(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
Top Comments: Lessons About Global Warming from the Permian Extinction [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-07-06
Here at Top Comments we strive to nourish community by rounding up some of the site's best, funniest, most mojo'd & most informative commentary, and we depend on your help!! If you see a comment by another Kossack that deserves wider recognition, please send it either to topcomments at gmail or to the Top Comments group mailbox by 9:30pm Eastern. Please please please include a few words about why you sent it in as well as your user name (even if you think we know it already :-)), so we can credit you with the find!
The Permian Extinction, which occurred 252 million years ago, is also called the Great Dying, because it was the deadliest of the great extinctions. It is estimated that 96 % of marine species and 70 % of terrestrial species went extinct during this event. A further detail that is relevant to our present situation of global climate change because the geologic record shows that the Permian Extinction was followed by a period of highly elevated temperatures that lasted 5 million years. A new study proffers an explanation for how this happened, with an additional warning for our own age.
[A] team of international researchers led by the University of Leeds and the China University of Geosciences in Wuhan has gathered new data which supports the theory that the demise of tropical forests, and their slow recovery, limited carbon sequestration - a process where carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere and held in plants, soils or minerals. During extensive field studies, the team used a new type of analysis of fossil records as well as clues about past climate conditions found in certain rock formations to reconstruct maps of changes in plant productivity during the Permian-Triassic Mass Extinction. Their results, which are published on July 2 in Nature Communications, show that vegetation loss during the event led to greatly reduced levels of carbon sequestration resulting in a prolonged period where there were high levels of CO2.
When the Siberian Flats erupted, the tropical forests of the Earth burned. Whatever flora remained were incapable of removing (sequestering) the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, so as the world burned, more CO 2 simply continued to accumulate, resulting in the most punishing greenhouse-induced heat this planet has seen since life evolved. The team at the China University of Geosciences performed the fieldwork and analyzed the data. The University of Leeds team performed climate modeling which included the effect of the destruction of tropical forests, giving a result that agrees with the climate history revealed by the geology. The researchers’ warning:
Professor Mills added: "There is a warning here about the importance of Earth's present day tropical forests. If rapid warming causes them to collapse in a similar manner, then we should not expect our climate to cool to preindustrial levels even if we stop emitting CO2. "Indeed, warming could continue to accelerate in this case even if we reach zero human emissions. We will have fundamentally changed the carbon cycle in a way that can take geological timescales to recover, which has happened in Earth's past."
As a species, we are not taking great care of our tropical forests, which are the oxygen factories of the planet. Indeed, we can’t seem to resist destroying them. If the Earth experiences rapid heating at the same time that the topical forests are thoroughly destroyed, it may take millions of years for the Earth to recover, as it did after the Permian Extinction. This is a history we should avoid repeating.
Comments are below the fold.
Top Comments (July 5-6, 2025):
From thesphynx:
Christopher's brutally funny comment on the GOP serially defunding and dismantling taken-for-granted protections like the Voting Rights Act, NWS & NOAA, from Clytemnestra’s recommended post urging people to blame Trump for loss of life in the Texas flooding.
From siab:
This comment by Liberal Thinking gave me a lovely chuckle. From siab’s post on a Kipling poem.
Top Mojo (July 4, 2025):
Top Mojo is courtesy of mik! Click here for more on how Top Mojo works.
Top Mojo (July 5, 2025):
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/7/6/2331951/-Top-Comments-Lessons-About-Global-Warming-from-the-Permian-Extinction?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=latest_community&pm_medium=web
Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/
