11:22 AM 10/6/2023

#How #CO2 ‘ #Starvation’ #Caused #Earth’s #Greatest #Extinction,

Almost Ending Life On Earth
October 6, 2023 Cap Allon
https://electroverse.info/how-co2-starvation-caused-earths-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.

How CO2 'Starvation' Caused Earth’s Greatest Extinction, Almost Ending Life On Earth - Electroverse
Modern concepts of “Dead Clades Walking” are challenging the mainstream's "high CO2" narrative.
electroverse.info