Putting deep time on a familiar scale helps us to understand the rapid pace of today’s changes. The expanse of deep time still surprises me every time I look at it, hopefully it will impress you too.
HI Tom my only query to these figures is that the start temperatures for each of these extinction events are much higher than our current level of global average temperatures which leaves us 5-7 degrees Celsius before we even reach temperatures at which these events started.
End-Permian Extinction ~22°C to 26°C
End-Triassic Extinction ~20°C to 26°C (estimated)
Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) 22.3°C to 28.3°C
Modern Era (Pre-Industrial) ~13.7°C
Modern Era (2025) ~15.2°C
As history shows each were thriving at the start and each had an extinction event and rapid warming but was this due to the extreme highs reached or the rate of change?
Our worst case scenarios would only take us to the start temperatures for these events before we will change our energy production to cleaner methods.
I think what worries a lot of people is the cyclical ice age we should be entering.
Either way water is the best temperature shock absorber and the creation of well hydrated continents full of life will help control fluctuations.
Hi Theodore, That’s correct. The Earth inhabits a number of stable states, ultimately driven by CO2 levels but also influenced by continental makeup and ocean geometry. It actually spends most of the time in hot house conditions, dipping into ice ages for shorter periods with transitional periods in between.
Life thrives in all of them as long as it has time to adapt and evolve between states. Left to its own devices our current ecology would adapt to a hot house climate given the 10+ million years this would take, just as it evolved from the much hotter Eocene to the cold house we have had for the last 3 million years.
It’s the pace of change that life struggles with, so when something rapid happens like a volcanic province eruption it can’t cope, but a new mountain range or a change on ocean configuration is fine as its much slower.
If you transplanted everything today into the Eocene, it would have a terrible time, likewise if you transplanted everything from the Eocene into today, it couldn’t cope either. Both are adapted to their current conditions.
Working at the shovel end of the equation the fact that life will thrive if we wish is different to keeping our current ecological mix alive. Invasive species are one of the biggest ecological threats but what can we expect when we change the environment so much. There are many threads to this, some based upon the notion of natural repair some on preserving and enduring the change with hope of survival or adaption. At the moment we are trying to accomplish the latter with little regard to the former which in times of rapid change may offer many benefits. Life I believe will always work toward a climatic maximum and holding on to something that will prove to be out of context in a different climatic regime is a lot of hard work, like keeping animals in a zoo. Hard to accept but maybe acceptance and understanding is what we need most as we are happy to introduce species for enhanced agricultural production but not environmental stability?
I should have worded this as they are not as worried about some global warming because of the cyclical global cooling we should be entering. my apologies
Wow, sobering analysis. Thanks for compiling
HI Tom my only query to these figures is that the start temperatures for each of these extinction events are much higher than our current level of global average temperatures which leaves us 5-7 degrees Celsius before we even reach temperatures at which these events started.
End-Permian Extinction ~22°C to 26°C
End-Triassic Extinction ~20°C to 26°C (estimated)
Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) 22.3°C to 28.3°C
Modern Era (Pre-Industrial) ~13.7°C
Modern Era (2025) ~15.2°C
As history shows each were thriving at the start and each had an extinction event and rapid warming but was this due to the extreme highs reached or the rate of change?
Our worst case scenarios would only take us to the start temperatures for these events before we will change our energy production to cleaner methods.
I think what worries a lot of people is the cyclical ice age we should be entering.
Either way water is the best temperature shock absorber and the creation of well hydrated continents full of life will help control fluctuations.
Thanks for an interesting read.
Hi Theodore, That’s correct. The Earth inhabits a number of stable states, ultimately driven by CO2 levels but also influenced by continental makeup and ocean geometry. It actually spends most of the time in hot house conditions, dipping into ice ages for shorter periods with transitional periods in between.
Life thrives in all of them as long as it has time to adapt and evolve between states. Left to its own devices our current ecology would adapt to a hot house climate given the 10+ million years this would take, just as it evolved from the much hotter Eocene to the cold house we have had for the last 3 million years.
It’s the pace of change that life struggles with, so when something rapid happens like a volcanic province eruption it can’t cope, but a new mountain range or a change on ocean configuration is fine as its much slower.
If you transplanted everything today into the Eocene, it would have a terrible time, likewise if you transplanted everything from the Eocene into today, it couldn’t cope either. Both are adapted to their current conditions.
Working at the shovel end of the equation the fact that life will thrive if we wish is different to keeping our current ecological mix alive. Invasive species are one of the biggest ecological threats but what can we expect when we change the environment so much. There are many threads to this, some based upon the notion of natural repair some on preserving and enduring the change with hope of survival or adaption. At the moment we are trying to accomplish the latter with little regard to the former which in times of rapid change may offer many benefits. Life I believe will always work toward a climatic maximum and holding on to something that will prove to be out of context in a different climatic regime is a lot of hard work, like keeping animals in a zoo. Hard to accept but maybe acceptance and understanding is what we need most as we are happy to introduce species for enhanced agricultural production but not environmental stability?
"I think what worries a lot of people is the cyclical ice age we should be entering."
Almost nobody is worried about that (unless you can provide evidence); the only ones are warming denialists.
I should have worded this as they are not as worried about some global warming because of the cyclical global cooling we should be entering. my apologies