Great time travel

Chapter 122: A Resilient Biosphere and a Fragile Civilization
In the history of the evolution of life on Earth, there have been five mass extinctions of creatures that shook the world, wept ghosts and gods, and almost turned the Earth into an alien.

The so-called mass extinction refers to the extinction of large-scale biological clusters, also known as biological extinction.That is, the whole family, whole order or even the whole class of organisms completely disappeared in a short period of time, or only a very small number remained.Among them, the most famous in the modern world is naturally the time when the dinosaurs became extinct, that is, the last mass extinction.During each mass extinction, the environment of the entire earth will be turned upside down and become like a foreign planet.If someone could travel through time and space and land on the purgatory template earth of that era, I'm afraid they would never recognize that this ghostly place is actually their own home planet earth...

The first mass extinction occurred at the end of the Ordovician period 4.4 million years ago, which was caused by global climate cooling.Due to the action of continental drift at that time, all the land gathered near the poles, resulting in thick ice accumulation.The large glaciers cooled the ocean currents and atmospheric circulation, which eventually led to a gradual drop in the temperature of the entire planet, resulting in the extinction of 85% of species that were not hardy to cold.

The second mass extinction occurred in the late Devonian period about 3.65 years ago. The reason was also the cooling of the climate and global ice. The circumstances were very similar to the previous Ordovician mass extinction. The degree of extinction It's almost the same, so I won't say more here.

This was followed by the third most horrific mass extinction in Earth's history, the Permian mass extinction some 2.5 million years ago.

At the end of the Permian period, the most terrifying volcanic eruption in history occurred in Siberia. The molten basalt was ejected directly from the mantle, blasting a large mouth with a diameter of 50 kilometers in the earth's crust, and the average temperature of the earth at that time was 16 degrees Celsius. , has rapidly increased to 40 degrees Celsius in a few decades (now the average temperature of the earth is 14 degrees Celsius)! !Then, the tens of millions of cubic kilometers of magma erupted from this super volcano not only burned countless vegetation, but also directly covered half of the land at that time, severely damaged the ecological chain, and caused the oxygen content of the atmosphere to plummet—— At a high temperature with an average temperature of 40 degrees Celsius, the oxygen content in the atmosphere has dropped below 10%. Now the oxygen content in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is 15%, and the oxygen content in the plains is 21%...

While the oxygen content of the atmosphere plummeted, the content of sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere rose to 6%, and the content of carbon dioxide rose to 10%. The carbon dioxide content of the modern atmosphere is 0.05%. There are already a group of people calling for carbon control. discharged.

Due to the sharp increase in the content of carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide, and in the fire caused by the volcanic eruption, a large amount of toxic gas and greenhouse gas methane was produced, resulting in the extremely terrifying super greenhouse effect.Moreover, this volcanic eruption has been erupting for several 10 years without ending, which is equivalent to continuing to burn the stove in the greenhouse, so in the next 10 years, the global average temperature continued to rise to the horrific 70 degrees Celsius - the highest temperature in the world at that time. The cold place is hotter than the current Sahara Desert.Two-thirds of the world's sea water has evaporated, and the air humidity is as high as 80%. When sulfur dioxide encounters water vapor, it will form sulfuric acid. However, the sulfur dioxide in the air at that time was too high, and what fell was not acid rain, but dilute sulfuric acid... In this way, dilute sulfuric acid has been raining continuously for tens of thousands of years all over the world, and the soil and oceans around the world have been completely acidified. Animals and plants have been drenched in acid for so long, and they can no longer bear it, and they all die.

What's more terrible is that because the super-scale volcanic eruption lasted for several 10 years, the content of volcanic ash, sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increased day by day, completely covering the sun, making the entire earth's surface dark for as long as 40 years. It’s dark night, and the photosynthesis of plants is completely over… In the past 10 years, the earth has looked similar to Venus from space. For four seasons, the global average temperature is as high as 70 degrees Celsius, all ocean currents have stopped, the oxygen content of seawater is almost zero, two-thirds of the seawater has evaporated, the air humidity is higher than that of the sauna room, and sulfuric acid rains every day - in such a lava hell package Among the miracles, it is a miracle among miracles that all creatures on the earth are not completely wiped out.

(Even the hell and abyss in the DND setting are much more livable than the earth in the Permian mass extinction era.)
After 20 years, the super volcano in Siberia finally stopped erupting. The basalt solidified by magma is more than 600 meters thick, covering almost the entire surface of the earth.Another 30 years later, the long night finally ended, the remaining plants began to multiply, the oxygen content of the atmosphere began to recover, the temperature began to drop, and the water vapor after cooling formed global rainfall, and the disappeared ocean reappeared... But 98% of the species on the earth have disappeared forever, and the rest are super dead species with tenacious vitality, such as sharks, dragonflies and cockroaches.Especially for sharks, it is really hard to imagine how they survive and reproduce in seawater at [-] degrees Celsius.

——Compared with the purgatory environment of the Permian mass extinction, the environmental damage and air pollution of modern humans are simply a piece of cake, and even the interstellar wars in science fiction are mostly not up to such an exaggerated degree of destruction .And the life on the earth has survived, and the earth has not been turned into a lifeless dead planet... The tenacity of the biosphere can be seen from this.

4000 million years after the Permian mass extinction, the fourth mass extinction, the Triassic mass extinction, began again.

The causes and manifestations of the early stage of this mass extinction are similar to those of the last Permian mass extinction—because of the division of continental plates, a 50-kilometer-long, A large crack with a width of 800 meters, about [-] million cubic kilometers of magma and a large amount of carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide erupted from the ground, and then there were almost identical forest fires, super greenhouse effect, plummeting atmospheric oxygen content, tens of thousands of years of sulfuric acid rain...

But later on, it was different from the third mass extinction—compared with the last mass extinction, the magma eruption in the fourth mass extinction ended earlier, and there was no time to turn the earth into Venus again.However, the volcanic ash left in the atmosphere covered the sky, reducing the sunlight received by the surface by half, and the global temperature, which had risen rapidly, plummeted in reverse, preventing the eggs of a large number of early animals from hatching in the low temperature. Pieces of extinction... Then the earth began to snow for several years, forming glaciers all over the land and the Great Ice Age that lasted for 30 years, which also caused the extinction of 76% of the species on the earth at that time.

——If the last mass extinction was a template of lava hell, then this time it is the real ice and fire...

Finally, 500 million years ago, the fifth mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous period... Although it is the closest to modern times and ended the age of dinosaurs, this mass extinction is the most well-known, but in fact, In terms of destructive power and degree of destruction, it is actually the most "mild" among the five mass extinctions.

The specific process is now well known, that is, an asteroid fell on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, splashing a huge cloud of dust and covering a large area.At the same time, the impact also caused a large number of volcanoes around the world to erupt, and a huge amount of volcanic ash, carbon dioxide, and sulfur dioxide entered the atmosphere. The thickness of the cloud layer reached several kilometers, blocking the sun, and causing the global temperature to drop sharply.The whole world fell into darkness for six full months... When the first ray of sunlight pierced through the clouds, it rained sulfuric acid for another 30 years...

During this time, the extinction of the dinosaurs occurred—first with the death of large swaths of plants, and then the rapid death of herbivorous dinosaurs.Carnivorous dinosaurs began to kill each other, and finally they all died... However, compared with the previous Permian mass extinction and Triassic mass extinction, the scale of the Cretaceous mass extinction is really too small.First of all, the duration is very short, just a few decades from beginning to end, while the previous Permian mass extinction and Triassic mass extinction were both tens of thousands of years long.Moreover, the Cretaceous mass extinction did not cause global large-scale hypoxia, there was no terrifying super high temperature or global ice cover, and there was no large-scale ocean evaporation.The six-month dark night and the 10-year dark night are also completely different concepts-the climate of the entire earth has recovered a few decades after the asteroid hit.In the early Cenozoic that followed, the climate was not significantly different from that at the end of the Mesozoic, when the dinosaurs lived.

But even so, such a "mild" mass extinction is much more terrifying than the zombie apocalypse in human science fiction. It can be seen that compared with the earth that has suffered and vicissitudes, we humans Still too young and too ignorant
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All in all, in Wang Qiu’s view, since the earth’s biosphere is still full of vitality after five horrific mass extinctions, how can it be possible to really bring the earth out of existence with such a little ability of human beings to deal with the natural world? What doomsday will come?
It's just a mere nuclear winter. Compared with these five mass extinctions, it's not even a hair!
Besides, even the so-called "nuclear winter" concept is nothing more than a hoax and a false proposition. It is almost the same as the American Star Wars plan in the 80s, except that its anti-war purpose is a little more noble. That's all.

"...In my opinion, whether it's pollution or war, even if it's nuclear war, it's still far from the standard of destroying the world! Human beings are always accustomed to arrogance and self-importance in many cases. , For a while, I feel that man can conquer nature, and I can hold nature in the palm of my hand, but for a while, I worry about the sky, worrying that if I am not careful, I will ruin the earth.

In fact, from the perspective of the earth, I am afraid that human beings seem to have a serious tendency towards arrogance, arrogantly thinking that they are important and powerful, but in fact, this is not the case at all.Many popular environmental protection topics are over-promoted intentionally or unintentionally. Our earth is very strong. It is not so easy to grasp, but it is also not so easy to play badly. "

In the living room of the shrine, Wang Qiu talked so eloquently, talking about his experience after saving & destroying & messing up several worlds, "... I remember there were always some environmentalists who always bluffed It seems reasonable at first to say that the Amazon tropical jungle is the 'lungs of the earth', which accounts for a fraction of the proportion of the world's forests. If it is cut down, it will cause disastrous consequences. But I thought about it later, If it goes back to ancient times, then the Yangtze and Yellow River basins in China, the Ganges River basin in India, and the Mississippi River basin in the United States, these densely populated areas in the future, were all large forests at that time! There is also the ancient Roman era In Europe, there is a large black forest. A squirrel can jump from one tree to another, from Spain to Denmark, without going to the ground. By now, these forests have basically been cut down. In terms of total area, it is at least several times that of the Amazon rainforest? But why hasn’t the oxygen content of the earth’s atmosphere dropped significantly in the past few thousand years?

The reason is very simple, whether it is really ulterior motives, or purely heartless silly white sweet, anyway, when it comes to the oxygen emissions of the Amazon forest, those environmentalists are simply talking nonsense.In fact, among the annual net oxygen production of the entire earth, marine algae produce 90% of it, freshwater algae produce 3% of it, and mosses and lichens produce 6% of it.And how much of the oxygen content is produced by all land higher plants including forests, grasslands, and crops?Only 1%! !
That is to say, among the oxygen in the entire earth, all higher plants on land only contribute one percent, and the proportion of forests is even lower...For the earth, the oxygen-producing ability of forests can almost be ignored , and cannot even affect the oxygen content of the atmosphere.

Why is this so?Because higher plants themselves also need to breathe, they have to re-eat part of the oxygen they produce through photosynthesis, and spit out carbon dioxide.In addition, any higher plants are the product of biological carbon accumulation. After they die, they will rot and deteriorate, releasing a large amount of carbon emissions and consuming a lot of oxygen... According to the calculations of many scientists, if the balance of oxygen is balanced , Some plants not only did not produce extra oxygen in their lifetime, but consumed more oxygen!
Therefore, even if all the forests on the planet were turned into deserts, there would be no adverse effect on the oxygen content of the atmosphere.Conversely, even if the time goes back thousands of years and human settlements turn into big forests again, the air on the earth will not become cleaner..."

Wang Qiu took a sip of water from his teacup, and then continued, "...It can be seen that the Amazon rainforest is not the lungs of the earth at all, and the concept of nuclear winter in the Cold War era is also a well-intentioned deception—in During the Cold War, even if all the nuclear bombs of all human beings were detonated together, the total energy would be nothing more than the amount of a large-scale volcanic eruption to the earth. cannot change the climate.

The so-called control of carbon emissions and "low-carbon life" that have been hyped up recently are actually a false proposition deliberately concocted-in fact, the little impact we humans have on the earth is, Actually nothing.The total annual carbon emissions of all human beings are not as much as those rotting plants in the forest.And the annual methane emissions of all human beings can't keep up with volcanic eruptions, or even the farting of termites.The so-called control of carbon emissions is just an excuse for developed countries to despise and suppress developing countries. It is analogous to ancient wizards accusing tribal members of 'offending the gods'. It is purely human beings tossing themselves...

So, everyone, don’t think too highly of yourself, the earth does not need to be saved by humans, it is enough for humans to save themselves! "

After listening to Wang Qiu's long speech, everyone seemed to be a little dizzy, and their thinking was a little knotted by the conflicts of various ideas... After a long silence, it was the ship girl Sophie who cared most about the world. Miss, speak first to refute.

"...You are right, the earth does not need us to save, and human beings cannot destroy the earth. But the problem is, even if human beings cannot destroy the earth, they can still easily destroy themselves! So the current human civilization still needs our help save!"

Sophie, the ship's mother who had just recovered (rehabilitated) from a serious injury, spread her hands with a wry smile, "...Although the earth's biosphere is very tough, human civilization is very fragile! And, do you know that the life of Europeans today is What is the environment like?"