The Five Scariest Things about Climate Change

Not sure if these are the five SCARIEST things, but with so many to choose from, there’s no need to be picky!

More news from the Permian

In my first post on this blog, I discussed one of the possible connections between the “Anthropocene Warming Event”,  and the Permian-Triassic extinction, also known as “The Great Dying”.  Basically, one hypothesis about the extinction event, and its pattern – oceanic extinction preceding terrestrial extinction – is that a sharp decline in oceanic dissolved oxygen led to a proliferation of anaerobic bacteria, which generated hydrogen sulfide, which filled the oceans with poison, and eventually began to leak out of the water onto the land as a toxic gas.

Now another piece of that event’s puzzle has come up, and that is mercury. In a study published in the journal Geology, Sanei, Grasby, and Beauchamp used sedimentary analysis to look at oceanic mercury content from that time period, and found that there was a dramatic increase in mercury levels. The increase in mercury was caused by a high amount of volcanic activity (thirty times the present-day levels, according to the authors), as well as the burning of massive coal seams ignited by the volcanism.

This caused a mercury buildup that overwhelmed the systems that normally absorb the metal, adding to the ocean’s toxicity.

The authors specify that the present levels are far below the ones they measured from the Permian-Triassic boundary era, but Beauchamp added, “We are adding to the levels through industrial emissions. This is a warning for us here on Earth today.” (more and a video below the fold)

On changing our perspective

When I first watched this TED talk, I thought “yeah! we should totally change things and conserve and build windmills on our houses and stuff!”

While that’s not entirely wrong, it’s not what he was talking about. We really do need to change how we look at the world, and that call for change includes those of us who are trying to address global warming.

We are facing conditions that haven’t existed for millions of years, that our species hasn’t ever come close to experiencing, and we’ve got nothing to go on – no precedent, no experience, not tales or folklore. This is entirely uncharted territory, and that means that we must be willing to let go of any or all of our certainties about the world, if it turns out they are no longer effective.