The Crisis Report - 111 : Lessons from the past. Part One
Posted by TuneGlum7903@reddit | collapse | View on Reddit | 19 comments
Let's consider MASS EXTINCTION. Since we are now living through the Sixth Extinction Event.
There's been a spate of new papers out looking at the worst mass extinction event known, "The Great Dying" 252mya. It's known as the “Great Dying” because it wiped out around 90% of life on the planet.
When it started, the Earth was at 420ppmCO2 and about +4°C over our 1850 baseline. In just 75ky the CO2 level was around 2500ppmCO2 and the GMST was between 32°C to 40°C.
Six-fold increase of atmospheric pCO2 during the Permian-Triassic mass extinction - Nature…The Permian-Triassic mass extinction was accompanied by a massive release of carbon into the ocean-atmosphere system…www.nature.com
We show that pCO2 increased from 426ppm(CO2) in the latest Permian to 2507ppm(CO2) at the Permian-Triassic Mass Extinction within about 75ky, and that the reconstructed pCO2 significantly correlates with sea surface temperatures.
It started with volcanoes in what is now Siberia.
Then the volcanoes ignited a massive coal bed.
Field evidence for coal combustion links the 252 Ma Siberian Traps with global carbon disruption — June 2020
Here we give further evidence that Siberian Traps magmas intruded into and incorporated coal and organic material, and, for the first time, give direct evidence that the magmas also combusted large quantities of coal and organic matter during eruption.
Volcanic coal-burning in Siberia led to climate change 252 million years ago….A team of researchers led by Arizona State University geoscientist Linda Elkins-Tanton has provided the first direct…www.nsf.gov
Over a 75ky period, atmospheric CO2 levels increased by +2000ppm.
During this event, up to 96% of marine species and 70% of terrestrial vertebrate species became extinct.
Calculations of seawater temperature indicate that at the peak of the extinction, the Earth underwent lethally hot global warming, in which equatorial ocean temperatures exceeded 104 degrees Fahrenheit (40°C).
Basically, everything between 30°N and 30°S DIED. What survived did so by moving towards the Poles.
BURNING FOSSIL FUELS IS DEADLY FOR LIFE ON EARTH.
Whether it happens “naturally” or as part of an “industrial revolution” it ALWAYS FUCKS with the Climate System.
freesoloc2c@reddit
Run away train never going back. Wrong way on a one way track.
delusionalbillsfan@reddit
https://youtu.be/LW7Iv-V1-Jo?si=qSfaSbiPjRexWFZ_
freesoloc2c@reddit
Dude. That was funny.
delusionalbillsfan@reddit
I bounce back and forth between optimism and pessimism, but you look at how crazy things are getting at +1.5C and its hard to imagine what +2C, +3C brings. Let alone +5C lmao.
Dudeogenes@reddit
https://youtu.be/Z0GFRcFm-aY?si=VPH1QVX97t8MtlcP
OGSyedIsEverywhere@reddit
Surely those are some mondegreens. As far as I remember, the lyrics are
JonathanApple@reddit
Yes, better, I memorized them for playing and I think this is much closer....I'd have to sing it out to remember myself
TuneGlum7903@reddit (OP)
Appropriate.
NyriasNeo@reddit
"BURNING FOSSIL FUELS IS DEADLY FOR LIFE ON EARTH."
I do not need to know what happened 250M years ago to know that.
OGSyedIsEverywhere@reddit
How much of the impact was from the speed of the change compared to the size of the peak (2500ppm)?
I ask because AFAIK the RCP8.5 has it that we'll reach a mere 900ppm very quickly and then stall out, unable to emit further by virtue of resource shortages.
TuneGlum7903@reddit (OP)
The problem is that the forests globally all died out at around 860ppm. From the paper Mega El Niño instigated the end-Permian mass extinction, Science, 12 Sep 2024, Vol 385, Issue 6714 pp. 1189–119
As atmospheric partial pressure of carbon dioxide doubled from about 410 to about 860 ppm (parts per million) in the latest Permian, the meridional overturning circulation collapsed, the Hadley cell contracted, and El Niños intensified.
The resultant deforestation, reef demise, and plankton crisis marked the start of a cascading environmental disaster. Reduced carbon sequestration initiated positive feedback, producing a warmer hothouse and, consequently, stronger El Niños. The compounding effects of elevated climate variability and mean state warming led to catastrophic but diachronous terrestrial and marine losses.
The “cascading environmental disaster” started at around +860ppmCO2. FAR below the +2500ppmCO2 level that would ultimately be reached.
By 2050 we will be at around 750ppmCO2e. At a +3ppm/year rate of increase we will reach 860ppmCO2e around 2085.
Assuming things don't accelerate.
When I say ALL the forests died, I mean ALL OF THE TREES on the planet died.
“Whilst the oceans were initially shielded from the temperature rises, the mega-El Nino’s caused temperatures on land to exceed most species thermal tolerances at rates so rapid that they could not adapt in time,” co-lead author Yadong Sun, a researcher at China University of Geosciences in Wuhan, said in a news release.
“Only species that could migrate quickly could survive, and there weren’t many plants or animals that could do that.”
“You lose all trees at this time, which is amazing. Nothing would have been growing higher than your knees in the early Triassic” referring to the geological era that followed the extinction event when the ecosystem began to recover.
The complete global "forest death" and then burning of those trees as well as the burning of tropical peats probably released another +1000ppm to +1200ppm of CO2 into the atmosphere very quickly.
There is a "tipping point" where globally "ecosystem turnover" takes over and all the trees die. This releases a large pulse of biological carbon (as opposed to fossil carbon) into the Climate System in another wave of warming.
I wouldn't put much stock on the idea that things are going to "stall out".
OGSyedIsEverywhere@reddit
That makes a lot of sense. Are you aware of anybody speaking about a "forest death event" - by that name or any other - as a worst case scenario to hopefully avoid in the long term?
TuneGlum7903@reddit (OP)
Besides myself, you mean?
036 - The World’s Forests are Burning, Ecosystem Turnover is the Cause. Let’s All be Really Clear on What that Means.
Not yet. People are still scrambling to process that Arctic Amplification if 4X overall warming which means that the Boreal Forests are doomed. A few people like Hansen are incorporating that into their forecasts but generally forest die off is still being looked at piecemeal instead as being a global consequence of a warming planet.
Heck, as recently as 2000 mainstream climate science was confident that forests would respond to warming conditions by expanding.
OGSyedIsEverywhere@reddit
I'd had the impression from the 2022 UNEP report on wildfire incidence and the establishment of the FAO's Global Fire Management Hub that the idea of total forest and woodland death was something that must have already been given a technical name and accounted for somwhere. Do you know if they do anything besides policywashing and fiddling the statistics?
TuneGlum7903@reddit (OP)
Thanks for the link, I took a quick look and noted this,
"Spreading like Wildfire: The Rising Threat of Extraordinary Fires is the first report by UNEP and GRID-Arendal to take stock of the scale and extent of the global wildfire crisis and has been commissioned in support of the UN Decade of Ecosystem Restoration."
So, 2022 is the FIRST report looking at this. I wouldn't be optimistic about much progress being made since then.
OGSyedIsEverywhere@reddit
I think the idea would be well served a snappy term that content creators (e.g. Hagens, Collapse Chronicles, Rachel Donald) can use to spread the idea, like Blue Ocean Event. I propose Forest Extinction Carbon (as a noun) if nobody else has a suggestion. Example sentence:
.
If anybody thinks a different name for it would be better in headlines and soundbites, I'd love to hear suggestions.
TuneGlum7903@reddit (OP)
SS: The Crisis Report - 111 : Lessons from the past. Part One
Part One of my series on "mass extinction" events. In this paper I examine the worst ME of the last 500my, the Permian-Triassic ME aka "The Great Dying".
There has been a spate of papers recently on this topic and they greatly improve our understanding of why this event happened and how it unfolded.
Here are two articles last week discussing the Permian-Triassic extinction.
The 'Great Dying' wiped out 90% of life, then came 5 million years of lethal heat. New fossils…A mass extinction event wiped out around 90% of life. What followed has long puzzled scientists: The planet became…www.cnn.com
Around 250 million years ago, Earth was near-lifeless and locked in a hothouse state. Now…The answer confirms scientists' suspicion that when our planet's climate crosses certain 'tipping points', truly…theconversation.com
They were in response to this paper in Nature.
Spiritual_Dot_3128@reddit
Thanks Richard, very interesting.
StatementBot@reddit
The following submission statement was provided by /u/TuneGlum7903:
SS: The Crisis Report - 111 : Lessons from the past. Part One
Part One of my series on "mass extinction" events. In this paper I examine the worst ME of the last 500my, the Permian-Triassic ME aka "The Great Dying".
There has been a spate of papers recently on this topic and they greatly improve our understanding of why this event happened and how it unfolded.
Here are two articles last week discussing the Permian-Triassic extinction.
The 'Great Dying' wiped out 90% of life, then came 5 million years of lethal heat. New fossils…A mass extinction event wiped out around 90% of life. What followed has long puzzled scientists: The planet became…www.cnn.com
Around 250 million years ago, Earth was near-lifeless and locked in a hothouse state. Now…The answer confirms scientists' suspicion that when our planet's climate crosses certain 'tipping points', truly…theconversation.com
They were in response to this paper in Nature.
Early Triassic super-greenhouse climate driven by vegetation collapse - Nature Communications….The Permian-Triassic Mass Extinction (PTME), the most severe crisis of the Phanerozoic, has been attributed to intense…www.nature.com
They think that if it gets hot enough, so much of the plant life dies off that the Climate System gets “locked into” a hothouse state for a prolonged period.
“Specifically, we investigate the hypothesis that the key driver of the transition to a super greenhouse Earth was the dramatic and prolonged reduction of low-latitude terrestrial biomass caused by the PTME and its delayed recovery. Tropical peat-forming ecosystems are responsible for substantial drawdown of CO2, but these extensive biomes were lost at the end of the Permian.”
Basically they think it got so hot that almost all of the tropical jungles (low-latitude terrestrial biomass) DIED. These died, then burned and released all the CO2 they sequestered back into the atmosphere.
Once these forests were gone, there was nothing to draw that CO2 back out of the atmosphere and sequester it in tropical peats again. So, it stayed HOT for a really long time.
“Indeed, plant species richness and abundance dropped significantly during the Permian–Triassic transition, which is the only genuine mass extinction level event of land plants through the whole Phanzerzoic. Leaving a multimillion year “coal gap” in the Early to Middle Triassic where terrestrial plant materials did not build up as peat.”
It stayed “so hot” for “so long” that most of the planet turned to desert and most life on land and in the oceans died. There was so little plant life that it left a “multimillion year “coal gap” in the Early to Middle Triassic where terrestrial plant materials “did not build up as peat”.
Let's consider what that means for us as the 6th Mass Extinction unfolds around us.
MANDATORY DISCLAIMER:
I write and post on a number of sites and have been attacked for having no “academic credentials” in any field related to climate science. I do not wish to misrepresent myself as a “climate scientist” or “climate expert” to anyone who is reading this or any of my other climate related posts, so let us be clear:
I am not a climatologist, meteorologist, paleo-climatologist, geoscientist, ecologist, or climate science specialist. I am a motivated individual studying the issue using publicly available datasets and papers.
The analysis I am presenting is my own. I make no claim to “insider or hidden knowledge” and all the points I discuss can be verified with only a few hours of research on the Internet.
The analysis and opinion I present, in this and my other climate articles is exactly that: my opinion. I hope anyone reading it finds it useful, informative, and insightful but in the end, it is just my opinion.
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