Peter Brannen: "Deep Time, Mass Extinctions, and Today”

Episode 103
January 03rd, 2024

(Conversation recorded on October 26th, 2023)  

Show Summary

On this episode, Nate is joined by Peter Brannen, science journalist and author specializing in Earth’s prior mass extinctions, to unpack our planet’s geologic history and what it can tell us about our current climate situation. Humans have become very good at uncovering the history of our planetary home - revealing distinct periods during billions of years of deep time that have disturbing similarities to our own present time. How is the carbon cycle the foundation of our biosphere - and how have changes to it in the past impacted life’s ability to thrive? On the scales of geologic time, how do humans compare to the other species who have inhabited this planet - 99% of which have gone extinct - and will we end up being just a blip in the fossil record? How can an understanding of geologic and climate science prepare us for the environmental challenges we’ll face in the coming decades?

About Peter Brannen

Peter Brannen is an award-winning science journalist and contributing writer at The Atlantic. His work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Wired, Aeon, The Boston Globe, Slate and The Guardian among other publications. His 2017 book, The Ends of the World covers the five major mass extinctions in Earth's history. Peter is currently a visiting scholar at the Kluge Center at the Library of Congress and an affiliate at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado-Boulder. He was formerly a 2018 Scripps Fellow at CU-Boulder, a 2015 journalist-in-residence at the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center at Duke University, and a 2011 Ocean Science Journalism Fellow at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, MA.

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Show Notes & Links to Learn More

PDF Transcript

00:00 - Peter Brannen Works + Info, The Ends of The World

02:28 - Big Five Mass Extinctions

05:50 - Deep Time, Reality Blind Chapter

07:10 - Humans have a difficult time conceptualizing really big numbers

08:01 - Cyanobacteria, stromatolites

08:28 - The Great Unconformity

08:52 - Fossil Raindrops

11:56 - Pangea

12:05 - Dinosaurs evolved 245 million years ago

12:19 - Cambrian Explosion

12:25 - Ordovician, Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event

13:21 - Enhanced Rock Weathering

15:24 - 99% of species ever to exist are extinct

16:58 - Late Davonian Mass extinction

17:55 - Trees in the Davonian

18:18 - Trees and nutrient release, effects on sea life

18:41 - Fossil fuel creation in anoxic Davonian seas

20:31 - End-Permian Mass Extinction

21:03 - Trilobites

21:09 - Permian Basin Petroleum Museum

21:52 - Fungal Spike

22:16 - Siberian Traps, Large Igneous Province

22:49 - Yellowstone Caldera

24:20 - RCP 8.5

25:10 - Carbon emitted during the Permian and the rate, compared to today

25:15 - Ocean Acidification

27:01 - Humans emit 100x more CO2 than all the volcanoes on Earth

27:18 - The carbon cycle is a large regulator for the climate and life

28:30 - Birds are dinosaurs and there are twice as many species of them as mammals

29:11 - Mass Radiations

30:15 - End-Triassic Mass Extinction, End Cretaceous Mass Extinctions

31:05 - Deccan Traps

31:34 - Peter Ward + TGS Episode

34:51 - Zircons, radioisotopes

35:30 - Lake Suigetsu

35:54 - Carbon Dating

37:50 - Minor mass extinctions

38:20 - Threshold to be a major mass extinction, 75% of species go extinct

39:04 - Threshold to make a species extinct

41:30 - Don’t Look Up

42:02 - Life on Our Planet

43:20 - Gaia vs Medea Hypotheses

45:05 - Hurricanes are heat dissipating structures for the ocean

46:50 - Heisenberg Principle

48:50 - Humans are only 300,000 years old as a species

50:02 - Interconnection of land and ocean systems

50:18 - Threats to ocean well-being

50:27 - Oceans have lost 2% of oxygen since 1960

51:21 - Plants have 30% fewer pores on their leaves since the industrial revolution because of increased CO2

52:06 - 56 million years ago warming event analyzed through ginkgo leaves in the fossil record

53:12 - CO2 helps plants grow, to a certain point

54:02 -A constraint on historic growth in global photosynthesis due to rising CO2

54:35 - Global warming makes the planet more unpredictable

54:49 - Corn expected to decline under future warming scenarios

55:25 - Plants will become less nutritious under climate change

56:16 - Sir David King, TGS Episode

56:33 - Jeremy Grantham, TGS Episode

56:45 - Half of people in the US don’t believe in Climate Change

58:34 - Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

58:57 - Little Ice Age, Medieval Warm Period

1:01:10 - Eastern Seaboard Blackout sources from Ohio

1:03:42 - CO2 ppm over time

1:03:28 - Beginning of climate science

1:05:57 - Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas, but is not the primary knob but a feedback effect, it cycles through the system very quickly

1:08:58 - With each degree increase, the atmosphere can hold 7% more water vapor, which creates more powerful storms

1:09:39 - Wet Bulb temperatures

1:10:57 - Horses during the warm period get smaller

1:11:21 - Fish are getting smaller

1:11:27 - Homo Floresiensis

1;12:15 - Acid Rain, Methylmercury

1:12:31 - Venusification

1:14:05 - Next supercontinent, Pangea Ultima

1:14:25 - Wilson Continental Cycle

1:14:31 - Rodinia

1:15:53 - Solar forcing and CO2 forcing

1:16:39 - Sun has gotten 10% brighter

1:18:18 - Triassic Newark Basin

1:24:15 - Tom Murphy + TGS Episode, Galactic Energy

1:27:27 - Link between energy and the economy

1:29:36 - Current climate events

1:30:13 - El Nino

1:30:35 - Opinion | I Study Climate Change. The Data Is Telling Us Something New. 

1:30:59 - James Hansen Congress Testimony

1:40:23 - Parallel Universes  

1:41:23 - Carl Sagan

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