By Anupum Pant
99% of the species that ever lived have now become extinct. Most of this wiping of animal species is caused by certain events that suddenly happen from time to time.
About 440 Million years ago, most species (86% of all the species) were killed when shallow sea waters got frozen due to global cooling because all the carbon dioxide was sucked away by volcanic rock..
347 Million years ago some thing similar happened, but this time all of the oxygen from water was sucked away by algae – too many plants.
250 Million years ago, during the permian extinction, 70% of land and 95% of ocean life was wiped off the face of earth. This was when volcanic gases destroyed the ozone layer, ocean temperatures rose to an average of 40 degree Celsius and acid started raining from the heavens.
Only 50 million years later a huge rift cracked earth, split the america and europe and spewed massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. Uncontrolled global warming killed more than 80% of all the species which had tried to recover in these 50 million years.
Soon bigger dinosaurs started roaming the earth and were believed to have been wiped off by a massive asteroid the size of a small town which made such a huge impact that it blew massive amounts of dust in the air, blocked the sunlight and killed all dinosaurs.
Now, human population burst has created an unusual imbalance in the planet. Massive amounts of CO2 is already being thrown into the air – increased 25% in the last 50 years. The population of one species is unusually high. Thanks to the world dominated by us, the rate of species getting extinct is about thousand times higher than the natural rate!! That’s a certain 6th mass extinctions is soon to come – in about the next hundred years. As always, it will hurt us, the species at the top of the chain, worst, and also because the probability of it hitting us would be massively higher than it hitting any other species. It’s coming, and nothing that’s going on now looks like it’s going to stop.
However, on the brighter side, there are so many of us that the probability of some of us not getting killed by the massive extinctions is also pretty high. In that case, for those some of us who manage to escape it, life will be tough. But, they’ll carry our race further? We can only wait and watch.