When was the last time that we had such a slow moving, swampy ocean, without the circulation type that we have now? Well, the last most devastating time is actually during the jerassic. We're right back at p e t m times, which was 55 million years ago. I don't think anyone knows what's going to happen to climb it, or what the eventual c o two levels will be. As you know, i am sceptical of the fossil fuel availability. A lot of the a coal and natural gas and oil that exists will be energetically remote,. and we won't be able to access it. But i'll come back to that in a minute.
On this episode, we meet with author and paleobiologist Peter Ward.
Ward helps us catalogue the various risks facing Earth’s oceans, how the Atlantic Ocean’s currents are slowing due to warming, what happened in Earths history when ocean currents stopped, and why a reduction in elephant poaching is contributing to the destruction of coral reefs.
About Peter Ward:
Peter Ward is a Professor of Biology and Earth and Space Sciences at the University of Washington. He is author of over a dozen books on Earth's natural history including On Methuselah's Trail: Living Fossils and the Great Extinctions; Under a Green Sky; and The Medea Hypothesis, 2009, (listed by the New York Times as one of the “100 most important ideas of 2009”). Ward gave a TED talk in 2008 about mass extinctions.
For Show Notes and Transcript visit: https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/08-peter-ward