Fossil Fuels Had A Hand In Dinosaur Extinction

New Scientist:

Fossil fuels have a new crime to live down. A frenzy of hydrocarbon burning at the end of the Permian period may have led to the most devastating mass extinction Earth has ever seen, as explosive encounters between magma and coal released more carbon dioxide in the course of a few years than in all of human history.

Read the whole story: New Scientist

Comments

[research]

since this has become yet another denier forum...

Shouldn't first principles outlaw dumping gigatons of junk into the atmospheric commons?

[fumes]

oops..
November 10, 2009
New data show that the balance between the airborne and the absorbed fraction of CO2 has stayed approximately constant since 1850, despite emissions of CO2 having risen from about 2 billion tons a year in 1850 to 35 billion tons a year now.
This suggests that terrestrial ecosystems and the oceans have a much greater capacity to absorb CO2 than had been previously expected.
The results run contrary to a significant body of recent research which expects that the capacity of terrestrial ecosystems and the oceans to absorb CO2 should start to diminish as CO2 emissions increase, letting greenhouse gas levels skyrocket. Dr Wolfgang Knorr at the University of Bristol found that in fact the trend in the airborne fraction since 1850 has only been 0.7 ± 1.4% per decade, which is essentially zero.
The strength of the new study, published online in Geophysical Research Letters, is that it rests solely on measurements and statistical data, including historical records extracted from Antarctic ice, and does not rely on computations with complex climate models.
This work is extremely important for climate change policy, because emission targets to be negotiated at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen early next month have been based on projections that have a carbon free sink of already factored in.
Another result of the study is that emissions from deforestation might have been overestimated by between 18 and 75 per cent. http://www.physorg.com/news177059550.html

[MoreDimensions]

Let's see what you failed to mention.

1. Most of the absorbed CO2 goes into the ocean which acidifies the water. The long term affects as mentioned in the above article is extinctions.
2. The overall level of CO2 in the atmosphere is continuing to rise dramatically compared to baseline levels. The level has increased almost 30% (280ppm to 385ppm) in the last hundred years and is trending towards a far more rapid increase.
3. Warming in the mid latitudes of the northern hemisphere (US) will occur last due to high levels of sulfur compounds from coal burning that block sunlight. The downside of this is that these sulfur compounds are quickly rained out as acid rain which further acidifies all bodies of water.

[Exusian]

Weird, I posted on this here this afternoon and it has disappeared.

The headline "Fossil Fuels Had A Hand In Dinosaur Extinction" is complete nonsense.

The End Permian extinction event, also known as the Permian-Triassic extinction event, happened 251 million years ago, 20 million years *BEFORE* the evolution of the first dinosaurs.

See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian%E2%80%93Triassic_extinction_event
and:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinosaur

[Exusian]

To clarify, the End-Permian extinction event happened 186 million years *BEFORE* the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs in the K-T extinction event 65 million years ago.

Who the heck wrote this ignorant and misleading headline?

[BlackbirdHighway]

No, that wasn't dinosaurs going extinct 250 million years ago. It was only after that when the dinosaurs proliferated. They went extinct much later, about 65 million years ago.

[fumes]

since we're obviously about to go extinct.. maybe friday.. saturday at the latest..

shouldn't we be chiseling into stone somewhere:

''it was CO2.. a trace gas comprising only .038% of the atmosphere that did it!''

just to warn life-forms from other galaxies that they're messin' with cyanide?

[Exusian]

fumes, although CO2 is indeed a trace gas that makes up just .038% of Earth's atmosphere, there are still around 4,700 trillion CO2 molecules sitting in the path of each and every infrared photon trying to escape from the Earth's surface to space.

How CO2 matters
http://moregrumbinescience.blogspot.com/2009/11/how-co2-matters.html#more

[fumes]

once again..

cold clear nights are living proof CO2's potency to block escaping infrared photons..

were it not for the rotisserie effect of the timely sunrise..

all heat would be lost.

[Exusian]

Once again, cold clear nights are nights of low relative humidity and no cloud cover.

If you reduce the level of H2O in the air, the greenhouse molecule that accounts for 66% to 85% of the greenhouse effect, and then expect CO2, the gas that accounts for 9% to 26% of the greenhouse effect, to provide the same level of greenhouse warming then you are deluded.

You have hitched your belief system to a failed argument, fumes.

[emily00011]

there are plenty of compounds that are lethal in the ppb range, so what is your point other than to show lack of chemical knowledge.

[mountainweb]

oh great, one more brain dead cause of devastating mass extinction. Give us a break, you can only have ONE real cause of extinction. These shallow minds keep coming up with the "cause of the day", each one someone grasping for their 15 minutes of fame.

[timmyturner]

And may soon be the cause of our extinction too.