I am living a few hundred feet above a scar, a surface representing the worst disaster ever inflicted on planet Earth.
That is, we are on what is called the Jurassic Coast. It was given this title after it became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2001. “Jurassic” is the name of just one of a group of three geological layers, but it’s the one more popularly known because of the film “Jurassic Park,” so is good for tourism.
The three layers – Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous – underlie much of England, and became tilted so that they slope gently down toward the east. They are collectively called the Mesozoic (“middle life”); the era in which they were laid down is also known as the “Age of Dinosaurs.” It lasted from about 250 million to about 65 million years ago. The three layers outcrop along this coast in cliffs, from which fossils are loosened by tides and landslips, so Lyme Regis, in the middle of the Jurassic Coast, is a mecca for geologists.
What happened 250 million years ago was the Permian-Triassic extinction. 70 percent of all life on land, and 90 percent of all life in the oceans, was wiped out. The cause was massive volcanic eruptions in what is now Siberia. Carbon dioxide was forced into the oceans, and oxygen forced out – marine life asphyxiated.
Life had previously been diverse; it had radiated in the Cambrian “explosion” into all the lineages that still exist and many that do not. Perhaps, if the great extinction hadn’t happened, we would be 250 million years more advanced than we now are.
(I think that better names for these global extinction events would be the End-Permian and the End-Cretaceous.)
Life began thriving and diversifying again, through the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous periods. Then about 65 million years ago came another extinction, called the Cretaceous-Paleogene. It was more scary than “Jurassic Park” but maybe not quite as drastic as the earlier event: it extinguished three quarters of species. It was caused by an asteroid that hit Yucatán, and is more popularly known, because it killed all dinosaurs except the birds.
We are living spatially above the traces of those global extinctions, and, in time, within another, between the recent geological period called the Holocene and what is coming to be called a new one, the Anthropocene. It began with agriculture, and has been accelerating since the industrial revolution. Carbon dioxide is again being forced into the oceans, so that corals are dying.
Of the world’s mammals, 36 percent, by mass, are now of one species, the human. 60 percent are livestock grown for human use (cattle, sheep, pigs…). Wild mammals (everything from whales to elephants to lions to lemurs to mice) are reduced to 4 percent. Of birds, 70 percent by mass are livestock (poultry); wild birds are down to 30 percent. These are among the findings of the first thorough assessment of the world’s biomass, reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S.A.
Plants vastly outweigh all other forms of life put together. However, their biomass must have been several times greater before humans started replacing forest with field and city.
No need to repeat the statistics of the declines of fish, amphibians, bees, of which you’ve doubtless read. A recent shock was the decimation in European countries, probably extrapolable to others, of all flying insects, on which the higher food chain depends.
I’m not sure how the ongoing extinction event compares with the Permian-Triassic one in speed and scale. But it shouldn’t be as bad. Its cause is not a blind volcanic force but a cognitive species, which will presumably understand and change its behavior before those percentages reach their worst.
THE WAY OF ALL FLESH (as it were):
More than 99 percent of all species, amounting to over five billion species, that ever lived on Earth are estimated to be extinct.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_evolutionary_history_of_life
There is a great difference between steady natural extinction, which is spread over billions of years and is outrun by speciation, and the geologically instantaneous loss of the majority of species existing at one time.
Otherwise the world’s species wouldn’t have grown to be millions. It’s rather like the difference between constant replacement of hairs and being scalped.
Most of the species that no longer exist are “lost” only in the sense that they divided into new groups of species. The common ancestor of the primates no longer exists, nor the common ancestors of the branches of primates, but their many descendant species do, including us.
What behavior must we change for survival?
Would abandoning fossil fuels be enough to stop carbonization of the oceans, or do we also need to stop agriculture and raising cattle / poultry?
If we stopped agriculture and raising farm animals we could probably survive on grubs, crickets, and truffles (they should taste OK with the right seasoning).
Though phasing out fossil fuels must be the major step, there are many others large and small; I’ve been hoping to take time to collect the scattered statements on what their percentage contributions are, in order to improve my “primer” on global heating, http://www.universalworkshop.com/climate/index.htm
Agriculture must continue. But it can be made less destructive by e.g. no-till methods, and it could be increasingly concentrated into vertical farming in cities, much more efficient and allowing vast areas of monoculture to return to nature.
We (even committed vegetarians) can’t expect more than a small fraction of people to give up flesh-eating anytime soon, great as it would be in many ways. Another visionary idea that is already in practice is meat grown from cells; no herds of animals needed, no seas of manure entering rivers, no mad cow disease.
Some (a dozen?) years ago, the then environmental columnist in Scientific American had an article on the many (?) slivers? angles? components? of policy that could be combined in various ways to combat climate change; I wish I could find it again, will try.
Your link has a lot of good info. I went to Life In the Skin of a Bubble / Rise of Vertical Farms and learned about perennial wheat that acts as a carbon sink. I’ll pass that on to my farmer friend. I also read about how the DMZ in Korea was once scarred but is now lush with growth. The land can heal itself if left alone. That’s in the Bible too; I think it recommends giving the land a sabbath every 7 years.
Coincidentally, the New York Times travel section has an article about hunting dinosaurs in Lyme Regis.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/23/travel/fossil-hunting-lyme-regis-dorset-england.html
Guy,Thank you !. I would imagine a small justification is in order,let me explain. I’ve always felt that the extreme extinction event ,known as the Permian-Triassic was likely due to the ignition of massive coal beds laid down during the Carboniferous Period -with the exothermic chemical reaction taking place between the coal and——You guessed it- a volcanic eruption as the source of ignition as mentioned in your post.Although,I have expressed this opinion in open forums and even a class I took on “Mass Extinction Events” offered by the University of Cape Town in South Africa my thoughts on the subjects received what I would have considered a less that enthusiastic response .That said,You certainly seemed to have found a very interesting place to relocate to !.Your Friend (stuck across the pond),Sam
That suggestion is very interesting. I don’t know enough to know whether it is plausible, but am surprised that no one considered it seriously.
I had thought of mentioning the profusion of vegetable life in the Carboniferous (which preceded the Permian) but wanted to keep my summary of the geological succession simple.
Guy,There is a very interesting article in today’s (24/05/18) Science Examiner blog dealing with the most likely benefactors-birds and ferns-of the Mass Extinction Event of 65 MYA. Check it out I think you will find it interesting. Supplementary,I have been ruminating on my comment to you about the Permian Event and have come to the conclusion that the lack of interest in my hypothesis hinges on two elements.The first being a lack of understanding of the First Law of Thermodynamics and Laws of Conservation by the general public-I would imagine for instances that I would be considered insane if I made a statement to the effect that our present society is actually powered by converted sunlight.Secondly,I believe that an ontological discrepancy exist by using the terms coal,oil or petrol of which would still have been in a proto or potential state in illu tempori rather that the substances we think of today.Anyway,Ita Fiat,Esto-right.Nevertheless,Thank You for your kind comment,Sam
Thanks Guy. I was unaware of those percentages — Mammals: 36% human, 60% livestock, 4% wild; Birds 70% livestock, 30% wild (I retyped them just to help me remember them). That is sobering.
Honestly I am not optimistic that we humans are going to change enough to prevent the sixth mass extinction from continuing to run its course. I remain hopeful though (Hope is a moral virtue, while optimism is an attitude), and I do what I can to reduce my harmful impacts and to have as much of a positive impact as I can. I don’t want to sink into nihilism.
I often find myself saying, “there are too damn many people on this planet, and I’m one of them.”
Welcome back to Lyme Regis. I guess you weren’t able to sell the old house. I hope it will be manageable, and you will enjoy living on the Jurassic coast.
Anthony,I would imagine like most things it’s actually a matter of prospective and knowing one’s place-or as the Germans say “Sitz im Leben”.My guess is it all got started with this Et Ecco Homo crap in Genesis where somehow or another mankind had become so exhalted.The truth of the matter is that we are just another animal within a huge biodiversity,unfortunately though, we have chosen a destructive path rather than coexisting with nature as the other animals and plants seem to do.Myself I believe that in fact we are on the proper trajectory towards extinction as would any other species that has overrun the carrying capacity of it’s environment.To paraphrase an old U.S. Forest Agency TV commercial-“Who’s the most dangerous animal in the world-Man is the one with the brain “.I have to agree with you about not being very optimistic about our chances of survival as I am sure that once again our wisdom will be trumped by our arrogance or as Albert Einstein so elegantly stated-“One can not solve a problem using the very same thinking that created it”.Anyhow,it’s a relativistic universe right,and like all the other great species and empires and stars or whatever for that one brief moment in eternity we will have had our glorious moment in the Sunlight and in the meantime the World will go on as it always has !.
The world will go on, but not as it always has. After each of the previous five mass extinctions, the biosphere took tens of millions of years to recover. And when we look at Mars (and possibly Venus), we see a planet that once had conditions amenable to life as we know it, but which is now uninhabitable. I don’t see any silver linings in our current anthopogenic mass extinction.
Anthony,I am sorry but I believe I am missing your point or that possibly you are missing mine.If one looks at it from a “It’s Man’s World and that’s all that counts “point of view I guess your right.Concerning Mass Extinctions they are generally misunderstood by the general public as they are actually drivers of diversity and a furtherance to evolution-e.g.,there would be no Homo Sapiens if the dinosaurs were not driven to extinction allowing a small bred a mammal to thrive,our great gateway ancestor.If you study the topic you will find that the animal and plant kingdoms have come an enormous way since their humble beginnings primarily due to the fact that large dominant species extinctions provided an opportunity for other species to evolve-imagine if you would our planets dominant species still being cyanobacteria as it was 3.9 bya there would not be any available oxygen for other spies to arise, as well as being an incredibly dull place.And lastly,I believe that it is a bit of a stretch to believe that Venus and Mars ever had habitable conditions amenable to life as we conceive it.As far as the Silver Lining goes that will go to the species that replaces Man.
Makes me thinK of more than just this biggest volcanic eruption on the big island of Hawaii going on now. A nmeumonic I got for the Paleaozic age is COSDCP, Cambrian, Orthodivician, Silurian, Devonian. Carboniferous, (pennslyvanian and some other,), and Permian. I wanted to be a paleontologist but my Mon said ther’s not future in it. LOL, Now look at all this interst in it now. So became a horticultrualist instead. You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink or as we horts now say, you can lead a whore to culture but you can’t make her think.
So, How early has any of you yet seen Venus in the daytime? With my trained eye. I’ve spotted it as early as noon.
Too many more thoughts in my free-wheeling spinning mind righ now to put in this righ now. so, stay tuned.