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#54523 10/13/15 02:55 AM
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An enhancement of the theory that an asteroid impact killed the dinosaurs has been presented. Phil Plait in his Bad Astronomy Blog on Slate has an article on the combination of events that may have killed the dinosaurs. What Really Killed the Dinosaurs?

The idea is that the asteroid impact shook up the Deccan Traps volcanic event and caused it to blow up in a big way. That then caused the final extinction.

Interesting idea, and I can see how it could happen that way. We will just have to wait and see how it plays out.

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Back in the 70s when I was dabbling in geology the formation of the Deccan Traps was high on the suspect list. It's interesting to see it's making a comeback.


There never was nothing.
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Another point of view. In this months (December 2015) Scientific American there is an article about the end of the dinosaurs. The author and his colleagues are still looking at the asteroid strike as being the main cause of the death of the dinosaurs. However, they are looking at why the asteroid really did cause it. They have studied the diversity of species leading up to the extinction. It seems that most of the meat eating dinosaurs had a relatively large diversity. But the diversity of the large plant eaters was much reduced. So when the asteroid struck it damaged the large plant eaters more than the meat eaters, and that caused the collapse. They had a conference where 11 scientists sat down to discuss the extinction and found that they all agreed on this scenario.

Of course the Deccan Traps could have helped the event along, but the reason for the extinction was that the lack of diversity in the large plant eaters caused a large bottleneck in the food chain.

Of course they don't really know what caused the loss of diversity in the plant eaters, but they think the extinction might not have happened if they had been more diverse.

Bill Gill


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the asteroid caused a nuclear winter type of blockage of
the suns light.
the lack of sunlight caused the plants to die off.
the lack of plants caused the plant eaters to die off and
the lack of plants caused a lack of oxygen because plants
cause oxygen and the lack of oxygen caused the extinction.

large animals require large amounts of oxygen for breathing.

the bottom line is that even if there were a large diversity
of plant eaters there would have still been a extinction from
the way I see it.

because all of the dinosaurs required oxygen to breath
and without plants there was very little oxygen and
the earths air would have been mostly co2.




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But it wouldn't have killed off all of the vegetation. If there had been a greater diversity of herbivores then more of them would would have survived, eating what was left. As far as lack of oxygen, I don't much think that would have been a major problem. At the present time the oxygen content of the air is just under 21%. Even if it dropped to 17% or so most animal life would have survived. The biggie would have been lack of food for the carnivores.

Bill Gill


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plants don't grow without sunlight.

without a really large amount of plant life all the
really large animals will die off.

go buy a plant and put it in your closet and turn the closets light off and close the door without the suns light or some artificial sun light source the plant will die.

this is not quantum mechanics , you cant just pop sunlight
into the closet because it sounds nerdy to make the plant live.


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A global winter wouldn't completely block all the sun light. There would still be some. So some plant life would still survive. If it was kinds that the smaller diversity of the large herbivores couldn't eat then they would die off. If there had been a great diversity of large herbivores then the chance that some of them would survive would be greater. That is because the diversity depends on their living in different ecological niches. Probably eating different plants. So if those different ones had survived then a chance for some of the carnivores to survive would have been greater.

And of course this has to be taken with the usual caveat that neither one us really knows for sure what we are talking about. This is just the way it seems to me, based on what the author of the story I linked to said.

Bill Gill


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lets be realistic about this , we are talking about an
extinction event that did happen according to current knowledge.

smaller animals did survive but the larger ones did die off
the only real reason that there could be would be the lack of plants and as a result the lack of oxygen.

smaller animals would survive because they would require less plants for food.

the earths air may have been much richer in oxygen before the asteroid or more ppm of oxygen in the air.

after the larger plants died off there would still be some smaller plants closer to the ground and close to the entrances of caves and depressions where the smaller animals lived.

the larger animals just couldn't survive in the low oxygen environment.

Im certain that in some areas there were hardy forest that did survive for a while after the asteroid and there were several large animals that survived in them especially those that were used to low oxygen in high elevation areas.

I don't think that a lack of diversity was the culprit it
must have been the lack of oxygen.

also when the sun light faded the temperatures plummeted any animal that lived in areas with higher temperatures just froze to death unless they could migrate in time to warmer areas and the smaller animals could simply lay on the ground or enter caves to stay warm.

really large animals were left out in the cold or they huddled
together in the depressions or pockets of air that were available.

I looked in my minds eye and that is what I saw.




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Originally Posted By: Paul
I looked in my minds eye and that is what I saw.

Have you had your minds eye evaluated by a competent mental ophthalmologist? The scientists who were mentioned in the article didn't use just their minds eyes, they really looked at the data available.

As I said we neither of us really know what we are talking about, but your excursion seems a bit far out to me.

Bill Gill

Last edited by Bill; 11/23/15 02:49 AM.

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yes I have , its called real science.

my minds eye operates on the knowledge that I have acquired
over the years.

some people actually still use the knowledge of their mind
to predict the outcome of events or to figure out the reasons
that led up to events.

others simply go with the ever increasing horde of main stream
fantasy science and if they come across something they cant comprehend then they invent a reason.

I would expect that everyones minds eye operates on the knowledge they have acquired and if they mostly acquired fantasy then their mind uses that fantasy to apply to
problem solving vs actual things that would deliver an actual solution.

like the global warming conspiracy that is actually global cooling they even want to cut down all the trees because the trees produce too much co2 ... !!!!


http://www.infowars.com/solution-for-global-warming-poison-the-air-cut-down-trees/

the article about the trees ... lol

http://www.sciencearchive.org.au/nova/newscientist/108ns_006.htm

Quote:
he calculated that if we buried half of the wood that grows each year, in such a way that it didn't decay, enough CO2 would be removed from the atmosphere to offset all of our fossil-fuel emissions. It wouldn't be easy, but Zeng believes it could be done.


they cant comprehend the fact that without the co2 there
wouldn't be much oxygen for them to breath because trees
convert co2 into oxygen for hundreds of years but some idiot
started the idea , their idiot peers maintained and promoted the idea , and its as backwards of an idea as the co2 warming bullshit.

I have to give the guy credit though his idea would reduce co2
in a way because half the oxygen currently produced each year by the trees would go away ... and the global ppm of oxygen in the air would greatly reduce in proportion as the trees were cut down and buried so any of the people and animals that require oxygen to breath would also be buried as a result
but there would be no one left to burry them or to notice the
lower co2 levels on earth and people would stop buying the book when everyone is dead , so its not a really
good idea after all , but the co2 levels would decrease.

BTW , the global warming has got me turning on my heaters
earlier this year... its obviously just my imagination of
course because everyone knows through the constant brainwashing that the global warming dictates that it shouldn't be cooler so I must be using the air conditioner instead of the heaters in my home.

that is obvious...







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Originally Posted By: Paul
without the co2 there
wouldn't be much oxygen for them to breath

The idea of burying trees is kind of a dumb idea, but your problem with it isn't quite as big as you seem to think. The problem there is that trees don't contribute all that much to the oxygen content of the atmosphere. I did a quick search and found a discussion on the Biology Stack Exchange discussing how much oxygen is produced by oceanic sources. Are trees the only source of large amounts of oxygen?
Originally Posted By: Biology Stack Exchange
71% of the earth's surface is taken up by water. Not surprisingly therefore, the seas are an important source of oxygen. National Geographic claims that photosynthesis by phytoplankton (mostly single-celled phototrophs, such as cyanobacteria, green algae and diatoms) account for half of the earth's oxygen production. The other half, they claim, is produced on land by trees, shrubs, grasses, and other plants.

The Ecology Global Network takes it a step further and claims that all marine plants (including phytoplankton) together produce 70 to 80 percent of the oxygen in the atmosphere.

Based on these reports, hence, marine phototrophs account for 50 - 80% of the earth's oxygen production.

With regard to terrestrial oxygen production, NASA reports that 30% of the land is covered by trees, and as much as 45 percent of the carbon stored on land is tied up in forests. So on land, trees are definitely large contributors to oxygen production.

So cutting down half of the trees would reduce the amount of atmospheric oxygen. But not by as much as you seem to think. Particularly since they would be replaced by grasses that would make up a large part of the difference.
Originally Posted By: Paul
BTW , the global warming has got me turning on my heaters
earlier this year... its obviously just my imagination of
course because everyone knows through the constant brainwashing that the global warming dictates that it shouldn't be cooler so I must be using the air conditioner instead of the heaters in my home.

Is it really getting cool early in Florida? Here in Oklahoma, and all up through the middle of the country clear to the Dakotas we have been having an unusually warm fall. Here in Tulsa we just had our first freeze of the season. In fact we just set a new record for the number of consecutive days without a freeze. My bedding plants in front of the house are still blooming. Normally they die out in September or early October. When you start saying things like that you begin to sound like Jim Inhofe, the idiot child Oklahoma keeps sending to the Senate. Last winter he brought in a snow ball from outside the capitol and used that to debunk global warming. He really shouldn't have wasted that snow. They needed it in Alaska because they had to reroute the Idatarod sled race because they hadn't had enough snow.

So if you believe in science why don't you believe the over 90% of climate scientists who say that anthropogenic global warming is real? I mean these are people who have actually studied the numbers and agree it is happening.


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Ouch ... that didn't hurt me.

the oceans phytoplankton obtains its co2 from the oceans not from the atmosphere.

so by cutting down trees you are adding more co2 into the
ppm of the air that we breath because the trees cant convert
the co2 into oxygen after its been cut down and buried.

so that is as serious as I think it is.

here's an article I found.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/06/0607_040607_phytoplankton_2.html

something else you might want to read about...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen#Photosynthesis_and_respiration

Quote:
Variations of Oxygen shaped the climates of the past. When oxygen declined, atmospheric density dropped and this in turn increased surface evaporation, and led to precipitation increases and warmer temperatures


sounds a lot like what's happening today doesn't it.








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Back to the subject of the thread. Here is another article from PHys.Org about volcanic eruptions and extinction events.

New research may draw a 'curtain of fire' on dinosaur extinction theory

The paper that was quoted in the article says that the devastation associated with massive eruptions such as the Deccan Traps would not have been as severe as has been thought. The atmosphere would have cooled quite a bit, about 4.5 degrees C. But vegetation would have been affected in a spotty way. Some places it would have been destroyed and other places it wouldn't have been affected. It would only have taken about 50 years for the temperature to recover from the shock.

Thinking off the top of my head it seems likely that species that were highly adapted to a given climate would have a hard time making it through even a 50 year change. So the likelihood of becoming extinct in such an event would depend on how finely a species was tuned to the environment. Generalist species would have a better chance of making it through.

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Originally Posted By: Paul

the oceans phytoplankton obtains its co2 from the oceans not from the atmosphere.

And where do the oceans get their CO2?

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As sort of a general comment on this topic I ran into an interesting commentary a few weeks ago.

I really only have experience with mainstream religions before arriving in USA and was familiar with the usual views. Most just ignore dinosaurs but those who do deal with it vary from the patterns in the rocks humans just want to be dinosaurs, thru to they are the devils work designed to undermine one's faith.

You can easily look up the Vaticans official line of Dinosaurs

Vatican on Dinosaurs: This is a question for science, not theology. What we do know, however, is that “Nothing exists that does not owe its existence to God the Creator. The world began when God's word drew it out of nothingness; all existent beings, all of nature, and all human history are rooted in this primordial event, the very genesis by which the world was constituted and time begun."

What threw me the other week was one of the "new age" religion groups here in USA that had the dinosaurs all drowning in Noah's flood a few thousand years ago. Apparently Noah either didn't build a big enough Arc or God decided dinosaurs where wicked and evil and so they got there justice like all the other sinners. There seemed to be oscillation about which of these was the reason.

Paul doesn't like your idea Bill but I have to ask with his views of creation, did the dinosaurs drown?

Last edited by Orac; 11/24/15 07:13 AM.

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the ocean gets its co2 or carbon from fish or marine life as they breath by exchanging carbon with oxygen found in the oceans water , from the carbon stored in dead marine life as it decomposes and from dissolved rock and the carbon cycle between the oceans and the atmosphere etc...

the ocean will absorb co2 from the atmosphere when the
co2 pressure of the atmosphere is higher than the co2 pressure
in the ocean.

therefore , the cutting down of 1/2 the trees would lower the oxygen ppm in the atmosphere and increase the co2 ppm in the atmosphere which would increase the co2 pressure of the atmosphere and trigger co2 absorbtion into the oceans... but the oceans have a limit as to the amount of co2 that they can absorb.

so this is yet another reason other than the lower oxygen ppm
to not cut down the trees as a means of reducing co2 levels
in the atmosphere.


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Orac, strictly speaking this one should be switched to NQS. But since it is a follow on to a science subject I will respond to your comments. After all I have been responding to Paul's global warming denials when they should be in Climate Change.

There are a lot of problems with creationist responses to dinosaurs. One is as you said they were drowned because they weren't on the ark. The biggest problem with that one is that the Bible says that all the animals were represented on the ark. There isn't a foot note that says that some were left behind. I'm not sure how they can claim that the Bible is completely true and then say that some animals weren't on the Ark. That is just one of the things that they come up with when they try to explain things that don't match the Bible. There are a lot of illogical things they do in trying to explain. In fact there is a Creation Museum in Kentucky where they show people mingling with dinosaurs.

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I got that inconsistencies which is what threw me originally, Bill. I actually had trouble searching the topic because obviously there is a lot of mocking and ridicule around it, and it obviously become "one of those questions" to the believers. All I really have been able to work out is it relatively new claim by some of the newer fundamentalist religions.

Watching Paul's arguments sort of reminded me of the original comment to me, and he is the right demographic. So it struck me maybe he believes the dinosaurs drowned and so arguing this with him would be pointless.

To be honest I was surprised he was commenting at all I was sort of expecting dinosaurs don't exist as an answer.

Last edited by Orac; 11/24/15 03:50 PM.

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It is hard to deny the existence of the dinosaurs. There are just too many fossils around. And of course they are quite popular with people in general. So fundamentalists come up with all kinds of strange ideas to explain them. The only one that I can at all understand is that God put them there as a test of faith. No other argument that I have ever seen makes any kind of sense to me.

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its almost as if you orac are poking fun at people who
believe that dinosaurs could have existed at the time of
noahs flood but they couldn't fit into the ark so God let
them drown.

is that the case?

BTW ... the Bible that I read does not mention dinosaurs
before noahs flood or after noahs flood and I'm not saying that dinosaurs existed at the time of noahs flood.

but ... if there were dinosaurs at the time of noahs flood I
cannot see why they could not have been included as young dinosaurs.

how big would a fresh from the egg dinosaur be anyway?

about the size of its egg?

how big were dinosaur eggs?



from the above image it looks as if 40-50 fresh from the egg
dinosaurs could have been stored in a few cubic feet of space
onboard the ark.

you know maybe noah knew about quantum mechanics himself and
he simply poped them into a parallel universe until the ark
came to rest on the ground. then he popped them back !!!

in other words people who live a life of fantasy shouldn't
question or poke fun at anything that others believe in.



Last edited by paul; 11/24/15 06:39 PM.

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