Was the Permian Extinction Caused by Global Warming or CO2 Starvation?

Of all the mass extinctions in the earth’s distant past, by far the greatest and most drastic was the Permian Extinction, which occurred during the Permian between 300 and 250 million years ago. Also known as the Great Dying, the Permian Extinction killed off an estimated 57% of all biological families including rainforest flora, 81% of marine species and 70% of terrestrial vertebrate species that existed before the Permian’s last million years. What was the cause of this devastation?

The answer to that question is controversial among paleontologists. For many years, it has been thought the extinction was a result of ancient global warming. During Earth’s 4.5-billion-year history, the global average temperature has fluctuated wildly, from “hothouse” temperatures as much as 14 degrees Celsius (25 degrees Fahrenheit) above today’s level of about 14.8 degrees Celsius (27 degrees Fahrenheit), to “icehouse” temperatures 6 degrees Celsius (11 degrees Fahrenheit) below.

Hottest of all was a sudden temperature spike from icehouse conditions at the onset of the Permian to extreme hothouse temperatures at its end, as can be seen in the figure below. The figure is a 2021 estimate of ancient temperatures derived from oxygen isotopic measurements combined with lithologic climate indicators, such as coals, sedimentary rocks, minerals and glacial deposits. The barely visible time scale is in millions of years before the present.

The geological event responsible for this enormous surge in temperature is a massive volcanic eruption known as the Siberian Traps. The eruption lasted at least 1 million years and resulted in the outpouring of voluminous quantities of basaltic lava from rifts in West Siberia; the lava buried over 50% of Siberia in a blanket up to 6.5 km (4 miles) deep.

Volcanic CO₂ released by the eruptions was supplemented by CO₂ produced during combustion of thick, buried coal deposits that lay along the subterranean path of the erupting lava. This stupendous outburst boosted the atmospheric CO₂ level from a very low 200 ppm (parts per million) to more than 2,000 ppm, as shown in the next figure.

The conventional wisdom in the past has been that this geologically sudden, gigantic increase in the CO₂ level sent the global thermometer soaring – a conclusion sensationalized by mainstream media such as the New York Times. However, that argument ignores the saturation effect for atmospheric CO₂, which limits CO₂-induced warming to that produced by the first few hundred ppm of the greenhouse gas.

While the composition of the atmosphere 250 million years ago may have been different from today’s, the saturation effect would still have occurred. There’s no question, nevertheless, that end-Permian temperatures were as high as we think, whatever the cause. That’s because the temperatures are based on the highly reliable method of measuring oxygen ¹⁸O to ¹⁶O isotopic ratios in ancient microfossils.

Such hothouse conditions would have undoubtedly caused the extinction of various species; the severity of the extinction event is revealed by subsequent gaps in the fossil record. Organic carbon accumulated in the deep ocean, depleting oxygen and thus wiping out many marine species such as phytoplankton, brachiopods and reef-building corals. On land, vertebrates such as amphibians and early reptiles, as well as diverse tropical and temperate rainforest flora, disappeared.

All from extreme global warming? Not so fast, says ecologist Jim Steele.

Steele attributes the Permian extinction not to an excess of CO₂ at the end of this geological period, but rather to a lack of it during the preceding Carboniferous and the early Permian, as can be seen in the figure above. He explains that all life is dependent on a supply of CO₂, and that when its concentration drops below 150 ppm, photosynthesis ceases, and plants and living creatures die.

Steele argues that because of CO₂ starvation over this interval, many species had either already become extinct, or were on the verge of extinction, long before the planet heated up so abruptly.

In comparison to other periods, the Permian saw the appearance of very few new species, as illustrated in the following figure. For example, far more new species evolved (and became extinct) during the earlier Ordovician, when CO₂ levels were much, much higher but an icehouse climate prevailed.

When CO₂ concentrations reached their lowest levels ever in the early Permian, phytoplankton fossils were extremely rare – some 40 million years or so before the later hothouse spike, which is when the conventional narrative claims the species became extinct. And Steele says that 35-47% of marine invertebrate genera went extinct, as well as almost 80% of land vertebrates, from 7 to 17 million years before the mass extinction at the end of the Permian.

Furthermore, Steele adds, the formation of the supercontinent Pangaea (shown to the left), which occurred during the Carboniferous, had a negative effect on biodiversity. Pangea removed unique niches from its converging island-like microcontinents, again long before the end-Permian.

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Climate Heresy: To Avoid Extinction We Need More, Not Less CO2

A recent preprint advances the heretical idea that all life on Earth will perish in as little as 42,000 years unless we take action to boost – not lower – the CO₂ level in the atmosphere. The preprint’s author claims that is when the level could fall to a critical 150 ppm (parts per million), below which plants die due to CO₂ starvation.

Some of the arguments of author Brendan Godwin, a former Australian meteorologist, are sound. But Godwin seriously underestimates the time frame for possible extinction. It can easily be shown that the interval is in fact millions of years.

Plants are essential for life because they are the source, either directly or indirectly, of all the food that living creatures eat. Both CO₂ and water, as well as sunlight, are necessary for the photosynthesis process by which plants grow. In the carbon cycle, the ultimate repository for CO₂ pulled out of both the air and the oceans is limestone or calcium carbonate (CaCO₃), of which there are two types: chemical and biological.

Chemical limestone is formed from the weathering over time of silicate rocks, which make up about 90% of the earth’s crust, and to a lesser extent, of carbonate rocks. Silicate weathering draws CO₂ out of the atmosphere when the CO₂ combines with rainwater to form carbonic acid (H₂CO₃) that dissolves silicates. A representative chemical reaction for calcium silicate (CaSiO₃) is

CaSiO₃ + 2CO₂ + H₂O → Ca²⁺ + 2HCO₃^- + SiO₂.

The resulting calcium (Ca²⁺) and bicarbonate (HCO₃^-) ions, together with dissolved silica (SiO₂), are then carried away mostly by rivers to the oceans. There, calcium carbonate (CaCO₃) precipitates when marine organisms utilize the Ca²⁺ and HCO₃^- ions to build their skeletons and shells:

Ca²⁺ + 2HCO₃^- → CaCO₃ + CO₂ + H₂O.

Once the organisms die, the CaCO₃ skeletons and shells sink to the ocean floor and are deposited as chemical limestone in deep-sea sediment.

Biological limestone, on the other hand, comes from fossilized coral reefs and is approximately twice as abundant as chemical limestone. Just like the marine organisms or plankton that ultimately form chemical limestone, the polyps that constitute a coral build the chambers in which they live out of CaCO₃. Biological limestone from accumulated coralline debris accumulates mainly in shallow ocean waters, and is transformed over time by plate tectonic processes into major outcrops on land and in the highest mountains – even the top of Mount Everest.

Godwin’s estimate of only 42,000 years before life is extinct stems from a misunderstanding about the carbon cycle, which is illustrated in the figure below depicting the global carbon budget in gigatonnes of carbon. Carbon stocks are shown in blue, with annual flows between carbon reservoirs shown in red.

The carbon sequestered as chemical limestone in deep-sea sediment, and as biological limestone, is represented by the 100 million gigatonnes stored in the earth’s crust. As you can see, today’s atmosphere contains approximately 850 gigatonnes of carbon (as CO₂) and the oceans another 38,000 gigatonnes, most of which was originally dissolved as atmospheric CO₂.

The erroneous estimate of Godwin simply divides the 38,000 gigatonnes of carbon in the oceans by 0.9 gigatonnes per year, which is the known rate of carbon sequestration into chemical and biological limestone combined; chemical weathering of silicate rocks contributes 0.3 gigatonnes per year, while fossilized coral contributes 0.6 gigatonnes per year.

This calculation is wrong because Godwin fails to understand that the carbon cycle is dynamic, with carbon constantly being exchanged between land, atmospheric and ocean reservoirs. The carbon sequestered into chemical and biological limestone is included in the flow from rivers to ocean and in ocean uptake in the figure above. But there are many flows in the opposite direction that replenish carbon in the atmosphere, even when fossil fuel burning is ignored. Simply depleting the ocean reservoir will not lead to extinction.

A realistic estimate can be made by assuming that atmospheric carbon will continue to decline at the same rate as it has over the past 540 million years. As shown in the next figure, the concentration of CO₂ in the atmosphere over that period has dropped from a high of about 7,000 ppm at the beginning of the so-called Cambrian Explosion, to today’s 417 ppm.

Using a conversion factor of 2.13 gigatonnes of carbon per ppm of atmospheric CO₂, the drop corresponds to an average decline of approximately 26 kilotonnes of carbon per year. At that rate, the 150 ppm (320 gigatonnes) level at which life on earth would begin to die will not be reached until 22 million years from now.

Given that the present CO₂ level is rising due to fossil fuel emissions, the 22 million years is likely to be an underestimate. However, ecologist Patrick Moore points out that a future cessation of fossil fuel burning could make the next ice age – which may be only thousands of years away – devastating for humanity, as temperatures and CO₂ levels could fall to unprecedentedly low levels, drastically reducing plant growth and creating widespread famine.

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Little Evidence That Global Warming Is Causing Extinction of Coral Reefs

Coral reefs, like polar bears, have become a poster child for global warming. According to the climate change narrative, both are in imminent peril of becoming extinct.

But just as polar bears are thriving despite the loss of sea ice in the Arctic, coral reefs are in good health overall despite rising temperatures. Recent research shows that not only are corals capable of much more rapid recovery from bleaching events than most reef scientists thought, but they are a lot more abundant around the globe than anyone knew.

During the massive, prolonged El Niño of 2014-17, higher temperatures caused mass bleaching of coral reefs all across the Pacific Ocean, including the famous Great Barrier Reef that hugs the northeastern coast of Australia. Corals lose their vibrant colors when the water gets too hot, because heat causes the microscopic food-producing algae that normally live inside them to poison the coral – so the coral kicks them out. However, corals have the ability to select from the surrounding water a different species of algae better suited to hot conditions, and thus to survive.

Until recently, it was believed that the recovery process, if it occurred at all, took years. But new studies (see here and here) have found that both the Great Barrier Reef and coral colonies on reefs around Christmas Island in the Pacific were able to recover from the 2014-17 El Niño much more rapidly, even while seawater temperatures were still higher than normal. The authors of the studies attribute the corals’ recovery capacity to lack of exposure to other stressors such as the crown-of-thorns starfish and water pollution from farming runoff.

That corals worldwide are not on the verge of extinction was first revealed in a 2021 study by four researchers at Australia’s James Cook University (JCU). The study completely contradicted previous apocalyptic predictions of the imminent demise of coral reefs, predictions that included an earlier warning from three of the same authors and others of ongoing coral degradation from global warming.

The JCU study included data on more than 900 coral reefs across the Pacific, from Indonesia to French Polynesia, as shown in the figure below. To estimate abundances, the researchers used a combination of coral reef habitat maps and counts of coral colonies. They estimated the total number of corals in the Pacific at approximately half a trillion, similar to the number of trees in the Amazon or birds in the world. This colossal population is for a mere 300 species, a small fraction of the 1,619 coral species estimated to exist worldwide by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Reinforcing the JCU finding is a very recent discovery made by Scuba divers working with the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The divers mapped out a massive reef of giant rose-shaped corals in pristine condition off the coast of Tahiti, the largest island in French Polynesia. The stunning reef, described as “a work of art” by the diving expedition leader, is remarkable for its size and its survival of a mass bleaching event in 2019.

Approximately 3 kilometers (2 miles) long and 30 to 65 meters (100 to 210 feet) across, the reef lies between 30 and 55 meters (100 and 180 feet) below the surface, about 2 kilometers (1 mile) off shore. The giant corals measure more than 2 meters (6.5 feet) in diameter, according to UNESCO. Studying a reef at such great depths for Scuba divers required special technology, such as the use of air containing helium, which negates hallucinations caused by oxygen and nitrogen at depth and helps prevent decompression sickness.

CREDIT: Alexis Rosenfeld/Associated Press

The existence of this and likely many other deep coral reefs, together with the JCU study, mean that the global extinction risk of most coral species is much lower than previously thought, even though a local loss can be ecologically devastating to coral reefs in the vicinity.

The newly discovered rapid recovery of corals probably helped save the Great Barrier Reef from being added to a list of World Heritage Sites that are “in danger.” This classification had been recommended in 2021 by a UNESCO committee, to counter the supposed deleterious effects of climate change.

But, after intensive lobbying by an angry Australian government keen to avoid a politically embarrassing classification for a popular tourist attraction, the committee members agreed to an amendment. The amended recommendation required Australia to produce an updated report on the state of the reef by this month, when a vote could follow on whether or not to classify the site as being in danger.

Next: Can Undersea Volcanoes Cause Global Warming?

Fishy Business: Alleged Fraud over Ocean Acidification Research, Reversal on Coral Extinction

In the news recently have been two revelations about the sometimes controversial world of coral reef research. The first is fraud allegations against research claiming that ocean acidification from global warming impairs the behavior of coral reef fish. The second is an about-face on inflated estimates for the extinction risk of Pacific Ocean coral species due to climate change. 

The alleged fraud involves 22 research papers authored by Philip Munday, a marine ecologist at JCU (James Cook University) in Townsville, Australia and Danielle Dixson, a U.S. biologist who completed her PhD under Munday’s supervision in 2012. The fraud charges were made in August 2020 by three of an international group of mostly biological and environmental scientists, plus the group leader, fish physiologist Timothy Clark of Deakin University in Geelong, Australia. The Clark group says it will publicize the alleged data problems shortly.

The research in question studied the behavior of coral reef fish in slightly acidified seawater, in order to simulate the effect of ocean acidification caused by the absorption of up to 30% of humanity’s CO₂ emissions. The additional CO₂ has so far lowered the average pH – a measure of acidity – of ocean surface water from about 8.2 to 8.1 since industrialization began in the 18th century.

Munday and Dixson claim that the extra CO₂ causes reef fish to be attracted by chemical cues from predators, instead of avoiding them; to become hyperactive and disoriented; and to suffer loss of vision and hearing. But Clark and his fellow scientists, in their own paper published in January 2020, debunk all of these conclusions. Most damningly of all, the researchers find that the reported effects of ocean acidification on the behavior of coral reef fish are not reproducible – the basis for their fraud allegations against the JCU work.

In a published rebuttal, Munday and Dixson say that the Clark group’s replication study differed from the original research “in at least 16 crucial ways” and didn’t acknowledge other papers that support the JCU position.

Nevertheless, while the university has dismissed the allegations after a preliminary investigation, Science magazine points out that a 2016 paper by another former PhD student of Munday’s was subsequently deemed fraudulent and retracted. And Clark and his colleagues say they have evidence of manipulation in publicly available raw data files for two papers published by Munday’s research laboratory, as well as documentation of large and “statistically impossible” effects from CO₂ reported in many of the other 20 allegedly fraudulent papers.

CREDIT: ALEX MUSTARD/MINDEN PICTURES

The about-turn on coral extinction involves another JCU group, the university’s Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies. Four Centre researchers published a paper in March 2021 that completely contradicts previous apocalyptic predictions of the imminent demise of coral reefs, predictions that include an earlier warning by three of the same authors of ongoing coral degradation from global warming.

As an example of past hype, the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) states on its website that 33% of all reef-building corals are at risk of extinction. The IUCN is highly regarded for its assessments of the world’s biodiversity, including evaluation of the extinction risk of thousands of species. An even more pessimistic environmental organization suggests that more than 90% of the planet’s coral reefs may be extinct by 2050.

The recent JCU paper turns all such alarming prophecies on their head. But the most astounding revelation is perhaps the sheer number of corals estimated to exist on reefs across the Pacific Ocean, from Indonesia to French Polynesia – approximately half a trillion, similar to the number of trees in the Amazon, or birds in the world. To estimate abundances, the JCU scientists used a combination of coral reef habitat maps and counts of coral colonies.

This colossal population is for a mere 300 species, a small fraction of the 2,175 coral species estimated to exist worldwide by the IUCN. And of the 80 species considered by the IUCN to be at an elevated risk of extinction, those in its “critically endangered” and “endangered” categories, 12 species have estimated Pacific populations of over a billion colonies. One of the study’s authors remarks that the eight most common coral species in the region each have a population size larger than the 7.8 billion people on Earth.

The implication of this stunning research is that the global extinction risk of most coral species is lower than previously estimated, even though a local loss can be ecologically devastating to coral reefs in the vicinity. So any future extinctions due to global warming are unlikely to unfold rapidly, if at all.

Next: New Doubts on the Climatic Effects of Ocean Currents, Clouds

UN Species Extinction Report Spouts Unscientific Hype, Dubious Math

An unprecedented decline in nature’s animal and plant species is supposedly looming, according to a UN body charged with developing a knowledge base for preservation of the planet’s biodiversity. In a dramatic announcement this month, the IPBES (Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services) claimed that more species are currently at risk of extinction than at any time in human history and that the extinction rate is accelerating. But these claims are nonsensical hype, based on wildly exaggerated numbers that can’t be corroborated.

Credit: Ben Curtis, Associated Press

The IPBES report summary, which is all that has been released so far, states that “around 1 million of an estimated 8 million animal and plant species (75% of which are insects), are threatened with extinction.” Apart from the as-yet-unpublished report, there’s little indication of the source for these estimates, which are as mystifying as the classic magician’s rabbit produced from an empty hat.

It appears from the report summary that the estimates are derived from a much more reliable set of numbers – the so-called Red List of threatened species, compiled by the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature). The IUCN, not affiliated with the UN, is an international environmental network highly regarded for its assessments of the world’s biodiversity, including evaluation of the extinction risk of thousands of species. The network includes a large number of biologists and conservationists.

Of an estimated 1.7 million species in total, the IUCN’s Red List has currently assessed just 98,512 species, of which it lists 27,159 or approximately 28% as threatened with extinction. The IUCN’s “threatened” description includes the categories “critically endangered,” “endangered” and “vulnerable.”

A close look at the IUCN category definitions reveals that “vulnerable” represents a probability of extinction in the wild of merely “at least 10% within 100 years,” and “endangered” an extinction probability of “at least 20% within a maximum of 100 years.” Both of these categories are hardly a major cause for concern, yet together they embrace 78% of the IUCN’s compilation of threatened species. That leaves just 22% or about 5,900 critically endangered species, whose probability of extinction in the wild is assessed at more than 50% over the next 100 years – high enough for these species to be genuinely at risk of becoming extinct.

But while the IUCN presents these numbers matter-of-factly without fanfare, the much more political IPBES resorts to unashamed hype by extrapolating the statistics beyond the 98,512 species that the IUCN has actually investigated, and by assuming a total number of species far in excess of the IUCN’s estimated 1.7 million. Estimates of just how many species the Earth hosts vary considerably, from the IUCN number of 1.7 million all the way up to 1 trillion. The IPBES number of 8 million species appears to be plucked out of nowhere, as does the 1 million threatened with extinction, despite the IPBES report being the result of a “systematic review” of 15,000 scientific and government sources.

According to IPBES chair Sir Robert Watson, the 1 million number was derived from the 8 million by what appears to be an arbitrary calculation based on the IUCN’s much lower numbers. The IPBES assumes a global total of 5.5 million insects – compared with the IUCN’s Red List estimate of 1.0 million – which, when subtracted from the 8 million grand total, leaves 2.5 million non-insect species. This 2.5 million is then multiplied by the IUCN 28% threatened rate, and the 5.5 million insects multiplied by a mysterious unspecified lower rate, to arrive at the 1 million species in danger. That far excedes the IUCN’s estimate of 27,159.

Not only does the IPBES take unjustified liberties with the IUCN statistics, but its extinction rate projection bears no relationship whatsoever to actual extinction data. A known 680 vertebrate species have been driven to extinction since the 16th century, with 66 known insect extinctions recorded over the same period – or approximately 1.5 extinctions per year on average. The IPBES report summary states that the current rate of global species extinction is tens to hundreds of times higher than this and accelerating, but without explanation except for the known effect of habitat loss on animal species.

Maybe we should give the IPBES the benefit of the doubt and suspend judgment until the full report is made available. But with such a disparity between its estimates and the more sober assessment of the IUCN, it seems that the IPBES numbers are sheer make-believe. One million species on the brink of extinction is nothing but fiction, when the true number could be as low as 5,900.

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