How CO2 ‘Starvation’ Caused Earth’s Greatest Extinction, Almost Ending Life On Earth
Jim Steele (@JimSteeleSkepti) recently put out a great X post.
Here’s the heart of it:
The”Great Dying”, or end Permian mass extinction, is considered to have happened between just 251.9 and 251.8 million years ago.
Although there is no scientific consensus on its cause, in keeping with the current crisis narratives, many researchers blame the loss of 81% of marine species and 70% of terrestrial vertebrate species existing at that time on high CO2 concentrations released by the Siberian Taps volcanic events around 251.9 million years ago.
But Permian extinctions had been elevated long before that.
Likely due to researchers being biased by the abrupt extinction event when an asteroid collision ended the Age of Dinosaurs, mass extinction events have been arbitrarily defined as a short-lived die-off. However, such an artificial time constraint on extinction processes is now being challenged by the modern concept of “Dead Clades Walking”.
Researchers are increasingly finding mass extinction events are triggered by various detrimental events that happened 10 to 100 million years earlier. Narrowly focusing on events happening 252 million years ago, totally obscures the drivers of extinction.
As illustrated in the graphic above, Bambach shows before modern times, the evolution of new genera relative to extinctions was greatest during the Devonian 400 million years ago when CO2 levels hovered between 4000 & 2000 ppm and global average air temperature was estimated at 22.4°C, much higher than the 20th century average of 13.9°C.
As CO2 decreased, so did the number of genera.
When the framework of “Dead Clades Walking” is applied to the end-Permian extinctions, CO2 starvation emerges as the driver. CO2 starvation reduces photosynthesis and the productivity needed to support entire food webs. The end-Permian extinctions were the culmination of greatly reduced biodiversity happening over the previous 50 million years, resulting from reduced photosynthesis.
As shown above by Kroeck (2022), very few new phytoplankton species ever originated during the late Carboniferous and Permian as CO2 concentrations plummeted to 100 to 200 ppm by the early Permian, its lowest levels ever.
The resulting series of small extinctions throughout the Permian were punctuated by the larger extinction events mentioned below, culminating in the end-Permian’s deadly finality.
~305 MYA – Late Carboniferous:
With coal beds sequestering carbon and lowering atmospheric CO2 to starvation levels, Carboniferous tropical rainforests collapsed.
Similarly early stages of a controversial “phytoplankton blackout” appeared (see figure below), named for the extremely low diversity and abundance of phytoplankton fossil evidence. Clearly the base of the earth’s food webs was being devastated.
~300-265 MYA – early Permian:
As CO2 starvation reduced photosynthesis, it also reduced oxygen concentrations from its high of 35%, then falling far below today’s 20% by end Permian.
Giant insects and skin-breathing fish-like amphibian creatures (Lepospondyli) that had evolved and adapted to high oxygen levels in the Carboniferous quickly went extinct. Terrestrial animals were limited to low altitudes due to lack of oxygen at higher elevations.
Low oxygen levels persisted into the Triassic and likely prevented any timely recovery from the Permian’s extinctions.
~273 MYA -Early-Mid Permian Olsen’s mass extinction:
Plant genera fell by 25%; highest rates of reptile-like (Eureptilia ) extinctions, exceeding the end-Permian mass extinction rates.
High rates of amphibian and fish extinctions also observed.
~259 MYA – mid Permian Capitanian mass extinctions:
74-80% loss of South African tetrapod generic richness; 56% of plant species went extinct; 24% of plant species went extinct in South China.
Researchers who denied the phytoplankton blackout evidence had based their arguments on “the presence and abundance of filter feeding and suspension feeding benthic organisms such as brachiopods, crinoids, sponges and corals” suggesting there was undetected adequate primary production.
However, particulate and dissolved organic matter and the bacterial loop likely maintained those marine food webs for millions of years after initial phytoplankton collapse.
The effects of a phytoplankton blackout finally became evident by the Capitanian with the extinction of 35% to 47% of all marine invertebrate genera, 82.2% of coral species, 82% of fusulinacean foraminifers and 87% of brachiopods.
251.9 – 251.8 MYA – end-Permian Great Dying:
It began over 50 million years before, when low CO2 dramatically reduced photosynthesis and began dead clades walking and with greatly reduced biodiversity the end-Permian gave its last gasps.
For a deeper dive into all this, watch Jim Steele’s video on YouTube: “How CO2 Starvation & Plate Tectonics Caused the Greatest Mass Extinction, the Permian Great Dying”.
The end of the Little Ice Age around 1850(pre-industrial) is what is often used as the baseline, but the Earth was. and is still is, in a cold interglacial period that alternates with very cold glacial periods. In 1850 the life expectancy was only 27 years. Is that what the iPCC really wants to go back to?
Even today This recent study shows that the cold weather we have every year causes about 4.6 million deaths a year globally mainly through increased strokes and heart attacks, compared with about 500,000 deaths a year from hot weather. We can’t easily protect our lungs from the cold air in the winter and that causes our blood vessels to constrict causing blood pressure to increase leading to heart attacks and strokes.
‘Global, regional and national burden of mortality associated with nonoptimal ambient temperatures from 2000 to 2019: a three-stage modelling study’
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(21)00081-4/fulltext
We should be glad it is warming up with more CO2 to support plants of all kinds and farmers as well. The cost of $200 trillion, estimated by Bloomberg, is much more than families can afford. There is only $40 trillion in the world today counting physical money, checking and savings accounts. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-07-05/-200-trillion-is-needed-to-stop-global-warming-that-s-a-bargain?embedded-checkout=true
The cost of reaching net zero is irrelevant as the lack of minerals needed for renewable energy generation and especially battery production simply don’t exist. The biggest shortfall is in lithium for batteries, net zero at present global energy use and lithium production would take about 4,100 years and there aren’t large untapped deposits that can be exploited economically at anything like current global prices. The figures for other minerals such as cobalt aren’t as high but still equal hundreds of years of current production.
So that’s why they want to go net zero?!
Evolution and all the millions and billions of years that you can add to a chart are nothing more then mere conjecture. It is nothing more and nothing less then an effort to make the Bible and the God of the Bible into some form of a fairy tale. Just like all the global warming alarmist, since they have consensus they think they are right. Consensus does not validate anything. It only shows what side you are on. You can have either faith in the God of the Bible and what He said (I cannot prove God), or you can have faith in evolution, which has no facts nor has it been proven. The answer from the Bible has to why there is “extinction” everywhere in the world is Noah’s (God’s) flood. Man is willingly ignorant of three things– II Peter 2:5-7
There is space for evolution AND God.
I agree, but there is no validity in the millions of years of toss-ups preached by the “darwinians”. Just put the scientific method to their dating methods and you’ll see how flawed that can be. We shouldn’t be making any assumptions if we can’t any that are not removed from fairytale-level
Matt have you seen the new battery technology concrete and carbon black mixture, they are talking about using it iin the foundations of houses, will have to find link link to the article, cheap easy to make, and could sustain a house for a day, it also generates heat when powered,
Of course governments will kill the idea, as they can’t control the off switch
thats sounds very interesting.
Hope you can find the link.
Low-cost additive turns concrete slabs into super-fast energy storage
https://newatlas.com/architecture/mit-concrete-supercapacitor/#:~:text=MIT%20researchers%20have%20discovered%20that%20when%20you%20mix,to%20power%20a%20home%20or%20fast-charge%20electric%20cars.
“The MIT team says a 1,589-cu-ft (45 m3) block of nanocarbon black-doped concrete will store around 10 kWh of electricity – enough to cover around a third of the power consumption of the average American home, or to reduce your grid energy bill close to zero in conjunction with a decent-sized solar rooftop array. What’s more, it would add little to no cost.”
There is, though, some reduction in the strength of the concrete.
Very interesting. Thanks for the link.
“..concrete will store around 10 kWh of electricity – enough to cover around a third of the power consumption of the average American home..”
correction ( let’s stay with physics and /or economics): this should read ” energy ” consumption not “power”.
But the MIT idea is great!
Thanks for finding the link Jay
Interesting subject
Your picture at top is of Dickinsonia, which became extinct at the start of the Cambrian. Otherwise, top post.
So current CO2 concentration at around 450 ppm are in the lowest 3% throughout recordable history. Only 1.5% above extinction levels.
Despite the IPCC claiming CO2 as the main driver of climate CO2 remained highly elevated throughout extended glacial periods, often 4000ppm or more. It is very likely much raised CO2 levels provided the enrichment necessary for much of life to survive extreme cold periods.