Even though millions of years have passed since the Great Dying and today's environment, there are valid concerns that history is repeating itself as wildfires sweep across the planet. The Permian-Triassic mass extinction event occurred over 251 million years ago, and it wiped out "57% of biological families, 83% of genera, 81% of marine species[8][9][10] and 70% of terrestrial vertebrate species.[11] It was the largest known mass extinction of insects." Evidence that three separate pulses contributed to the worst mass extinction in planet history.
Researchers found that today's pattern of wildfires, heat, and changes in rainfall patterns have likely begun to mirror the conditions of the Great Dying. The study (behind a paywall) was from the University Cork in Ireland and published in the journal PALOIS.
The end Permian took thousands of years to begin. Today, rapid changes are happening over a couple of hundred years due to our fossil fuel use. Ecosystems are breaking down today and continue will continue to degrade drastically during the lifespan of a human.
Corrine Purell summarizes the study in Phys.org:
A long time ago, the carbon was rock, buried in the earth as securely as a secret. Then an environmental catastrophe of unprecedented scale began. The rocks burned, and the atoms inside them disassembled into carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
Temperatures rose and wildfire—always a natural part of the ecosystem—became more frequent and more powerful. Forests disappeared into the flames. Carbon once stored inside countless leaves belched back into the atmosphere, which became hotter and drier, and the fires sparked even faster.
Without trees to hold them back, nutrients leached from denuded soil into lakes and streams. Those nutrients fed algae that bloomed in toxic quantities, while other species starved.
By the time it was over, most living things on Earth—up to 95% of ocean species, and more than 70% of those on land—were dead.
New research suggests the accelerating fires of this apocalyptic period 252 million years ago were not just a symptom of a warming planet, but a driver of extinction in their own right. Increasingly frequent fires overwhelmed plants' ability to adapt and set off chains of events that threatened life in habitats untouched by flames themselves—just as scientists fear they are doing today.
We are only at a 1.2 temperature rise, which we have been told is safe.
Remember that every Republican senator voted against the climate provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act. Vote them all out.