The whole "an asteroid killed the dinosaurs" thing probably did untold damage in the general public's perception of the severity of our current situation. Every single mass extinction in Earth's history has been because of climate change. Whatever event (or events) happened to start it vary but at the end of it all mass extinctions outside of the "impact zones" of these events are because of climate change. The Earth was already struggling from climate change for a while, so the asteroid could have just been the final nail in the coffin.
Another mass extinction about 250 million years ago, "The Great Dying" as it's called because an estimated 90% of all life on Earth was eradicated, happened because increased volcanic activity led to the collapse of the tropical forest biosphere which further increased CO2 buildup because the plants were no longer taking it out of the atmosphere. Today, we have global warming messing up the natural timelines many species biologically operate on, in specific conditions they evolved for that are now changing. Even aside from direct deforestation, plants will keep dying.
"Indeed, warming could continue to accelerate in this case even if we reach zero human emissions. We will have fundamentally changed the carbon cycle in a way that can take geological timescales to recover, which has happened in Earth's past."
I look at this one in particular because it seems most similar to today, so could give us an idea of what we could expect.
During stage 2, the onset of volcanism began in the early Capitanian, with the significant release of greenhouse gases resulting in climate warming of 3°C–5°C. This coincided with sea level rise caused by regional subsidence, thus exacerbating stratification of the water column and marine anoxia as warmer oceans reduced the concentration of dissolved oxygen. While nutrients were brought to the surface by volcanic activity, primary productivity at the ocean surface used up most of this oxygen for respiration and organic matter decomposition, generating depleted oxygen minimum zones below.
95% of all marine species suffocated to death directly because of warming oceans. Warmer body temperatures mean increased metabolisms, and increased respiration. Warm water cannot hold as much oxygen as cold water, so there was even less oxygen for the increased demand.
Without human activity it still took the planet about 30 million years to recover. I can't even imagine what we're looking at today with the USAmerican government putting 500 Planet Death Accelerator Centers everywhere. The general public already hates these data centers, which is good, but it still has a huge problem with even acknowledging how dire our situation is. One thing people mention is that the Earth goes through natural changes on its own.
But on a geological scale this is more consistent than not.
I would like to draw your attention to the part of the graph roughly 250 million years ago, "The Great Dying" of the Permian-Triassic. And then back to the part of the graph where we are today (data from 2025). We are already in Earth's sixth mass extinction event, and the only one caused by humans.
Roughly 900 documented species have gone extinct since the year 1500, and around 1 million more are currently threatened with extinction, largely because of human activity. That 900 figure sounds modest until you consider that scientists have formally assessed less than 5% of all described species on Earth. The true number of human-caused extinctions is almost certainly far higher, and the rate at which species are disappearing is between 100 and 1,000 times faster than what would happen naturally.
I know this is depressing but everyone needs to know this because it will continue to affect you whether you want to acknowledge it or not. We passed the 1.5 degree threshold climate scientists were warning about for decades. That was in 2024, so all these other weird things you notice can be attributed to global warming. It's not just summers being hotter and winters getting colder, it's increased viral mutation and spread, it's crop failures, it's higher rates of skin cancer, and so much more. As we've seen, once one thing changes it opens the door for a cascade of things to happen. And it is incredibly isolating to actually know this stuff because everyone wants to bury their heads in the sand and just continue on their own lives like they have been, continuing to force wooden shapes in holes they don't fit, doing activities in environments that are unsafe now, but this is what they've always done and they refuse to change or adapt. I swear people will end up making some sort of sport out of playing in the cyanobacteria blooms that kill you.
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