And I challenge anyone to construct a plausible narrative in which human
civilization survives the extinction of life in the oceans.
Oliver.
On 08/06/2013 10:01, Ken Caldeira wrote:
Andrew,
Please respond to what I said and not what you imagine I said.
The issue has to do with a hypothetical case of sterilization of the
oceans. There was no reference to climate change in my statement.
I challenge anyone to construct a plausible causal chain that would
lead from sterilization of the oceans to downfall of human civilization.
This is not an expression of my values, this is an expression of my
scientific understanding.
Let all realize that I spend a large chunk of my time trying to
investigate and protect human threats to ocean ecosystems.
*This Scientist Aims High to Save the World's Coral Reefs*
http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=176344300&m=178462367
<http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=176344300&m=178462367>
(Aired Monday, 4/22 on NPR's All Things Considered; 7 minutes, 49 seconds)
Best,
Ken
On Saturday, June 8, 2013, Andrew Lockley wrote:
In my view, history provides the best guide to the future.
Civilisations are not long lived at the best of times, and their
messy and painful demise is usually accompanied by minor climate
disruption.
The more complex the civilisation, the less robust it is, as there
is a greater interconnectedness, and hence a greater ability to
transmit shocks through the system. To further explain : our
ancestors would not have heard about an antipodean earthquake,
whereas now such a tremor can send markets into meltdown in minutes.
The idea that despite this much more vulnerable society, the
American middle class will survive the worst climate change in
human history without disruption to the Chicken McNugget supply,
or to the ability of Hollywood to produce Game of Thrones, is
completely bizarre.
Someone, somewhere will likely be eating a piece of battered
chicken meat. Someone, somewhere will probably still have a
working digital camera and some kind of transmission equipment .
This does not equate to an uninterrupted experience for the US
middle class.
A
On Jun 8, 2013 8:42 AM, "Emily L-B" <[email protected]> wrote:
Hi all, I'd propose you put this hypothesis to Dan Laffolley
(you can google him).
There are so many responses to this I am overwhelmed and can't
respond coherently. Apart from anything else, my understanding
is that decay of ocean matter would release noxious gases. So
while there may be O2, it may be polluted.
Best wishes,
Emily.
Sent from my BlackBerry
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*From: * Ken Caldeira <[email protected]>
*Sender: * [email protected]
*Date: *Sat, 8 Jun 2013 15:05:06 +0800
*To: *[email protected]<[email protected]>
*ReplyTo: * [email protected]
*Cc:
*[email protected]<[email protected]>
*Subject: *[geo] The Caldeira "If you Sterilize the Ocean We'd
Still Have Chicken McNuggets Hypothesis" questioned by Ocean
expert
David,
The residence time of oxygen in the atmosphere + ocean +
biosphere with respect to the lithosphere is millions of years.
There are about 4 x 10 ** 19 mol of O2 in the atmosphere. The
rate of removal of this O2 by organic carbon weathering is
about 4 x 10 ** 12 mol per year. I am not sure about pyrite
oxidation and so on but you can check out the attached paper
for an entree into the literature.
In any case, the 1000 year number you cite is not based on any
reliable literature value. A better guess might be that we
would have breathable oxygen on the order of a million years
if you eliminated all life on land and sea. If life were
eliminated in the oceans only, I don't know of anything that
would impede our ability to eat Chicken McNuggets and watch TV
indefinitely.
Let me make it clear that I value life in the oceans quite
highly and do not at all like Chicken McNuggets. (For some
reason, nutters on the web think that you can't discuss
anything unless you are advocating actually doing it.)
Best,
Ken
On Saturday, June 8, 2013, David Lewis wrote:
During the Q&A after his 2012 AGU talk entitled "/Ocean
Acidification: Adaptive Challenge or Extinction
Threat?/", Ken Caldeira said: "I actually think*if you
sterilize the ocean*, yes vulnerable people would be hurt,
poor people would be hurt, but that*we'd still have
Chicken McNuggets and TV shows and basically we'd be OK* "
A video of Ken's entire talk is*available here*
<http://fallmeeting.agu.org/2012/events/gc44c-special-lecture-in-ocean-acidification-consequences-of-excess-carbon-dioxide-in-the-marine-environment-video-on-demand/>.
He lays out the McNugget/Ocean Sterilization hypothesis
starting at *minute 50:20*.
This seemed to be Ken's answer to the question he posed in
his subtitle, i.e. is homo sapiens facing a threat of
extinction as a result of any particular odd behavior the
species is engaged in at the moment such as carelessly
dumping waste gases into the atmosphere which are changing
the chemistry of the global ocean?
Callum Roberts, a scientist who studies the impact of
human activity on marine ecosystems, addressed an audience
at the University of Sydney this year where he discussed
the many problems human activity is causing life in the
oceans. He interrupted his litany of woe briefly to tell
the audience of some "*good news*" he had: "even if all
the ocean's primary productivity were shot down
tomorrow,*it will still be a long time before we suffocate
*because there's plenty of oxygen in the atmosphere,
enough for more than 1,000 years. So hopefully we can get
our heads aro
--
_______________
Ken Caldeira
Carnegie Institution for Science
Dept of Global Ecology
260 Panama Street, Stanford, CA 94305 USA
+1 650 704 [email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>
http://dge.stanford.edu/labs/caldeiralab@kencaldeira
*Caldeira Lab is hiring postdoctoral researchers.*
*http://dge.stanford.edu/labs/caldeiralab/Caldeira_employment.html*
Check out the profile of me on NPR's All Things Considered
<http://www.npr.org/2013/04/22/176344300/this-scientist-aims-high-to-save-the-worlds-coral-reefs>
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