I fear we are witnessing a massive ocean die off.

[arcadian]

The entire planet's oceans dead. Completely dead.

[Codeine]

1. There's a lot of water out there. nt

[arcadian]

2. One volcano can blot out the sun

and change the globes climate.

[Codeine]

4. For a while. And most everything survives globally.

Locally it will be devastating.

[Toucano]

20. That is the most ignorant and incorrect thing I have read all day. n/t

[Codeine]

22. A devastating factual rebuttal. nt

[The Damned]

36. But, but, but

Her picture is purty!

[Codeine]

40. His picture.

And yes, yes it is.

[tavalon]

35. The earth will recover if you look at eonic time

In the short term (the only one that matters to us and the rest of the world's species) there is going to be a lot of dying going on. How much, none of us can say. Gaia will of course survive, but her inhabitants have the most tenuous of holds upon her and that includes humans.

[LakeSamish706]

3. Yep, I think so as well and that doesn't bode well for the human species.

Worst problem with this, there is no valve to turn this flow off with. This planet was already in trouble before this disaster came about.

[Ozymanithrax]

5. Where is the evidence? n/t

[Bluebear]

6. The evidence that the poster "FEARS" something? Are you daft?

OK, arcadian, please show us your evidence that you are worried. :silly:

[Ozymanithrax]

8. I want to know what has inspired this fear? Whe event?

If it is the spewing oil in the gulf, it has a long way to go to be even the worst oil spill in the gulf, that would have been the Ixtoc well.

The gulf war oil spills were the worst in history.

The oceans are still alive.

[Scuba]

23. This 'spill' is just starting...

...I also fear the outcome of this tragedy.

[arcadian]

11. My hands are shaking

:rofl:

Seriously though, the idea of a geyser of crude oil at an inaccessible depth in the Gulf of Mexico with a bunch of oil engineers scratching their heads, shrugging and saying, "I don't know" is the stuff of environmental nightmares. It seems we will be lucky if this only destroys the Gulf of Mexico. I can't imagine what it will do to Caribbean coral reef ecology.

[Ozymanithrax]

7. To put this in perspective. Ixtoc OIl well dumped in 1979 and 1980 dumped...

about 480,000 tons of crude oil into the gulf in 1979 and 1980. So, I don't think we have to worry about the oceans dying just yet.

[tekisui]

9. Says the incrementalist.

[Ozymanithrax]

14. Yep, that is me. And Ixtoc, though the worst in the gulf, isn't the worst in history...

That was the gulf war oil spills, where over a million tons of oil was spewed.

The earth is quite resilient.

Look an asteroid struck the earth some time back and wiped out the dinosaurs. Scientists estimated that it even set the earths atmosphere on fire.

A million years later you wouldn't have known it.

In distant galaxies, super massive blackholes get so big, that the force of the x-rays radiating from the just outside the event horizon is so great it forces all the dust out of a galaxy. The x-rays are so intense that they will kill anting on any planet in an entire galaxy. These galaxies then die because all the dust is gone and no new stars are born.

A supernova 100 light years from earth would be powerful enough to wipe out life on earth, except microscopic stuff living in the deepest part of the ocean and in mines more than a mile under the earth.

We humans have better things to do than to fear.

[sabrina 1]

39. Well, that's all very comforting except for the fact

that none of us have a million years to wait for the oceans to recover.

As George Carlin once said 'the planet will survive' even if we eliminate ourselves and we won't be missed. I KNOW the planet will survive. But I'm selfish, I'm worried about US!

So, do you have anything else, like a story about a terrible disaster that only took about two years to recover from? We really, really don't have eons to wait around!

[William Z. Foster]

16. let us know

Let us know when it is time to start worrying about stuff.

[Ozymanithrax]

17. What? Me Worry?

I prefer to live my life day to day rather than worry my self to death from one minute to the next.

[William Z. Foster]

18. you betcha

I don't see anything to worry about, and I am certainly not concerned about anything other than my own personal comfort and peace of mind.

So, for me to be personally comfortable, for me to have peace of mind, and for me to not be worrying - and this may not be true for you - I am going to to be in touch with and aware of all of the dangers and all of the suffering, and I will fight as hard as I can every minute with every breath to contribute in any way that I can to saving the human race, the planet and all of the critters on it. That leaves no time for worrying about myself in the way you are talking about. I would rather be fully alive and die with my boots on than to live in some sort of self-centered "balanced" and "peaceful" denial and avoidance and isolation. I am going to see complacency as the greater danger than alarmism. I am going to see smug aloofness as a more miserable existence than risking danger, pain and self-sacrifice. I am going to err on the side of vigilance rather than personal escapism.

That is what makes me personally comfortable, free of worry and brings me peace of mind. That is what makes life worth living.

You may have a different strategy.

[Ozymanithrax]

21. I didn't say I would not fight to preserve this blue marble...

only that to go through life in fear isn't the way to do it.

[William Z. Foster]

24. agreed

We are being bombarded with fear campaigns of various kinds. That can be counterproductive.

[tavalon]

37. Oxy is right

If our worry would actually help the situation, then I would suggest we organize a huge worrying demonstration. Am I saying this isn't bad? Nope, it's likely to be the worst oil disaster ever and it will likely destroy the gulf and make all the other leaks look tiny. I'm sad, I'm so sad I can't look at the pictures. I spent 30 of my years around that gulf and while oceans have never called to me the way mountains do, she was beautiful and she is dying. I'm a chronic worry wart so when I recommend not worrying, it means the game is over. No amount of worry will stave off one bit of this awful thing.

The time to worry is over. It's time to mourn.

[gmoney]

10. "Soylent Green is people"

[ericinne]

12. As long as it tastes good, I'm game

[ZombieHorde]

13. Just start developing a hearty hatred for the ocean. Then you can cheer! nt

edit to fix a spelling error which was kind of funny now that I think about it

[Aramchek]

15. Oh Gob!! Not the BEEEEEEES!!

[Chulanowa]

19. Hate to sound like a denialist, but really, that's rather conceited

We honestly lack the ability to eradicate life on land; the oceans are far beyond our ability to harm in total.

We can, of course, cause severe damage to certain aspects of the ocean, put to put this in perspective...

Out in the middle of the Atlantic is a massive trench that goes way below the crust of the earth. Millions and millions of tons of seawater pour into the mantle from here, and are ejected at temperatures hot enough to melt lead. Speaking of lead, these waters are laden with the stuff. And arsenic, and cadmium, and sulfur and all sorts of wonderful cyanides and mercury compounds and what have you. Billions of gallons of deep sea water are venting a soup of chemicals that will kill anything except those critters specially adapted to it, at temperatures that are dangerous even for those rare few. Every day. it's been happening for billions of years.

You'd never know if we didn't have benthic explorers.

So while the north coast of the Gulf of Mexico is probably well and truly screwn for most coastal life forms, the gulf itself will survive.

[femrap]

25. Considering what man

has done to Mother Nature, I think everything is about to keel over.

[Bonobo]

26. "man", "Mother".

Wow, broad brush there.

Women did it too.

[SidDithers]

27. 1.3 billion cubic kilometer of water in the world's oceans...

That's 3.4 x 10^20 gallons. That's a lot of water.

Sid

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

28. I fear the bouyancy of the oil will shift earth on its axis and we'll go spinning off into space.

Just like in the documentary Dante's Peak.

[mochajava666]

29. Too soon to worry - not enough info yet

On one hand, it's not too hard to imagine the beginning of the end due to an environmental disaster starting with people monkeying around with unproven technology and a misunderstanding of scale and interconnectedness. We have seen that many times in books and movies, and in real life.

On the other hand, this particular disaster would have to dramatically increase to cause some quick global changes leading to the ocean's dying. The Ixtoc spill in the gulf and the Iraq war oil dumping are two fairly good examples of the current scale of this disaster.

In a month or so, I would think we will be able to better predict the extent of this disaster. By then, most quick fixes to cap or gather the flow would have been tried (and most likely will fail) and then we would just have to wait for the alternate well to be drilled to relieve the pressure. Last time I heard, that would take a minimum of 3 months to a maximum of 6-9 months. If that's the scenario, the Ixtoc spill will provide a good predictive model to estimate the damage.

My best bet for the oceans dying scenario would be from acidification from excess carbon dioxide killing algae, not oil. But I'm a water chemist/ecologist, so I know my field, but know jack squat about oil rigs. Ask an astrophysicist, and they would say a gamma ray burst, or something like that. Ask a military person, and they might say nuclear confrontation. Ask the Republicans and tea baggers, and they would say that the end of the world started when we elected a black man for president. Everyone has their own perspective based on their knowledge and experiences, or lack thereof.

For a great summary of end of the world scenarios, check out Exit Mundi (http://www.exitmundi.nl/exitmundi.htm). I love that site.

[earth mom]

30. I'm feeling the same way.

:cry:

[troubledamerican]

31. Chapter 6 from Rush Limbaugh's first book: "The Earth Is NOT Fragile"

A lot of DUers on this thread would prefer to read that.

[tavalon]

38. Whoa!

Never thought I would agree with anything that came out of Limpballs' mouth! The Earth isn't fragile. The species on it, including ours, are very fragile, but the Earth will be just fine without us, better in fact.

[Kablooie]

32. Cheer up. I'm sure it won't be nearly as bad as the asteroid that destroyed the dinosaurs.

Look on the bright side.

[NAO]

33. The end of all life on earth?

Seriously, don't the oceans play a vital role in keeping Earth capable of sustaining life?

I thought this on the first day of the spill.

[lonestarnot]

34. I see mostly dead stuff. Yeah dead. All dead.