first world while simultaneously halting development in the third world. But hey, who gives a shit, we've got ours, fuck all of those poor brown people.
Whether you're willing to admit it or not, energy is civilization and massively increasing the cost thereof condemns billions of people to remain in poverty. You'd do better to spend those countless trillions on preparing humanity for the change that we couldn't stop even if we axed all carbon emissions tomorrow.
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Only a miserly 30% of all energy is consumed by buildings. Constructing buildings for less capital than conventional construction methods while using 40% less energy is such stupid "green" thinking. I'll continue supporting the mindless squandering of energy because "civilization is energy," energy waste is a benefit to mankind, and energy efficiency doesn't scale.
Besides capital and operating lower costs, improved comfort and control, and higher reliability aren't all that "
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They've been saying that for as long as science has been promising us nuclear fusion. It's been 50 years away for my entire lifespan; I'm now in my 30s and don't see it happening before I'm 50. Do you?
I would love to see the day when technology provides a solution to this problem and am optimistic enough to believe that it will happen before I die. That said, we're forced to deal with reality as it exists today, and the sad truth of the matter is that you can't replace carbon based sources of energy tod
Re:Strictly speaking... (Score:5, Insightful)
"John, when people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."
http://chem.tufts.edu/answersi... [tufts.edu]
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Actually there were no "new ice age scientists", there were a couple of journalists on a slow news week at Time Magazine who had learned about Milankovich Cycles and found that we should be well into the next glaciation cycle.
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Instead of quoting journalists, you wouldn't mind, oh I don't fucking know, actually looking at what the scientists say.
Re:Strictly speaking... (Score:5, Informative)
You may not have RTFA, but this entire story is driven by what a "journalist" wrote, not a scientist. Journalists drive these stories, they drive the alarmism.
So in a story written by a journalist, not a scientist, it's perfectly acceptable to quote journalists.
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I think he and the rest are trying to have it both ways. When some journalist makes some idiotic statement, he and the rest are silent, knowing their position will benefit from the scare mongering. But when someone calls them out on it, they respond, "well, you need to listen to the scientists, not the journalists".
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That is the stark assessment of Nasa scientist and leading climate expert Jim Hansen
Are you saying that Jim Hansen isn't a NASA scientist or leading climate expert?
Or are you saying that he didn't say these things and the journalist just made them up?
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It is far more pressing in the snort term to stop doing drugs, mmkay?
Re:Strictly speaking... (Score:4, Informative)
Ph level is a sliding scale with acid on one side and alkaline on the other. If Ocean water is moves from alkaline to neutral to below 7 on the scale, which is what tehy are saying is/will happen, then it is becoming acidic. It is currently at an 8.1 out of a 14 point scale.
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It should also be pointed out that the oceans are not of a uniform pH and can vary from 7.5 to 8.4. Saltwater aquariums can similarly vary in pH in about the same range. To say that the last time the pH was this low all the life died out in the oceans is disingenuous. There are already parts of the ocean where the pH is much lower than 8.1 and life continues to thrive in those
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Re:Strictly speaking... (Score:5, Informative)
they're not becoming acidic, they're becoming less alkaline
More acidic is the same as less alkaline. It's an increase in protons.
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Make no mistake, 'more acidic' instead of 'less alkaline' is a sure indicator of alarmist intent.
No, it's simply a desire to use a single, simple word "acidification", instead of "becoming less alkaline".
one may even suppose that the writer doesn't even know that seawater is alkaline.
I'm pretty sure that scientists who are researching ocean pH know that seawater is alkaline, and they still use "acidification" in all their papers.
Re:Strictly speaking... (Score:4, Informative)
There are quite a few large studies about the plastic content in the oceans, and quite a few oceanographers have raised concerns. You should Google it!
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Re:Strictly speaking... (Score:5, Insightful)
"... they're not becoming acidic, they're becoming less alkaline..." is like saying "you're tires aren't going flat, they're just becoming less inflated."
And the explanation for why acidity (or as you so euphemistically put it, "de-alkalinizing") is because of the amount of carbon being absorbed through, and you guessed it, CO2 emissions, the same thing causing AGW. They are aspects of the same problem, with, and wait for it, the same solution; reducing CO2 emissions.
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Define "acidification", mate.
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Which is kind of like saying "you're not becoming taller, you're becoming less short".
It's a fairly pointless distinction.
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Strictly speaking, from TFA, there aren't enough fossil fuels available to duplicate the extinction event they're talking about.
The Rate of Change is as high as it was then, but the total change possible (given that we burn all the fossil fuels) isn't as high as it was then.
Which probably means no major extinction event in the near future....
Re:Strictly speaking... (Score:5, Insightful)
Which probably means no major extinction event in the near future....
I think the extinctions are more related to the rate of change than to absolute numbers. Absolute numbers for CO2 have been much higher, and there was plenty of life at those times. The problem is that it takes a different form of life, adapted to the different environment. Quick changes could possibly overwhelm the rate in which species can adapt.
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Which probably means no major extinction event in the near future....
Behold the contrarian school of science, where assertions require no studies, and are just known to be correct because they have a pleasant ring to the political faithful.
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.. they'r.e not becoming acidic, they're becoming less alkaline and are slowly heading towards neutral.
Perhaps they've changed things in the 20+ years since I took my last chemistry class, but "becoming less alkaline" is pretty much the definition of "becoming more acidic".
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Do you realize that carbon dioxide uptake from the atmosphere is what's driving ocean acidification? Compare the map of the world's forests to one hundred, one thousand, and ten thousand years ago. Add the fact that industrialization over the past two centuries got hundreds of millions of years' worth of sequestered carbon and released it into the atmosphere. What's this to the natural world? A top-level mass extinction.
The ecosystem's screwed. Whether it's beyond recovery is the question. Seeing as h
Re:Strictly speaking... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm less concerned about the number and more concerned about the rate. normally these kinds changes take several magnitudes longer.
Re:Strictly speaking... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm less concerned about the number and more concerned about the rate. normally these kinds changes take several magnitudes longer.
We have no idea whether the rate is unusual. There are no proxies with that resolution available.
(But why let science stand in the way of a good scare story?)
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Great, Let's Build IFR's (Score:5, Informative)
So, where are all the environmentalists demanding we build integral fast reactors as fast as we can? We have a huge 300,000 year light-water-reactor waste problem, a huge CO2 problem, and only one source of energy that can satisfy all the demand that humans have and will have as the other billions are lifted out of poverty. There's only one known technology [pbs.org] that cleans up the mess and provides the power.
But how does solving the problem concentrate power in the hands of governments, right? Big shocker that it was Al Gore who lead the charge to cancel the IFR program. Total coincidence. That's why Obama won't even take Branson's calls about building them now, on his dime.
Just tax carbon and the oceans will be saved, amirite?
The silver lining is that China will build them and eventually America will be forced by the harsh realities of economics to buy them from the Chinese manufacturers, as China replaces the US as the center of industrialization. Unless Americans start refusing to be controlled by sociopaths first.
Re:Great, Let's Build IFR's (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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That works only when you conveniently exclude those with entirely rational concerns about nuclear power by labelling anyone with such concerns "irrational".
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Well no, what I'm saying is true even though there are some rational concerns about nuclear power. The fact that there are rational concerns doesn't prevent some people from having an irrational fear.
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Except if you study the IFR idea, you'll find there are very few rational concerns about it. In fact it handily addresses all the traditional concerns about Nuclear energy. Safety, waste, etc. If the article linked to by the GP is correct, even the worry about plutonium bomb making is unwarranted as IFR technology simply can't be used to make a bomb. If this scientist is correct (and I see no evidence he's not--after all he worked on this project for many years), then any politician opposing IFR is irr
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As long as something is still radioactive, there is wasted energy (not to mention dangerous to store) that could be extracted. That's what the IFR program was all about. Process the material until it breaks down into things with such a short half life that it doesn't make sense to process them anymore. And at that point you have waste that has a radioactive half life of decades not centuries or thousands of years. And it sounds like in the short decade they were in operation, they were very successful.
As
I'm for nuclear power if it is economical (Score:3)
I think nuclear power CAN be safe, and CAN be a net environmental benefit (meaning it causes far less environmental damage than equivalent gas or coal operations), however, I'm not sure that it can be those two things AND be economical at the same time.
It's hard for a fission plant to pay for the interest on the capital used to build it selling electricity at rates competitive with alternatives. The way fusion is looking, if it EVER works, it might be in the same boat as fission, economically, except worse
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Well we can argue about a lot of different specifics on this issue. Nuclear power may not ultimately be the best solution, but it's also true that there are many environmentalists that have changed their mind on the issue, and argued that we should switch to nuclear even if it's not "economical".
Part of the argument there is that fossil fuels are also not economical, but that their costs are hidden. First, they are also subsidized in various ways, including taking up a disproportionate amount of our fore
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While you US boys discuss other reactor types, the Chinese and Europe are moving towards renewable energy quite fast. We invest in cheap and durable storage technology and energy management, as well as in wind and solar power (for example Germany http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R... [wikipedia.org]). When I look at the US, I also see that people and industry are mainly investing in renewable energy (and unfortunately oil) and not in any nuclear stuff. Even though there are reports on /. every now and then about a new concept
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While you're ultimately correct, what's holding back the IFR is *not* conspiracy, but material science.
The neutron flux for those is insane! They can't get them to run without dissolving for very long. They aren't economical unless they can run for many years without a total refurbishment.
The best arm-chair hand-waving 'solution' I can think of barring some serious material science advances is a set of cores that repair themselves on a regular basis with CNC/3D printing tech.
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So...looks like the AC below got it right then, Salvation lies in mud huts, nuts and twigs and organically grown and harvested plant materials for clothing.
Re:Either fast breeder or thorium (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
What About Competing Theories (Score:4, Funny)
And if it's not sunspots, it's probably volcanoes or something. I'll figure that out if someone disproved my first theory.
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You, sir, are what is referred to as a "denier".
Your sarcasm detector needs recalibrating.
Re:What About Competing Theories (Score:4, Funny)
Great Filter (Score:3)
We had a nice run, humanity. Maybe the Blattarian race that succeeds us in a few million years will do better.
Biggest Extinction Events in Planetary History (Score:3)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E... [wikipedia.org]
Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event
As originally proposed by a team of scientists led by Luis Alvarez, it is now generally believed that the K–Pg extinction was triggered by a massive comet/asteroid impact and its catastrophic effects on the global environment, including a lingering impact winter that made it impossible for plants and plankton to carry out photosynthesis.
Triassic–Jurassic extinction event
Gradual climate change, sea-level fluctuations or a pulse of oceanic acidification[6] during the late Triassic reached a tipping point. However, this does not explain the suddenness of the extinctions in the marine realm.
Asteroid impact, but so far no impact crater of sufficient size has been dated to coincide with the Triassic–Jurassic boundary.
Permian–Triassic extinction event (the one claimed here)
There are several proposed mechanisms for the extinctions; the earlier phase was probably due to gradual environmental change, while the latter phase has been argued to be due to a catastrophic event.
Late Devonian extinction
The causes of these extinctions are unclear. Leading theories include changes in sea level and ocean anoxia, possibly triggered by global cooling or oceanic volcanism. The impact of a comet or another extraterrestrial body has also been suggested.
Ordovician–Silurian extinction events
The immediate cause of extinction[which?] appears to have been the movement of Gondwana into the south polar region. This led to global cooling, glaciation and consequent sea level fall. The falling sea level disrupted or eliminated habitats along the continental shelves.
TL:DR -> Maybe some major extinction events were caused by climate shifts, but all were theorized to be gradual shifts, not sudden. The sudden extinction events are generally due to volcanic or impact events.
Oversimplify, Distort, then Spin (Score:3)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P... [wikipedia.org]
Researchers have variously suggested that there were from one to three distinct pulses, or phases, of extinction.[7][11][12][13] There are several proposed mechanisms for the extinctions; the earlier phase was probably due to gradual environmental change, while the latter phase has been argued to be due to a catastrophic event. Suggested mechanisms for the latter include one or more large bolide impact events, massive volcanism, coal or gas fires and explosions from the Siberian Traps,[14] and a runaway greenhouse effect triggered by sudden release of methane from the sea floor due to methane clathrate dissociation or methane-producing microbes known as methanogens;[15] possible contributing gradual changes include sea-level change, increasing anoxia, increasing aridity, and a shift in ocean circulation driven by climate change.
Really, the PT event was the perfect storm of extinction events.
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While wikipedia is generally reliable, I wouldn't trust it as an authority against fresh research. It's the new research that determines what people will write in wikipedia, not the other way around.
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Mother Jones is the issue not the research.
To be pedantic: 96% of marine _species_ went extin (Score:4, Informative)
To be pedantic: 96% of marine _species_ went extinct.
We've seen 99% of all of some species disappear, and the species come back. Homo Sapiens was brought down to a 10,000 person bottleneck once, but bounced back. We've had 90%+ of some fish populations disappear with almost no complete species disappearing. But the great extinctions losing 96 % of species is another level entirely.
Is headline overstating it? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
What is the time resolution of our knowledge? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
The important words here are... (Score:3)
..."over tens of thousands of years".
Load of Bollocks (Score:3)
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According to the author, it's the rate of change that is worrying, not the absolute levels.
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I'm not understanding: is this domesday?
No. That means you will soon be able to have a nice swim without any jellyfish around!
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And the water will always be bathwater warm!
Re:It's been nice knowing y'all (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Sharks don't have bones either...
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Re:It's been nice knowing y'all (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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Too bad we can't get to the moon anymore.
Re:It's been nice knowing y'all (Score:4, Insightful)
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
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Enough people know how to garden that building back to farming wouldn't likely take terribly long, at least on a small (community) scale. Putting up a basic house isn't terribly difficult either if you don't have to worry about building codes and inspectors -- sure you'll have a somewhat higher chance of it collapsing on you and killing you but enough people will build non-collapsing houses that it won't be the end of us.
Remember there's been at least one point in history where the human population was on
Re:It's been nice knowing y'all (Score:4, Informative)
It means that in the present we have to wade through mountains of denier fud and be confronted by minions of anti climate change trolls whenever trying to have a discussion about the changing climate
In the future we will only have to suffer the pangs of coulda, woulda and shoulda
Re:It's been nice knowing y'all (Score:4, Funny)
I'm not understanding: is this domesday?
No it's Dunes day.
At this point, whatever is gonna happen, is gonna happen.
Good thing the rapture is any moment now.
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Sure, why not [edushyster.com].
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Depends for whom. Jellyfish for example might find that news quite disturbing. However, they normally do not follow the news.
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Re:It's been nice knowing y'all (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:It's been nice knowing y'all (Score:5, Funny)
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.
I used to worry about anthropological climate change but then I got a Facebook account and learned that GMO foods are going to kill me.
(That's another issue where public opinion is at complete odds with the scientific consensus, incidentally)
Re:It's been nice knowing y'all (Score:4, Funny)
More like your DNA is modified by what you eat
That's not how it works.
Re:No mention of sulfur (Score:5, Informative)
Volcanoes release quite a bit of sulfur(oxides) which contribute quite a bit to acidification. Why is this not mentioned?
Because acidification happens faster and faster, while there is no special volcanic activity. In other terms, the reason of this accelerated acidification does not come from volcanoes.
Re:No mention of sulfur (Score:5, Insightful)
Because we've always had volcanoes and the oceans didn't acidify as a result?
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Obviously a import component of acidification was ignored to push an agenda.
As long as we're just comparing the acidification and the rate of acidification, does it really matter if it was caused by different mechanisms ?
Re:No mention of sulfur (Score:4, Informative)
The article doesn't claim that the rates of acidification are the same, just that we are releasing carbon at a similar rate.
The actual research that the article was based on is a pH reconstruction, not carbon concentration.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cont... [sciencemag.org]
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Re:No mention of sulfur (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Maybe not as scary you might think (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Which brings us to now (Score:5, Insightful)
Because this time it will be us making room for the next upcoming species.
Re:Which brings us to now (Score:5, Funny)
It's ok. In millions of years when they burn our oily remains for fuel we'll have our revenge.
Think long term here.
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Scared?
It's not a challenge to see who can out-macho the most. There's nothing to be scared of at all. However, I'd rather not share a world with little more than rats and cockroaches (hyperbole, but you get the point).
Big extinctions is why we don't have cool things like this any more http://upload.wikimedia.org/wi... [wikimedia.org]
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Because humans also generated religious nutjobs who rather wish death becomes us.