From the University of California – Riverside , and the department of sulfurous odors, comes this “it must be carbon dioxide” moment:
“Also associated with this event are high levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which are linked to elevated ocean and atmospheric temperatures. Associated consequences include likely enhanced global rainfall and weathering of the continents, which further shifted the chemistry of the ocean.”
Of course, it couldn’t possibly be anything else but CO2 causing this, right?
Researchers quantify toxic ocean conditions during major extinction 93.9 million years ago
UC Riverside-led study points to an ancient oxygen-free and hydrogen sulfide-rich ocean that may foreshadow our future
RIVERSIDE, Calif. — Oxygen in the atmosphere and ocean rose dramatically about 600 million years ago, coinciding with the first proliferation of animal life. Since then, numerous short lived biotic events — typically marked by significant climatic perturbations — took place when oxygen concentrations in the ocean dipped episodically.
The most studied and extensive of these events occurred 93.9 million years ago. By looking at the chemistry of rocks deposited during that time period, specifically coupled carbon and sulfur isotope data, a research team led by University of California, Riverside biogeochemists reports that oxygen-free and hydrogen sulfide-rich waters extended across roughly five percent of the global ocean during this major climatic perturbation — far more than the modern ocean’s 0.1 percent but much less than previous estimates for this event.
The research suggests that previous estimates of oxygen-free and hydrogen sulfide-rich conditions, or “euxinia,” were too high. Nevertheless, the limited and localized euxinia were still sufficiently widespread to have dramatic effect on the entire ocean’s chemistry and thus biological activity.
“These conditions must have impacted nutrient availability in the ocean and ultimately the spatial and temporal distribution of marine life,” said team member Jeremy D. Owens, a former UC Riverside graduate student, who is now a postdoctoral scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. “Under low-oxygen environments, many biologically important metals and other nutrients are removed from seawater and deposited in the sediments on the seafloor, making them less available for life to flourish.”
“What makes this discovery particularly noteworthy is that we mapped out a landscape of bioessential elements in the ocean that was far more perturbed than we expected, and the impacts on life were big,” said Timothy W. Lyons, a professor of biogeochemistry at UCR, Owens’s former advisor and the principal investigator on the research project.
Study results appear online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Across the event 93.9 million years ago, a major biological extinction in the marine realm has already been documented. Also associated with this event are high levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which are linked to elevated ocean and atmospheric temperatures. Associated consequences include likely enhanced global rainfall and weathering of the continents, which further shifted the chemistry of the ocean.
“Our work shows that even though only a small portion of the ocean contained toxic and metal-scavenging hydrogen sulfide, it was sufficiently large so that changes to the ocean’s chemistry and biology were likely profound,” Owens said. “What this says is that only portions of the ocean need to contain sulfide to greatly impact biota.”
For their analysis, the researchers collected seafloor mud samples, now rock, from multiple localities in England and Italy. They then performed chemical extraction on the samples to analyze the sulfur isotope compositions in order to estimate the chemistry of the global ocean.
According to the researchers, the importance of their study is elevated by the large amount of previous work on the same interval and thus the extensive availability of supporting data and samples. Yet despite all this past research, the team was able to make a fundamental discovery about the global conditions in the ancient ocean and their impacts on life.
“Today, we are facing rising carbon dioxide contents in the atmosphere through human activities, and the amount of oxygen in the ocean may drop correspondingly in the face of rising seawater temperatures,” Lyons said. “Oxygen is less soluble in warmer water, and there are already suggestions of such decreases. In the face of these concerns, our findings from the warm, oxygen-poor ancient ocean may be a warning shot about yet another possible perturbation to marine ecology in the future.”
A grant to Lyons from the National Science Foundation supported the study.
Owens and Lyons were joined in the study by UCR’s Steven M. Bates; Benjamin C. Gill at Virginia Tech. and a former Ph.D. student with Lyons; Hugh C. Jenkyns at the University of Oxford, the United Kingdom; Silke Severmann at Rutgers University, NJ, and a former postdoctoral researcher with Lyons; Marcel M. M. Kuypers at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Biology, Germany; and Richard G. Woodfine at British Petroleum, the United Kingdom.
wayne:
re your ridiculous excuse at October 29, 2013 at 3:52 am.
I read it, noted it, and I am ignoring its attempt to continue your trolling.
Perhaps you can now stop trolling and address the subject of this thread.
Richard
Oxygen in the atmosphere and ocean rose dramatically about 600 million years ago, coinciding with the first proliferation of animal life.
Shouldn’t that be plant life?
I was not certain from the article if the authors thought that CO2 preceded the H2S event, happened at the same time or lagged it. Seems like the former. It also seemed that they implied that CO2 caused the H2S event.
Just some random thoughts on the article and some posts:
a. The solubility of gasses in water is a fuction of vapor pressure, polarity and ability to react with water.
b. The solubility of all gasses in water varies inversely with temperature http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/gases-solubility-water-d_1148.html
c. The solubility of CO2 in water will decrease with decreasing pH. This would suggest that the CO2 increase would, in part, lag the H2S event.
d. Sulfide ions won’t do much to change pH, hydrogen ions will.
e. The speculation on a CO2 increase following an anoxic event seems good, but how do we pin that down?
I wasted a great deal of time wading through the name calling sessions. It’s rather boring and childish and would be much better done on some political blog or in a newspaper.
re: richardscourtney
October 29, 2013 at 2:27 am
Quod Erat Demonstrandum
Chris Schoneveld:
Thankyou for your post at October 29, 2013 at 4:40 am which says you agree with my post at October 29, 2013 at 2:27 am.
Richard
Gentleman!
I do not know Richard S. Courtney, but I have spoken to him via facebook a few years back, he probably doesn’t remember it, it was a mater of giving the Fwit politicos a ladder by which they could extract themselves from the cesspool they had jumped into! I found him polite & scientifically informative especially as I understood he was a former UNIPCC reviewer. Big respect! I have no objections to his political views, mine are not the same as his, There are good people on both sides of this non-debate who value the science.
I simply ask that there is a general agreement that ad hominem attacks from all sides cease, & just agree to differ, but let’s stick to the science, please.
Alan Hannaford, CEng, MIStructE
Principal
Alan Hannaford Consultants
richardscourtney,
The problem with socialism is that the incentives are wrong. It rewards consumers and penalizes producers. Every system needs some of that to smooth out some of the bumps. Too much of it and you wind up with too many consumers and not enough producers.
And on top of that you run into the knowledge problem. Who can know what value to place on a given item of production? If you advantage consumers too much (some one has to decide what the proper level of consumption is), production declines.
And how about subsidies? It is obvious the production of Alternative Energy (AE) is excessive because it causes power prices to rise above what supply and natural (unsubsidized) demand indicate. Women, children, and minorities hurt hardest.
Climate science as currently used in politics is nothing but an attempt at the strengthening of central authority (command and control). Command and control systems of any stripe have a very bad historical record. Solar cells or coal? Want power when the sun doesn’t shine? Windmills or nuclear? Want power when the wind doesn’t blow (enough)?
Alan the Brit says:
October 29, 2013 at 5:04 am
I agree that richard knows atmospheric science quite well. He seems naive in politics and economics.
The trouble is that CAGW is an endeavor to use bad science to foster bad economics.
Women, children, and minorities hurt hardest.
Central control is always done in the name of the weak. It winds up advantaging oligarchs (in some systems referred to as commissars).
M Simon says:
October 29, 2013 at 5:21 am
The objective is simple, Total Global Government. It will be loosely based on Socialist principles but it won’t be Socialist, more like the Socialism of we know what’s best for everyone else, but it won’t apply to us, as is evidenced by the jamborees they have every time they get together. These are what used to be known as the “Champagne Socialists”, like Tony Blair et al, I wonder what his net worth is right now. I truly wonder what the actual monetary cost of these champagne & caviar events is when the UNIPCC get together, never seems to come to light.
dbstealey, davidmhoffer, and Alan the Brit:
I write to thank each of you for your kind and supportive words.
As you each say, I have different political views to you but that is not relevant to our considerations of the science pertaining to AGW.
I have been promoting real science against AGW scaremongering for 33 years and it has cost me much time, trouble and money. The beginning of the end of the AGW scare was achieved in December 2009 at Copenhagen. So, we are now into controlling the potentially harmful effects of the scare as it fades away. Many are better equipped to achieve that control than me. But it is important to obtain as wide a range as possible of political adherents for involvement in that activity.
I was driven from the blogs of Jo Nova and Judith Curry by troll attacks of me. On those blogs, as in this WUWT thread, it became impossible for me to address the science because my time was consumed by defending from irrelevant and abusive attacks of me.
I left WUWT earlier this year and returned after some months only because several people pressed me to. If threads are disrupted by my presence – as this thread has been – then this would ensure that my continuing in attempts to contribute to WUWT would be self defeating. But my presence does demonstrate the falsehood of the assertion that WUWT is a ‘front’ for right-wing political extremism.
Hence, my thanks for your supporting words are great and sincere to each of you.
Richard
M Simon:
I ask you to read my above post at October 29, 2013 at 5:33 am and also the discussion of my political views in another thread where I answered questions on them (I linked to the start of that interrogation above).
These links are to them.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10/28/the-big-stink-93-9-million-years-ago-blame-co2/#comment-1460124
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/06/skeptcial-science-takes-creepy-to-a-whole-new-level/#comment-1385725
Now, can we please return to the subject of this thread.
Richard
This yet-to-be-release paper seems to be so flawed just by the press release. We have all seen how the ocean waters have an approximate upper limit of 30°C and unless it has been proven that all life can not exist at 30°C (of course totally incorrect) I quite honestly don’t know what they are speaking about. My guess is their underlying thrust is going to be aimed subliminally at not only carbon dioxide but to hydrogen sulfide which can be found in natural gas. But for those that will take the time, few of the public or other scientists will, that component in natural gas is next to totally removed before final distribution and is about 15% of the source of all elementary sulfur produced for use in other industries.
So where does the hydrogen sulfide originate that they seem to place as the number one culprit in this paper… volcanoes, especially underwater volcanoes, but I really found no mention of that at all.
As to whether carbon dioxide has been linked to higher temperature, it has not, it has been hypothesized, nothing more.
wayne:
Thankyou for your post at October 29, 2013 at 5:59 am which goes to the crux of the matter raised by this – yet to be read – paper.
As you say, the lack of mention of volcanism is a serious error in the paper (assuming the press release is right). The issue of the H2S, volcanism and biological activity in the ocean surface layer is of fundamental importance to the AGW-hypothesis. I explained why it is so fundamentally important in an above post. To save people needing to find it, I copy the pertinent part to here.
A change in the pH of the ocean surface layer would alter the equilibrium between concentrations of CO2 in the air and the ocean surface layer. Such a pH change from additional CO2 is inhibited by the carbonate buffer. However, introduction of sulphide ions to the ocean surface layer would alter the pH of the ocean surface layer and would not be inhibited by the buffer.
A change only 0.1 to the pH of the ocean surface layer would alter the equilibrium to induce a rise of atmospheric CO2 concentration greater than the rise which has happened since the industrial revolution. Such a small change is far too small for it to be discernible. But it may have happened as a result of variation to sulphide injected to the oceans by undersea volcanism. And the above paper suggests such sulphide injections to ocean surface layer may also be caused by changes to biota in the ocean.
The AGW-scare is based on the hypothesis that the observed rise of atmospheric CO2 concentration since the industrial revolution results from emissions of CO2 from human activities.
If the observed rise of atmospheric CO2 concentration since the industrial revolution results from volcanic and/or biological introduction of sulphide to the ocean surface layer then the entire AGW-scare is refuted. And the paper under discussion says that sulphide variation in the ocean surface layer does alter concentrations of O2 and CO2.
Richard
Don’t take the politics in this thread seriously. It is quite extreme. The idea that “everyone who I disagree with is a racist” is patently absurd. The idea that the slave trade was a socialist endeavour is not even worth discussing. So why be offended at the rantings of a crazy man (or maybe a crazy woman)?
Sure, it is insulting to a very large number of people but so what? It is too ridiculous to be taken seriously. So ignore it.
Look, this is the internet. There are loonies all over the place. They aren’t a problem so long as they are treated in one of the the following two ways:
1) Politely disagreed with in forums that are appropriate.
2) Ignored in forums where they are irrelevant.
Now, if anyone is confused as to which kind of forum this is, please explain the link between the political organisation of human society and ocean chemistry 93.9 million years ago.
Then consider how the confusion could have been made.
And, if you choose, also consider how relevant people who make such an illogical leap are to any debate.
Temp and Richard
I live in the USA. Although we embrace capitalism here, it is a socialist country that redistributes wealth on a massive scale. I dont know where you live but my gut says that we are all socialists now and the sooner we drop the name calling the sooner we’ll all get along.
Gents – can we focus on the science, please?
Richard, I admit that I’m not deep in the AGW literature, and in the scientific ecosystem, I’m plankton — but I’m not sure that said refutation logically follows. Would not its proponent merely reply that our various industrial processes have added onto what was naturally occurring, thus making the situation “worse” and therefore “even more dangerous?”
Apparently, climate science research is so far removed from trustworthy science that it stands apart from the concern for research fraud, such as in medical research and other disciplines. Note how the LA Times treats research misconduct when it comes to medical research and the billions misspent in that arena.—–
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hiltzik-20131027,0,1228881.column#axzz2j7KJsAIj
hydrogen sulfide-rich conditions
=================
volcanoes.
Richard,
No problems, I really didn’t know that word was in his post, don’t remember the sentence, no offense mean. But so far I am like Hoffer and have never considered myself as socialist and if as a comment said we are all socialists now then I need to trot down to the government office soon and get my share since I live on half of poverty level for the last seven years, am slightly disabled due to a mid-brain aneurysm that caused me to lose all large words (and the word to my songs and why I don’t write so fluidly anymore) and give up this insistence that “I’m not going to be on welfare” bit. But curiously that event didn’t touch my intellect, thoughts, or my music, it’s weird, even enhanced me in other areas.
Enough on that. Back to the article. Yes, you see what I see. My major was physiology, minor chemistry, so I know (or used to know) very much of natural buffer systems and that is where they make no sense to me. As for the living creatures in the oceans, where in the heck do they think the sulfur in their cells comes from in the first place? I mean they are going to raise the level of hydrogen sulfide themselves? I guess if the entire ocean died their sulfur content might add a little but this is getting into crazy talk.
Richard, like what you are saying, and you say it so concise and proper (and fast!) so keep on talking. It takes me usually 30 minutes to just type and find the words for just one comment but writing here on blogs has helped me greatly, I mean a huge improvements before finding Anthony and wuwt back in 2009. And by the way, I’m Jackson so you don’t have to keep me in the “hiding behind a pseudo. Just picked wayne on my first post long ago and my family refuse to let me get any more exposed than I already have, they say I’m way to open and far, far too honest (I get taken advantage of often).
The level of hubris of the ‘experts’, the elite class of intellectuals, is mind boggling. 93.9 million years. point nine. It’s not ‘somewhere around 100 million years’. It’s 93 point 9.
They cannot possibly know that, yet they act as if it is ‘settled’ science and irrefutable. I love it when a Ceolocanth comes meandering to the surface, or another soft tissue is found in a 247.1415927 million year fossil and sends them into a panic.
Oh sure, everyone is aware of the Middle Cretaceous extinction event that was caused by Sauropods’ excessively large SUVs.
It had nothing to do with active tectonics and the evolution/radiation of significant new biota such as diatoms, angiosperms, and coccolithophores. Definitely every event to ever occur on Earth was a direct result of atmospheric CO2 levels.
M Simon says:
October 29, 2013 at 4:39 am
No, animal life is correct. There were probably no “higher” green plants at all until well into the Phanerozoic, arising perhaps in the Ordovician Period, c. 450 Ma, & spreading to land in the Silurian (although some new evidence suggests they might have evolved earlier). Before that the photosynthetic basis of ecosystems remained the lowly, prokaryotic cyanobacteria, also incorrectly called “blue-green algae”, & eukaryotic glaucophytes, red & green algae, the ancestor of “higher” plants.
As heterotrophs, animals benefited from the increased oxygen.
happycrow:
At October 29, 2013 at 6:35 am you ask me
That IS a good question. Many thanks for asking it.
I answer by returning to first principles.
Many (including the IPCC) assume there was a natural balance between natural emissions and natural sequestrations. Hence, they say, the atmospheric CO2 concentration was stable and changed little prior to the addition of the anthropogenic (i.e. from human sources) CO2. They then assume the natural sequestration systems cannot cope with the addition so about half of the human CO2 emission accumulates in the atmosphere to cause the observed rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration. For a much more full explanation of this I refer you to the excellent web site of Ferdinand Engelbeen who is a strong advocate of this anthropogenic cause of the rise.
Some others assert that the observed rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration is a delayed response to the oceans having warmed as part of the recovery from the Little Ice Age.
In our two 1995 papers we considered all the available evidence (sadly, there is not much) concerning the behaviour of the carbon cycle. One of those papers specifically assesses whether the data can determine a natural or an anthropogenic cause of the rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration as measured at Mauna Loa since 1958.
(ref. Rorsch A, Courtney RS & Thoenes D, ‘The Interaction of Climate Change and the Carbon Dioxide Cycle’ E&E v16no2 (2005) ).
We determined that the dynamics of the natural sequestration processes can cope easily with ALL the CO2 emissions both natural and anthropogenic of each year. From this we determined that rise is not accumulation of part of the anthropogenic emission (as is asserted by e.g. the IPCC and Ferdinand).
But the natural sequestration processes do NOT sequester all the CO2 emissions (both natural and anthropogenic) of each year. If they did then there would not be a rise. This leads to the important question; i.e.
Why don’t the natural sequestration processes sequester all the CO2 emissions of each year when their dynamics indicate they can?
We addressed this paradox by modelling the system behaviour with six different models three of which assumed a natural cause of the rise and the other three assumed the anthropogenic emission was the cause of the rise.
All six of ourmodels each matched the empirical data of the atmospheric CO2 concentration for each year to within the stated measurement accuracy of the Mauna Loa data. Thus, each of our models is better than the Bern model used by the IPCC because the IPCC uses unjustifiable 5-year smoothing to get its model to fit the empirical data.
This match occurs because – according to each of our models – the total CO2 emission of any year affects – and is affected by – the equilibrium state of the entire system. Some processes of the system are very slow with rate constants of years and decades. Hence, the system takes decades to fully adjust to a new equilibrium.
This leads to a direct answer to your question. The anthropogenic emission cannot directly add to rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration because the rate of that rise is limited by the rate constants in the processes of the carbon cycle. But the anthropogenic CO2 may possibly be the cause of the rise because the addition of anthropogenic CO2 may have caused the change in the equilibrium of the carbon cycle which is providing the rise. However, that possible cause is only a possibility. The six models which each provide that indication are three models which each assumes a natural cause of the change and three which each assumes the anthropogenic CO2 emission is the cause of the change.
But there is important information which follows from this.
Each of the models in our paper matches the available empirical data without use of any ‘fiddle-factor’ such as the ‘5-year smoothing’ the IPCC uses to get its model to agree with the empirical data. So, if one of the six models of our paper is adopted then there is a 5:1 probability that the choice is wrong. And other models are probably also possible. And the six models each give a different indication of future atmospheric CO2 concentration for the same future anthropogenic emission of carbon dioxide.
Data that fits all the possible causes is not evidence for the true cause. Data that only fits the true cause would be evidence of the true cause. But our findings demonstrate that there is no data which only fits either an anthropogenic or a natural cause of the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration. Hence, the only factual statements that can be made on the true cause of the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration are
(a) the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration may have an anthropogenic cause, or a natural cause, or some combination of anthropogenic and natural causes,
but
(b) there is no evidence that the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration has a mostly anthropogenic cause or a mostly natural cause.
Hence, using the available data it cannot be known what if any effect altering the anthropogenic emission of CO2 will have on the future atmospheric CO2 concentration.
The paper which is the subject of this thread could be a demonstration from geological data of a significant – possibly the only significant – cause of the change to the equilibrium between CO2 in the atmosphere and the ocean surface layer.
I hope that is clear and what you wanted.
Richard
So what does somebody with a fish tank do if the dissolved oxygen gets too low? All you need is an air pump and some tubing (on a grand scale for the oceans).
But, that’s only if you see that low dissolved oxygen in the oceans is a problem that MUST be dealt with. Otherwise, leave things alone so the situation fixes itself.
wayne:
Thankyou for your post at October 29, 2013 at 7:27 am, especially its first paragraph.
Obviously I was not – and could not have been – aware of your personal circumstance. Clearly, your paragraph does explain what happened in the disagreement between you and me. And equally clearly, in my ignorance of your situation I assumed you were merely another troll joining the ‘feeding frenzy’. I now know and understand that my assumption was mistaken, and I offer you my apology for reacting to you in a blunt manner which was not appropriate in your case.
It pleases me that we see the paper under discussion has importance and for the same reasons.
Richard