At the end of the Permian time period, about 250 million years ago, life on Earth suffered one of the largest mass extinction events we know of. Life on our planet nearly came to an end, with an estimated >90% loss of life in the ocean and 75% on land.
A key trigger for the mass extinction was massive(!) volcanism in Siberia, adding large amounts of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. With more and more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, global heating became worse and worse. This set off other processes, in scientific publications called kill mechanisms, that reduced life on Earth. Ocean oxygen levels dropped (anoxia), and the seawater became more acidic, killing most of the life in the ocean. On land, plants and animals that did not cope well with extreme heat, drought, wildfires, and acid rain had a tough time. The extinction event lasted for about 60 000 years, a geological blink of an eye but incomprehensibly long for us humans, and after this event it’s suggested that the Earth had no or very few trees for a long time, millions of years, after the actual mass extinction ended.
Take a second and picture that, a world with no trees. Then picture a future under a scorching hot sun and there are no trees to provide shade for you or your loved ones. To me, that’s a picture unimaginably sad, and chilling.
It's January 2025 and I’m presently working with a manuscript on the geochemistry of two rock formations in Bolivia, focusing on oxygen conditions (anoxia) in the ocean some twenty million years prior to the End-Permian Mass Extinction (records that we can see in the rock samples) and can’t help but to reflect on how often we today see these kill mechanisms reported in news media from around the world but then phrased differently. ‘Kill mechanism’ likely has a too nasty ring to it.
Adding more and more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere feeds these kill mechanisms, and today we add carbon dioxide at an 80 times higher rate compared to the time leading up to the End-Permian Mass Extinction. Let that sink in for a while and then think again about a world with no trees.
