My main concern is the acidification of the ocean due to the carbon dioxide equilibrium between the atmosphere and the sea.
There is a threshold level threshold at wich the shell of plankton just dissolves. After that happens I think the whole ocean ecosystem will collapse (maybe no more fishes?)
Also the deep ocean has an inertia of thousands years meaning that we are going to stick with industrial coal revolution levels of co2 in the atmosphere for a lot of time even if we emit nothing.
People wasn't seeing immediate effects because it was hidden in saturating the ocean and now there's no way back in my opinion
Abstract: "Simple calculations show that if deep-water H2S concentrations increased beyond a critical threshold during oceanic anoxic intervals of Earth history, the chemocline separating sulfidic deep waters from oxygenated surface waters could have risen abruptly to the ocean surface (a chemocline upward excursion). Atmospheric photochemical modeling indicates that resulting fluxes of H2S to the atmosphere (>2000 times the small modern flux from volcanoes) would likely have led to toxic levels of H2S in the atmosphere. Moreover, the ozone shield would have been destroyed, and methane levels would have risen to >100 ppm. We thus propose (1) chemocline upward excursion as a kill mechanism during the end-Permian, Late Devonian, and Cenomanian Turonian extinctions, and (2) persistently high atmospheric H2S levels as a factor that impeded evolution of eukaryotic life on land during the Proterozoic."
If will be avoided if we die before, i.e. because the conditions that would eventually lead to that event.
We are changing the environment and the conditions very fast, the Permian process could had taken from hundreds of thousands to millions of years. And CO2 levels because the eruptions that started this were in the order of several thousands, in a process that took also hundreds of thousands of years.
But we are in the road to reach those numbers within decades or very few centuries. If the trend continues, we will die, but by (multiple) other reasons.
this is one of several "failure modes" connected to climate change that are bieng dissmissed out of hand
and in spite of all the blither blather about humans determining our own future as seperate from anything as trivial as the "weather", we exist as the prime exploiter of what can be summed up as the carbohydrate production of nature, a single number of X millions of tons per anum, which our breathable atmosphere, is a byproduct of.
There is no candidate for the prime exploiter of NPP at this time, since any numeric measure of chemical throughput has us almost tied with marine protists.
Furthermore, the majority of calories consumed by humans are derived from the Haber-Bosch process, which entails exploiting ancient reserves of stored sunlight instead of the present-day supply of sunlight.
My main concern is the acidification of the ocean due to the carbon dioxide equilibrium between the atmosphere and the sea. There is a threshold level threshold at wich the shell of plankton just dissolves. After that happens I think the whole ocean ecosystem will collapse (maybe no more fishes?) Also the deep ocean has an inertia of thousands years meaning that we are going to stick with industrial coal revolution levels of co2 in the atmosphere for a lot of time even if we emit nothing.
People wasn't seeing immediate effects because it was hidden in saturating the ocean and now there's no way back in my opinion
Competing species (non-calcifying) then take over...
Will those species replace plankton's role of producing the majority of the Earth's oxygen?
After a few million years, sure.
Original article: "Massive release of hydrogen sulfide to the surface ocean and atmosphere during intervals of oceanic anoxia" - https://www.researchgate.net/publication/253144294_Massive_r...
Abstract: "Simple calculations show that if deep-water H2S concentrations increased beyond a critical threshold during oceanic anoxic intervals of Earth history, the chemocline separating sulfidic deep waters from oxygenated surface waters could have risen abruptly to the ocean surface (a chemocline upward excursion). Atmospheric photochemical modeling indicates that resulting fluxes of H2S to the atmosphere (>2000 times the small modern flux from volcanoes) would likely have led to toxic levels of H2S in the atmosphere. Moreover, the ozone shield would have been destroyed, and methane levels would have risen to >100 ppm. We thus propose (1) chemocline upward excursion as a kill mechanism during the end-Permian, Late Devonian, and Cenomanian Turonian extinctions, and (2) persistently high atmospheric H2S levels as a factor that impeded evolution of eukaryotic life on land during the Proterozoic."
Related: "Impacts of a massive release of methane and hydrogen sulfide on oxygen and ozone during the late Permian mass extinction" - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09218...
If will be avoided if we die before, i.e. because the conditions that would eventually lead to that event.
We are changing the environment and the conditions very fast, the Permian process could had taken from hundreds of thousands to millions of years. And CO2 levels because the eruptions that started this were in the order of several thousands, in a process that took also hundreds of thousands of years.
But we are in the road to reach those numbers within decades or very few centuries. If the trend continues, we will die, but by (multiple) other reasons.
> "Today, there are not enough organics in the oceans to go anoxic," says Kump. "But in the Permian,"
The editorialized HN title misrepresents what the article says.
Have you talked with an oceans specialist recently? Anoxic events are difficult to predict. Not all specialists agree with that Permian isolation.
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/202...
That's interesting, but the title still misrepresents the article. Flagged.
As the issue now includes a deepening of recent radical shift potential in equator-to-pole gradient, the chances for this are now measurably distinct.
The question is left open, particularly in the recent data on gulfstream collapse, which may be imminent.
I'm not sure anyone is qualified to claim 100% anoxic events and hydrogen sulfide out gas are limited to the Permian condition.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-025-02793-1
and
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/200...
are in conflict.
Given this proposed series of events, what would be the mechanism s that would return the environment to the conditions we see today?
this is one of several "failure modes" connected to climate change that are bieng dissmissed out of hand and in spite of all the blither blather about humans determining our own future as seperate from anything as trivial as the "weather", we exist as the prime exploiter of what can be summed up as the carbohydrate production of nature, a single number of X millions of tons per anum, which our breathable atmosphere, is a byproduct of.
There is no candidate for the prime exploiter of NPP at this time, since any numeric measure of chemical throughput has us almost tied with marine protists.
Furthermore, the majority of calories consumed by humans are derived from the Haber-Bosch process, which entails exploiting ancient reserves of stored sunlight instead of the present-day supply of sunlight.
[flagged]
I've not read and am instead trusting Betteridge's law of headlines.
(2010) should be in the title, presumably?