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Raging wildfires, acidified oceans and soaring temperatures likely caused a mass extinction 250 million years ago killing 95 per cent of the Earth’s marine life and 70 per cent of terrestrial species.
Charles Henderson, a professor of geoscience at the University of Calgary, led the study that pinpointed more precisely than ever exactly when — 252 million years ago — and for how long — about 20,000 years — the mass extinction happened.
The time frame, Henderson says, suggests the cause was massive volcano eruptions and the resulting carbon dioxide release from a region known as the Siberian Traps. Similar carbon dioxide releases have occurred before in Earth’s history, and there’s no reason it couldn’t happen again.
“Certainly, the current concerns over global warming are related to greenhouse gases and we have become the ‘new volcano,’” Henderson told me in an email. “Our study suggests that in the case of the End Permian extinction, high levels of CO2 were persistently detrimental to life for at least 20,000 years in order to achieve this largest extinction in Earth’s history.”
Henderson and a team of researchers studied 23 geological sites and 1,500 species of marine fossils. In particular, the teeth of tiny eel-like creatures called conodonts that lived in the Arctic and Western Canada provided a relative time scale based on their changing shape over time. They also looked at rocks and crystals, Henderson said:
“We also correlated layers by determining the stable carbon isotopic signature of the rocks and this was very important to show the rapid environmental deterioration. … the absolute dates that were essential for this study were determined by the radioactive clocks found within tiny zircon crystals (about 0.1mm) that are found in numerous volcanic ash layers interbedded with the fossiliferous layers.”
They used mass spectrometry to determine stable isotopic ratios and radioactive ages. And they studied the fossil species using a computer program called CONOP9, created by Pete Sadler at the University of California at Riverside.
It’s kind of a big deal study that shows greenhouse gases can and did kill the earth. But a cataclysmic event like the one in the Permian isn’t the only way it could happen. Enough years of carbon emissions will do the trick.[Science]
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“Raging wildfires, acidified oceans and soaring temperatures likely caused a mass DISTINCTION” should be “Raging wildfires, acidified oceans and soaring temperatures likely caused a mass EXTINCTION”
#Corrections.
My problem with the whole thing is if it’s going to happen then we cannot stop it and need to get over it. The levels of CO2 we produce is such a tiny amount it has no impact to what all the evidence shows right now and like 99% of it is natural. When you include the fact that CO2 only accounts for such a small percentage of the overall greenhouse gases then why are they trying to make it sound like the be all and end all? Oh yeah… they’re going to make billions and billions in tax and companies can make a fortune of the new products they sell. You know and they don’t even tell you that to create the new product and get rid of the old creates more CO2 than your current product will do in it’s life time.
Yeah we need to become more energy efficient and create less pollution, but don’t create this bullshit story to try and support it and charge me a fuck load with no evidence. We’ll naturally become more energy efficient anyways as components keep getting smaller and new technologies come about to replace the old.
Yet at what price does all this have on our Planet? I mean weren’t great forests in Madagascar cut down to produce all this recyclable material? Why don’t we look at the things we can change and need to change now and put more of a focus on that?
Cutting down of the rain forests
Mass Extinction caused by Humans
Overpopulation
All these new diseases that are caused by Vaccines
War
Cruelty to animals
Over fishing of the seas
etc etc.
I mean it was much hotter than it is now in the Middle Ages and yet the Polar Bears survived fine so something has obviously changed since then to cause their population to decline…. Humans have taken over the Planet to Seven Billion! What to Polar Bears eat? I’ll take one example and that is Seals, what do Seals eat? Fish. What are we doing to our Oceans? Over Fishing and causing a massive decline in population. Obviously that means less Seals and alternative food sources for Polar Bears and means more die out from starvation. They aren’t dying out from being too hot, just lack of food…
Just pisses me off.
@scaramoosh, everything you’ve just said contradicts the evidence.
There isn’t any evidence that man made CO2 is causing this mass scale end of the world global warming.