re: #142 publicityStunted

Though I don’t think you were being literal, I still feel compelled to point out there’s a difference between low IQ and aggressively, maliciously, willfully stupid. …

I intentionally did not write “IQ”.

And as far as SO₂: Don’t know, but I have not found a near-term extinction scenario that has made any sense to me (yet.) The oceans turn over slowly, and the release of sulfur dioxide is something that would be linked to temperature change in the ocean - water at an air boundary dissolves gases in proportion to the partial pressure of said gasses - and at the water-atmosphere boundary an equilibrium is reached between the water and the atmosphere for each gas.

As the ocean water warms it can hold less gas (total) and will exhale gases (at the boundary) relative to the gas proportions.

However, the water of the oceans is stratified, very strongly in some locations. This means the abyss doesn’t mix with the upper layers very much. While the abyss today is not anoxic (though it can be close) there is always the potential for it to become so in the future, and that sulfur using bacteria will once again dominate the planet. In that case then we (all the multicellular animals that are oxygen breathers) really will become extinct.

However, that is a worst case scenario, and I’ve not seen it proposed as anything that is likely to happen (in our civilization’s lifetime, anyway.) The people who raise this worst case scenario really ought to make it clear that it is the worst case scenario and that it is not predicted by any of the accepted Earth System models.