That comes from this statement in the press release:
Professor Kennedy said that the doubling of the amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere over the past 50 years is “like hitting our ecosystem with a sledge-hammer”
Hmmm, you’d think they could get the basic math right. From ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/trends/co2_mm_mlo.txt
Today’s seasonally corrected Mauna Loa CO2 April 2011 = 390.49 ppm
The seasonally corrected Mauna Loa CO2 value 50 years ago , April 1961 = 317.27 ppm
317.27 x 2 (a doubling over 50 years) = 634.54 ppm Seems the claim for doubling over 50 years is 244.05 ppm short. Perhaps he meant a ball peen hammer.
Greenhouse ocean study offers warning for future
The mass extinction of marine life in our oceans during prehistoric times is a warning that the same could happen again due to high levels of greenhouse gases, according to new research.
Professor Martin Kennedy from the University of Adelaide (School of Earth & Environmental Sciences) and Professor Thomas Wagner from Newcastle University, UK, (Civil Engineering and Geosciences) have been studying ‘greenhouse oceans’ – those that have been depleted of oxygen, suffering increases in carbon dioxide and temperature.
Using core samples drilled from the ocean bed off the coast of western Africa, the geologists studied layers of sediment from the Late Cretaceous Period (85 million years ago) across a 400,000-year timespan. They found a significant amount of organic material – marine life – buried within deoxygenated layers of the sediment.
Professor Wagner says the results of their research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), has relevance for our modern world: “We know that ‘dead zones’ are rapidly growing in size and number in seas and oceans across the globe,” he said. “These are areas of water that are lacking in oxygen and are suffering from increases of CO2, rising temperatures, nutrient run-off from agriculture and other factors.”
Their research points to a mass mortality in the oceans at a time when the Earth was going through a greenhouse effect. High levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and rising temperatures led to a severe lack of oxygen (hypoxia) in the water that marine animals depend upon.
“What’s alarming to us as scientists is that there were only very slight natural changes that resulted in the onset of hypoxia in the deep ocean,” said Professor Kennedy. “This occurred relatively rapidly – in periods of hundreds of years, or possibly even less – not gradually over longer, geological time scales, suggesting that the Earth’s oceans are in a much more delicate balance during greenhouse conditions than originally thought, and may respond in a more abrupt fashion to even subtle changes in temperature and CO2 levels.”
Professor Kennedy said that the doubling of the amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere over the past 50 years is “like hitting our ecosystem with a sledge-hammer” compared to the very small changes in incoming solar energy (radiation) which was capable of triggering these events in the past.
“This could have a catastrophic, profound impact on the sustainability of life in our oceans, which in turn is likely to impact on the sustainability of life for many land-based species, including humankind,” he added.
However, the geological record offers a glimmer of hope thanks to a naturally occurring response to greenhouse conditions. After a hypoxic phase, oxygen concentration in the ocean seems to improve, and marine life returns.
This research has shown that natural processes of carbon burial kick in and the land comes to the rescue, with soil-formed minerals collecting and burying excess dissolved organic matter in seawater. Burial of the excess carbon ultimately contributes to CO2 removal from the atmosphere, cooling the planet and the ocean.
“This is nature’s solution to the greenhouse effect and it could offer a possible solution for us,” said Professor Wagner. “If we are able to learn more about this effect and its feedbacks, we may be able to manage it, and reduce the present rate of warming threatening our oceans.”
Sam says:
May 17, 2011 at 11:20 am
Really, that is all you can come up with.
The only thing you can do to defame their conclusions is comment on the mistaken writing of some shoddy journalist about a doubling.
Clutching at straws
Perhaps, Sam, you could come up with some of the things that make this paper “Correct”. Troll Fail.
“Professor Kennedy said that the doubling of the amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere over the past 50 years…”
Sums are hard. University professors shouldn’t have to do them.
Sam says:
“The only thing you can do to defame their conclusions is comment on the mistaken writing of some shoddy journalist about a doubling.”
No, that just gives us a good giggle. Any refutation of the conclusions is left to the brains of the people who read this blog. That’s the way it works around here.
A ‘sludge hammer’ is perhaps a more appropriate metaphor.
Ordinary flooding (due to statistical vagaries in rainfall) dumps massive amounts of organic material into rivers whence it flows into oceans. These marine flood deposits are subject to the same laws of chemistry and physics as everything else, so decomposition locally depletes the oxygen – to an extreme. Anoxia does not cause the formation of massive marine organic deposits, but rather the converse is true.
The paper is online here.
Pretty hard to write that news release based on this rather esoteric paper.
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/05/12/1018670108.full.pdf+html
Philip Finck says:
May 17, 2011 at 10:52 am
“I like Sean’s comment about increased preservation potential. If the sediments are deoxygenated wouldn’t it generally mean less decomposition ”
——————————
Yep. But the mechanism is even simpler than you think. Decomposition of organic material on the seafloor is accomplished by critters that eat the organic matter. The critters — whether unicellular or multicellular need Oxygen to survive. Cut off their oxygen and you end up with deposits (typically black shales) full of undecomposed organic matter. Some spectacular fossils have been found in such beds.
Cook the black shales for millenia and you get petroleum or natural gas depending on the thermal history and the ability of the fluids/gas to escape.
It’s not clear to me whether the press release is talking about periodic episodes of anoxia that killed marine life or periodic periods of anoxia that prevented normal decomposition of material that died from natural causes then settled to the bottom. And it’s not clear that whoever wrote the press release knows the difference.
It’s possible that the authors of the paper have a meaningful point, but I don’t quite see how anyone is going to figure out what the point is from the press release. I’d point out that unless the authors had a hand in the press release, it’s also possible that the actual authors of the paper know how to multiply 2 times 317ppm.
“They found a significant amount of organic material – marine life – buried within deoxygenated layers of the sediment.”
– What’s new? I might be wrong, but isn’t this the beginning of oil …?
“… we may be able to manage it, and reduce the present rate of warming threatening our oceans.”
– Hybris! Strange that they still (deliberatly) do not understand that this is a system that is so extensive in complexity, that no one is close to understand how it fits together … (Not even the world’s total computing power is sufficient to yield an accurate forecast …)
… and this will not happen as long as they are (deliberate) stuck on some (irrelevant) details, without or with low scientific value, instead of looking at the big picture like it should be …
No, we need a global (political) movement, like the new Australian against CO2 taxes, but more in general to stop this nonsense … (PASAPA – People Against Scientific And Political Atrophy)
“These are areas of water that are lacking in oxygen and are suffering from increases of CO2, rising temperatures, nutrient run-off from agriculture and other factors.”
Okay, so what we are to infer is that a gas that exists at 390ppm in the atmosphere is somehow interferring with the ability of oxygen, which exists at 210,000ppm in the atmosphere, to dissolve in the ocean???
Apparently the learned professor is completely unfamiliar with the process of eutrophication (eutrophia: Greek = healthy, adequate nutrition) in which cellular respiration is so vigorous that oxygen in the vicinity is depleted and converted into CO2. This sentence should have read:
“High levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and rising temperatures led to” “a severe lack of oxygen (hypoxia) in the water that marine animals depend upon.”
The “Sledgehammer” reminds me of a line form the old cult TV series “Sledge Hammer” Sledge:
“Trust me I know what I’m doing” -just before the whole stiuation went south…
“The public does not yet know much about nitrogen, but in many ways it is as big an issue as carbon, and due to the interactions of nitrogen and carbon, makes the challenge of providing food and energy to the world’s peoples without harming the global environment a tremendous challenge,” said University of Virginia environmental sciences professor James Galloway, the lead author of one of the Science papers and a co-author on the other. “We are accumulating reactive nitrogen in the environment at alarming rates, and this may prove to be as serious as putting carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.” http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-05/uov-at051208.php
We have Got to get these two together!
I just looked up the cause of dead zones. Guess what, they are caused primarily by chemical fertalizers. Global warming has nothing to do with them. The author of this paper is a ….
“Does oxygen out-gas at a similar rate to CO2 or is it faster or slower? I can’t find a definitive answer.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry's_law
Whenever I point warmists to millions of years ago they scoff and say conditions were different then. Yet they happily use geologic time to back their case. Odd that.
This was lost for some reason in my last response (May 17, 2011 at 12:22 pm):
pat says:
May 17, 2011 at 11:13 am
“… the volcanic CO2 is easily detected. …“
I was led to believe that according to the ice cores co2 rise followed temperature rise.
New study suggest that deepsea volcanoes and magma play a much greater role than previously beleived in the release of CO2…
From a recent McGill University study:
Study quote:
<>
McGill geology researchers’ discovery of high concentrations of CO2 at mid-ocean ridges confirms explosive nature of certain volcanic eruptions
Between 75 and 80 per cent of all volcanic activity on Earth takes place at deep-sea, mid-ocean ridges. Most of these volcanoes produce effusive lava flows rather than explosive eruptions, both because the levels of magmatic gas (which fuel the explosions and are made up of a variety of components, including, most importantly CO2) tend to be low, and because the volcanoes are under a lot of pressure from the surrounding water.
Over about the last 10 years however, geologists have nevertheless speculated, based on the presence of volcanic ash in certain sites, that explosive eruptions can also occur in deep-sea volcanoes.
But no one has been able to prove it until now.
By using an ion microprobe, Christoph Helo, a PhD student in McGill’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, has now discovered very high concentrations of CO2 in droplets of magma trapped within crystals recovered from volcanic ash deposits on Axial Volcano on the Juan de Fuca Ridge, off the coast of Oregon.
These entrapped droplets represent the state of the magma prior to eruption. As a result, Helo and fellow researchers from McGill, the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, have been able to prove that explosive eruptions can indeed occur in deep-sea volcanoes. Their work also shows that the release of CO2 from the deeper mantle to the Earth’s atmosphere, at least in certain parts of mid-ocean ridges, is much higher than had previously been imagined.
Given that mid-ocean ridges constitute the largest volcanic system on Earth, this discovery has important implications for the global carbon cycle which have yet to be explored…
http://www.mcgill.ca/newsroom/news/item/?item_id=173335
ON ADMITTING AND CORRECTING MISTAKES
What is the OBSERVED exponential carbon emission growth rate that Hansen forecasted to be 1.5% in Hansen et al., 1988?
The carbon emission curve is shown in the following graph.
http://bit.ly/mT56Fc
From the above data, the approximate annual global carbon emission in G-ton from 1900 to 2007 = 0.53*e^(0.0267*(year-1900))
As a result, the annual exponential growth rate is 2.67%, much higher than the 1.5% assumed by Hansen et al, 1988.
If we substitute the Hansen’s growth rate of 1.5%, the carbon emission for 2007 = 0.53*e^(0.015*(2007-1900)) = 0.53*e^(1.605)=0.53*4.978=2.63 G-ton, which is obviously wrong.
If we substitute the actual approximate growth rate of 2.67%, the carbon emission for 2007 = 0.53*e^(0.0267*(2007-1900)) = 0.53*e^(2.857)=0.53*17.409=9.23 G-ton, which is much closer to the actual carbon emission of 8.4 G-ton for 2007.
CONCLUSION:
The OBSERVED exponential carbon emission growth rate is about 2.67%, which was forecasted to be 1.5% in Hansen et al., 1988. As a result, among the three scenarios, scenario A is closer to the reality.
Here is the comparison of the three forecasted scenarios with observation.
http://bit.ly/iyscaK
When is this mistake going to be admitted and corrected?
James Schrumpf says:”Why isn’t the CO2 level averaged from remote sites around the world, as is attempted with temperature?”
Some time ago, I downloaded data from a number of sites, to check. It appears that CO2 mixes pretty well worldwide within a year or less.
http://members.westnet.com.au/jonas1/CO2AtVariousStations.jpg
12-month changes tend to show up at Mauna Loa and the South Pole at about the same time, but a bit later at Barrow (in the Arctic).
http://members.westnet.com.au/jonas1/CO212MthChanges.jpg
The data was all from “Carbon Dioxide Research Group , Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) , University of California” – I think this is the link:
http://scrippsco2.ucsd.edu/data/atmospheric_co2.html
Too many of these scientists are as worthy of our regard as the cleric who is predicting the end of the world come Saturday.
Perhaps I missed the point, but what is the significance of 85mya? I don’t recall any significant extinction or catastrophic event then. A quick Google didn’t help. Why did they pick 85mya? Can’t read now, but I see Bill pasted the paper’s link above.
Anyone who knows something about such geological maters care to read and comment? A quick scan of it doesn’t convince me the paper supports the assertions in the press release. I agree with Bill, but I’ll try to read the paper later. I could not find a reference to 85mya in the paper, just late Cretaceous .
Sean says:
“They found a significant amount of organic material – marine life – buried within deoxygenated layers of the sediment.” does not necessarly mean they die due to the deoxygenate. It could mean the area was so fertile and full of life, more died there. It could also mean the same number died as usual but were just better preserved.
Maybe they were better preserved due to the environment they ended up in. Since only anaerobic saphrotrophic organisms can live there.
What I want to know is who was causing the agricultural chemicals runoff in the Cretaceous. I’m a Doctor Who fan since the first episode in 1963 🙂
Lonnie E. Schubert said @ur momisugly May 17, 2011 at 1:21 pm
“Perhaps I missed the point, but what is the significance of 85mya? I don’t recall any significant extinction or catastrophic event then. A quick Google didn’t help. Why did they pick 85mya?”
That’s when New Zealand split from the supercontinent Gondwana. I thought everyone knew that! 😉
Jeff in Calgary says:
May 17, 2011 at 12:20 pm
“I just looked up the cause of dead zones. Guess what, they are caused primarily by chemical fertalizers.”
Well, ehr … yeah. But I’m pretty sure that the consensus of expert opinion is that usage of chemical fertilizers was minimal in the Cretaceous when the rocks in question were deposited. Likewise in the Upper Ordovician and Middle and Upper Devonian of the Appalachian region when extensive organic rich muds were deposited under apparently anoxic conditions. There apparently can be other causes of dead zones.
———–
James Schrumpf says:
May 17, 2011 at 9:49 am
Could someone explain why Mauna Loa is the go-to for the atmospheric CO2 measurement? Being as it’s very close to active volcanoes, it seems to be a possibly biased source. Why isn’t the CO2 level averaged from remote sites around the world
———–
Basically, they wanted to establish a CO2 observatory at a high altitude someplace at low latitude away from industrial/vehicle CO2 sources but with reasonable access. Almost anyplace that meets those conditions is going to be on a volcano. The “continuous” monitoring at Mauna Loa is cross checked with less frequent (weekly?) observations from other stations ranging from the South Pole to the high Northern latitudes. I think most people who look seriously at CO2 measurements — including many who are very unhappy with climate science — believe that the CO2 measurements are pretty much a model of how climate science should be, but too often is not, conducted.