CO2 Extinction
Ambience: Ocean
Walker: There’s been time in the past when three’s been high CO2 in the atmosphere and that has mixed with ocean water. And during those times are usually when we have extinctions of marine sea creatures.
Studying earth’s climate in the past can give us clues about the present. I’m Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet. Sally Walker is a paleontologist at the University of Georgia.
So, in the fossil record, we’d like to know when these global change events happened in the past. When was CO2 the highest? Back in the Paleozoic, the Cambrian time when we had trilobites; there are several periods of time when there was high CO2. But this high carbon dioxide took place over many, many millions of years.
Instead of taking place over millions of years, we’re seeing a major increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide in the last 100 years due to the burning of fossil fuels on a massive scale. Large amount of CO2 get absorbed into the world’s oceans.
It’s unprecedented, the rapidity of the CO2 that’s mixing in with the seawater. We’re seeing today that there are organisms very susceptible to the CO2. That drives the ocean to more acidity. And this is not good. And what that does – the animals cannot make their shells.
This is telling us that we’re in probably for a major extinction if we don’t lower our amounts of CO2 we’re putting into the atmosphere. For instance, oysters, a major food resource for many people – If the baby oysters can’t make their shells, then we are seeing, perhaps, the eventual collapse of the oyster industry.
Our thanks to Sally Walker. Pulse of the Planet is made possible by the National Science Foundation. I’m Jim Metzner.