We May Be Setting Ourselves Up for a Catastrophic Natural Event

Too much CO2 in the air and not enough oxygen in the oceans may release a toxic dose of hydrogen sulfide — an unheralded executioner.

What is hydrogen sulfide? It smells like farts and rotten eggs. You can find it in swamps, sewers, landfills, volcanic and natural gases, and pretty much everywhere there is a petroleum refinery. Unfortunately, you can also usually find it whenever and wherever you’ve got mass extinctions.

In fact, it is hydrogen sulfide, rather than killer asteroids or some other interstellar death-bringer, that has possibly become the go-to kill-shot of most mass extinctions in Earth’s history.

“It doesn’t take much hydrogen sulfide to kill off anything,” Gerry Dickens, professor of earth science and paleoceanography at Rice University, explained to AlterNet by phone.

He should know: It was Dickens’ work with methane hydrates that completed the puzzle of the Permian-Triassic extinction event, more aptly known as the Great Dying, in the 2002 BBC Horizon documentary The Day the Earth Nearly Died.

AlterNet