The Great Dying

Back in November of 2011, BRT's post, Something to Consider, addressed the present day great dying we are generating today due to global warming, environment degradation and resource depletion, conditions man made, conditions rectifiable, conditions ongoing, thanks to governmental and corporate collusion performed at planetary scale, something changing life on this planet in ways not seen since the  Great Dying of 250 million years ago.

“We as a species have never experienced 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere,” Guy McPherson, professor emeritus of evolutionary biology, natural resources, and ecology at the University of Arizona and a climate change expert of 25 years, told me. “We’ve never been on a planet with no Arctic ice, and we will hit the average of 400 ppm... within the next couple of years. At that time, we’ll also see the loss of Arctic ice in the summers… This planet has not experienced an ice-free Arctic for at least the last three million years.”

For the uninitiated, in the simplest terms, here’s what an ice-free Arctic would mean when it comes to heating the planet: minus the reflective ice cover on Arctic waters, solar radiation would be absorbed, not reflected, by the Arctic Ocean.  That would heat those waters, and hence the planet, further. This effect has the potential to change global weather patterns, vary the flow of winds, and even someday possibly alter the position of the jet stream. Polar jet streams are fast flowing rivers of wind positioned high in the Earth’s atmosphere that push cold and warm air masses around, playing a critical role in determining the weather of our planet.

We are already @ 400ppm. How high it goes, nobody knows.

As stated before, phase transitions are exponential events, not linear, which give credence to the fact GW is happening faster then previously thought possible, something also being seen in species extinction due to the aforementioned troika of global warming, environment degradation and resource depletion, conditions eerily similar to the Permian era when the great dying occurred save that the changes happening today are thousands of times faster then when the Siberian Traps blew their tops way back when. 

Seen below is the excellent Wikipedia graphic detailing the phase transition from plasma to solid.

Addendum:

We are currently in the midst of what scientists consider the sixth mass extinction in planetary history, with between 150 and 200 species going extinct daily, a pace 1,000 times greater than the “natural” or “background” extinction rate. This event may already be comparable to, or even exceed, both the speed and intensity of the Permian mass extinction. The difference being that ours is human caused, isn’t going to take 80,000 years, has so far lasted just a few centuries, and is now gaining speed in a non-linear fashion.