The ends of the world
"As new groundbreaking research suggests that climate change played a major role in the most extreme catastrophes in the planet's history, award-winning science journalist Peter Brannen takes us on a wild ride through the planet's five mass extinctions and, in the process, offers us a glimpse of our increasingly dangerous future."-- "A vivid tour of Earth's Big Five mass extinctions, the past worlds lost with each, and what they all can tell us about our not-too-distant future. Was it really an asteroid that killed the dinosaurs? Or carbon dioxide-driven climate change? In fact, scientists now suspect that climate change played a major role not only in the end of the age of dinosaurs, but also in each of the five most deadly mass extinctions in the history of the planet. Struck by the implications of this for our own future, Peter Brannen, along with some of the world's leading paleontologists, dives into deep time, exploring each of Earth's five dead ends, and in the process, offers us a glimpse of what's to come. Using the visible clues these extinctions have left behind in the fossil record, The Ends of the World takes us inside the 'scenes of the crime,' from South Africa's Karoo Desert to the New York Palisades, to tell the story of each extinction.
Stats for nerds
10recommend
13mentions
12people
2018–2026years
85% recommend15% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Seconded. I learned a ton from it, as well as his previous book The Ends of the World on mass extinctions. His writing style is wonderful, he turns an academic subject into a page-turner.
The Story of CO2 taught me something I had never considered. It wasn't exactly that photosynthetic life started pumping out O2 and chilled the planet. Snowball earth happened way later. It was photosynthetic life that got buried in sediment and locked it away from aerobic respiration. The amount of carbon stored in the earth's crust is insane. Fossil fuels are just a minuscule fraction of that.
This has some implications for our current climate: If we want to use biology to sequester carbon (growing trees, algae, etc), it's only a temporary sink unless we lock it away for eons. Once it's eaten/burned, the CO2 is right back in the atmosphere. In short, we gotta physically put it back into the earth's crust if we want to draw down carbon.
- Thinking about just how long the earth has been around fascinates me. I read (or listened to, rather) The Ends of the World by Peter Brannen, which was captivating. The audiobook is well-narrated too. We humans tend to think that the planet just "is" the way it is, but this is just how it exists in this moment in which we find ourselves observing it. The earth has worn many faces over the ages.
- If you are looking for an in depth (pop-sci) dive into the mass extinctions in earth's history definitely check out "The Ends of the World" by Peter Brannen. It covers the five mass extinctions with a good mix of scientific detail and entertaining writing. IIRC it discusses the likelier explanations for Silurian extinctions including disruptions to the carbon-silicate cycle (volcanism -> fresh silicate rocks -> weathering removes CO2 from the atmosphere as ultimately insoluble CaCO3 -> global ice age), anoxia/CO2 drawdown caused by increased phosphorous and other nutrient availability, and others.
"The Ends of the World" stands out as a top disaster book along with Simon Winchester's "Krakatoa" and Sebastian Junger's "The Perfect Storm".
- Agree, and this point, that the current age can't yet count as a mass extinction, was made well in the book "The Ends of the World", which is about the five major mass extinctions (and which was a good read). It's not that what we've done so far isn't a possible start on a mass extinction, it's just that the big five (and especially the end-Permian) were mind-bogglingly destructive "perfect storms". They killed most organisms of all types and sizes in all environments over the entire world. It's hard to imagine how that's even possible!
- > A changing climate doesn't mean an unlivable earth.
For virtually the entire history of life on this planet for the majority of life on the planet, this statement is false.
Peter Ward's Under a Green Sky is a great read on this subject from a scientific point of view and Peter Brannen's The Ends of the World covers it more broadly with a more journalistic style.
The geological evidence we have strongly suggests that rapid rise in CO2 and sudden climate change have been responsible for many of the great extinction events in the fossil record.
While the magnitude of our current CO2 spike is not as severe as the most extreme cases, it is happening at a rate that is unprecedented in the history of life on this planet.
Now to be clear, there are many, many unknowns about exactly how things will play out, so this isn't a "we're definitely going extinct in the near future!" message. But species extinction is absolutely in the cards (it is worth pointing out we're already in the 6th largest extinction event).
- Another recommended read (which I’m in the middle of right now) is The Ends of the World: Volcanic Apocalypses, Lethal Oceans, and Our Quest to Understand Earth's Past Mass Extinctions by Peter Brannen.
Coincidentally I’ve just reached the Permian mass extinction event, where the author discusses how the ammonites clocked out in a later mass extinction. A related species, Nautiluses, have survived till today and are now at risk of extinction because humans prize their beautiful shells.
We humans are atoms in the scope of geological time, but time will tell if we prove to be atoms of Uranium in Little Boy...
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