Re:Inventory of CO2 available for terraforming Mars
by jcranmer on Monday July 30, 2018 @10:12PM
(#17650023)
> Toba released between 2000 and 3000 cubic kilometers of ejecta (800 cubic kilometers being ashfall), killed a significant portion of humans alive at the time, created a genetic bottleneck responsible for the current genetic makeup of billions of people, lowered the temperature as much as 27F in places (5.4-9F globally).
The Toba genetic bottleneck theory is generally considered discredited in modern scientific circles. There is evidence of an ash layer as far as Lake Malawi, but there is no evidence of any significant disruption to flora and fauna. It failed to even show a major cooling event in that region.
> at some point you likely have massive fires burning through entire cities adding more smoke and ash to the atmosphere, some of these will move into forests unchecked
At this point in your little rant, I broke down laughing. You're clearly someone who has bought into the nuclear winter theories, and the most outlandishly over-the-top ones at that. We've been able to observe out-of-control boreal forest fires in recent decades (such as the McMurray fire not two years ago), and the effects of such fires are extremely short-lived. Even setting an entire country's oil fields on fire failed to produce any significant regional effect, much to the chagrin of the nuclear winter fear-mongers.
> Toba was 100x more powerful than Tambora that I think I saw mentioned elsewhere in this comment chain. tambora happened in 1815 and cooled global temperatures by 0.95F / 0.53C, per wiki
Tambora is the strongest eruption in recorded history. It is also the strongest link we have to a volcanic winter, the effects of which were so devastating that you have to go read books on Tambora to discover that it happened. The only other eruption posited to have had enough of an impact to cause political repercussions is Huaynaputina in 1600, which may have caused the Russian famine during the Time of Troubles.
There is a significant gap between "measurable drop in global temperature" (which is well-attested) and "significant population drop due to crop failures" (which is not), and an even more significant gap to "extinction of several species as a result of major climactic changes."
To believe that a supervolcano is capable of making the human race extinct, you'd have to believe either that >99% of species are less susceptible to extinction than humans, or that extinction-level events happen every few million years, the latter of which is contradicted by fossil evidence.
The Toba genetic bottleneck theory is generally considered discredited in modern scientific circles. There is evidence of an ash layer as far as Lake Malawi, but there is no evidence of any significant disruption to flora and fauna. It failed to even show a major cooling event in that region.
> at some point you likely have massive fires burning through entire cities adding more smoke and ash to the atmosphere, some of these will move into forests unchecked
At this point in your little rant, I broke down laughing. You're clearly someone who has bought into the nuclear winter theories, and the most outlandishly over-the-top ones at that. We've been able to observe out-of-control boreal forest fires in recent decades (such as the McMurray fire not two years ago), and the effects of such fires are extremely short-lived. Even setting an entire country's oil fields on fire failed to produce any significant regional effect, much to the chagrin of the nuclear winter fear-mongers.
> Toba was 100x more powerful than Tambora that I think I saw mentioned elsewhere in this comment chain. tambora happened in 1815 and cooled global temperatures by 0.95F / 0.53C, per wiki
Tambora is the strongest eruption in recorded history. It is also the strongest link we have to a volcanic winter, the effects of which were so devastating that you have to go read books on Tambora to discover that it happened. The only other eruption posited to have had enough of an impact to cause political repercussions is Huaynaputina in 1600, which may have caused the Russian famine during the Time of Troubles.
There is a significant gap between "measurable drop in global temperature" (which is well-attested) and "significant population drop due to crop failures" (which is not), and an even more significant gap to "extinction of several species as a result of major climactic changes."
To believe that a supervolcano is capable of making the human race extinct, you'd have to believe either that >99% of species are less susceptible to extinction than humans, or that extinction-level events happen every few million years, the latter of which is contradicted by fossil evidence.