From the UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER and the department of doom modeling comes this press release that suggests that somehow Earth would lose all (or most of) it’s oxygen due to global warming. However, it seems the Earth has been through this before and life survived, as this graph from Dr. Vincent Gray shows.:
Global warming disaster could suffocate life on planet Earth, research shows
University of Leicester researchers reveal how Earth’s oxygen could dramatically fall due to change in ocean temperature of just several degrees
Falling oxygen levels caused by global warming could be a greater threat to the survival of life on planet Earth than flooding, according to researchers from the University of Leicester.
A study led by Sergei Petrovskii, Professor in Applied Mathematics from the University of Leicester’s Department of Mathematics, has shown that an increase in the water temperature of the world’s oceans of around six degrees Celsius — which some scientists predict could occur as soon as 2100 — could stop oxygen production by phytoplankton by disrupting the process of photosynthesis.
Professor Petrovskii explained: “Global warming has been a focus of attention of science and politics for about two decades now. A lot has been said about its expected disastrous consequences; perhaps the most notorious is the global flooding that may result from melting of Antarctic ice if the warming exceeds a few degrees compared to the pre-industrial level. However, it now appears that this is probably not the biggest danger that the warming can cause to the humanity.
“About two-thirds of the planet’s total atmospheric oxygen is produced by ocean phytoplankton – and therefore cessation would result in the depletion of atmospheric oxygen on a global scale. This would likely result in the mass mortality of animals and humans.”
The team developed a new model of oxygen production in the ocean that takes into account basic interactions in the plankton community, such as oxygen production in photosynthesis, oxygen consumption because of plankton breathing and zooplankton feeding on phytoplankton.
While mainstream research often focuses on the CO2 cycle, as carbon dioxide is the agent mainly responsible for global warming, few researchers have explored the effects of global warming on oxygen production.
###
The 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference will be held in Le Bourget, Paris, from Nov. 30 to Dec. 11. It will be the 21st yearly session of the Conference of the Parties to the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the 11th session of the Meeting of the Parties to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. The conference objective is to achieve a legally binding and universal agreement on climate, from all the nations of the world.
The paper ‘Mathematical Modelling of Plankton-Oxygen Dynamics Under the Climate Change’ published in the Bulletin of Mathematical Biology is available here: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11538-015-0126-0
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so the oxygen content dropped around the P/T event? give or take a couple million years?
Another man caused planetary disaster to add to the list under my Axiom: Man made planetary disasters Will Not Come to Pass. They never have and they never will.
As far as I can determine, the warmest SST currently is below 32 degrees C as shown here:
http://polar.ncep.noaa.gov/sst/oper/global_sst_oper0.png
Adding 6 degrees gives us 38 degrees, max, and that’s for very small regions of the oceans.
Old research (197?) actually reviewing measured plankton growth rates versus temperature show an exponential growth rate to 40 degrees, where growth then levels off. This research is here:
http://fishbull.noaa.gov/70-4/eppley.pdf
I’m beginning to believe that many ‘scientists’ don’t have a clue how to research, or even what the word means.
That 1972 paper says the following:
“Temperatures in excess of the optimum for growth result in a much steeper decline in specific growth rate with increasing temperature than do suboptimal temperatures; growth in this thermal region would be risky if the ambient temperature were subject to fluctuations of a few degrees.”
It’s one of the references listed in the paper which is the subject of this thread.
The issue is what is the thermal region in which such a decline takes place. This paper shows it is at least 40 degrees, far in excess of existing SSTs, and greater than existing SSTs + 6 degrees. I suspect all h takes place in the growth rate when the water approaches 100 degrees!
Professor Petrovskii is probably quite clever but he is a mathematician.
Mathematicians operate within a given set of rules. Develop a formula, plug in the numbers, however unrealistic, and out pop some other numbers that are your answer.
So, warm the ocean by 6C and see what happens ?
The good professor’s work, apart from a few statements of the bleeding obvious, is a great example of gigo………..garbage in, garbage out
I suspect his paper results from contemporary university pressures to publish or perish.
If your paper is really bad it will end up being referred to more often than a moderately good paper…..more citations must mean that your department is more relevant and more likely to gain more funding [ ! ].
Abundance and form of the most abundant elements in Earth’s continental crust.
http://www.gly.uga.edu/railsback/Fundamentals/ElementalAbundanceTableP.pdf
Order of Weight % Molar % Volume %
abundance Element in crust in crust in crust Typical natural form at Earth surface
1 Oxygen 46.3 % 60.2% 94.2% O2- in minerals and H2O; small amount
as elemental O2 in atmosphere
2 Silicon 28.2 20.8 0.8 Almost all as Si4+ in silicate minerals;
some as H4SiO4 in seawater
3 Aluminum 8.1 6.2 0.4 Almost all as Al3+ in minerals
4 Hydrogen 0.1 2.9 – Almost all as H+
in H2O, OHin
minerals, and HCO3
–
5 Sodium 2.4 2.2 1.1 All as Na+
, largely in minerals
but also in seawater
6 Calcium 4.1 2.1 1.2 All as Ca2+, largely in minerals
but also in seawater
7 Iron 5.4 2.0 0.4 Mostly as Fe2+ and Fe3+ in minerals
8 Magnesium 2.3 2.0 0.3 All as Mg2+, largely in minerals
but also in seawater
9 Potassium 2.1 1.1 1.5 All as K+
, largely in minerals
but also in seawater
10 Titanium 0.5 0.2 0.04 Almost all as Ti4+ in minerals
The pdf spreadsheet doesn’t line up in a comment but the jist is that Oxygen is the most abundant element on Earth. Period. By far. There is absolutely no way that oxygen is going anywhere.
Well, I guess if you put government in charge of it, they could create a shortage, but we’re not going to do that! Are we?