3 ms·

Coal-burning in Siberia led to climate change 250M years ago (2020)

31 points by zeristor 5y ago

zeristor 5y ago
Just looking at the latest video of the Icelandic eruption made me think what would happen if a volcano erupted through a seam of coal. It seems this happened 250 million years ago.
uncoder0 5y ago
So they're theorizing that this event is what caused the >1500ppm C02 spike ~250m years ago. Currently we're at ~400ppm. Seems like we shouldn't push it too much further because nature could always throw one of these events at us. If I'm reading the graphs correctly the atmospheric CO2 was approximately at the same level we are today. Not my area of expertise so interested to see other's takes on this.
- loopz 5y ago
  Humans are nowhere near even slowing down CO2 emissions. CO2 emissions are instead accelerating further [1]. Carbon Dioxide Levels Lower Than Thought During Super Greenhouse Period [2]. Do high levels of CO2 in the past contradict the warming effect of CO2 [3]? There are also other drivers for climate besides CO2. Life on earth have enjoyed unparallelled stability for past 10K years [4], so have no historical frame of reference for what happens if temperature breaks free from this zone. Extinction events on earth for past 300 million years are associated with CO2 concentrations above 900 ppm [5], page 8. [1] https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/gl_gr.html https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/gl_gr.html [2] https://www.dartmouth.edu/press-releases/carbon-dioxide-levels-lower-101217.html https://www.dartmouth.edu/press-releases/carbon-dioxide-leve... [3] https://skepticalscience.com/co2-higher-in-past-intermediate.htm https://skepticalscience.com/co2-higher-in-past-intermediate... [4] https://earth.org/data_visualization/a-brief-history-of-co2/ https://earth.org/data_visualization/a-brief-history-of-co2/ [5] http://burro.case.edu/Academics/USNA229/impactfromthedeep.pdf http://burro.case.edu/Academics/USNA229/impactfromthedeep.pd... Where this gets complicated is wether earth is due another ice age or not as well.
  - uncoder0 5y ago
    So number [2] does not reference the same time period the referenced time period in your article is 1/2 the concentrations from 250-300m years ago. There is no disputing the numbers from 200-300m years ago as far as I can tell. [4] is the same graph I looked at. [3] Is not something I even tried to suggest. [5] is obvious and well known in this area of research. I asked a couple specific questions only response [1] addresses them partially. I'm not saying the planet isn't getting hotter by any means. I was asking if I had the periods/eras correct and the CO2 levels so I could appropriately create a frame of reference.
  - imtringued 5y ago
    >Do high levels of CO2 in the past contradict the warming effect of CO2 [3]? There are also other drivers for climate besides CO2. The sun gets hotter over the course of millions of years as it is inching closer to death. However we are talking about millions of years, not the last 200 years. CO2 levels on earth fall and we end up maintaining roughly the same temperatures. If we reach record CO2 levels we are also going hit record temperatures. When I was still in high school I got fooled by so many articles talking about how we are in or entering a solar minimum and how it is about to get colder. What a joke. If the heating effect of human activity is enough to outdo a solar minimum we know it's human made. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjgCaF9BGUo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjgCaF9BGUo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBF6F4Bi6Sg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBF6F4Bi6Sg
Aerroon 5y ago
Time to start building a carbon capture startup. We will have to do carbon capture eventually. There's no way around it. Potential events like this make it even more necessary.
MichaelMoser123 5y ago
my reply will probably be downvoted, still: some fourty years ago we were all very worried about nuclear war, so scientist warned about nuclear winter, now there is a lot of debate on this [1]. Today we are worried about climate change, and now evidence was found that a similar event caused severe changes in the past. Is there a correlation here? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter#Criticism_and_debate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter#Criticism_and_d...
- fogihujy 5y ago
  Yes, it did indeed happen in the past. That's why we should be careful not to do it ourselves: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian%E2%80%93Triassic_extinction_event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian%E2%80%93Triassic_extin...
- zeristor 5y ago
  The article suggests that this could be the root cause of one of the largest extinction events. It seems like a very plausible explanation, more and more supporting evidence would go some way to establishing it as an explanation: “This is ideal ground for researchers seeking an understanding of the Permo-Triassic extinction event, which affected all life on Earth approximately 252 million years ago. During this event, up to 96% of all marine species and 70% of terrestrial vertebrate species became extinct.”
  - imtringued 5y ago
    If you want to understand the past (crisis) understand the present (crisis)?

31 points by zeristor 5y ago

Just looking at the latest video of the Icelandic eruption made me think what would happen if a volcano erupted through a seam of coal. It seems this happened 250 million years ago.

uncoder0 5y ago

So they're theorizing that this event is what caused the >1500ppm C02 spike ~250m years ago. Currently we're at ~400ppm. Seems like we shouldn't push it too much further because nature could always throw one of these events at us. If I'm reading the graphs correctly the atmospheric CO2 was approximately at the same level we are today. Not my area of expertise so interested to see other's takes on this.

loopz 5y ago
Humans are nowhere near even slowing down CO2 emissions. CO2 emissions are instead accelerating further [1]. Carbon Dioxide Levels Lower Than Thought During Super Greenhouse Period [2]. Do high levels of CO2 in the past contradict the warming effect of CO2 [3]? There are also other drivers for climate besides CO2. Life on earth have enjoyed unparallelled stability for past 10K years [4], so have no historical frame of reference for what happens if temperature breaks free from this zone. Extinction events on earth for past 300 million years are associated with CO2 concentrations above 900 ppm [5], page 8. [1] https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/gl_gr.html https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/gl_gr.html [2] https://www.dartmouth.edu/press-releases/carbon-dioxide-levels-lower-101217.html https://www.dartmouth.edu/press-releases/carbon-dioxide-leve... [3] https://skepticalscience.com/co2-higher-in-past-intermediate.htm https://skepticalscience.com/co2-higher-in-past-intermediate... [4] https://earth.org/data_visualization/a-brief-history-of-co2/ https://earth.org/data_visualization/a-brief-history-of-co2/ [5] http://burro.case.edu/Academics/USNA229/impactfromthedeep.pdf http://burro.case.edu/Academics/USNA229/impactfromthedeep.pd... Where this gets complicated is wether earth is due another ice age or not as well.
- uncoder0 5y ago
  So number [2] does not reference the same time period the referenced time period in your article is 1/2 the concentrations from 250-300m years ago. There is no disputing the numbers from 200-300m years ago as far as I can tell. [4] is the same graph I looked at. [3] Is not something I even tried to suggest. [5] is obvious and well known in this area of research. I asked a couple specific questions only response [1] addresses them partially. I'm not saying the planet isn't getting hotter by any means. I was asking if I had the periods/eras correct and the CO2 levels so I could appropriately create a frame of reference.
- imtringued 5y ago
  >Do high levels of CO2 in the past contradict the warming effect of CO2 [3]? There are also other drivers for climate besides CO2. The sun gets hotter over the course of millions of years as it is inching closer to death. However we are talking about millions of years, not the last 200 years. CO2 levels on earth fall and we end up maintaining roughly the same temperatures. If we reach record CO2 levels we are also going hit record temperatures. When I was still in high school I got fooled by so many articles talking about how we are in or entering a solar minimum and how it is about to get colder. What a joke. If the heating effect of human activity is enough to outdo a solar minimum we know it's human made. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjgCaF9BGUo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjgCaF9BGUo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBF6F4Bi6Sg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBF6F4Bi6Sg

Aerroon 5y ago

Time to start building a carbon capture startup. We will have to do carbon capture eventually. There's no way around it. Potential events like this make it even more necessary.

MichaelMoser123 5y ago

my reply will probably be downvoted, still: some fourty years ago we were all very worried about nuclear war, so scientist warned about nuclear winter, now there is a lot of debate on this [1]. Today we are worried about climate change, and now evidence was found that a similar event caused severe changes in the past. Is there a correlation here? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter#Criticism_and_debate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter#Criticism_and_d...

fogihujy 5y ago
Yes, it did indeed happen in the past. That's why we should be careful not to do it ourselves: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian%E2%80%93Triassic_extinction_event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian%E2%80%93Triassic_extin...
zeristor 5y ago
The article suggests that this could be the root cause of one of the largest extinction events. It seems like a very plausible explanation, more and more supporting evidence would go some way to establishing it as an explanation: “This is ideal ground for researchers seeking an understanding of the Permo-Triassic extinction event, which affected all life on Earth approximately 252 million years ago. During this event, up to 96% of all marine species and 70% of terrestrial vertebrate species became extinct.”
- imtringued 5y ago
  If you want to understand the past (crisis) understand the present (crisis)?