What abrupt warming did, by one estimate

so what you are saying is in the past there was natural ghg that caused more extinctions than we think will happen today from man made ghg. That seems obvious, but again what is the point. Other things were happening in the past to accelerate extinctions. Today we have fences for breaking up the ecosystems.

 

Fences cause segmentation of ecosystems -> more extinction. Polution + segmentation of ecosystems is much more of a driver of extinction than ghg today. That video of polar bears playing, that some film pretended was about extinction was a bald faced lie that violated any integrity.

There were other things going on in the Triasic than man burning fossil fuel. Many theories but lower oxygen levels and massive change of tempearature where major factors in extinction.

climate change is real. extinction is real. This is not the CT boundary though. I despise partial information pretending cause and effect. There is strong evidence of an asteroid, I guess me driving my prius will cause more asteroids hitting russia.

 

A' is correlated with B
Does not say if B->A

No one has said that ghg alone caused the extinctions.

Ask this question - "how many of the extinctions would happen if we cut down on ghg"? Almost all of them, and I worked on grants trying to determine this. Most extinctions are about loss of habitat, not ghg. Simply cuttting down on habitat, increased pollution, and natural varyblility will cause most of those extinctions that some pretend are about global warming.

 

Well yes, as someone that has done research in this area of current extinctions, I do think that reading some article on the internet does not make you an expert. In fact reading articles on the internet, and missing key things in them may actually make you less informed.

Q1) was the only thing going on increased ghg, like today

From casually reading, no, the situation was not at all like today, and neither were the spiecies.

Q2) Is the research definative?

I guess we have the strongest evidence according to one source for the extinction being caused by volcanoes, but this is hard to narrow down even to a million years, and was in a situation quite unlike today. Although that article does not mention it darkness from the volcanic activity and changes in oxygen levels levels on creatures that depended on it were also key parts theorized to have led to the extinction.

 

Here is the response from the wall -

How many of those extinctions were caused only by increased carbon dioxide? None that I have heard of, there were other factors.

How many of the predicted animals to go extinct in the near future, or recent past will do it because of carbon dioxide? Very few. Over hunting, fishing, loss of habitat, pollutions, these are the causes. When you over simplify things to look at extreme examples you miss the obvious. Even the damage to the great barrier reef is mainly from agricultural waste and a couple of animals attracted to the pollution and over breading that are destroying it. These are the factors stopping recovery from temperature shocks. Missing the obvious by t wanting to put everything into this driving cars will kill everything is counter productive. What will destroy the ecosystem more, the waste washing into the chesapeak bay causing a dead zone, or driving 5 miles in your prius.

That is not to say that dumping plumes of carbon dioxide into the air helps all spiecies, but you need to chill and think. What else happens other than carbon dioxide when volcanos erupt. Sulfur ash, pollution, darkness. Mass extinctions went with large loss of habitats. Volcano didn't kill the giant sloth or the mammoth. When someone does a fund raiser for global warming showing pictures of polar bears playing and claims they are drowning, I cringe a little bit. When people read stories on the internet about how something quite wrong is going to do them in, I guess I am like talking to a wall. I will not agree with your crack pot theory. Want to continue to dump polution into rivers and cut down forests, fence in habitats to reduce their size and extinctions increase. Its not difficult to understand, but I guess its easier to blaim ghg. Many extinctions are natural. We get warmer after ice ages, volcanos blow and destroy habitats, but lets not ignore the leading man made causes and ghg doesn't rank in the top 5.

 

In each historical case, warming was not necessary or sufficient.

Warming can be contributory with other factors. Is it the main factor? No research I have seen shows that. What you have done is elevated a very minor factor to be the main one. When Hansen one of the pushers of this crack pot theory was asked - What percent of extinctions that he was predicting would occur without AGW, the answer was over 90%. Skeptical science's claim to fame is its supposed to be impartial because its run by an evangelical Christian. Aren't those the guys pushing the appocolypse. The guy isn't even a climate scientist, or biologist, chemical engineer, zoologist, or any scientist related to this. He is a blogger. When I worked on projects in the field, I worked with zoology, biology, and chemical engineering professors. You know the guys actually trying to get the research right.

That is quite different. Hmm. One chart said the earth wasn't habitable at 333 ppm carbon dioxide. When you get to 2.5x current levels things are likely to happen. What if the oceans buffer the carbon dioxide and we don't get to 1000 ppm? hmm. Seems like there are more likely culprits to track down until then.

But what is going to cause most of the extinction from the scientists studing it? Over hunting, over fihing, pollution, habitat destruction, segmentations of habitats. That is happening now, not at some future far off date where carbon dioxide more than doubles. Let's burn a little more oil, and dump less pollution in the oceans, reforest some of the planet that has been destroyed, restore wetlands. Have they made that tradeoff?

 

,Let me clarify what I am calling crack pot theories.

NASA warming scientist: 'This is the last chance' - USATODAY.com

The magic number required to avert 20%-50% of species to go extinct?

In other words now in 2013, we must be doublely doomed to cause mass extinctions at 396.8.

Or alternatively 350 ppm is from an organization Hansen belongs to and there is no scientific research that this is a magic number.

Now what about those volcanos? Was it only the ghg that caused extinctions? If you have been to pompei or looked at the devastation from mount saint Helens you might have an understanding that it isn't the ghg that cause most of the destruction. If you haven't please take a look at some of the pictures on the internet. You may also be cautioned that doubleing from 2000ppm-4000ppm is quite different from going from 280 ppm (pre-industrial) - 560 ppm. If things could live at 2000ppm I would expect that some can live at 560 ppm.

So what is real, and included in the research? Coral bleaching occurs with high seasonal temperatures, and as the oceans warm these instances will happen more often. Pollution hurts the ability to of the coral to recover. Many different corals exist that can live in higher temperatures, but these do not exist near many sights of coral, and when a reef can not recover the ecosystem that depends on it can die. Coral death is a real result of warming. We have loaded the system against them, and need to take steps to remove the pollution that we can.

What about mass extinction caused soley by increased carbonic acid concentrations or temperature. These are unlikely at these levels. Double the concentration of carbon dioxide in the air, and the surface waters should get double the concentration of carbonic acid, which will be detrimental to many shelled creatures. Will a mass extinction happen if we double the concentration? Theories go on both sides, but I don't really want to find out. If you are concerned about extinction though protect the habitat of these species. That will do much more good than trying to block the keystone pipeline, as those 350.org folks want to do.

Not all people that espouse crackpot theories are crack pots. I believe this one was politically motivated and it doesn't matter to the proponents of the theory whether it is true or false. Many other scientists doing good work have shown that it is unlikely to be correct though.

 

The more we learn, the less we know.

DBCassidy

 

What does "species extinction" really entail when examined closely? Usually it means a better suited species took over when given a chance. It certainly does not mean 3/4 of all living organisms left a 3/4 void in biomass. There is HUGE difference between a change in environmental conditions and elimination of the environment.

I'm not minimizing the issue or the problems we face. However, solving the problems is not served by painting the outcome as guaranteed universal suffering, it's best solved by showing how the solutions are much better than the present path.

 

Time to move to the moon an other planets.

DBCassidy

 

Do you honestly think that 50% of the species on earth will likely disappear by 2080 or similar date, but some US government program will stop it? Please tell us the government program to stop this near term disaster? Could you point to some scientific paper or a science fiction movie that you learned this from?

Please do not site the bible or koran.

 

You missed the bigger point entirely. I made it clear that I was not dismissing or minimizing the problem. What I was pointing out is the fallacy of using "fear" as a motivator. It fails for both the educated and uneducated readers, but for different reasons.

The educated reader looks at such an article and notes the difference between a correlation and causation link. There definitely is correlation, but a one-to-one causation of "CO change = global death+destruction" is not justified with what is contained in that article. Saying 3/4 of the species was eliminated was meant to be scary when in fact it is unavoidable. Perfect stasis is not possible when dealing with evolutionary driven life. What one can say is that massive climate change drivers of the past do not seem to leave CO2 levels unaffected.

Correspondingly, the vast majority of the worlds population and the vast majority of the worlds political leadership does not understand enough science to matter here. No amount of fear based motivation, no matter how solidly based on science will turn the tide. What will happen with every fear based motivation technique is it will backfire. Instead of motivation, what you get is despair and hopelessness. That is the worst thing to cultivate. What will work is showing how profitable sustainable solutions can be.

Again, there is no question that big changes are needed. We are not debating that. What we are debating is how to get the gigatons of political and cultural resistance to start moving in the right direction. Fear won't cut it, no matter how much "Science" is used as justification for the fear.

 

Absolutely, but more to the point, the fear is rarely wrapped in policies that address any problems in some rational way. Historically, in the US the biggest fear based policy was internment of the Japan se during WWII. Definitely some in the government had a huge fear of Iraq giving WMD to terrorists, and we got the Iraq war. I don't think the fearmongers here want anything that destructive but seem to be putting faith in blocking the keystone pipeline will somehow work some magic and save the world. The irrationality is its world oil use not a pipeline that sets the level of ghg from oil. The more dangerous path is if you give into the fear, and go to the next logical fear based conclusion that Chinese coal plants are weapons of mass destruction and we go to war with China to prevent them from increasing energy use.


Now there is a chance that we are headed to a mass extinction event. One happens about every 100 million years. Many have theorized that agriculture and pollution has transformed the worlds ecosystems making species more susceptible to extinction. A giant asteroid may hit the earth, or massive volcanic eruptions may happen as they have in past extinction events. It would be wrong to misunderstand the science and think simply reducing fossil fuels would prevent a quickly approaching extinction event if one is coming. The odds of one coming is low but not zero. One must convince people that going from 2000ppm to 4000ppm is the same as going from 290-400 ppm, and only ghg, nothing else from the volcanos happened.