“It’s not over yet. We still have time to save the planet, but it is worrying that—especially going forward—where in the past a lot of our damage has been done by hunting, now we’re starting to pull these levers that are really responsible for the worst things that have happened in Earth history, these big injections of CO2. So, before we go too far down that road, because we know it leads [to mass extinction], we should consult the rocks and learn what they have to tell us.”
Peter Brannen is an award-winning science journalist with expertise in ocean science, deep time, astrobiology and the carbon cycle. Peter’s work has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic and The Washington Post, among many other media outlets, and he is the author of the acclaimed The Ends of the World: Volcanic Apocalypses, Lethal Oceans, and Our Quest to Understand Earth’s Past Mass Extinctions. Today, Peter joins Ross and Christophe to walk us through the five major mass extinctions in Earth’s history, discussing what events triggered each extinction and how plant and animal life changed each time.
Peter covers the current threat to coral reefs and shares his definition of fossil fuels, explaining how past mass extinctions generated the fossil fuels we use today. Listen in for Peter’s insight around the eerie shadow of extinction that follows human migration and find out what we can learn about managing the carbon cycle from previous extinctions to avert another ‘end of times.’
Key Takeaways
[1:46] How to think about the scale of geology and deep time
Frame one footstep as century of time
Walk 20 miles/day for four years to beginning of Earth’s history
[6:25] The Ordovician mass extinction (445M years ago)
Underwater animal life gets off ground, reefs take off
Ice age drops sea level and causes 85% of life to go extinct
[11:18] The Late Devonian mass extinction (375M years ago)
Age of fish + first life appears on land
Trees as mechanism of mass extinction, initiate ice age
[14:43] The End-Permian mass extinction (252M years ago)
Big reptiles, animals related to mammals and reefs in oceans
96% of life wiped out by extreme volcanic eruptions
[19:50] How the Earth recovered after the End-Permian
Took 10M years to recoup, miserable time
Life looks totally different in aftermath
[20:49] The ‘Permian Jr.’ mass extinction (200M years ago)
Volcanic event causes breakup of Pangea
Sets reign of dinosaurs in motion
[22:27] The instantaneous nature of the asteroid extinction
May have taken < 20 minutes (hot as pizza oven)
Less than 50K years considered fast geologically
[27:00] The current threat to the coral reefs
Devastating bleaching events + acidification
Tend to get wiped out in mass extinctions
Supply 25% of Earth’s biodiversity
[31:30] Peter’s definition of fossil fuels
What happens when life preserved in rocks for long time
Humans undo photosynthesis by releasing CO2
[32:40] What role mass extinctions play in generating fossil fuels
Natural gas fracked today victim of Late Devonian
Organic matter preserved at bottom of ocean
[34:36] What characterizes the current potential extinction
Modern humans show up 300K years ago
Eerie shadow of extinction follows where people go
Foot on accelerator now but still time to avert
[41:38] Why it doesn’t matter if humans cause the rise in CO2
Geopolitical implications of immigration once tropics uninhabitable
Wet bulb temperature = no way to cool off, die of overheating
[45:20] What we can learn about changing the atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gasses from previous mass extinctions
Sequester CO2 in basalt rock, turn to limestone
Same process cooled Earth 200M years ago
[47:08] Why Peter has cause to be optimistic
Use information to energize vs. get depressed
Area of opportunity for carbon removal industry
Connect with Ross & Christophe
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Resources
Peter’s Website
Peter on Twitter
The Ends of the World: Volcanic Apocalypses, Lethal Oceans, and Our Quest to Understand Earth’s Past Mass Extinctions by Peter Brannen
Techstars Sustainability Accelerator
Lee Kump
National Center for Atmospheric Research
The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
Dr. David Goldberg on RCC EP004
‘We Need to Capture Carbon to Fight Climate Change’ in Nature
Paris Agreement
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