Extinctions: the role of CO2 confirmed
Jackson-Davis analysis confirmed by using a more recent data set
The holy Goddess Gaia mourns over the death of her beloved dinosaurs, asphyxiated by CO2
Did CO2 directly kill the dinosaurs by asphyxiating them? It is a fascinating hypothesis, extremely relevant to our present conditions. It is known that CO2 kills in high doses, but we know little about the effects of low doses for long periods — except that they are probably not good, as I discuss in a recent paper.
In a paper that I recently discovered, William Jackson-Davis discusses the correlation of CO2 with mass extinctions, finding a clear dependency: CO2 alone does cause extinctions, although not the largest ones. Davis argues that extinctions are caused by the anoxia generated by Ocean acidification. In another paper of mine, I argue that CO2 biochemical poisoning is another possible explanation. These two hypotheses do not exclude each other.
Fascinating, indeed. But is it true? Davis’s paper looks convincing, but nowadays, you never know whether you can trust scientific papers. So, to make sure, I went to re-examine Davis’s data. For the CO2 concentrations, he used Royers’ 2014 data; good, but a little old. So, I used instead the most recent data set, that by Judd et al,, of 2024. And I am happy to report that, yes, Davis’ analysis is basically correct and that I could confirm it.
A caveat: the correlation with CO2 exists only if you select extinction data that Davis identifies as statistically significant peaks in the Sepkoski marine genus database “blue points”. These peaks represent local maxima in extinction intensity that are flanked by periods of lower extinction rates, indicating genuine extinction episodes rather than random fluctuations. These peaks involve genus losses that exceed approximately 20% extinction. This distinguishes them from background extinction fluctuations (typically <20%).
This said, Davis’ results are confirmed. Here is my plot (done by Manus. It got a virtual cookie and a scratch under its virtual ears from me in exchange for having been able, for once, to do a decently good job):
Note that the correlation doesn’t exist for the five “canonical” mass extinctions, the “big ones.” Apparently, these huge events are in another category; affected by secondary events generated by the large CO2 increase — maybe hydrogen sulphide poisoning. But the important point is that Davis’ analysis is confirmed.
And the consequence is (drums rolling): we ARE asphyxiating ourselves with CO2. And plenty of people seem to be very happy about that; you know, the bunch of idiots who go screaming “CO2 is plant food! We need more of it!!”.
I think we deserve extinction much more than the dinosaurs, and probably the Goddess will not weep too much for our loss.
time to take action even if we are all going down! https://exploringhumans.substack.com/p/unleash-your-inner-female-bonobo
I did a study of that, simply comparing speciation and extinction rates. The message I got from it is that nature is more flexible than I thought, as though total biomass population numbers were sharply falling, that was mostly of established species with large populations losing their niches, and new and less proven species with smaller populations filling in.
So my view is that nature is in motion and would be better off if it got rid of us. That actually could occur, or something close to it, if we repeat humanity’s fantastical whole civilization collapse routine, the one that extinguished the cultures and languages of Babel, Atlantis, and Rome, all collapsing so totally their stories, history, and evidence are almost totally missing.
So to get rid of humanity it seems nature would seem all she’d need to do is allow us to repeat our all-consuming civilization collapse standard growth-to-collapse plan to extinguish everything tied to it. The basic plan only requires everyone on earth being part of same living organism, taking everyone with it when it dies. It’s actually fairly common for whole systems to vanish that way!