Those Who Repeat the Past Are Doomed to Know It

Study of fossil record predicts climate change could fuel mass extinction

Posted at 7:42 AM on 24 Oct 2007

Photo: iStockphoto

Climate change may fuel a mass extinction in which half of all plant and animal species could -- how to put this delicately? -- exit stage left, according to a new study. If the past 520 million years of fossil records are any predictor of the future, a globally warmed world will not bode well for biodiversity, researchers found. "We found that over the fossil record as a whole, the higher the temperatures have been, the higher the extinctions have been," said University of York ecologist Peter Mayhew. The study also found that four of five of the world's mass extinctions occurred when the Earth was significantly warmer, and that in cooler times, biodiversity tends to be higher. Researchers warned that the Earth is on track to hit temperatures similar to the higher, extinction-correlated ones in about 100 years or so.

sources: Associated Press, The Guardian, The Guardian

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Comments: (5 comments)

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Whoa.

So, after the Empire was overthrown, Chewbacca became an ecologist at the University of York? Who'd have guessed?

by Pathos at 9:08 PM on 24 Oct 2007

Mass extinction book - Readers Digest Version

In his chilling book, "Under a Green Sky", author/paleontologist Peter Ward concludes that most of the past massive extinctions on earth were caused by huge increases in greenhouse gases due to volcanic activity. This concentration of greenhouse gases caused the earth to warm, which caused the ice caps to melt, which shut down the oceans' conveyor systems that oxygenates the oceans. The oxygen-deprived oceans became saturated with microorganisms that produced hydrogen sulfide as a byproduct. The oceans and atmosphere became suffused with hydrogen sulfide and most plant and animal life died off. - Gulp.

by infp at 9:48 AM on 25 Oct 2007

Black Death Occurred During Cooling

The biggest "mass extinctions" such as the Black Death have occurred during times of cooling.

The biggest rise in population of humans in Earth's history has occurred in the last 2 centuries...during the Modern Warming.

by jabailo at 10:19 AM on 25 Oct 2007

In case anyone actually read that...

Okay, a bunch of humans denying is not a mass extiction. It's not even a single extinction. It might suck, but it's not an exinction.

On more relevant note... The biggest rise in population of humans in Earth's history is the reason we're having a modern warming!

by Pathos at 1:18 PM on 25 Oct 2007

Putting White-Out on my screen

"Dying," not "denying."

Denying is what he was doing.

And what I was doing about what he was doing. :)

by Pathos at 1:20 PM on 25 Oct 2007

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