Essay by Eric Worrall
Apparently our pitiful atmospheric contribution is comparable to the 2 million year eruption which drove the Permian–Triassic Extinction, which wiped out most life on Earth.
‘A climate of unparalleled malevolence’: are we on our way to the sixth major mass extinction?
Churning quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere at the rate we are going could lead the planet to another Great Dying
By Peter Brannen
Tue 19 Aug 2025 14.01 AESTLast modified on Tue 19 Aug 2025 14.20 AEST…
Put enough CO2 into the system all at once, and push the life-sustaining carbon cycle far enough out of equilibrium, and it might escape into a sort of planetary failure mode, where processes intrinsic to the Earth itself take over, acting as positive feedback to release dramatically more carbon into the system. This subsequent release of carbon would send the planet off on a devastating 100-millennia excursion before regaining its composure. And it wouldn’t matter if CO2 were higher or lower than it is today, or whether the Earth was warmer or cooler as a result. It’s the rate of change in CO2 that gets you to Armageddon.
…
Here’s a plausible sequence of events at the end of the Permian. First, and most simply: the excess CO2 trapped more energy from the sun on the surface of our planet – a simple physical process that was worked out by physicists more than 150 years ago. And so the world helplessly warmed – models and proxies both point to about 10C of warming over thousands of years – pushing animal and plant physiology alike to their limits. It’s also a simple physical fact about our world that for every degree it warms, the atmosphere can hold about 7% more water, so, as the temperature climbed and the water cycle accelerated, storms began to take on a menacing, drowning intensity. As the ocean warms as well, it holds less oxygen.
…Now let’s pull back from the brink. However similar to this era our modern experiment on the planet might first appear, it’s worth acknowledging, even stressing, that the end-Permian climate catastrophe was truly, surpassingly bad. And on a scale unlikely ever to be matched by humans. Upper estimates for how much carbon dioxide the fossil-fuel-burning Siberian Traps erupted, ranging up to 120,000 gigatons, defy belief. Even lower estimates, of say 30,000 gigatons, constitute volumes of CO2 so completely ridiculous that matching it would require humans to not only burn all the fossil fuel reserves in the world, but then keep putting ever more carbon into the atmosphere for thousands of years. Perhaps by burning limestone for fun on an industrial scale for generations, even as the biosphere disintegrates. As it is, industrial civilisation could theoretically generate about 18,000 gigatons of CO2 if the entire world pulled together on a nihilistic, multicentennial, international effort to burn all the accessible fossil fuels on Earth.
…
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/aug/19/a-climate-of-unparalleled-malevolence-are-we-on-our-way-to-the-sixth-major-mass-extinction
Back in the real world, the Earth is still locked in a brutal Late Cenozoic Ice Age, which started 34 million years ago, yet still threatens to crush our civilisation under mile high walls of ice – so we have plenty of buffer between us and any kind of geologically significant global warming event.
Life has thrived under far higher CO2 levels than today. The graphic at the top of this page came from User-friendly carbon-cycle modelling and aspects of Phanerozoic climate change. During the late Carboniferous for example, CO2 levels were likely far higher than today, but despite elevated CO2 the Earth still experienced icehouse conditions, similar to today’s ice age cycle. So clearly CO2 isn’t the only factor driving climatic conditions.
The ice age of the last 34 million years is a lot of ice age. Clearly something more powerful than CO2 is keeping our planet locked in the ice box. It is likely industrial CO2 emissions will fail to overcome today’s geological ice box forcings, just as much higher CO2 levels failed to overcome the powerful geological ice box forcings which created the Late Paleozoic icehouse during the Carboniferous.
Even if I’m wrong, and substantial warming does occur, we have strong evidence humans would thrive in such conditions. Our monkey ancestors made their debut in the fossil record during much warmer conditions than today. The Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, 5-8C hotter than today, was the age of monkeys. Our monkey ancestors thrived on the abundance of the hothouse PETM, and colonised much of the world, only retreating when the cold returned. If a bunch of monkey ancestors with brains the size of matchboxes could thrive in a much warmer world, then we humans certainly could – which gives us at least a 5-8C buffer of safety against any imaginable global warming event.
Fish also did well during the PETM – so it’s not just humans who would thrive in such warm conditions.
Given the remarkable stability of the Earth’s climate on geological timescales, the fact the Earth is still locked in an ice age, the benign conditions which prevailed in previous much warmer ages, and the existence of previous ice age epochs with far higher CO2 levels than today, those who focus on the carbon cycle alone are overlooking some pretty important evidence. Given all this, I believe we can reasonably conclude claims that industrial emissions are creating a man made Permian Extinction are an absurd fantasy.
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I was wondering when we would be hearing another asinine doomsday prediction from The Guardian. Could it be that after a few drinks some of the equally asinine astronomers that they would employ to fabricate end-of-the- world scenarios mistook traffic signal reflections for an oncoming asteroid that will wipe out the remaining reptiles end civilization as we know it into the bargain?
An asteroid caused my man-made CO2!!!
Astronomers?? was that a typo, and you meant astrologers???
+The Guardian sez….It’s Hot….and gettin’ Hotter !
The Grauniad sez we are losing money and it’s getting worse!
The Guardian sez it’s all your fault, now feel bad and repent 🙂
Repent, and send money.
Repent, say hallelujah, and send more money.
🎶 Put a nickle on the drum
Save another drunken (Guardian) bum
Put a nickle on the drum
And you’ll be saved.🎶
My comment is attributed to a lab technician in the 80s who did humorous monologs pretending to be a revivalist preacher.
“‘A climate of unparalleled malevolence’”
Most of it coming from places like the Guardian, Washington Post, MSNBC, BBC, and other far-left media hacks.
“‘A climate of unparalleled malevolence’”
That is exactly what the Climate Syndicate is creating for all mankind.
Australia is. The decline in productivity means will be unable to feed ourselves by the end of the century.
Our new Chinese overlords will fix the productivity issue.
Chinese and Hamas/Palestinians.!!
Wonderful !
The US EPA will soon rescind the 2009 CO2 Endangerment Finding. When this occurs, whatever will Premier Anthony A. do? He will have to eat humble pie, cancel all the climate actions plans such as the Net Zero by 2050 Plan, and remove any restrictions on the use of fossil fuels.
You Aussies will be liberated from draconian dictates of the Canberra Climate Commissars.
There will be celebrations. There will be dancing in the streets and there will be free beer.
And the UK will quadruple our efforts to bankrupt ourselves into Nut Zero
After the EPA rescinds the Endangerment Finding,
Nigel Farage and the Reformers will gain much new power, will force Mad Ed to resign, and then banish him to a wind farm in Scotland.
We can but hope…
Do not eat bananas before they are peeled.
It is highly likely the EF will be rescinded, but soon is questionable and the tsunami of lawfare might upset the success.
Being pragmatic, but still hopeful.
The Grauniad would try to sell what looks like James Hansen’s Runaway Feedback model of warming.
But of course Peter Brannen uses FF every minute of every day, what a flaming HYPOCRITE!
If the Sixth Great Extinction were to take mosquitos and tomato hornworms I’d be all for it.
Thing is we are discovering/classifying something like six new species for every one dispatched by nature.
Could we add case-bearing clothes moths to the extinction list, please?
A few dozen extinctions over the last hundred years or so, not a single one caused by so called climate change are somehow presaging a mass extinction event the likes of which has not been seen since a 7 mile wide comet hit the Earth 66 million years ago.
Yea right.
The Western U.S. used to be plagued by the Rocky Mountain Locust. They’ve gone extinct. I bet Bill Gates wants to bring them back.
I also noted they didn’t bring up the Big Speeding Rock.
Wonder what the numbers would be in KE= 1/2 MV^2, on that baby & how long it took to shed the E..
No, but most journalists and tabloid news are headed there.
LOL … bring on AI!
Just when you think they can’t up with any more totally anti-science gibberish and BS.. they out-do themselves.
And I bet not one of the usual trolls will come out against this atrociously stupid article.
The Guardian is blaming Trump for rising electricity prices.
While I suspect there is some truth in blaming Trump, it has more to do with removing subsidies more than anything:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/19/electricity-bills-increase-trump
Trump is the antithesis of rising electricity costs … in the US prices are retreating. Whilst Biden was “president” energy prices around the entire world rocketed up.
Prices are retreating? Where is the evidence of deflation in the US? The rate of inflation has slowed, as indeed it has around the world but there is no sign of deflation.
Streetcred was talking about electricity prices…
… bring those and fuel prices down, everything else will follow.
Seems you don’t understand basic economics, either.
But Trump isn’t bringing electricity prices down. In fact they are rising twice as fast as inflation. See
https://www.npr.org/2025/08/16/nx-s1-5502671/electricity-bill-high-inflation-ai
Amusing that you think that NPR with a single example with no corroborative detail is evidence of anything.
How about this from the US EIA
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=65284
which goes on to state that
“Retail electricity prices have increased faster than the rate of inflation since 2022, and we expect them to continue increasing through 2026, based on forecasts in our Short-Term Energy Outlook. Parts of the country with relatively high electricity prices may experience greater price increases than those with relatively low electricity prices.”
I don’t see anything in your linked article that even intimates that Trump is responsible for the increasing electricity rates. It seems that almost everything he does is impeded by federal judges who impose stays on the implementation. Perhaps you should be complaining about the federal judges who put ideology before the welfare of the citizenry.
The one thing that the article blames is computing centers for AI. Those who are expecting to ultimately make money on AI should be the ones paying for the increased demand.
Not exactly:
The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers
National Propaganda Radio? Is that still a thing?
I think that The Guardian should be charged with interfering with US elections and attempting to influence the electorate and legislators with misinformation.
Much of the UK mainstream media seem unable to get over the fact that Trump won the election.
One example. The BBC late evening news banged on and on about Trump’s links to Epstein for well over a week showing the same film night after night. It was then announced that the Clinton’s links to him were being investigated which they did broadcast once but only once. Then they dropped any mention of Epstein altogether.
Why not blame Trump.
Everyone needs someone (except the real culprits) to blame.
Trump is an easy target.
I wonder how many of these authors–and commenters–have mapped Permo-Triassic rocks so actually know what they show about conditions at that time. I have; in our part of the world they’re the Cache Creek Group and Takla Volcanics.
Hiking mountains and swamps with mosquito saturation is difficult work though; sitting in offices modelling at a computer is a lot easier way to form conclusions and make predictions.
Hiking in mountains is good for your health. Sitting in front of a computer screen is not.
Oh I dunno. My sister fell down Table mountain and got pretty badly smashed up.
Well, you’re supposed to sit at the table, not climb it. 😉
Reportedly, there were signs of stress in some species about 1m years before the Permian-Triassic extinction event*. I think we should wait until there are signs of stress (eg. when NASA report a decline in leaf area), and then we would have a few hundred thousand years in which to work out a solution.
*Some think it all happened at 3pm on a Wednesday afternoon, but the evidence shows it was a bit slower than that, ie, about a million years (Tuesday to Tuesday).
I was unaware that CO2 trapped energy from the sun.
CO2 absorbs only a minute amount of incoming LWIR in sunlight in the far IR range.
It doesn’t. If energy from the Sun was being “trapped,” whether directly or indirectly, every day would be hotter than the one before.
You obviously grok the meaning of trapped.
Since when has the Guardian done “plausible”. 😉
The Extinction Event The Guardian is always talking about is actually its decline in readership.
Hyperbole…
Propaganda.
It is wholly more plausible that the Guardian will become extinct long before “the sixth major extinction”.
So a Guardian journalist is convinced that Happer and Wijngaarden are wrong. Perhaps some day he will explain?
If the Guardian published an edition in the middle of a forest with no one around to read it, would they still be wrong?
Recent evidence suggests that the End Permian Extinction was less related to CO2 or increasing temperatures than it was to the release of toxic gases. Apparently, magmatic sills were emplaced under organic-rich sediments (either actual coal beds or proto-coal beds), driving off volatiles colloquially known as coal tars (as in benzene), carbon monoxide, and sulfur dioxide from included pyrite/marcasite. The sulfur dioxide, when dissolved in water, creates a strong acid — sulfuric acid — probably actually capable of significantly lowering the pH of all waters.
… and of reducing plant food for land animals???
Populations cycle naturally, each in it’s own characteristic fashion, and extinction is “in the numbers” and inevitable. No special changes in the environment are required … The numbers get a little more complex when inter-species relationships are considered and impossibly complex when Gaia as a whole is involved..ie- the great extinction events are the “perfect storm” of additive cycles, and as pointed out above, take place over 10s & 100s of thousands of years– plenty of time for species to adapt, so it ain’t the changing environment. It’s just in the numbers. Cf- any textbook on Mathematical Biology
From my notes: Satellite imagery recently revealed a 300-mile wide impact crater in the Wilkes Land region of East Antarctica. This asteroid impact was more than twice as large as the Chicxulub crater that caused extinction of the dinosaurs 185 million years later.
The Wilkes Land asteroid is estimated to have been 30 miles in diameter. Translational waves from the Antarctic impact propagated around the globe and focused at the anti-impact site, inducing an outbreak of volcanism over what is now called Siberia. This impact event 250 million ybp is known as the “Great Dying,” the Permian-Triassic extinction event. 90% of all life on earth was obliterated.
Pure, unadulterated speculation, with no basis in evidence, logic or reality. It’s the only leg they’ve got left to stand on, and it’s a very shakey one at best.
Ah, the old, “rate of change” hand-woven from full on dyed-in-the-wool BS. We don’t have anything like the resolution in proxies to determine what rates of change occurred in the past. It’s a ludicrous pretension.
Strangely, intelligent, educated people seem to swallow all this bunk without giving it any proper examination or rational thought. It’s quite sad.
You echo my sentiment entirely.
I have found these people to be moderately intelligent but intellectual snobs. Reading the Guardian gives them a way to feel marginally superior to their plebeian brethren who scarcely read at all…
“Positive feedback.”
Using a term the author does not understand.
These days, much of the so called educational establishment is focused on teaching students what to think, rather than how to think. Those who are best at regurgitating whatever nonsense is being fed them get the highest grades.
That, sadly, is an unintended (?) consequence of national standardized testing.
That doesn’t need to be the case. If the emphasis of the testing were to be to demonstrate the ability to think, then it wouldn’t happen.
Nothing wrong with standardized testing.
The problem is the left has taken over the education establishment.
Maybe your first comma in the last sentence should be removed. 🙂
The PT transition is just more than elevated levels of CO2 and water vapour, it is the enormous volumes of tephra being thrown up into the air by intense and prolonged exhalative volcanic activity. These eruptive sequences are primarily rhyolitic bringing with it enormous releases of a toxic plume that include CO2 but also abundant SO2 and just about everything else.
And the source is correct; this went on for at least 2 million years.
With tuffaceous sequences (grey) interbedded with the coals (black) being reported in the Bulli Seams in the Sydney Basin it is likely that volcanic activity was a fact of life well into the Triassic from the Mid Permian as seen in the type outcrop.
There is no comparison with today’s paltry efforts. Rest easy
‘A climate of unparalleled malevolence’. That describes accurately the Guardian’s attitude to free speech the past 20 years.
Articles like this at least give lie to the fatuous phase “destroying the planet”. We’ve had 5 mass extinction events in the Earths history yet it’s still here, and will be for another several billion years until the sun expands to swallow it.
Uranus may see a real-estate boom.
(And to anyone who detects some anatomical reference herein — You’re Sick!)
Only if its colonizers eat a lot of beans. 🤣
On the other hand, it is not impossible that life on earth will evolve sufficiently to be able to live and flourish on the expanded sun.
Life – nothing has ever got out alive !
Humans, all of us, are infected with a common ailment.
It has 100% mortality.
It is acquired at conception/birth.
It is called life.
Individual mortality was a tradeoff to allow evolution and thus immortality of life in general. Without the ability to adapt to changing physical environments, such as rising and subsequently eroding mountain ranges, there would be few places where the primitive species could have survived without evolution.
‘A climate of unparalleled malevolence’
You can say that again with an army of Gretaheads-
‘Brainwashing them’: Documentary pushes climate propaganda in schools
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