Last Mass Extinction May Have Actually Been Caused By CO2 Levels

>Science is a collection of stories we like to tell eachother about how the world works.

Stopped reading there

>>8251207
>The title is a double entendre
Non-native English speaker here, where in the actual fuck is a double meaning in "The Solution to the Ice Age Extinctions"?

>>8251241
But that's true, m8.

>>8251207
>scribd
I don't take any papers published seriously if they're not reported on dailymail.

>>8251243
probs meaning 'solution' to what caused the extinctions and humans are a 'solution' to low co2 levels. Dude waits until the very end to say this tho

>>8251257
>dailymail
I don't take any papers published seriously if they're not reported on beforeitsnews.

>May Have Actually Been Caused
... but most-certainly was not.

>>8252272
>... but most-certainly was not.
From the available evidence, it most probably was. OP here. Not to rain on the author's parade, but the idea has been floated by other researchers specializing in the Pleistocene Extinctions - he simply joins the puzzle pieces into a larger picture.

The gist of the argument is pretty simple, if you can make it through the 'scholarly tripwires' at the start:
-Up until the Pleistocene, all photosynthesis was of the c3 type, which can no longer grow when CO2 drops below 100 ppm.
-c4 photosynthesis, a far more efficient type, had just evolved, and can grow with atmospheric CO2 as low as 20 ppm.
-From ice cores, we know that the average CO2 got as low as 170 ppm, a rate at which c3 plants will no longer flower or grow, but not yet die
-As with any measurement device, the precision is expressed as a percent of scale. Ice cores yield (relatively speaking) high resolution when studying CO2 levels from last century, but the resolution is less than a year when studying periods ~10,000 years ago, and
-Seasonal variations are large; CO2 levels are lowest in summer (when plants grow the most) and highest in winter (when plants don't grow), and
-Local variations are large; CO2 levels drop the most nearest the areas where they are being consumed.

Nothing here can't be confirmed with a little google-fu. I am genuinely looking for flaws in the reasoning, so if anyone can spot anything, please do point it out.

File: pepislam.jpg (20KB, 225x225px) Image search: [Google]

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>le global warming meme

There's a million different factors that could have contributed to the extinction of large mammals in the new world after the last glacial maximum, and as it is now, we don't have enough evidence to draw a conclusion. This is a nice piece to add to the puzzle but it in no way makes a complete picture