{"id":59302,"date":"2021-09-12T18:53:18","date_gmt":"2021-09-12T23:53:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=59302"},"modified":"2021-09-12T18:53:18","modified_gmt":"2021-09-12T23:53:18","slug":"not-enough-fossil-fuels-left-to-trigger-another-mass-extinction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=59302","title":{"rendered":"Not enough fossil fuels left to trigger another mass extinction"},"content":{"rendered":"

Not enough fossil fuels left to trigger another mass extinction<\/a><\/h3>\n
\n

Preface<\/strong>. Since both conventional and unconventional oil peaked in 2018, we clearly won\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

Many books, starting with Ward\u2019s \u201cUnder a Green Sky\u201d 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\u2019s commonly said that we are emitting far more CO2 faster than ever in history, this isn\u2019t true.<\/p>\n

Amazingly, researchers don\u2019t 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 \u00d7 1014<\/sup>\u00a0tonnes). That is an almost incomprehensible amount of carbon injected into the atmosphere in a short (geologically speaking) period of time.\u00a0This is more than 40 times the amount of all carbon available in modern fossil fuel reserves\u00a0including carbon already burned since the industrial revolution<\/em><\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Researchers also don\u2019t find methane hydrates a suspect, because it was \u201chighly unlikely based on our data\u201d according to Dr. Marcus Gutjahr from GEOMAR, co-author of the study (SD 2020).<\/p>\n

Related articles<\/strong>:<\/p>\n

Clarkson, M. O., et al. 2015.\u00a0Ocean acidification and the Permo-Triassic mass extinction<\/a>. Science 348:229.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Not enough fossil fuels left to trigger another mass extinction Preface. Since both conventional and unconventional oil peaked in 2018, we clearly won\u2019t 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% […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4,7],"tags":[11836,113,140,11859,328,5161,440],"class_list":["post-59302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","category-environment","category-survival-2","tag-alice-friedemann","tag-carbon-emissions","tag-climate","tag-energy-skeptic","tag-fossil-fuels","tag-intergovernmental-panel-on-climate-change","tag-ipcc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=59302"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59302\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59303,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59302\/revisions\/59303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=59302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=59302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=59302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}