The new great dying
Scientists are telling us that we are having an enormous impact on the ecosystems, that we are creating a huge extinction event that may rival the greatest extinctions in the history of life through the ages. Let me summarize. In the past 545 million years, called the Phanerozoic Eon, life diversified from simple single celled organisms which had dominated life on Earth for more than three billion years. The number of species and the diversity of organisms exploded in these last half billion years. Today there are an estimated ten million different species in existence.
During the the Phanerozoic, the fossil record tells us that five times, great and awful mass extinctions took place. The last, but far from the worst mass extinction event, was 65-million years ago, during what is called the K-T event, an extinction that ended among others the spectacular dinosaurs. It appears that a massive asteroid was the culprit and it struck the Earth with such devastation that soot from unbelievable conflagrations darkened the skies for decades.
The worst mass extinction on Earth happened 251-million years ago, and it is called not inappropriately, the Great Dying. Paleontologists tell us that 95 per cent of all species died out during that distant event, that life on Earth almost came to a shuddering end. What caused it? No one is really sure but indications are that massive climate change, heating of the Earth’s eco-systems precipitated by massive volcanic eruptions. The oceans became acidic and noxious and globally temperatures climbed to some 25-degrees Celsius warmer than they are today. Dante couldn’t have envisioned a less hospitable environment.
It took five-million years for the climate to settle back down and another 100-million years before life was as diversified as it had been before the Great Dying.
Today our species extinction rate rivals that of the five mass extinctions of the past half billion years and our environment is threatened with overheating, all because of humanity’s zeal for consumption. We are growing at the expense of our environment and our fellow inhabitants.
How much longer before our effort create a new Great Dying and the environment kicks back at use and cleanses the Earth with a new Global Fever of warming? What a legacy, to rival the greatest mass killers of in the great tapestry of life.