Extinction Events, Anoxic Oceans, and the Quest for Ancient Oil

Expansion to Extinction Over Last 540 Million Years
Mass extinctions have played an important role in the evolution of Terrestrial life. With each mass extinction, the way is cleared for the spread and adaptation of surviving species, and for the emergence of new species. But that is not what we will talk about today.

Recent findings in geochemistry have called into doubt some of the pet theories of climate scientologists scientists concerning acid oceans and mass ocean extinctions. Here is the abstract from the paper in PNAS:

Periods of oceanic anoxia have had a major influence on the evolutionary history of Earth and are often contemporaneous with mass extinction events. Changes in global (as opposed to local) redox conditions can be potentially evaluated using U system proxies. The intensity and timing of oceanic redox changes associated with the end-Permian extinction horizon (EH) were assessed from variations in 238U/235U (δ238U) and Th/U ratios in a carbonate section at Dawen in southern China. The EH is characterized by shifts toward lower δ238U values (from -0.37‰ to -0.65‰), indicative of an expansion of oceanic anoxia, and higher Th/U ratios (from 0.06 to 0.42), indicative of drawdown of U concentrations in seawater. Using a mass balance model, we estimate that this isotopic shift represents a sixfold increase in the flux of U to anoxic facies, implying a corresponding increase in the extent of oceanic anoxia. The intensification of oceanic anoxia coincided with, or slightly preceded, the EH and persisted for an interval of at least 40,000 to 50,000 y following the EH. These findings challenge previous hypotheses of an extended period of whole-ocean anoxia prior to the end-Permian extinction. _PNAS

More information on the study

The suggestion is that the ocean anoxia was secondary to the main extinction event, rather than being the cause. More study will be necessary to validate the isotopic techniques utilised. But this finding cannot but be a disappointment to the politically correct denizens of deep climate scientology science.

But what interests Al Fin know-it-all-o-tologists about this information, is how it may relate to the topic of the production and sequestration of ancient oil. Deep ocean anoxia is not only related to mass extinction events, it is also a component of oil formation in the deep seabed.

Sea bottom anoxia occurs routinely at the mouths of large rivers, where massive sediment routinely buries dead sealife that is constantly deposited on the seafloor. That is why rich oil fields are often found offshore of large river deltas -- either where the deltas are now, or where they were hundreds of millions of years ago.

An ancient oil sleuth must be able to backward-trace the movements of continents and great river valleys, in order to know where to look for such sediment-buried deposits.

Another cause of mass sediment burial of seafloor organic material, is massive volcanic activity. This would be particularly important to an ancient oil sleuth when a group of volcanoes might stay active for millions of years, in the same general vicinity upwind of river deltas or rich upwelling currents.

But in cases of mass extinctions, the large scale deep ocean anoxia occurring at the same time as massive deposition of organic material onto the seafloor, might be a particularly rich time for the initiation of large scale oil production.

When this process occurs over continental crust, the oil can be preserved for a very long time. If it occurs over oceanic crust, the oil may be subducted with the crust into the mantle, where it will likely be converted into short chain hydrocarbons, CO2, CO, and other forms of carbon. The short chain hydrocarbons may return to the crust, and may eventually be recovered economically. Diamond and graphite may also return to depths which allows humans to recover them economically.

Regardless, it is the ancient oil we are interested in. The challenge is to connect the extinction events, the ocean anoxia, and the ancient geographic patterns together, to provide the best guess for the locations of giant oil deposits which might conceivably still exist in an undiscovered, but ultimately recoverable state.

Humans have become accustomed to utilising the easy oil, and are just now getting good at recovering oil from the harsh, deep ocean environments. That is a good thing, because the Earth is 70% ocean-covered.

Still, some the planet which was once covered by oceans is now dry land, and such places -- if they fit the criteria above -- might be some of the first locations to check out.

Solar Cycles Stalling: Ice Age On Its Way?

Average temperatures in Britain could fall by two degrees centigrade, according to the study led by Mike Lockwood, professor of space environment physics at Reading University, because of a drop in the amount of sunspot activity. _DailyMail

Little Ice Age Plunging In?
The Earth's climate is chaotic by nature, and given to drastic changes and shifts as a matter of course. The many overlapping natural cycles which contribute to global climate have been largely ignored by climate scientists -- until now.

Professor Lockwood's findings could mean the average winter temperature could drop below 2.5C, compared to the average British winter now of 5C, the newspaper reported.

In June, three different studies all concluded that sunspot activity looks set to decline over the next 10 years.

Experts said the next upswing in sunspot activity, which follows an 11-year cycle, will not be as strong as normal - or might not even happen at all.
The findings were presented at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society's solar physics division.

They said a decrease in global warming might result in the years after 2020, the approximate time when sunspots are expected to disappear for years, maybe even decades. _DailyMail

Meanwhile, climate scientists are just now beginning to admit the importance of the urban heat island effect, which has biased global temperature records upward -- contributing to the carbon hysteria which has sustained the orthodoxy of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming, and helped drive the bandwagon and steamroller of the great climate panic of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

More honest scientists are likewise admitting that extreme weather events have nothing to do with atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.

You Mustn't Believe the Lies that Green Zealots Tell. Not only about nuclear power, but about climate change, resource depletion, overpopulation, etc.

Government meddling in climate and energy will be the death of us all. It is time to stamp out government meddling, before government meddling stamps us out!

Humans Still Do Not Understand Oceans or Planet

Wiki
Popular culture is immersed with the message that "humans are killing the oceans" and "man is destroying the planet." But science is so abysmally ignorant about what is actually happening in the seas and on land, that the faux environmentalist message of doom is based upon a blooming ignorance, and little else.

Take a recent declaration of "plankton apocalypse" by researchers from Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia. Faux environmentalists seized on the single, unsubstantiated report as confirmation that the end of the world is near. More knowledgeable and intelligent persons knew -- or at least sensed -- that the Dalhousie report was hagwash. And so it seems to have been. Much of modern published "science" dealing with the environment and climate is unmitigated hogwash, albeit politically correct.

But there is much valid and valuable science to be learned from the oceans, if one can work objectively and without prejudicial biases.

Physorg

"The big mystery about bacteria is what they are doing in nature," Whitman said. "The organisms metabolize compounds for their own needs. We need to understand what they are getting out of it to understand what it means for the ocean, and now it will be possible to look at the environmental importance of this process and how it's regulated." That will help to answer the "why" of the two sulfur fates. _Physorg

Notice that the U. of Georgia scientists are microbiologists -- not "climatologists." Although the microbiologists link their study to climate -- for reasons of funding among others -- their results help to expose the abysmal ignorance of climate "science" with regards to the oceans and cloud formation.

SeaFriends

Scientists have discovered that marine diatoms, tiny phytoplankton abundant in the sea, have an animal-like urea cycle, and that this cycle enables the diatoms to efficiently use carbon and nitrogen from their environment.

The researchers, from the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) and other institutions, published their findings in this week's issue of the journal Nature.

The team, led by lead author Andrew Allen from JCVI and co-author Chris Bowler, Institute of Biology, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, believes that the cycle could be a reason for the domination of diatoms in marine environments, especially after upwelling events--the upward movement of nutrient rich waters from the deep ocean to the surface.

In response to ocean upwelling, diatoms are able to quickly recover from prolonged periods of nutrient deprivation and rapidly proliferate. _Physorg

Nature
Here again, we see a significant finding that relates importantly to global carbon balance, ocean phytoplankton levels, and atmospheric oxygen levels. How many other momentous and paradigm-changing discoveries are waiting for humans to discard their politically correct prejudices in order to better perceive the reality of the universe?

Overlapping Climate Cycles Lead to Natural Climate Chaos

Earth's climate is driven by multiple ongoing cycles on many levels. When natural resonant cycles overlap -- at whatever level -- they can contribute to a chaotic pattern.

When the overlap starts, many higher-order resonances are also involved so fairly large areas of phase space have their tori destroyed and the ensuing chaos is "widespread" since trajectories are now free to wander between regions that previously were separated by nonresonant tori. _Wolfram

We begin with a pictorial overview of the natural components of climate -- sun, ocean, land, atmosphere, volcanoes, ice & snow, living organisms -- all of which appear to be subject to periodic cycling of various types, with potentially chaotic overlap.

Volcanoes can exert very strong influences on climate. It appears as if volcanic activity can occur at widely separated locations almost simultaneously, due to underlying geologic activity. Whether or not such tectonic movements occur "cyclically," the impact of such large scale volcanic activity can easily contribute to a naturally chaotic climate.

Natural ocean oscillations are thought to be driven by periodic solar variation, pictured below. These ocean oscillations such as El Nino (PDF) drive cycles of atmospheric heating and cooling, cycles of ice & snow, and strongly influence populations of living organisms worldwide.

Solar variation influences the size of the heliosphere, and determine the extent of galactic cosmic ray infiltration into the solar system and Earth's climatic system. This cyclic variation of cosmic ray bombardment on Earth's atsmosphere is thought to influence the amount of cloud formation in the atmosphere, which influences planetary ensolation and radiative heat balance.

The Milankovich orbital cycles occur with different periodicity in the tens of thousands of years, creating overlapping resonances with potential chaotic results on climate.

Another multi-thousand year orbital cycle which could easily influence global climate, is the slightly varying angle of Earth's solar orbit to the ecliptic. As the planet falls slightly below the plane and risis slightly above the plane of the ecliptic -- over tens of thousands of years -- the thickness of intervening dust between Earth and Sun varies. This periodically alters the ensolation of the Earth's system. Such cycles may have subtle effects, but in combination with other overlapping resonances, these overlapping effects may push the system into a chaotic result.

The image above illustrates the heliosphere, which can expand and contract according to the Sun's periodic activity. The fluctuating heliosphere is an important line of defense against galactic cosmic rays -- which are very likely to influence Earth's climate.

The Solar system is passing through an enormous interstellar cloud, which may or may not have an influence on climate. But it is a rather fascinating topic all the same.

Understanding natural chaos in climate is a crucial matter for policy-makers, who must determine the fate of US$trillions of future spending of tax dollars.

For science to provide the greatest benefit to those who fund it, it must focus upon genuine problems which need to be solved. As long as scientists have open, sceptical minds, they are more able to look at problems from varying perspectives -- from the close-in small picture, to the far-out big picture.

The last thing that tax-paying humans need is for their tax-paid scientists to fly off on a narrow tangent which ignores the larger picture. That would be a very wasteful tragedy.

Taken from an earlier article published at Al Fin