The Briefing Room
General Category => Science, Technology and Knowledge => Topic started by: rangerrebew on September 21, 2017, 03:38:04 pm
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By 2100, oceans may hold enough carbon to launch sixth mass extermination of species, mathematics predicts (Update)
September 20, 2017
In the past 540 million years, the Earth has endured five mass extinction events, each involving processes that upended the normal cycling of carbon through the atmosphere and oceans. These globally fatal perturbations in carbon each unfolded over thousands to millions of years, and are coincident with the widespread extermination of marine species around the world.
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-09-mathematics-sixth-mass-extinction.html#jCp
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It will have to do battle for primacy with all the B.S. spewed by global warming alarmists and politicians. :bullie smokin:
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"Mathematics predicts" - what the hell is that supposed to mean?
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Earth Is Not in the Midst of a Sixth Mass Extinction
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/06/the-ends-of-the-world/529545/ (https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/06/the-ends-of-the-world/529545/)
“As scientists we have a responsibility to be accurate about such comparisons.”
Surely we’ve earned our place in the pantheon next to the greatest ecological catastrophes of all time: the so-called Big Five mass extinctions of earth history. Surely our Anthropocene extinction can confidently take its place next to the juggernauts of deep time—the Ordovician, Devonian, Permian, Triassic and Cretaceous extinctions.
Erwin says no. He thinks it’s junk science.
“Many of those making facile comparisons between the current situation and past mass extinctions don’t have a clue about the difference in the nature of the data, much less how truly awful the mass extinctions recorded in the marine fossil record actually were,” he wrote me in an email. “It is absolutely critical to recognize that I am NOT claiming that humans haven’t done great damage to marine and terrestrial [ecosystems], nor that many extinctions have not occurred and more will certainly occur in the near future. But I do think that as scientists we have a responsibility to be accurate about such comparisons.”
Much more: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/06/the-ends-of-the-world/529545/ (https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/06/the-ends-of-the-world/529545/)
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Maybe oysters will do better and make more pearls, too. If coral reefs can just find enough calcium, they can grow faster, and more phytoplankton will be able to feed more zooplankton which feed more of the little critters that feed the fishies and whales and there will be more tuna for the sushi bars for the people who run around in their Birkenstocks predicting, yet again, the end of everything. Or not.
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"Mathematics predicts" - what the hell is that supposed to mean?
It means they know more than the vast innumerate masses whose eyes cloud over at the first integral sign.
Just ask them, and they'll tell you you couldn't possibly understand without a STEM PhD. *****rollingeyes*****