Earth's history knows catastrophes which are unimaginable for humans. For example, around 66 million years ago an asteroid impact marked the end of the dinosaur era. Long before however, 252 million years ago at the boundary between the Permian and Triassic epochs, Earth witnessed a far more extreme mass extinction event that extinguished about three-quarters of all species on land and some 95 percent of all species in the ocean. Volcanic activity on an enormous scale in today's Siberia has long been debated as a likely trigger of the Permian-Triassic mass extinction, but the exact sequence of events that led to the extinction remained highly controversial. Now, a team of researchers from GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel, in collaboration with the Helmholtz Centre Potsdam GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences and Italian and Canadian universities, provides for the first time a conclusive reconstruction of the key events that led to the mega-catastrophe. Their research also draws bleak lessons for the future. They report about their discoveries in the journal Nature Geoscience.

How a greenhouse catastrophe killed nearly all life | EurekAlert! Science News
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-10/ggph-hag101920.php

TUHO: Original clanek

The Permian/Triassic boundary approximately 251.9 million years ago marked the most severe environmental crisis identified in the geological record, which dictated the onwards course for the evolution of life. Magmatism from Siberian Traps is thought to have played an important role, but the causational trigger and its feedbacks are yet to be fully understood. Here we present a new boron-isotope-derived seawater pH record from fossil brachiopod shells deposited on the Tethys shelf that demonstrates a substantial decline in seawater pH coeval with the onset of the mass extinction in the latest Permian. Combined with carbon isotope data, our results are integrated in a geochemical model that resolves the carbon cycle dynamics as well as the ocean redox conditions and nitrogen isotope turnover. We find that the initial ocean acidification was intimately linked to a large pulse of carbon degassing from the Siberian sill intrusions. We unravel the consequences of the greenhouse effect on the marine environment, and show how elevated sea surface temperatures, export production and nutrient input driven by increased rates of chemical weathering gave rise to widespread deoxygenation and sporadic sulfide poisoning of the oceans in the earliest Triassic. Our findings enable us to assemble a consistent biogeochemical reconstruction of the mechanisms that resulted in the largest Phanerozoic mass extinction.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-020-00646-4

Ancient volcanic eruptions of this kind are not directly comparable to anthropogenic carbon emissions, and in fact all modern fossil fuel reserves are far too insufficient to release as much CO2 over hundreds of years, let alone thousands of years as was released 252 million years ago,” said Dr Jurikova.
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But it is astonishing that humanity’s CO2 emission rate is currently fourteen times higher than the annual emission rate at the time that marked the greatest biological catastrophe in Earth’s history”."

Carbon release set off Earth’s biggest extinction | Climate News Network
https://climatenewsnetwork.net/carbon-release-set-off-earths-biggest-extinction/

Unie chce do roku 2030 zrenovovat 35 milionů budov. Česku to pomůže s plněním klimatických cílů – EURACTIV.cz
https://euractiv.cz/...ch-cilu/?fbclid=IwAR2kK2a2xvtBJGe5A14ymqYW2qvPbDUhltaVWVc_C5_YowUd2jFmWnvcPyw

"...V EU se nyní každoročně renovuje pouze jedno procento budov, v Česku se jedná o 0,6 až 0,8 procenta. Podle Komise to ale není dostatečné a tempo renovací chce v následující dekádě zdvojnásobit. Do roku 2030 by podle unijní exekutivy mohlo být v EU renovováno zhruba 35 milionů budov, což přinese nejen úspory energií a peněz, ale také 160 tisíc pracovních míst. Evropská komise to uvedla v dnes zveřejněné renovační strategii. Ta má ovlivnit celý systém renovací – od koncepce projektu až po jeho financování a dokončení."

Energetika a životní prostředí
13. 10. 2020
Záznam z debaty „Strategie pro vodík: Klíč ke splnění klimatických cílů EU?“

Záznam z debaty "Strategie pro vodík: Klíč ke splnění klimatických cílů EU?" | Energetika a životní prostředí | CEBRE
https://cebre.cz/...ych-cilu-eu?fbclid=IwAR0sEET90aX0YrddHdUULtSaAvTQOWp6MkcT3hhkDIk--4lhezIRqNohcXc

Heat-Bouncing Paint Is Latest Weapon Against Climate Change | Digital Trends
https://www.digitaltrends.com/news/heat-bouncing-paint-climate-change/

Capitalism Will Ruin the Earth By 2050, Scientists Say
https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7m48d/capitalism-will-ruin-the-earth-by-2050-scientists-say
On the first option, scientists backed by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program have concluded that capitalism-as-we-know-it cannot support a successful clean energy transition.

Not only that, but capitalism is on track to lead the world into mineral shortages and supply bottlenecks that could cut short efforts to decarbonize transport systems, guaranteeing dangerous climate change.

The new study published in the journal Energy Strategy Reviews finds that electrifying our cars, trucks and trains so that they run on renewable energy is only viable if we reduce the endlessly growing levels of consumption in industrial societies. That, effectively, means fundamentally transforming the very sinews of capitalism.

The real story of the day
https://gretathunberg.medium.com/the-real-story-of-the-day-3b04f49f5025

Today, eleven months after the European Parliament declared a climate emergency, the very same parliament voted to go ahead with an agricultural policy that — in summary — fuels ecological destruction with almost 400 billion euros. Hundreds of thousands of tweets using #VoteThisCAPdown asking the MEPs to intervene didn’t convince enough MEPs to flip this.

...

We ask the people to stay with us and keep pushing. We ask the ones in power to stop pretending they care — or to get going in case they mean it. And we ask the media to wake up, to rise up to their responsibility. This result happened due to that media decided to stay silent, decided not to question proposals, not to challenge leaders, not to intervene, not to inform the public. And if the media continues down this dangerous road, they will lose their credibility among countless young people. And this is something we can not allow to happen as there is no future for democracy without a strong, independent free press.
One hundred and fourteen weeks have passed since our first school strike. And it’s still up to us.