Is Global Warming Bad for Humans, Good for Many Other Living Things?

While watching Morgan Freeman’s “Life on Our Planet”, which explores the past 500 million years of plant and animal life, its hard not to notice that the high points of life in general were the Jurassic and Cretaceous (roughly 200 to 66 million years ago). During these years, the dinosaurs roamed and the earth was incredibly hot and wet (with CO2 levels roughly two to five times today’s levels). By contrast, today’s planet is much cooler and drier, with a “temperate” zone conducive to human habitation. Could it be that global warming will be disastrous to humans, but advantageous to most all other plant and animal life? And where do the Phytoplankton sit within all of this?

Mass extinctions during the past 500 million years. Three of these extinctions coincide with periods of warming due to high volcanic activity or meteor impact (Permian, Jurassic, Cretaceous), while two (Ordovician and Devonian) are from rapid cooling linked to land mass upwelling and rapid plant growth.

Life on Our Planet: The Jurassic, Cretaceous, and Prior: In a soothing voice, Morgan Freeman explains that since the appearance of primitive plant life and trilobites roughly 500 million years ago, plants and animals have been in a constant arms race for survival, with an ever-changing climate as a backdrop. Granted, 500 million years is an almost incomprehensible amount of time for us to wrap our minds around (especially since the rise of our species is only about 20,000 years old). The punch line of the show is the “big-five mass extinctions” of plant/animal species during this period, which forced large changes in evolution/dominance of species. To…