Global Anoxia Ruled Out As Main Culprit In the P-T Extinction 158
Garin writes "The late Permian saw the greatest mass extinction event of all-time. The causes for this extinction are hotly debated, but one key piece of the puzzle has recently been revealed: while the deep-water environments were anoxic, shallower waters showed clear signs of being oxygenated. This rules out global anoxia, and strongly suggests that other factors, such as the Siberian Traps vulcanism, must have played a dominant role. From the article: 'Rather than the direct cause of global extinction, anoxia may be more a contributing factor along with numerous other impacts associated with Siberian Traps eruption and other perturbations to the Earth system.' See the full research article (behind a paywall) here."
Re:Gasping (Score:5, Insightful)
And this is why people laugh at Deniers as they have no idea of the science or the problem.
Re:A Breathtaking Report!! (Score:2, Insightful)
Well WTH, I have to pass half the terms in the summary through Wikipedia to figure out what the heck they're talking about? This is supposed to be a self-selecting site for smart folk, but being smart in one area doesn't make you knowledgeable in another.
It would probably help if the editors required more than just copypasta from the original article. I don't think I'm being dumb, just acknowledging that I'm ignorant of certain topics.
Re:A Breathtaking Report!! (Score:1, Insightful)
and yet you spent some time educating yourself... excellent, excellent...
Re:Gasping (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, some people do care whether other people can survive. The point is simple: People will want to survive. If necessary, by floating on your corpse.
This is relatively good news. (Score:5, Insightful)
Given that we show every sign of running the CO2-enhancement experiment to completion, it is reassuring to know that this low-probability but extremely-high-cost outcome is that much more unlikely. (To my warmist comrades -- given a choice between losing a toe, a leg, or a life, we know which choice we would most want to avoid, but that does not mean the remaining choices are good. Anoxia is among the worst of the outcomes, far worse than the middle of the US becoming uninhabitable or the seas rising 100 feet. And to you denier bozos -- greenhouse science is cut-and-dried stuff, with only the detailed outcomes unclear, but it's also clear that between natural human greed and your foolish efforts, we will almost certainly burn all the fossil fuels we can until something truly alarming occurs. Perhaps we have overestimated the effects of the current CO2 levels -- but that's okay, we're just going to keep on burning it till we see an effect, and a big and unambiguous one.)
Re:This is relatively good news. (Score:2, Insightful)
we're just going to keep on burning it till we see an effect, and a big and unambiguous one.
No, we're seeing effects already. We're going to keep burning it until the devil is knocking at the door, then the skeptics will be the ones screaming the loudest about how they're new solution is the best.