As we move through the Sixth Extinction, it can be beneficial to examine what caused massive die-offs in the past. Lystrosaurus specimens from South Africa have been found that may help clarify what happened 250 million years ago. [via IFLScience]
The Permian-Triassic Extinction Event, or the Great Dying, takes the cake for the worst extinction we know about so far on our pale blue dot. The primary cause is thought to be intense volcanic activity which formed the Siberian Traps and sent global CO2 levels soaring. In Karoo Basin of South Africa, 170 tetrapod fossils were found that lend credence to the theory. Several of the Lystrosaurus skeletons were preserved in a spread eagle position that “are interpreted as drought-stricken carcasses that collapsed and died of starvation in and alongside dried-up water sources.”
As Pangea dried from increased global temperatures, drought struck many different terrestrial ecosystems and changed them from what they were before. The scientists say this “likely had a profound and lasting influence on the evolution of tetrapods.” As we come up on the Thanksgiving holiday here in the United States, perhaps you should give thanks for the prehistoric volcanism that led to your birth?
If you want to explore more about how CO2 can lead to life forms having a bad day, have a look at paleoclimatology and what it tells us about today. In more recent history, have a look at how we can detect volcanic eruptions from all around the world and how you can learn more about the Earth by dangling an antenna from a helicopter.
There’s hacks, and then there’s hacks.
Well said.
Life finds its way
Will the cockroaches’ civilisation be smarter so as to not get killed off by CO2? Depends on whether they invent money and investment banking along the way.
maybe there is a “dangerous range of intelligence”:
Smart enough to create a civilization that can produce high tech capable of destroying the conditions needed for the same civilization to survive.
Not smart enough to have enough control of the collective usage of that same high tech to avoid destroying the conditions needed for the same civilization to survive.
No, lifeforms go extinct and lower lifeforms evolve to consume excess resources better. Extremophiles could technically live on a hellscaped planet but that doesn’t mean everything else didn’t get wiped out. Not as catchy but more accurate.
dinosaurs couldn’t curb their consumption of fossil fuels. always had multiple cars and drove everywhere all the time. cars used a lot more gasoline back then, mainly for being so large as to accommodate the dinos. this really impacted their space program so badly they couldn’t intercept the asteroid.
even worse was the the fatal influence of Elongus mucus on the space program who cheated his way to the top of the food chain by sucking up to T. rex who likewise was only interested in he himself eating without any care given to the John Does of his day; E. Mucus managed to redirect pebbles earmarked for use by the Dinosaur Aviation and Space Agency into his own pouches without delivering, after eons of empty and unrealistic promises, a viable rocket that could have brought the dinos to Mars or even the Moon
Luckily, we are smarter than these fictional dinosaurs that live rent free in your head and NASA has a a fixed-price contract with SpaceX so no landing, no money.
Well they managed to get $3B and deliver flights that didn’t even get to LEO, so much for the fixed price. They’re also years behind schedule and their plans rely on technology that has not yet developed or proven to work, like fuel transfer in microgravity when the fuel sloshes around in the tank, or keeping the one rocket in orbit for weeks waiting for the next tanker flight to arrive and somehow avoid fuel boil-off during that time. According to a number of analysts (e.g. “smarter every day” Destin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoJsPvmFixU) SpaceX has (knowingly?) underestimated the number of fueling flights they’d need. Furthermore, SpaceX has been relying on overt corruption to get government contracts as shown by Kathy Lueders who seamlessly changed from her job at NASA where she awarded contracts to SpaceX to a job at SpaceX. Talk about conflict of interests.
Then again, when NASA went to the moon back in the day they had quite essential input by a real-life Nazi (found to be implicated in the death of ~20,000 people), so all they’re doing is really using that working recipe again by paying a 21st c Nazi.
Also I could choose to feel offended by your “rent-free” slight.
Do you have a citation on the $3B figure? As in, reports of that money being actually paid for “flights that didn’t get to LEO”. I was only able to find reports of contracts, which is standard for spaceflight. Bear in mind that Grumman took the contract for the LM before they even had a working prototype, let alone the significantly different final design that actually landed.
Apologies on the hurt feelings over the rent free comment. It was intended more as a jibe, rather than a slight.
(in response to Dan; apparently that thread has become too deep so there is no more Reply option)
My source for the $3B figure is various videos by Philip Mason aka Thunderf00t (https://www.youtube.com/@Thunderf00t); take any recent Musk-related one.
Not having a working rocket at the time you accept a contract is not so much the problem as is the number and magnitudes of future inventions that the fulfillment of a contract implies. We have never parked a tank that big in orbit, we’ve never docked two rockets in space (though many times with smaller vehicles), we’ve never transferred fuel from one rocket to the next, nobody knows how to counter boil-off; lastly, the number of flights necessary before the core part of a flight to the Moon (I think it was) is estimated at a staggering 16 at least by Destin (from memory), so you need either a lot of rockets or a very short turn-around time.
One more thing that has become clear—something easily overlooked when you’re not a rocket scientist, so I had to be told—is that if you just fly that first rocket into its waiting orbit, whatever fuel there is left in the tanks will aimlessly float around, presumably as one big bubble (but I’ve only seen that with water in an atmosphere, so might be different for methane). If you don’t do something you can’t really pump anything. So you need a piston, or you have to rotate the two joined rockets, or they have to slightly accelerate. SpaceX claimed to have conducted a fuel transfer test on what? its third test flight, but they don’t have anything to show for it, and at any rate if they did anything it was just pumping a liquid from one tank in the rocket to another one in the same rocket, with no proof they did anything or how much they did.
Thanks for the citation. Incidentally, this link actually shows the money spent:
https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_AWD_80MSFC20C0034_8000_-NONE-_-NONE-
Showing $2.3B paid thus far
Apologies for doubting the scale of the current payments. Regarding all the ‘nevers’, when JFK said “we choose to go to the Moon”, the US had less than 11h of manned orbital experience with a total of 6 human orbits.
Wait do people actually exist who listen to Thunderf00t for noncomedic purposes or are you just fooling around?
“According to a number of analysts”
That is an outstanding video I have posted here several times. As shown in that video, with 16 – 20 refueling flights required just to land a Starship on the moon, even according to NASA…:
NASA Says Up to 20 SpaceX Starship Refueling Launches Per Moon Mission
December 3, 2023
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2023/12/nasa-says-up-to-20-spacex-starship-refueling-launches-per-moon-mission.html
…Starship is by far best suited to putting the much larger Starlink v2.0 satellites into Earth orbit which Musk has said is why the Starship must succeed or SpaceX will go bankrupt although, like nearly everything else he says, that’s probably hype. As shown by the Pez dispenser payload slot in the Starship, that’s primarily what he’s developing at taxpayer expense.
The video also analyzes the huge cost versus scientific return of human spaceflight and ask WHY we are wanting to send humans to the lunar surface like we did in the 60s back when there was so much to learn about that dead, dusty ball and we didn’t have the sophisticated electronics and robotics we have now. Well, as is also pointed out in that film, it was MOSTLY political then and, besides the industry lobbies wanting it which results in $4.2 BILLION PER LAUNCH systems like the SLS, it’s MOSTLY political now:
“I would not want us to be there 2nd”: NASA administrator aims to beat China in the race to the Moon
And on the de-orbiting of the $150 billion dollar (at least) white elephant called the ISS that costs one Perseverance Mars rover mission PER YEAR just to support:
“she (NASA deputy administrator Pam Melroy) said… “There’s a national posture element to it, to not have humans on orbit after what would be nearly 30 years of continuous presence” when the ISS is retired in 2030.”
If I were in charge, I’d cancel ALL US human spaceflight to save about 50% of NASA’s budget and use that money instead to put rovers everywhere in the solar system to get views through their robot eyes instead of watching joy riders eating $2,500 EACH (to get them there) chocolate chip cookies they baked on the ISS. Everything in Earth orbit would be done by low latency human operated tele-robotics, robotics, and AI.
There is a very good reason humans haven’t been back to the moon in over 50 years: scientifically IT ISN’T WORTH THE HUGE COST. When China eventually wastes enough money to put humans on the moon, I’d very publicly welcome them to a club we started over 50 years ago and say that we use robots now.
Book: The End of Astronauts: Why Robots are the Future of Exploration (2022)
“As Pangea dried from increased global temperatures, drought struck many different terrestrial ecosystems and changed them from what they were before.”
It would be supercool to have an article on where all the goot Pangea water went.
My understanding is that the tropics can be quite humid, the poles not so much.
Thank you for providing the Wikipedia link. It sounds like you’re saying the cold-blooded dinosaurs (diapsids) went extinct because even though the temperature went up 8 degrees, which you’d think would be good, all their water went bye-bye. Choo Choo Gone. But we’re still left with the question “Where did all that water go?” I’m not saying it was aliens per se.
BTW Why are the editorial we talking about mammals? Lystrosaurus doesn’t seem like a mammal.
“The first mammal-like forms appeared in the fossil record around 225 million years ago, during the late Triassic period. The earliest known mammal is Brasilodon quadrangularis, a small, shrew-like animal with mammalian-like teeth.”
What’s 25 million years among friends?
BTW Why are the editorial we talking about mammals? Lystrosaurus doesn’t seem like a mammal.
“The first mammal-like forms appeared in the fossil record around 225 million years ago, during the late Triassic period. The earliest known mammal is Brasilodon quadrangularis, a small, shrew-like animal with mammalian-like teeth.”
What’s 25 million years among friends?