Comment by photochemsyn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by photochemsyn | Hacker News Reader

Nice image of a fish fossil from this discovery here:

https://www.sci.news/paleontology/guiyang-biota-11644.html

Also see the related (linked) discussion of the cause of the Permian extinction:

> "The team’s findings showed that volcanic eruptions in Siberian Traps released immense amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This release lasted several millennia and led to a strong greenhouse effect on the late Permian world, causing extreme warming and acidification of the ocean."

> "Dramatic changes in chemical weathering on land altered productivity and nutrient cycling in the ocean, and ultimately led to vast de-oxygenation of the ocean. The resulting multiple environmental stressors combined to wipe out a wide variety of animal and plant groups."

It's worth noting that current fossil fuel emission rates of CO2 to the atmosphere are as much as 14X the rates during the Permian extinction, although humans have only really been at it for 150 years or so, compared to thousands of years during the Permian era.

>> current fossil fuel emission rates of CO2 to the atmosphere are as much as 14X the rates during the Permian extinction, although humans have only really been at it for 150 years or so, compared to thousands of years during the Permian era.

And a rate of 14x times 150 years yields the equivalent of 2100 years of Siberian Traps pollution.

Current knowledge is that this activity preceded the Permian extinction for 250K years [0]. That might seem like "Oh, we're only around 1% there".

But, critically, the authors of the paper point out:

“We don’t know if a little erupted for 250,000 years, and right before the extinction, boom, a vast amount did, or if it was more slow and steady, where the atmosphere reaches a tipping point, and across that point you have mass extinction, but before that you just have critically stressed biospheres,”

We are creating serious danger here with this massive uncontrolled experiment on the climate. Once the food web breaks, we're fooked, with no way to recover in time.

[0] https://news.mit.edu/2015/siberian-traps-end-permian-extinct...

> And a rate of 14x times 150 years yields

There's a vast difference between what we were releasing 150 years ago, or even 50 years ago compared to now.

Yes, I understand that the rate isn't constant. This is a brief post looking at the scale of the issue, not an exhaustive dissertation.

The output is also accelerating, despite efforts to contain it. The only thing that seemed to cause a dip was the beginning of the pandemic.

But by all means, please continue to provide an example of the kind of dismissive opposition that is and will be faced by people trying to fix the problem, even when the food web is already collapsing.

Wow snark.

> And a rate of 14x times 150 years yields the equivalent of 2100 years of Siberian Traps pollution.

From your original comment you display no understanding that the rate isn't constant.

Again: absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence; brief posts tend to omit many obvious factors.

Perhaps instead of lamely defending your original post, you could instead add to the discussion by digging up the actual historical rate of increase and using it to rework the calculation for a more detailed result, and then project the current rate of increase into the future for the next few centuries and see how much of a dent that makes. Come to think of it, why didn't you do that in the first place?

But, thanks for again demonstrating Vladmir Lenin's thesis on how effective Useful Idiots can be in derailing progress. Keep right on helping ensure that no one can make a point that disturbs the status quo, and make sure that nothing changes...

sheesh

> But, thanks for again demonstrating Vladmir Lenin's thesis on how effective Useful Idiots can be in derailing progress.

That's a lot of words for name calling.

> Perhaps instead of lamely defending your original post

You made a simple error, and yet I'm the one defending? You're projecting. Honestly, it's people like you that put people off doing things climate change related. Self important, with a smart aleck response for everything.

Your anti-climate-action attitude needs no encouragement from me; you demoed it just fine by showing up doing the easiest thing in the world — only finding fault — and doing it by adding purposeful obtuseness as if you're trying to implement the CIA Sabotage Handbook [0]

Your entire point is dithering about values of 0.005 vs 0.01 and I was noting that we're somewhere around two orders of magnitude within the greatest climate disaster and extinction in the planet's history, but sure, let's waste our time over that 50% error.

[0] https://www.cia.gov/stories/story/the-art-of-simple-sabotage...

> Your anti-climate-action attitude needs no encouragement from me;

I don't have one. You're encouraging other to though. Finding fault is part of Science, it has nothing to do with disagreeing with your world view.

>>Finding fault is part of Science

Finding RELEVANT Fault is part of Science

Of course the rate has changed, but that level of precision is irrelevant to this question. If it was a steady change to this level, then it is off by 50% (straight-line-average), which is irrelevant; if it is a hockey-stick curve that only makes the point stronger, i.e., humans are super-rapidly producing that scale of greenhouse gasses.

The entire point is a very rough estimate that humans are outputting greenhouse gasses APPROACHING THE SCALE OF the greatest climate disaster in the 4.5 billion year history of the planet.

Despite the ordinary expectation that the Siberian Traps' gigantic volcanic activity for more than a quarter-million years dwarfs anything humans could ever do in a few centuries, the fact is that the scale of our output is now in the same playing field as that disaster.

I'm pointing out that we do not have a gnat in the room, we have an elephant. Yet you want to argue that I didn't specify Asian vs African elephant.

I'm not trying to weigh the elephant to the gram, I'm pointing out that we need to do something before it tears down the house.

Your comments about the minutiae, whether or not they might be technically correct, are not science; they are a distraction.

Have a good evening. I'm done here.

I know I shouldn’t, but … your in the wrong here.

A bit off topic - picture of co2 history is available here: https://skepticalscience.com/EmmissionsAcceleration.html

Thanks for providing that data.

This shows the acceleration of CO2 emissions is more than 2-3X the rate of simple assumption in my original post; i.e., it is more of a straight line up from 1950 vs 1850.

So, while my original simplified calculation overstates a static relationship of human output vs Siberian Traps Permian Extinction output by the same 2-3X, it also shows that we're accelerating into the meaningful danger zone at a far faster rate.

Accelerating into the danger zone at a far faster rate — a steeper slope — will cause far more damage sooner than accelerating more slowly from a high Y-intercept point.

Moreover, despite multiple "Climate Agreements", there is no significant decrease in the slope of fossil fuel consumption or CO2/CH4 outputs (except for a dip in the pandemic).

The original point, that human greenhouse gas outputs relative to that of the greatest extinction in the 4.5 billion year history of the planet, is NOT some trivial 6 orders of magnitute lower as we'd expect from "a quarter million years of volcanic belching". Human output rates are in fact coming within two orders of magnitude the extinction rates, definitely on the same scope and scale, and are rising crazy fast.

The fact that it is mostly in the last 7 decades is not comforting, it is far worse

So, thanks for pointing that out.

> This shows the acceleration of CO2

Thanks for the explanation of what I provided.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com