In the interest of fairness about climate change

POSTED BY: Niki2
UPDATED: Thursday, February 23, 2012 00:43
VIEWED: 2736
PAGE 1 of 1

NIKI2

Sunday, February 19, 2012 6:01 PM (P)

Just to screw up those who call me a die-hard liberal and whatever other left-wing pejoratives they can come up with, I offer this:

Quote:
Smoke and Mirrors in the Climate Debate

A new book by an executive at a major German power ultility claims we aren't facing a climate catastrophe and rejects current mainstream ideas on global warming. Both climate change skeptics and those who warn of global warming profit from such controversies -- so who should we believe?

Science can be so easy -- at least when it is stripped of its nuances. Fritz Vahrenholt and his colleague, geologist Sebastian Lüning, say the world isn't facing a climate catastrophe. The two are peddling precisely the kind of theory that generates publicity and allows both sides of the debate to profit. But it also leaves people wondering who they should believe.

The authors both work for German electric utility company RWE, where Vahrenholt is an executive. In their book "Die Kalte Sonne" ("The Cold Sun"), they claim that important research about climate change has been kept under wraps and that cries of an impending climate catastrophe are misleading. Their book arrived in book stores in Germany last week, with considerable media attention.

Following their statements, newspapers like the conservative tabloid Bild are dismissing what they call the "CO2 lie." This camp says it's not greenhouse gases that are behind the problem. It's the sun that determines climate change, they argue.

The book is the latest salvo in the ongoing debate over global climate change. It's a perpetual conflict that leaves people asking questions like: What's really going on with the climate? What kind of picture can you draw from current research? The most reliable source on the topic is the climate report produced by the United Nations. The Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) puts together a report every few years about the state of knowledge in the field. The report documents in detail where researchers are unsure or just don't know. Contrary to what many IPCC critics say, however, the report reads like a book filled with doubts. But there's also a "summary for political decision makers" section, which is put together by civil servants rather than researchers, and which can appear to be biased in places.

Feeding the Conspiracy Theorists The ideas espoused in Vahrenholt and Lüning's book can also be found in the UN climate report. Yet the two still accuse the IPCC of concealing the true facts. By spreading that claim, they are further fueling conspiracy theorists.

The fact that the IPCC has come to different conclusions than the two authors is simply because its report contains not only the theory being promoted by Vahrenholt-Lüning, but also myriad others. Indeed, judgments about climate change cannot be reached as easily as the two RWE authors would have one think. In an attempt to justify himself, Varenholt told SPIEGEL in an interview he wanted to "revitalize the deadlocked debate."

Vahrenholt and his allies have jumped headfirst into an emotionally charged debate between those who warn of climate change and those who are skeptical of it. The problem is that both sides profit from the conflict -- at the expense of the general public and scientific credibility. On the one side are the scientists, lobby groups and commentators who are constantly talking about a "consensus" among climate researchers. But for many important questions, this supposed consensus never even existed. On the other side are critics like Vahrenholt and Lüning, with their extreme theories.

An Old Theory with Little Evidence

The case of Vahrenholt and Lüning is a clear-cut one: They've handpicked the theories that best back their thesis -- the primary one being that the sun has been getting weaker since 2005 and will continue to do so in the coming decades. Together wit

CHRISISALL

Sunday, February 19, 2012 6:19 PM (P)

Again, both sides have their motivation.

Is Venice deeper under water than before?
Is there less ice in the Arctic?
Are storms more unpredictable than ever before in your lifetime?
Can you make as many snowmen recently as you could when you were a kid?

You don't even need the so-called experts. If you have half a brain, you know what's happening.
Now if you want to haggle over the *CAUSE*, be my guest. I don't really care, since it isn't a thing that can be stopped, nature-caused, man-made, or some combination.

The not-so-much-laughing-anymore Chrisisall

ANTHONYT

Sunday, February 19, 2012 6:35 PM (P)

Quote:
Is Venice deeper under water than before?

Hello,

That's a bad example, I think. Venice's construction is responsible for its sinking, not the global water level.

--Anthony

_______________________________________________

"In every war, the state enacts a tax of freedom upon the citizenry. The unspoken promise is that the tax shall be revoked at war's end. Endless war holds no such promise. Hence, Eternal War is Eternal Slavery." --Admiral Robert J. Henner

GEEZER

Sunday, February 19, 2012 9:31 PM (P)

Quote:
Originally posted by chrisisall:
Now if you want to haggle over the *CAUSE*, be my guest. I don't really care, since it isn't a thing that can be stopped, nature-caused, man-made, or some combination.

Pretty much my view.

If it's not man-made, there's no way to stop it and efforts should be made to prepare for the effects.

If it is man-made, there's probably still no way to stop it, as folks in China and India (and sooner or later, Africa) are gonna want their A/C and TV and cars too, and aren't going to give them up because the folks who've already got them ask nice. So once again the only thing to do is prepare for the effects.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

AURAPTOR

Sunday, February 19, 2012 9:44 PM (P)

Quote:
Originally posted by chrisisall:
Again, both sides have their motivation.

Well heyall yeah they do ! MY motivation is massive socio/economic taxes, rules and regulations which will yield to exactly ZERO in " solving " the climate issue.

Because there IS no climate issue. There certainly is no crisis. Man adapts to climate,it does not adapt to man.

" I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend. "

NIKI2

Sunday, February 19, 2012 10:22 PM (P)

Anthony; I agree. When we were in Venice way back in the early '60s, they had planks all over the place because of the water rising...it's the construction and, depending on the water level, it endures floods. That's been an issue for eons, they can just never figure out/agree on how to "fix" it.

Gee whiz, I guess water doesn't "adapt" to man either, nor air, nor land, so we can ignore all the air, water and land pollution around us, 'cuz it's just natural. You betcha.

Oh, wait, isn't air "climate" too?

Think I'll go find more entertaining things to do now, and leave Alt.Univ. to live his life here. Those who want to stay and argue his absurd points are welcome to do so. Keeps him busy, anyway.

AURAPTOR

Sunday, February 19, 2012 10:25 PM (P)

Quote:
Originally posted by Niki2:

Oh, wait, isn't air "climate" too?

And folks make fun of things Sarah Palin says ?

Crassic.

" I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend. "

OONJERAH

Monday, February 20, 2012 4:37 AM (P)

Hey, did anyone see The Age of Stupid starring Pete Postlethwaite?
It's set in the future. A historian looks back on Now.

"All I suggest is a man hears what he wants to hear, and disregards the rest" ~Paul Simon

SIGNYM

Monday, February 20, 2012 5:30 PM (P)

As Chris said, there are all kinds of "right now" events which demonstrate that the globe is warming, and there are others (ocean acidification) which point the finger at carbon dioxide. (Carbon dioxide dissolved in water create acid).

Aside from "right now", there is another causal indicator, which the Great Dying

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the Earth's most severe extinction event, with up to 96% of all marine species and 70% of terrestrial vertebrate species becoming extinct. It is the only known mass extinction of insects.Some 57% of all families and 83% of all genera became extinct. Because so much biodiversity was lost, the recovery of life on Earth took significantly longer than after any other extinction event. This event has been described as the "mother of all mass extinctions."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian%E2%80%93Triassic_extinction_event

There was a geological event which occurred back then: the formation of the Siberian Trappa (Traps, Stairs).

Quote:
The Siberian Traps (Russian: Сибирские траппы Sibirskie trappi) form a large region of volcanic rock, known as a large igneous province, in the Russian region of Siberia. The massive eruptive event which formed the traps, one of the largest known volcanic events of the last 500 million years of Earth's geological history, continued for a million years and spanned the Permian–Triassic boundary, about 251 to 250 million years ago....
Vast volumes of basaltic lava paved over a large expanse of primeval Siberia in a flood basalt event. Today the area covered is about 2 million km² – roughly equal to western Europe in land area

It was, as the geology books tell us, the largest volcanic event in Earth's history that we know of- larger than the formation of the Deccan Plateau, larger than any "super-volcano" that we've found (like Yellowstone, the last eruption a piddling 60 miles wide).

The unique feature of the Siberian Trappa was that the lava rose through vast coal fields. Massive amounts of methane and carbon dioxide were released over a million years, acidifying the ocean and turning it anoxic (without oxygen), which some scientists theorize expalins why so many ocean-based life forms died off.

The latest research which support this theory is the detection of coal flyash in ocean sediments from that time.

Quote:
The remains of these eruptions, called the Siberian Traps, now cover about 2 million square kilometers of Russia. ... over 1,000 Gt (Gigatonnes) of magma were released during the eruptions that created them, and they are thought to have put material into a plume that rose over 40 kilometers into the atmosphere.

Some researchers... have focused on a secondary effect of the eruptions: burning coal. There is evidence that the hot magma intruded into large deposits of coal found in Siberia and set it alight. Some estimates suggest that over 3 trillion tons of carbon could have been placed into the atmosphere through the burning of coal alone (that's in addition to the carbon dioxide released by the volcanism proper). That release would come in the form of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Methane is rapidly oxidized into carbon dioxide, which could then contribute to ocean acidification.

As if all of that weren't enough, the new paper, published in Nature Geoescience, indicates that the Siberian Traps eruptions might have added another insult to the oceans: toxic coal ash. The authors examined deep ocean sediments from a site that was off the west coast of the supercontinent at the time. To get there with the prevailing winds, material from the eruption would have to travel around the globe, a distance the authors estimate as more than 20,000 kilometers. And yet the sediments contain organic material that, under the microscope, looks remarkably similar to coal ash obtained from a modern power plant.

The authors were able to detect three pulses of this material derived from coal burning in the half-million years

ANTHONYT

Monday, February 20, 2012 5:44 PM (P)

Hello,

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Some estimates suggest that over 3 trillion tons of carbon could have been placed into the atmosphere through the burning of coal alone (that's in addition to the carbon dioxide released by the volcanism proper)

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(From wikipedia) one tonne of atmospheric carbon is equivalent to 44/12 or 3.7 tonnes of carbon dioxide).

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(From wikipedia) The burning of fossil fuels produces around 21.3 billion tonnes (21.3 gigatonnes) of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year

Based on this evidence, and my discalcula, the prehistoric coal burning event would have produced 11.1 trillion tons of carbon dioxide.

Thus the prehistoric coal burning event described is equivalent to 521 (modern) years of fuel burning.

Unless I misplaced a decimal point. Which I do from time to time.

--Anthony

_______________________________________________

"In every war, the state enacts a tax of freedom upon the citizenry. The unspoken promise is that the tax shall be revoked at war's end. Endless war holds no such promise. Hence, Eternal War is Eternal Slavery." --Admiral Robert J. Henner

SIGNYM

Monday, February 20, 2012 5:56 PM (P)

TONY- Yes, those dang decimal points! I misplace them all the time too! THANK YOU for doing the research and calculation. It provides context for our current reality.

1KIKI

Monday, February 20, 2012 5:58 PM (P)

Oh hey Anthony, back in physics we used to joke that along with conservation of mass and energy, there was also conservation of decimal places. If you lost or found one in your calculation, someone else was experiencing the opposite. No worries.

SIGNYM

Monday, February 20, 2012 7:37 PM (P)

Yes, we used to joke about those decimal places. pretending to shake off off a hand and saying "Now I have 0.5 fingers!" or picking one up, like an imaginary paper dot, and saying "Now I have 50 fingers!" Decimal errors were so common in class that if you got the right numbers, albeit an order of magnitude ... or two, or three... off, you figured you got the right answer. In my very first real job at a pharmaceutical company, I was so impressed with my supervisor, Rosie Gubbins, when she got the right numbers but wrong order of magnitude. She would not let that calculation go until she had found and killed the error.

The funny thing was, back in the day, I asked her what her husband did and she said he was a "stack tester". When I asked her want THAT meant she said "He climbs smokestacks and gets dirty". I think I gave her a very blank look. Little did I know that about three years later, I TOO would be a "stack tester". And yes, I climbed smokestacks and got dirty! I should post some pictures some day of me in my stack testing years.

That was a nice trip down memory lane!
------------------

Anyway, I checked the calculations using a spreadsheet (my calc skills are so enfeebled!), and you've got the right estimate.

So, I don't know whether to be happy or sad. You could look at it ONE way and say: Yippee! We've got about 500 years to Armageddon! Lot's of time to figure things out!

OTOH you could look at it another way and say that our RATE of release is about 200,000 times FASTER than during the Siberian Trap formation, and that we have already passed the tipping point.

Needs more thought. **thinking**

ANTHONYT

Monday, February 20, 2012 7:57 PM (P)

Hello,

As long as we have a working biosphere, we're not past the tipping point.

Quote:

The Colorado River Commission of Nevada estimates that we will run out of petroleum in 98 years, natural gas in 166 years and coal in 230 years (Read more: http://www.livestrong.com/article/179884-fossil-fuels-information/#ixz
z1mxB4mQRw)

Based on this estimate from I don't know who they are, we will run out of fossil fuels and be forced into renewable energy sources whether we like it or not, and well before 500 years have passed. In fact, absolute depletion estimates mean little, because economy will force us to switch off of fossil fuels before we have absolute depletion.

But I actually think the way things are going, the 22nd century will be almost totally powered by renewable energy sources. This will happen not just out of environmental concerns, but for practical reasons.

--Anthony

_______________________________________________

"In every war, the state enacts a tax of freedom upon the citizenry. The unspoken promise is that the tax shall be revoked at war's end. Endless war holds no such promise. Hence, Eternal War is Eternal Slavery." --Admiral Robert J. Henner

KPO

Monday, February 20, 2012 8:00 PM (P)

Quote:
Thus the prehistoric coal burning event described is equivalent to 521 (modern) years of fuel burning.

I agree with that. But remember that:

"The massive eruptive event which formed the traps, one of the largest known volcanic events of the last 500 million years of Earth's geological history, continued for a million years"

So our current fossil fuel burning is releasing carbon at a much faster rate - 2000 times as fast (it works out).

I suspect the volcanic event released much more carbon directly, than it did via the lava flowing through coal fields.

It's not personal. It's just war.

ANTHONYT

Monday, February 20, 2012 8:12 PM (P)

Quote:
So our current fossil fuel burning is releasing carbon at a much faster rate - 2000 times as fast (it works out).

Hello,

Well... maybe. But probably not. We don't know how long the coal took to burn. We only know how long the entire eruption took. The actual burning of the coal may have occurred over a much shorter span of time.

Quote:
I suspect the volcanic event released much more carbon directly, than it did via the lava flowing through coal fields.

I absolutely agree with you, based on things I've read about the carbon contamination caused by modern volcanic events. The coal burning in this scenario may have been the cherry on top, and not the Sundae.

--Anthony

_______________________________________________

"In every war, the state enacts a tax of freedom upon the citizenry. The unspoken promise is that the tax shall be revoked at war's end. Endless war holds no such promise. Hence, Eternal War is Eternal Slavery." --Admiral Robert J. Henner

SIGNYM

Wednesday, February 22, 2012 4:50 PM (P)

Tony, normal volcanoes don't emit much carbon, either as carbon dioxide or as methane, so.... what have you been reading??? It doesn't square with what I know. (OTOH volcanoes are notorious emitters of sulfur. Different thing altogether)

Quote:
Human activities emit roughly 135 times as much climate-warming carbon dioxide as volcanoes each year.
Volcanoes emit less than cars and trucks, and less, even, than cement production.
Climate change skeptics have claimed the opposite.

http://news.discovery.com/earth/volcanoes-co2-people-emissions-climate
-110627.html

ETA

But, interesting point, so I looked it up. This paper says that during the formation of the Deccan (Indian) plateau the basaltic flood was

Quote:
capable of releasing 10,000 Tg of SO2, resulting in atmospheric loadings of
1000 Tg a− 1 during a sustained decade-long eruptive event. We apply this model of flood basalt volcanism to estimate the potential mass
of CO2 and SO2 released during formation of the ∼65 Ma Deccan province. The Deccan lava-pile contains the record of hundreds of
enormous pāhoehoe flow-fields erupted within a period of about 1 Ma. Consequently, atmospheric perturbations associated with SO2
emissions from just one of these long-lasting eruptions were likely to have been severe, and constantly augmented over a decade or
longer. By contrast, the amounts of CO2 released would have been small compared with the mass already present in the atmosphere, and
thus much more limited in effect.

seismo.berkeley.edu/~manga/LIPS/self06.pdf

ANTHONYT

Wednesday, February 22, 2012 4:58 PM (P)

Hello,

I've been reading that Volcanoes comprise about 1% of carbon emissions, on average, each year.

This is an average. Active eruptions spike carbon levels a great deal, but Earth's volcanoes are not all actively erupting all the time.

Except this volcano was incredibly huge and it was actively erupting for an amazingly long time, so I think it very likely that it emitted more carbon than the coal did.

Surely you agree? I didn't think this opinion to be controversial.

--Anthony

_______________________________________________

"In every war, the state enacts a tax of freedom upon the citizenry. The unspoken promise is that the tax shall be revoked at war's end. Endless war holds no such promise. Hence, Eternal War is Eternal Slavery." --Admiral Robert J. Henner

SIGNYM

Wednesday, February 22, 2012 5:08 PM (P)

Um... I added to my post (above), it's something I'm looking up. There was more than one basalt flood event, altho the Siberian Trappa (Traps) is the largest. One event was during the formation of the Deccan plateau, the other was during the breakup of Pangea. I don't think either of those other two events involved coal fields. Although ALL were related to extinction events, the extinction event from the Siberian Traps was unparalleled.

-----------

Quote:
Subaerial continental flood basalt volcanism is distinguished from all other volcanic activity by the repeated effusion of huge batches of basaltic magma (~102–103 km3 per eruption) over short periods of geologic time (<1 Myr). Flood basalt provinces are constructed of thick stacks of extensive pahoehoe-dominated lava flow fields and are the products of hundreds of eruptions. Each huge eruption comes from a dyke-fed fissure tens to hundreds of kilometres long and lasts about a decade or more. Such spatial and temporal patterns of lava production do not occur at any other time in Earth history, and, during eruptions, gas fluxes of ~1 Gt per year of SO2 and CO2 over periods of a decade or more are possible. Importantly, the atmospheric cooling associated with aerosols generated from the SO2 emissions of just one flood basalt eruption is likely to have been severe and would have persisted for a decade or longer. By contrast, warming due to volcanogenic CO2 released during an eruption is estimated to have been insignificant because the mass of CO2 would have been small compared to that already present in the atmosphere.

gnews.wustl.edu/elements/e1_5/e1_5_art_self.pdf

Anyway, there's all kinds of interesting papers on the topic which show that many mass extinctions are associated with large basaltic floods. (A few extinction events are associated with meteor strikes). The Siberian flood was the only one (that I know of) which involved coal fields. There should be a paper out there which looks at the terrestrial die-off versus the oceanic die-off. I expect that the extinction with the highest marine die-offs would reflect the highest carbon dioxide output due to massive long-term ocean acidification, while the extinctions with the largest terrestrial impact would reflect the relatively short-term cooling impacts from sulfur emissions.

http://www.semp.us/publications/biot_reader.php?BiotID=681

Either way, what I "get" out of the information is that when you put a lot of shit into the atmosphere, you will wipe out a lot of species.

BYTEMITE

Wednesday, February 22, 2012 5:27 PM (P)

I'd say it depends on the volcano.

Most of the really deep rock isn't carbonaceous at all (it's mafic - magnesium and iron), so no degassing of CO2. Ocean spreading (one of only three ways you can have any kind of volcanism) gives off no CO2. However... Organic activity at depth, and decay, can give off CO2 (and methane). This stuff tends to get trapped on the ocean floor by a layer of dead sediment crap that continually rains down from above.

A hot spot plume will give off CO2 if it erupts into dead material.

Subduction is a trickier example of volcanism - basically when you're talking continental crustal thickness, the pressure gradient doesn't actually allow this stuff to melt, unless you have a infusion of sea water associated with it. Then you get rhyolitic siliclastic volcanism... Which probably does give off CO2.

It's not an insignificant amount, because we know volcanism was sufficient to reverse snowball earth scenarios about three times. But, whether it compares to the current output of respiring species on earth and industrialism? Good question.

The worst die off was the P-T boundary, which did have significant marine die off... But then again, there wasn't exactly much non-plant terrestrial biomass at the time to talk about. So some question remains whether the stressor there really was all that marine specific. I'd heard it bantered around that it might have been the result of the Siberian methane traps being released, which would drive up the temperature. That wouldn't really be introducing more CO2 into the system, though I suppose simply driving up the temperature might increase ocean acidification without additional CO2 to sequester.

STORYMARK

Wednesday, February 22, 2012 6:31 PM (P)

Quote:
Originally posted by chrisisall:
Now if you want to haggle over the *CAUSE*, be my guest. I don't really care, since it isn't a thing that can be stopped, nature-caused, man-made, or some combination.

Stopped outright, of course not. The damage mitigated, now thats a different issue.

"Goram it kid, let's frak this thing and go home! Engage!"

SIGNYM

Wednesday, February 22, 2012 6:59 PM (P)

Well, if WE are the cause then WE can stop it, or at least reduce it. Not that it will help in the immediate future, but in the next 100 years... for our children's children, and theirs.

And whether we are the cause or not, we should certainly be looking into surviving it. Alas, we are doing neither of these.

ANTHONYT

Wednesday, February 22, 2012 7:03 PM (P)

Quote:
"And whether we are the cause or not, we should certainly be looking into surviving it. Alas, we are doing neither of these."

Hello,

While I hesitate to find anything good about it, the War on Drugs has spurred considerable research and development into hydroponics. Clearly, that is a key technology to surviving climate change.

--Anthony

_______________________________________________

"In every war, the state enacts a tax of freedom upon the citizenry. The unspoken promise is that the tax shall be revoked at war's end. Endless war holds no such promise. Hence, Eternal War is Eternal Slavery." --Admiral Robert J. Henner

PERFESSERGEE

Thursday, February 23, 2012 12:03 AM (P)

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Um... I added to my post (above), it's something I'm looking up. There was more than one basalt flood event, altho the Siberian Trappa (Traps) is the largest. One event was during the formation of the Deccan plateau, the other was during the breakup of Pangea. I don't think either of those other two events involved coal fields. Although ALL were related to extinction events, the extinction event from the Siberian Traps was unparalleled.

-----------

Quote:
Subaerial continental flood basalt volcanism is distinguished from all other volcanic activity by the repeated effusion of huge batches of basaltic magma (~102–103 km3 per eruption) over short periods of geologic time (<1 Myr). Flood basalt provinces are constructed of thick stacks of extensive pahoehoe-dominated lava flow fields and are the products of hundreds of eruptions. Each huge eruption comes from a dyke-fed fissure tens to hundreds of kilometres long and lasts about a decade or more. Such spatial and temporal patterns of lava production do not occur at any other time in Earth history, and, during eruptions, gas fluxes of ~1 Gt per year of SO2 and CO2 over periods of a decade or more are possible. Importantly, the atmospheric cooling associated with aerosols generated from the SO2 emissions of just one flood basalt eruption is likely to have been severe and would have persisted for a decade or longer. By contrast, warming due to volcanogenic CO2 released during an eruption is estimated to have been insignificant because the mass of CO2 would have been small compared to that already present in the atmosphere.

gnews.wustl.edu/elements/e1_5/e1_5_art_self.pdf

Anyway, there's all kinds of interesting papers on the topic which show that many mass extinctions are associated with large basaltic floods. (A few extinction events are associated with meteor strikes). The Siberian flood was the only one (that I know of) which involved coal fields. There should be a paper out there which looks at the terrestrial die-off versus the oceanic die-off. I expect that the extinction with the highest marine die-offs would reflect the highest carbon dioxide output due to massive long-term ocean acidification, while the extinctions with the largest terrestrial impact would reflect the relatively short-term cooling impacts from sulfur emissions.

http://www.semp.us/publications/biot_reader.php?BiotID=681

Either way, what I "get" out of the information is that when you put a lot of shit into the atmosphere, you will wipe out a lot of species.

SignyM,

You are mostly right on the mark here, but it should be noted that both the PT and KT extinction events are associated both with vulcanism (PT, the Siberian Traps; KT, the Deccan Traps), and asteroid impacts - and geologists speculate that the impacts may have caused the vulcanism. The Chicxulub crater off the Yucatan is now well understood as associated with the KT event, and a few years ago, a crater off the NW coast of Australia was dated to the timing of the PT event. But in addition, both would have led to large-scale release of CO2 because of wildfires that would result from the release of enormous amounts of energy, probably as far as thousands of kilometers away. And, since the SO2 released would both lower temperatures and decrease transmission of sunlight, surviving plants would not be able to begin taking up much of the CO2 by photosynthesis for somewhere along the lines of 10-100 years.

perfessergee

ETA: I should have said "discovered and dated" with respect to the PT crater - it had been previously unknown.

BYTEMITE

Thursday, February 23, 2012 12:43 AM (P)

Ooh, I hadn't heard about an impact causing the P-T event. Interesting. I can see how it could be related.

I endorse the above post.