The Ends of the World: Volcanic Apocalypses, Lethal Oceans, and Our Quest to Understand Earth's Past Mass Extinctions

by Peter Brannen

Life on earth constitutes a remarkably thin glaze of interesting chemistry on an otherwise unremarkable, cooling ball of stone, hovering like a sand grain in an endless ocean of empty space.

“Did anybody bring any acid?” a geologist asked the group as we marched down the shoulder of I-68. “I did!” responded another. I would learn that this surprising question was customary among geologists. The acid is used, somewhat disappointingly, to take layers of grime off the rocks.

When you put a log on the fire, the light and heat you see is, in a literal sense, the decades of sunshine that tree basked in over its lifetime.

Considering how much we’ve already done to dismantle coral reefs, and projecting these trends forward into anything resembling geological time, it becomes clear why it’s not unreasonable to compare what is going on today with the worst disasters in earth’s history.