Scientists Track Eerie Parallels Between Today's Climate & Earth Trends And The Permian Extinction

[hatrack]

EDIT

Then came the final blow. In waterways that are anoxic beyond a certain depth, like today’s Black Sea, oxygen-dependent organisms live near the surface and oxygen-avoiding microbes live deeper. Scientists call the boundary between them the “chemocline.” Organisms below the chemocline “breathe” sulfates, not oxygen. Just as oxygen-dependent organisms exhale CO2, these bacteria give off hydrogen sulfide, a gas toxic in high concentrations to many life forms, including plants and animals. The gas neatly explains one of the mysteries of the Permian die-off: how an extinction event that began at sea could have decimated life on land.

Scientists find molecular “signatures” of anaerobic organisms at what was the water’s surface in end-Permian times. Lack of oxygen let sulfate-breathers rise from the ocean deep and spew hydrogen sulfide directly into Earth’s atmosphere.

Hydrogen sulfide would have also eaten holes in the earth’s protective ozone layer. Plants and animals either suffocated directly – atmospheric oxygen levels plummeted to 15 percent (it’s about 21 percent today) – or succumbed to the combination of long-term stresses.

And the lessons for today? At the Permian boundary, “you’re in a state of gradual warming, then as you approach that boundary, the warming in­­creases dramatically,” says Jeff Kiehl, a senior scientist at the Na­­­tion­­­al Center for Atmospheric Re­­search in Boulder, Colo. “It wasn’t a linear warming.” Says Professor Kump: “This shows us what could happen if we push the system too hard…. We don’t know where the intermediate thresholds are.”

We’re still some way from the atmospheric CO2 levels hypothesized at the end-Permian extinction – which were perhaps 10 times preindustrial levels, or 2,800 ppm. Yet, according the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, if trends continue we’re still approaching 1,000 ppm of CO2 by 2100. That’s not Permian-extinction levels, but it would be the highest CO2 concentration in 80 million years, and a level at which both ocean anoxia and lesser extinctions have occurred.

“Do we want to put ourselves on a very risky path of possibly repeating earth’s history, or do we want to be more cautious?” says Dr. Kiehl. “I would hope as a conscious species that we would choose the latter.”

EDIT/END

Ed. - emphasis added.

http://features.csmonitor.com/environment/2008/11/19/today%E2%80%99s-unsettling-comparison-to-%E2%80%98the-great-dying%E2%80%99/

[phantom power]

1. Uh oh.

[clear eye]

8. My sentiments exactly n/t

[BrklynLiberal]

12. Can't say it any better than that...

[GliderGuider]

2. The idea that we are a conscious species

or at least one that makes rational decisions, is one of our most deceptive conceits, and one of the reasons we're in this predicament.

[kestrel91316]

3. Well, if we have a Permian-style extinction, at least we won't have to worry

about a few humans surviving to muck things up down the road. We will ALL die, because for all intents and purposes our known world will die.

The sea microbes and critters will get the ball rolling again eventually, but we won't be in the picture.

[phantom power]

4. Yes, well at least we'll have *that*...

:rofl:

[FirstLight]

5. As always, Hatrack, I am grateful for these posts...

It may be a bummer to talk about, and people may not think it is as fun as speculation and drama...

but this is the tragedy of our lifetime, if not, our time as a species.

Constantly I look around me at the infrastructure as it stands and think of the magnitude of our habitation on this planet, and the error of our ways... and I am overwhelmed with grief that we can be so stupid collectively. WHERE are the geniuses of our time? We need an Edison or a similar whizkid to find a secret to creating a new energy source or a way to make conversion of fossil fuel consumption possible...where are they?

Honestly, I don't see the solution coming from governments, or fromn laws and treaties over 50 year periods...though it is a great start, don't get me wrong.
But the kind of major retooling we need HAS to come from something so revolutionary as to make combustion engine technology and fossil fuels become totally obsolete.

I keep hoping for some modern genuises to surface...

[GliderGuider]

7. You might look at the problem from the other side

From there it looks as though our problem was too many geniuses.

It's easily argued that what got us here was a surfeit of technological cleverness, supported by a scientific worldview that is in turn driven by the belief that we are separate from nature. If that supposition is true, there was no possible scientific or technological advance that would have allowed us to avoid this predicament.

Also, if that's true (and I believe strongly that it is), the answer to our dilemma can never be found in science and technology. As long as our underlying belief in human exceptionalism remains intact, science and technology can only lead us further into that toxic separation from nature and spirit, thereby increasing the damage. And I'm speaking as the atheist son of two scientists (biochemist and physicist) who until recently was a technocrat down to my shoelaces. I now think that the only way out is through cultural metamorphosis catalyzed by many individual spiritual transformations.

[BeFree]

10. Eh

We could save ourselves by doing the cultural metamorphosis thing. But we can't afford too.

Well, we can afford too, but we don't want to pay the bill.

[GliderGuider]

11. When the pain of not changing exceeds the pain of changing, we'll change

Things might be a little uncomfortable by then, though. Boiling frogs and all...

[lapfog_1]

6. Much like the beaker of solution

and the titration experiments we all ran in chemistry. You keep adding drops of acid into the solution and nothing seems to happen until one last drop. Then whammo, the whole beaker turns purple.

positive feedback loops, tipping points, titration events, runaway reactions.

[Dead_Parrot]

14. I can't really say...

...that I'm looking forward to my beaker tuning purple.

:(

[lapfog_1]

15. The beaker won't care.

It's been purple before.

We creatures that lived in the clear solution with a ph of 7.2, otoh...

[earth mom]

9. This is why I wanted Gore to run for Prez, not Obama.

:cry:

[NickB79]

13. Funny. I just started reading "Under A Green Sky" today

It discusses the Permian mass extinction and the role greenhouse gases played in it, particularly methane releases.