The world is currently busy with signs of increasingly rampant climate change. In fact, according to a scientist, Earth is currently on the verge of the next mass extinction.
Daniel Rothman, a professor of geophysics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, believes the Earth is slowly crawling toward a mass extinction. He said the amount of carbon produced by humans and carried into the atmosphere would have a fatal impact.
"Every time there is a big event in the history of life, there is also a big disturbance to the environment. These tend to happen together," said Rothman, as quoted from Futurism, Sunday (12/12/2021).
Rothman said the spread of large amounts of carbon in the ocean and atmosphere would disrupt the carbon cycle. He said in four of the five previous mass extinctions there was an increase in changes in the carbon cycle.
One example of a mass extinction is the Permian-Triassic extinction event that occurred 250 million years ago. This event was triggered by volcanic eruptions that continued for two million years and released carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Believed to be the most common mass extinction ever, this event caused an increase in temperature and acidity in the oceans, thus making 95% of marine life and 70% of land life extinct.
Rothman gave an example, if the amount of carbon in the ocean is too much it can cause seawater to become acidic and uninhabitable by living things.
In his calculations, Rothman says the threshold for carbon in the oceans is around 300 gigatons. This figure is quite worrying considering that humans are predicted to emit 500 gigatons of carbon into the oceans by 2100.
Fortunately there is some hope. World leaders are starting to see climate change as an increasingly crucial issue.
Global efforts such as the recently held COP 26 environmental conference are also the right steps, although their implementation is still a question mark. But there is still much that countries can do to counter such a major threat as mass extinction.
"I want to see more but good people are trying to do their best," concluded Rothman.
