Clearly, humans weren't the first organisms to influence the planet's climate.Clearly. Don't think anyone in-the-know ever claimed such a thing.
Nor did they trigger the mass extinction cause by cyanobacter (http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/07/28/the_great_oxygenation_event_the_earth_s_first_mass_extinction.html) - but maybe if we work at it....Nope. Your point being?
Do you know if acidification is harmful to Phytoplankton?I don't, but
Ocean acidification may cause dramatic changes to phytoplankton Study finds many species may die out and others may migrate significantly as ocean acidification intensifies. Jennifer Chu | MIT News Office July 20, 2015 http://news.mit.edu/2015/ocean-acidification-phytoplankton-0720 ... Stephanie Dutkiewicz, a principal research scientist in MIT’s Center for Global Change Science, says that while scientists have suspected ocean acidification might affect marine populations, the group’s results suggest a much larger upheaval of phytoplankton — and therefore probably the species that feed on them — than previously estimated. “I’ve always been a total believer in climate change, and I try not to be an alarmist, because it’s not good for anyone," says Dutkiewicz, who is the paper’s lead author. “But I was actually quite shocked by the results. The fact that there are so many different possible changes, that different phytoplankton respond differently, means there might be some quite traumatic changes in the communities over the course of the 21st century. A whole rearrangement of the communities means something to both the food web further up, but also for things like cycling of carbon." The paper’s co-authors include Mick Follows, an associate professor in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences.
http://www.whoi.edu/ocean-acidification/
Is it wonder, that scientists are beginning to talk about the 6th Great Extinction?
Clearly. Don't think anyone in-the-know ever claimed such a thing.Probably true but there was no indication I was addressing someone "in-the-know". Besides, I've read quite a few so-called science journalists in national publications suggesting that humans are the first organisms to threaten the planet so I'm not sure where the "in-the-know" cutoff point is.
Your point being?A suggestion that "truly scary" may be an overreaction to current climatic conditions. Humans, proto-humans and primates have survived several previous climate cycles, some with even higher temperatures than today. We're right to have a rational concern about climate change but we should be cautious about spinning doomsday scenarios. Life evolved in a high CO2 environment.
Ocean acidification may cause dramatic changes to phytoplanktonThe authors of the article you quote are quite cautious about their findings, using words like "may" and "possible". They also don't suggest that the "dramatic changes" will eradicate phytoplankton. Rather they point out that the changes would be in the relative populations of different phytoplankton species and in the global locations occupied by particular species. My original response was to the concern raised by Write4u which I assumed was about the possible demise of oxygen producing phytoplankton. A redistribution as described in the paper you quote isn't the same as the loss that I thought he was concerned about.
JohnH said, Life evolved in a high CO2 environment.Yes, but not mammalian life. You want to wait another 500,000 years before hominids may appear again? You think that is how evolution and natural selection works? This was the answer of the lumberjack who was cutting down "old growth forests"; it's a renewable resource isn't it? Well yes, but not for another thousand years. Think about it. Again I'll let George Carlin explain it to you.; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjVeWvdogMw
I give up! Besides this thread is about farming. Maybe the solution is to start a phytoplankton farm.
17 min TED talkJohnH said, Life evolved in a high CO2 environment.Yes, but not mammalian life. You want to wait another 500,000 years before hominids may appear again? You think that is how evolution and natural selection works? This was the answer of the lumberjack who was cutting down "old growth forests"; it's a renewable resource isn't it? Well yes, but not for another thousand years. Think about it. Again I'll let George Carlin explain it to you.; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjVeWvdogMw
I give up!WHY? Because you don't want to think about the reality of cumulative compounding interest in Earth biological and geophysical processes? You flippantly dismiss a massive rearrangement of the ocean phytoplankton community and it's food chain, as though it were a Hollywood movie and the resolution will arrive in time for the happy closing scene. You don't want think about disruptions that will take decades to fully unfold and recovery taking centuries - this is not conjecture this is the reality of what is actively unfolding within our oceans. If I had the time I could fill this post with links to recent studies about the increasing impacts of acidification of ocean biology, food chain, oyster beds, ocean farming and more. You want to pretend we really don't know because you are successful at shielding yourself, and ignoring the incoming information from every corner of our globe. But I'm no expert. You should listen to a little of Jeremy Jackson has to tell about oceans changes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0VHC1-DO_8 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Jackson_(scientist) Jeremy Bradford Cook Jackson (born November 13, 1942) is an American marine ecologist, paleontologist and a professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California as well as a Senior Scientist Emeritus at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in the Republic of Panama.[1] He has published over 150 scientific publications – 18 of which are in Science – and has written seven books. Biography[edit] Jackson was born in Louisville, Kentucky but had moved to New York City by the age of one. He grew up in Miami, Florida and Washington, D.C.. He completed his bachelor in zoology at George Washington University. He received his Ph.D. in geology from Yale University in 1971. Jeremy Jackson is married to Nancy Knowlton. They met in the Caribbean and married in 1983.[2] They have one daughter, Rebecca. Jackson also has a son, Stephen, from a previous marriage. Career[edit] Dr. Jackson started his career as a marine biologist studying the distribution of bryozoans and their behavior. His work on the evolution and quantitative genetics of marine bryozoans provided some of the strongest evidence to date for the controversial "punctuated equilibrium" model of evolutionary change. In addition to the bryozoan work, Jackson produced influential studies on the Pleistocene record of coral reef communities and was a central figure in a Smithsonian Institution project investigating the evolution of ecosystems in Panama and the surrounding regions. Jackson also studied the impact of Hurricane Allen on reefs in Jamaica. The resulting paper (Woodley et al., 1981, Science) confidently predicted recovery of the reef. A few years later
Just in case you missed it.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to minimize activities that we think MAY deteriorate our planed but I'd certainly feel more confident if some scientists and politicians were looking rather more critically at the carbon theory.Oh JohnH, you disappoint. Can you please summarize what your issues are with the "carbon theory"?
I give up! Besides this thread is about farming. Maybe the solution is to start a phytoplankton farm.No, a much better solution is to start Hemp farms. I urge you to read up on this amazing plant, which has virtually no THC, but can and is used all over the world for literally hundreds of uses!!!! And is much more effective carbon sequester than trees.
If you are unaware, hemp is one of the strongest, most durable, natural soft-fibers on this planet. Because of this, hemp has a wide variety of uses. Hemp can be used for paper, fuel, oils, medicine, clothing, housing, plastic, rope, and even food. In fact, many of these uses of hemp have been practiced throughout our history for over thousands of years. Because the history of cannabis is an extremely lengthy one, it is not necessary to list every piece of hemp’s usage throughout our history.Please read the entire link, and you will begin to understand why half the world grows and uses it for industrial purposes. Did you know that the dashboards of BMW cars are made from Hemp? http://herb.co/2015/04/08/what-is-hemp-and-why-is-it-so-beneficial/
WHY?Because it seems probable that the question I answered was from someone who was looking for a juicy angle for an emotive but perhaps unrealistic article on climate change rather than someone trying to understand climate change. Aslo, since this is a farming thread, climate change seems somewhat off-topic but I've responded to the comment reposted from here to the climate change thread.
A suggestion that "truly scary" may be an overreaction to current climatic conditions. Humans, proto-humans and primates have survived several previous climate cycles, some with even higher temperatures than today. We're right to have a rational concern about climate change but we should be cautious about spinning doomsday scenarios. Life evolved in a high CO2 environment.Whenever someone presents something like this I think it is a very good indication that they truly don't grasp what human forced climate change is. It's not a gradual transition to a slightly warmer global climate where we can enjoy the heat more than we do now. It's already forcing some of the most important ecosystems to the brink of elimination and if carried on at the current pace will almost certainly rival some of the worst extinction events in the Earth's history. It's not just the degree of change that is important, it is the pace, too much change in too short of time eliminates a high percentage of the biosphere which simply can not adapt or migrate fast enough. https:// skepticalscience.com/Lee-commentary-on-Burgess-et-al-PNAS-Permian-Dating.html
For years the cause of the Permian Mass Extinction has been linked to massive volcanic eruptions in Siberia. Volcanic CO2 and a cocktail of noxious gasses combined with burning coal and geothermally-baked methane emissions to enact a combination of toxic effects and, most importantly, ocean acidification and global warming. It led to a world where equatorial regions and the tropics were too hot for complex life to survive. That’s a fact so astonishing it bears repeating: global warming led to a large portion of planet Earth being lethally hot on land and in the oceans! The cascading extinctions in ecosystems across the planet unfolded over 61,000 years, and it took 10 million years for the planet to recover! For comparison, our distant ancestors separated from apes only 7 million years ago. Until recently the scale of the Permian Mass Extinction was seen as just too massive, its duration far too long, and dating too imprecise for a sensible comparison to be made with today’s climate change. No longer. In “High-precision timeline for Earth’s most severe extinction," published in PNAS on February 10, authors Seth Burgess, Samuel Bowring, and Shu-zhong Shen employed new dating techniques on Permian-Triassic rocks in China, bringing unprecedented precision to our understanding of the event. They have dramatically shortened the timeframe for the initial carbon emissions that triggered the mass extinction from roughly 150,000 years to between 2,100 and 18,800 years. This new timeframe is crucial because it brings the timescale of the Permian Extinction event’s carbon emissions shorter by two orders of magnitude, into the ballpark of human emission rates for the first time.
Burgess et al’s paper brings the Permian into line with many other global-warming extinction events, like the Triassic, the Toarcian, the Cretaceous Ocean Anoxic Events, The PETM, and the Columbia River Basalts, whose time frames have been progressively reduced as more sophisticated dating has been applied to them. They all produced the same symptoms as today’s climate change – rapid global warming, ocean acidification, and sea level rises, together with oxygen-less ocean dead zones and extinctions. They were all (possibly excluding the PETM - see below) triggered by rare volcanic outpourings called “Large Igneous Provinces," (LIPs) that emitted massive volumes of CO2 and methane at rates comparable to today’s emissions. The PETM may also have been triggered by a LIP, although that is still debated. Can we seriously expect Earth’s climate to behave differently today than it did at all those times in the past?Climate change due to rapid changes in atmospheric greenhouse gases is now recognized to be one of the most significant killers of life on the planet and we're already on pace to rival the Permian Extinction event if we don't change course. Coral reef systems are already in rapid retreat and so are many other crucial habitats that will simply disappear and much sooner than most people have a clue. Just because the Earth seems "really, really big" to some people doesn't mean that if the right force is applied in just the right way the fundamental conditions that allow most life will still exist forever. We're reordering how the Earth itself acts in regards to temperature and precipitation across most of the Earth's surface in ways that are already stressing many species to the breaking point, this is highly dangerous even if many seem to exist in some lala land where we can just blunder along until the major crisis hits then do something about it. The science says the major crisis is here already, it amazes me that so many people are totally out to lunch on such an existential issue.
WHY?Because it seems probable that the question I answered was from someone who was looking for a juicy angle for an emotive but perhaps unrealistic article on climate change rather than someone trying to understand climate change. Aslo, since this is a farming thread, climate change seems somewhat off-topic but I've responded to the comment reposted from here to the climate change thread. Yeah, John seems to not even grasp that weather patterns are critically important to a farmer's success or failure.