Preface. Since both conventional and unconventional oil peaked in 2018, we clearly won’t be burning fossils at exponentially increasing rates until 2400 as the IPCC expected. Quite the opposite, currently the decline rate of oil is 8% a year, which can be reduced to 4% by enhanced oil recovery techniques. The other 4% could be remedied by finding more oil, but discoveries have been at their lowest point for decades the past 7 years, and with oil prices so low, exploration and new projects are on hold.

Many books, starting with Ward’s “Under a Green Sky” warned that we would bring on another major extinction event burning fossil fuels. News reports continue to assume that this will be the eventual outcome as well. So you may not be aware of what it took to bring on the mother of all extinctions: The Permian. Although it’s commonly said that we are emitting far more CO2 faster than ever in history, this isn’t true.

Amazingly, researchers don’t blame the 300,000 to 1 million years of volcanic traps. Rather, it appears there were two pulses of lava from deep beneath the earth that rose to the surface, burning through underground deposits of coal, oil, and natural gas. That released an enormous amount of CO2 into the atmosphere; 100,000 billion tonnes (= 1 × 10¹⁴ tonnes). That is an almost incomprehensible amount of carbon injected into the atmosphere in a short (geologically speaking) period of time. This is more than 40 times the amount of all carbon available in modern fossil fuel reserves including carbon already burned since the industrial revolution.”

Researchers also don’t find methane hydrates a suspect, because it was “highly unlikely based on our data” according to Dr. Marcus Gutjahr from GEOMAR, co-author of the study (SD 2020).

Related articles:

Clarkson, M. O., et al. 2015. Ocean acidification and the Permo-Triassic mass extinction. Science 348:229.

Cui Y, Li M, van Soelen EE, et al (2021) Massive and rapid predominantly volcanic CO2 emission during the end-Permian mass extinction. PNAS.  https://www.pnas.org/content/118/37/e2014701118

Sobolev, S. V., et al. 2011. Linking mantle plumes, large igneous provinces and environmental catastrophes. Nature 477:312-316.

Svensen, H., et al. 2009. Siberian gas venting and the end-Permian environmental crisis. Earth and Planetary Science Letters 277: 490-500.

Alice Friedemann   www.energyskeptic.com  author of “Life After Fossil Fuels: A Reality Check on Alternative Energy”, 2021, Springer; “When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation”, 2015, Springer, Barriers to Making Algal Biofuels, and “Crunch! Whole Grain Artisan Chips and Crackers”. Podcasts: Collapse Chronicles, Derrick Jensen, Practical Prepping, KunstlerCast 253, KunstlerCast278, Peak Prosperity , XX2 report

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Jurikova H et al (2020) Permian–Triassic mass extinction pulses driven by major marine carbon cycle perturbations. Nature Geoscience 13: 745-750

Approximately 252 million years ago, long before the emergence of dinosaurs, at the Permian-Triassic boundary (PTB), the largest of the known mass extinctions on Earth occurred. With more than 95% of marine species becoming extinct, life in Permian seas, once a thriving and diverse ecosystem, was wiped out within only tens of thousands of years, a geological blink of an eye. This is now referred to as the ‘Great Dying’, a period when life on Earth has never been so close to becoming extinct.

Scientists have long debated the theories of the cause of the extinction ranging from bolide impact and dissolution of gas hydrates to volcanoes, which could have caused climatic and environmental changes making Earth so inhospitable to life.

This paper provides, for the first time, a conclusive picture of the underlying mechanism and consequences of the extinction and finally answers the key questions – what exactly caused Earth’s biggest mass extinction and how could an event of such a deadly magnitude unfold?

The team were able to determine that the trigger of the Permian-Triassic crisis was a large pulse of CO2 to the atmosphere originating from a massive flood basalt province, the result of a giant volcanic eruption in today’s Siberia. It was a rather rapid catastrophe (~61 ± 48 kyr). Analyses showed that the volcanisms released more than 100,000 billion tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere, triggering the onset of the extinction. This is more than 40 times the amount of all carbon available in modern fossil fuel reserves including carbon already burned since the industrial revolution.

Initially, the atmospheric CO2 is relatively low in the Late Permian (~500 to ~800 ppm). Following the CIE, at the onset of the extinction, CO2 levels rise abruptly to peak at 44 kyr after the CIE (up to a maximum of 4,400 ppm) and remain elevated (~1,500 ppm) throughout the Early Triassic, consistent with previous palaeo CO2 estimates.  Our model predicts warming by almost 10 °C.

Given the vastly differing timescales and carbon budgets involved, LIP carbon cycle dynamics is a poor analogy for present-day fossil fuel emissions> And today’s geological carbon reservoirs are insufficient for anthropogenic release beyond a century.  Even so, the peak emissions rate during the largest known mass extinction of 0.7 Pg C per year is 14 times less than the current anthropogenic rate (9.9 ± 0.5 Pg C per year). The environmental deterioration during the PTB took several thousands of years to unfold.

The research team used innovative modelling to reconstruct the effect of such large CO2 release on global biogeochemical cycles and the marine environment. The findings showed that, initially, the CO2 perturbation led to extreme warming and acidification of the ocean that was lethal to many organisms, especially those building calcium carbonate shells and skeletons. The greenhouse effect, however, led to further dramatic changes in chemical weathering rates on land and nutrient input and cycling in the ocean that resulted in vast deoxygenation and probably also sulphide poisoning of the oceans, killing the remaining organism groups.

The Permian-Triassic mass extinction was therefore a cascading collapse of vital global cycles sustaining the environment driven by an immense multi-millennial carbon injection to the atmosphere. The extreme changes and multiple stressors – high temperatures, acidification, oxygen loss, sulphide poisoning – combined to wipe out a large variety of marine organisms, explaining the severity of the extinction.

References

SD (2020) Driver of the largest mass extinction in the history of the Earth identified: New study provides a comprehensive reconstruction of the Permian-Triassic boundary event. ScienceDaily.

Jurikova H, Gutjahr M, Wallmann K et al (2020) Permian–Triassic mass extinction pulses driven by major marine carbon cycle perturbations. Nature Geoscience 13: 745-750.