Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) geophysics professor Daniel Rothman says we’re on the verge of a mass extinction, and he thinks we’re going to die out. The reason for the same is that humans are messing with the carbon cycle, which will lead to disaster in the end.
In order to come to his conclusion, Rothman looked at past mass extinction events. During these events, there was an increase in the rate at which the carbon cycle changed. In a nutshell, he says that there’s only so much carbon that can be added to the atmosphere and oceans in a geological time frame before we reach a point where we’re going to die out.
As an example, according to his calculations, the threshold for carbon in the ocean is about 300 gigatons. This is scary because humans are on track to add up to 500 gigatons of carbon into the oceans by 2100, which is a lot. The way he sees it, that puts Earth right on the path to having mass extinctions on its way.
A good thing: There’s still some hope. People around the world are starting to take climate change more seriously than they have in the past. There are a lot of good things that happen when countries work together, like the UN Climate Change Conference. And there have already been some very basic steps taken toward geoengineering, so it’s already possible.
To be sure, there’s still a lot more that countries can and should be doing to deal with the most serious threat to humanity that we face today.
Reference- NASA Earth Observatory website, MIT website, Futurism, The Times of Israel