CO2 Eruption could cause mass extinction

I just asphixiated some poor bastard in the john.

Methane and Johnny Walker fumes aren't the same as CO2, cj...




I'll file this away in the "things that might kill me that I have no control over" file. (Fer instance, I'm far more likely to be killed by repeated viewings of Armageddon than by asteroid impact.)

hmmmm, so, not an earth fart?

True but he's still dead.

There was a book called _Mother of Storms_ by John Barnes (pretty good book), which speculated that something like this could happen due to Methane trapped in ocean sediments on the sea floor.

I guess we just have to add Earth Farts to the list of things that can give the planet a bad day; Asteroids, Comets, Supervolcano's, Pandemic Plagues, Nearby Gamma Ray Bursts, Methane and now CO2. It's no wonder there are so many mass extinctions, too many things can go wrong... with no place to hide

Just think - all those folks on or near O2 tanks would survive it initially. Doctors and patients. Until the food ran out. Good scifi story? Too limited?

Stole my words, rosborne. I was just going to give Mother of Storms one of my highest reccomendations.

There are lakes in Africa where poison gasses are periodically released leading to deaths. If I remember correctly something like this happened a few years ago, and a lot of people died.

Hi Roger, Yeh, that book had a fairly simple premise, but it was exciting, and well written. I recommend it as well.

Best Regards,

Yep. And there are drifts of CO2 in the gulf of mexico waters, if I remember correctly.

Apparently the lake incident I remember was from 1986 in Camaroon at Lake Nyos.

The article is here: http://www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF10/1094.html

[ One day in August 1986, catastrophe struck a patch of countryside in the African nation of Cameroon. Suddenly, mysteriously, people and animals died. Whole villages expired; herds of cattle collapsed where they stood. Concerned and puzzled scientists flocked to the area while people mourned more than 1700 dead neighbors and kinfolk.

The researchers found a surprising culprit. The victims had suffocated in a cloud of poison gas: carbon dioxide. Its source was beautiful Lake Nyos, which filled the crater of a dormant volcano. Since then, Lake Nyos has become a very well-studied body of water. ]

Yep, and it'll probably happen again. Right now they've got pipes run down to the bottom of the lake to try and vent it, but the CO2 levels at the bottom are replenishing very rapidly anyway. (Fletcher's idea, I see from the article; anyway, it's not working.)

CO2 in the Gulf of Mexico? Hmmm, I wonder if isolated Earth Farts could have anything to do with areas like the Bermuda Triangle. Maybe localized burps in calm air linger and kill crews which then set the ships adrift. Or if the burp was methane, and someone lit a cigarette, you could have a very big explosion. Hmmm.

Best Regards,

Interesting thought. And since the gases are heavy they could just sit on top of the water and diffuse very slowly if the air was very still. Where is the Bermuda triangle in relation to the Sargasso Sea?

Hi Patio, I think the Sargasso Sea follows the gulf stream and borders the Triangle.

Oops... it looks like they basically overlap each other: http://www.bermuda-triangle.org/500_Leagues_of_Sea/Sargasso_Sea/sargasso_sea.html

Why do you ask? Is Sargassum associated with gas eruptions of some type?

Nah, just thinking about it because I knew it was very, very still and somewhere near the triangle.

Is it possible that you confused CO2 with clots of solid methane, propane, and butan? This is what has also been discovered on the ground of the North Sea if I remember correctly. Methane, propane and buthan are greenhouse gas just like CO2, and I think they are much more plausible candidates. CO2 is still going to be gaseous under the temperatures and pressures that are present on the ground of the Gulf of Mexico, so I can't see why it would stay down there.

-- Thomas

bookmarking

I'll give you something to bookmark for the rest of the century: Global warming feedback mechanisms