How Serious Is Global Warming: Last Global Warming took 5 Million Lethal Years to Recovery: Why?

Summary: The ‘Great Dying’ wiped out 90% of life 252 million years ago at the end of the Permian Geologic Perio. It was the worst of the five mass extinctions. All plant life died. It was followed by 5 million years of lethal heat. Why did the super greenhouse gas conditions last so long? New fossils explain why.

• The plant die-off disrupted the climate’s carbon cycling between earth and the atmosphere. Since much of it could no longer be stored in plants, elevated amounts remained in the atmosphere.

• This is a key takeaway from the study, Mills said. It shows what might happen if rapid global warming causes the planet’s rainforests to collapse in the future — a tipping point scientists are very concerned about.

• Even if humans stop pumping out planet-heating pollution altogether, the Earth may not cool. In fact, warming could accelerate, he said.

• There is a sliver of hope: The rainforests that currently carpet the tropics may be more resilient to high temperatures than those that existed before the Great Dying. This is the question the scientists are tackling next.

This study is still a warning, Mills said. “There is a tipping point there. If you warm tropical forests too much, then we have a very good record of what happens. And it’s extremely bad.” The ‘Great Dying’ wiped out 90% of life, then came 5 million years of lethal heat. New fossils explain why. See also Their findings, published Wednesday in the journal Nature Communications.