Save the...

[woodburner]

Define "ok"

The earth has seen mass dieoffs before, one of which allowed the development of mammals and eventually humans. There were possibly mass dieoffs of humans in previous times but with ice sheets scouring the earth's surface and water level increases of 120 feet or more covering what would have been inhabited areas we have lost the evidence.

Yes, the planet will recover but not as we know it, Jim!!

No quite. The Earth's life systems, arguably, would not recover from a global mass extinction event this time around. Or, at least, not to the point of re-evolving higher-order complex life forms. This is because there is only about half a billion years left for large land mammals to be able to exist on the surface of the Earth anyway due to the gradual increase of heat from the sun.

If all of the large land and sea creatures were to die tomorrow in a mass extinction event, there would not be enough time for their like or their alternative to evolve again.

Your argument is flawed. 500,000,000 years is enough. The dinosaurs suffered their end 65,000,000 years ago, and look at the mess we have now. It's unlikely all the large animals would go at the same time anyway.

[kenneal - lagger]

http://www.DODGY TAX AVOIDERS.co.uk/Life-Death-Plan ... 0749950099

Please leave the DODGY TAX AVOIDERS bit out. They are putting UK residents out of work and making your taxes higher.

[kenneal - lagger]

This seems to be one of the problems with culling: it causes previously static populations to start to move about, and to carry any disease with them.

It doesn't matter that much if populations move within the infected areas because most setts are infected anyway. The infected area in England now stretches from the tip of Cornwall to Berkshire and Hampshire and on northwards into Wales. A bit of movement within that area won't make any difference and its gradually moving outwards anyway. We have gone from three yearly testing to every year and we have to test any animal we move which isn't going to an abattoir.

Also, blaming the badgers gets the intensive dairy farms off the hook!

Most dairy farms are closed herds and the only animals coming onto the farm are bulls which are tested before movement. There is usually a net migration of calves off dairy farms to intensive beef rearers.

The alternative (vaccinating the cattle) was frankly a bit crap (didn't always take, etc) when the badger-culling idea was first mooted, but Technology Marches On and apparently there's now a cheaper and more effective vaccine.

You will have to convince the EU that vaccination is the way to go. We are governed by them if you hadn't noticed. Farming isn't a UK competence.

[biffvernon]

If we were to burn all the fossil carbon in oil, gas, tar sands and oil shales then our atmosphere would produce a greenhouse effect like that on Venus. Lead would melt on the Earth's surface and the planet would be a lifeless hunk of rock oblivious of it's heat death when the Sun goes red giant.

Of course we're not going to do that.

Are we?

[woodburner]

It seems to have escaped your notice, but Earth is a tad further from the sun than is Venus. Even so, your postulation is highly unlikely to happen. It's much more likely disease (anti-biotic resistant or Monsanto assisted) will get us first.

PS A new acronym, Monsanto Assisted Disease - MAD, or not so ..........

[biffvernon]

Distance from the Sun is, counter-intuitively, relatively unimportant compared to the greenhouse gas effect. The science behind my statement is sound.

Of course it won't happen because we won't burn all the fossil carbon, either because we choose not to or because we become unable to.

But if we did then the consequence is Venusian.

[woodburner]

Since it won't happen, stop damaging your credibility by making daft postulations.

[clv101]

Since it won't happen, stop damaging your credibility by making daft postulations.

No credibility is being damaged, it is true that Venus is as hot as it is, not because of its orbit but because of its atmosphere. It's also perfectly possible, even likely, that the Earth will one day have an atmosphere 90 bar of CO2. There's certainly enough carbon, just the hydrological cycles keeps it there through. The chain of events is long, however. It's a billion year process as first the planet needs to lose its oceans to space. Over the next 10 bn years this is inevitable as the solar output increases. Hansen's point is that we could trigger this 1 billion year process with a hyperthermal now associated with burning all the fossil carbon.

Clearly it's a wholly academic question, it makes little difference to anything whether the Earth becomes a 500C hunk of rock 1, 5 or 10 billion years from now. However it is interesting that we do have the capacity change this trajectory through our species' actions over the next few centuries.

[emordnilap]

Also, blaming the badgers gets the intensive dairy farms off the hook!

Incisive as always, RC.

[Little John]

The earth has seen mass dieoffs before, one of which allowed the development of mammals and eventually humans. There were possibly mass dieoffs of humans in previous times but with ice sheets scouring the earth's surface and water level increases of 120 feet or more covering what would have been inhabited areas we have lost the evidence.

Yes, the planet will recover but not as we know it, Jim!!

No quite. The Earth's life systems, arguably, would not recover from a global mass extinction event this time around. Or, at least, not to the point of re-evolving higher-order complex life forms. This is because there is only about half a billion years left for large land mammals to be able to exist on the surface of the Earth anyway due to the gradual increase of heat from the sun.

If all of the large land and sea creatures were to die tomorrow in a mass extinction event, there would not be enough time for their like or their alternative to evolve again.

Your argument is flawed. 500,000,000 years is enough. The dinosaurs suffered their end 65,000,000 years ago, and look at the mess we have now. It's unlikely all the large animals would go at the same time anyway.

The end of the dinosaurs was certainly a mass extinction event. However, mass extinction events are very variable in both severity and global scope. When the large lizards went, the small mammals remained and so quickly filled the newly vacant ecological niches. The kind of mass extinction event I am referring to would be of the order of the Permian–Triassic "Great Dying".

You may or may not be aware that the current rate of species extinctions (referred to as the "Holocene mass extinction event" and almost certainly due to human activity) is occurring at an estimated rate 1,000 times the normal historical background rate of extinction and outstrips that which occurred during all previous mass extinction events (including the "Great Dying") by a factor between 10 to 100 (depending on which previous mass extinction event the curent one is being compared with).

This current mass extinction event should be more properly called, therefore, "The Greater Dying" or perhaps, even," The Greatest Dying".

[kenneal - lagger]

I would have thought that the Mass Extinction of the Dinosaurs was almost instantaneous as it was due to a meteor strike and the ensuing "nuclear winter", for want of a better term, that followed. They would have died out within a couple of years at most from, initially, the direct blast effects, then from cold and finally from starvation.

I'm not making excuses for what mankind is doing but I don't think we are worse than a meteor strike, a super volcano eruption or a mass lava ejection, all of which have caused extinctions in the past and could do again, in the near future, geologically speaking.

[Little John]

I would have thought that the Mass Extinction of the Dinosaurs was almost instantaneous as it was due to a meteor strike and the ensuing "nuclear winter", for want of a better term, that followed. They would have died out within a couple of years at most from, initially, the direct blast effects, then from cold and finally from starvation.

I'm not making excuses for what mankind is doing but I don't think we are worse than a meteor strike, a super volcano eruption or a mass lava ejection, all of which have caused extinctions in the past and could do again, in the near future, geologically speaking.

Current theories about the KT dinosaur mass extinction event are that it's cause was multi factorial including volcanic activity as well as an asteroid impact. Consequently, the extinction event in fact lasted several thousand years from beginning to end. The current Holocene extinction event started about 10,000 years ago and so is quite comparable. Indeed, it is arguably far more severe than the KT event because most of the Holocene mass extinction has occurred in only the last few hundred years.

[JavaScriptDonkey]

But if we did then the consequence is Venusian.