Motl Independence

I know I should quit Lubos, and I have tried, but I just can't. The comedic possibilities are just too good to pass up.

Lubos saw a NYT story about some algae that actually seem to do pretty well on a diet of increased CO2. This was a good enough excuse to push his favorite theory that CO2 is a vitamin. So he wrote:

250 million years ago, when the land was dominated by dinosaurs, the oceans were controlled by coccolithophores, one-celled marine plants (a kind of phytoplankton).

This is a pretty funny statement for a few reasons, but mostly because 250 million years ago was right (1.5 million years) after the Permian-Triassic extinction event, the most drastic such in the fossil record. So Lumo is going on about how CO2 makes for an ideal ocean, but at that time oceanic life had been utterly devastated, with 96% of species extinct. Even more amusing is the fact that the P-T extinction is associated with, and may even have been caused by, a huge pulse in atmospheric carbon.

The first thing I noted, though, and wrote about, was the dinosaurs.(CIP in bold, LM in italics)

Lubos,

I'm afraid there were no dinosaurs 250 million years ago. If fact there was hardly any animal life on the planet at all. The Earth at that time had not yet begun to recover from the Permian extinction - an event associated with major dislocations in the carbon cycle.

Best,

LM: You don't have to remind us that you are a complete idiot. See the basic timeline here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Tim...#Basic_timeline for the evolution of animals. Animals with footprints already started in the paleozoic era 542 million years ago. 250 million years ago, we already had mezozoic in which dinosaurs spread abruptly. Most of their evolution occurred between 235 and 230 million years ago.

The Permian-Triassic exctinction left about 5% of marine species and 30% of land-based vertebrate species alive, they almost immediately occupied the whole planet, and as an almost direct consequence, this "clearing of the slate" has led to an ensuing diversification. This is not my speculation but a standard well-known fact, see e.g. Wikipedia. Saying that the event has eliminated animal life as a category is completely absurd. While the event might have been bad for the particular individuals who died, from the long term viewpoint of life on Earth, there was nothing wrong about the event and tendentious words such as "dislocations of carbon cycle" by alarmist idiots cannot change anything about it.

capitalistimperialistpig Homepage 04.18.08 - 12:54 pm #

Lumo, I think, missed my first point, but let's look at his critique line by line:

LM: You don't have to remind us that you are a complete idiot...

Guilty!, Guilty!, Guilty! One must admit that anyone who attempts to educate Lubos and his ineducable acolytes is in fact a complete idiot.

LM: See the basic timeline here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Tim...#Basic_timeline for the evolution of animals. Animals with footprints already started in the paleozoic era 542 million years ago.

True, but hardly relevant.

LM: 250 million years ago, we already had mezozoic in which dinosaurs spread abruptly.

The reason that there were no dinosaurs 250 million years ago is the same as the reason that there weren't any birds, bats, or monkeys at the time - they hadn't got around to evolving yet. It took about twenty million years before that happened - for dinosaurs - the others took longer.

LM: Most of their evolution occurred between 235 and 230 million years ago.

Actually they initially evolved 230 my ago. Their major evolution and radiation took place over the next 165 million years, till they met their cosmic doom.

LM: The Permian-Triassic exctinction left about 5% of marine species and 30% of land-based vertebrate species alive, they almost immediately occupied the whole planet, and as an almost direct consequence, this "clearing of the slate" has led to an ensuing diversification. This is not my speculation but a standard well-known fact, see e.g. Wikipedia.

CIP: The descendants of the survivors did indeed multiply and diversify, but it took them a long time - tens of millions of years in those "healthy" oceans. There is considerable evidence that the highly unfavorable conditions for most life lasted at least five million years.

LM: This is not my speculation but a standard well-known fact, see e.g. Wikipedia. Saying that the event has eliminated animal life as a category is completely absurd.

That would indeed be absurd. Good thing I didn't quite say that.

LM: While the event might have been bad for the particular individuals who died, from the long term viewpoint of life on Earth, there was nothing wrong about the event...

And if you think there is nothing wrong with wiping out most individuals and species for twenty million years or so, global warming is no big deal.

LM: ... and tendentious words such as "dislocations of carbon cycle" by alarmist idiots cannot change anything about it.

Not sure what his point is here. It is a fact, though, that carbon isotope ratios changed drastically after the Permian, and that that change probably represents the infusion of thousands of gigatons of carbon - perhaps from methane clathrates.

It seems that Lumo subsequently noticed his error, since he went back and changed the 250 million years to 230 million years in the current version of his post - without noting that fact. The change makes the irony slightly less humorous.