Next couple of nights, its rare night Legendary Music writer will be here talking about his latest book and on wednesday night sarah will be out with heard debut book. Peter brant and is writing about science and not religion so the ends of the world about the mass extinction occurring over the World History is the n spoiler role of the world have think im giving away too much that it has ended five times in the last half billion years if you are counting last november. [laughter] i have a ted of jokes. I will be back again at 11 00. Born and raised outside Boston College either from the web site he is a mammal. [laughter] it was on the internet. His work has appeared in the washington post, wired, the guardian, a New York Times the 2015 journalist said resident then national evolutionary center and in 2011 a fellow as a graduate student and got his start as a reporter that we can learn a lot from a geologic history or some small ways to find ways to be optimistic for not terrified. Please join me to give a warm welcome to peter brannen. [applause] i am very honored you guys all showed up. I thought i was star with a boston deemed reading to set the stage those that our little controversial so i am from boston conveniently the commuter ferry ride across the harbor to see the fossils of large complex life of the history of the planet condos and strip malls the beach had the arrestee spikes of a bygone more at the far end of the neglected beach seaweeds will begin to the ec. Off the coast of a super continent go further than the bed bath and beyond parking lot. More than half a billion in years old there is nothing in particular very interesting but revealing ovals no larger than a quarter yen assuming rings could mark were a fern shaped creature a grid itself to the bottom of the notion that the dawn of complex life this is for this story starts on the planet that shares our david that is about it. What is impossible to know how long they live their lives it is doubly impossible to grasp how old club played it is for the insignificant role of humanity. We are ruined in a tidy corner of space there really we are ruined in time. Geologist have come up with tricks to markair place among the eons. Imagine each step you take as 100 years of history so lets begin the walk. Heading back towards lifting appears hell there is no internet, the atomic bombs reassemble, two world wars are fought in reverse when your foot lance the Ottoman Empire exist. One step. A few paces later first buddhism the judiciary is them and hinduism. In judaism. The first Legal Systems in ridings disappear after all the few dozen steps before he reached the end of the block all the history peters out and all human civilization is on. That was easy you stretcher lakes and prepare for what could not be much longer. May be the dinosaurs no doubt that the formation of the earth by sundown. In fact, he would have to walk 20 miles a day every day for four years and then to reach the big bang another decade. The planet earth is not the story of a whole sapiens. There is no complex life not the d. C. Or the of topics except for the wind and waves we have the of violent planet those first creatures from Boston Harbor lasted 4 billion years on earth about anything else in fact, the years between 1. 8 billion for someone natural even geologist refer to read as a love boring billing billion with a geologist calls a boring be appalled. [laughter] even the earth was the desolate wasteland one of the only signs of life for millions of years and six planes microbial slime. 65 million years ago it whisper of life isopropyl was found a chemical through sponges filtering busy to bury the carbon making more complex life possible humidity bones of a special debt of gratitude. And around 579 million years ago after sterilizing the global a sage the champagne bottle of life was uncorked and rather suddenly they appeared. So this is a recent history 4200500 lifespans of the planet. More than 200 million and then before modern humans they are measured in hundreds of thousands rather than millions of years. Even for us it surpasses all understanding. I am ignoring the of boring billion we have things that we would recognize it is 0 00 logically it pick that we know from rock dating and a few thousand years or a few centuries it is hard to tell. The most recent of these was 66 million years ago. This is of mass extinction that takes up the land dinosaurs we still have the bird dinosaurs. [laughter] this is the most famous Everybody Knows an asteroid hit. We discovered a letter of negative in between the age of dinosaurs and the age of mammals and then in the early 90s paleontologists identified a 110mile crater in mexico so the story came together the reason why dinosaurs went 68 except the big marine the tiles and the bird dinosaurs in the squid like animals it made sense the asteroid hit some most life on earth goes extinct so Popular Culture notices so lot of bad movies about like armageddon the wrote the story because it imagination that is the story of mass extinction but in the last 30 years since been a totally different story has emerged that i did not think has reached the public yet. So the reason most extension to go out the dinosaurs dinosaurs hall of popular press for paleontologys so you dont hear much about them so it is hard to describe it really is the unfamiliar world so this alternate universe of crocodiles and in the triassic period they were plant eaters and dinosaurs were there but had to get the crocodiles knocked out before they could hunt the earth did you have an alternate universe of program all reptiles one line would become summerlike rhinoceros with a task the others were wolf or tiger that will get destroyed the mass extinction before that big armored fish they rely guillotines with mouse and heavily armored so i summoned up over a few hundred pages in the book but then 445 million years ago doesnt look anything like today. A vast ocean in the Northern Hemisphere almost no land no life on land at all in the ocean there is hardly any fish dominated by a world of creepycrawlies and tentacles and horseshoe crabs so these were appended by a catastrophe and armed with the knowledge that the pitcher was pretty clear in the last 30 years geologist have gone back looking for evidence of asteroids because they figure that is the story of mass extinction but they did not find any big craters are dust and most of them they found unimaginable in volcanically events when i say and imaginable, the biggest ever which now comprises almost the size of siberia that at one point was lot of had enough it would have covered though lower 48 states 1 kilometer deep sigh with yellowstone been the most dangerous today it would cover a few states in a few inches this would cover the lower 48 with a kilometer deep. But the scary thing about this story is a the way they render their destruction is a through the law itself but we know that life can recover hawaii today is just a big pile of lot of coverage in trees and wildlife and a few thousand years ago canada was covered in i. C. E. And in pretty extreme situations but what geologists and paleontologists think how they ended the world so many times is a huge injections of volcanic gas. There are clever ways to figure out there were huge injections of Carbon Dioxide into the area got extremely warm with some of these events one describe the worst extinction ever the oceans around the temperature of hot soup. Carbon dioxide makes the water more acidic which makes it harder for animals to live with shells or skeletons Calcium Carbonate so b. C. Acidification Global Warming boeotian answer is to use oxygen because of the warming this should sound of fighting were starting to see the first glimmers it is getting warmer the oceans are 30 percent more acidic and the start of the Industrial Revolution are ready around and start because the plant and are starting to dissolve in the ocean waters and the Pacific Northwest theyre having trouble growing oysters and the oceans are slowly losing their oxygen as well from pollution from industrial agriculture so there are things that geology can teach us that so far humans interaction with the environment has been through direct interference with hunting, overfished, destroy ed habitats but i think if we stopped the planet would recover pretty quickly but once you really start messing with the chemistry of the oceans and atmosphere when you are messing with those geological forces associated with the worst things that ever happened in the history of the planet so the good news is were not there yet one of the excerpts published i said were not in the mass extinction yet it was good news and bad news is good news but then the fossils go silent for millions of years as it is replaced arrive bacteria you cannot find trees over 10 million years. Were not there yet but we are starting to see very faint glimmers. So far conservative estimates human beings at whiteout 1 of species documented the worst mass extinction is the poorest of 90 but a lot of geology and astronomy it is not that big in a big picture over the next few decades we have the capacity to make decisions how we live on this planet that really could affect the planet if your geologist 100 million years from now how it could be important in ideological sense. Before we hit that point even as alien as the planet was there are things we can learn from geology. That is the of moral of the book. I a. M. The happy to open the floor for questions. [applause] were any of these extinctions controversial at the time you were writing the book . The cretaceous mass extinction is controversial that these too boring camps one vouches for the importance of the astride with the big volcanically bent in india over 30 years the camps have been going at it. They have lost professional relationships there in the volcano camper the astrid camp. That could cause the most at this that was the acrimonious fight of just how miserable the mascot at the end of cretaceous period. I was curious if there were any comments that some guys said they dont think they could have been related . Has that fall cato camp comeback to comment on that . When that dismisses the estrich completely and and i went to a conference and then afterwards i know what they said but a reunion that it seemed they had a real heart to heart and she has not softened at all she just opens by dismissing the asteroids out of hand. She is an interesting lady. [laughter] i want to pick up a couple of pieces of your research that were memorable. With that entire process the most surprising a niche is geology if you think about people going out every year thinking of dinosaurs like a paleontologist but to that extent these incredible stories are all around us. You could find a the apostles in the middle of the outback and in newfoundland did also Boston Harbor. My dads side of the family is from cincinnati he doesnt know anything about the geology of cincinnati but it turns out this is one of the most famous fossil sites in the of world of the earliest period you can pull rocks out of the road justin the highway road cuts if you look close it looks like a coral reef. There is seashells falling off the side of the off highway. I had driven down the west side highway in york million times really september majestic to look at but in 2013 and saw a paper by columbia that says action that caused one of the worst mass extinctions in history so that was the big revelation that there is geology all around us the matter where you are standing if you look up the geological history of the rock you are standing on is a fascinating story. I guess im recent convert to geology. [laughter] is it understood what caused the massive mechanical events . There is a few theories budget is tough with the deal level physics i know mantle plumes is the biggest very the big hot plastic baba of magmas that surges to the surface one takes place when pangaea is ripping apart making them more susceptible. There is a lot of debate on why these happened. I know people have looked at mass extinction and people are skeptical but i dont think there is any pattern. Yellowstone . It is on top of the big magma said chamber but it is a totally different style. But it never stops get on a plane to new zealand right away. Whenever geologist have fears they talk about this kind that yellowstone well below that they get scared one said when the geysers shut off run for the hills because the magma is in the plumbing basically they also said if they stop tweeting. [laughter] were you radiology major in college . No. I checked a few scions classs. I like to the guy a imported the skills from reading good books. Were there any books that inspired you thinking about the structure . I was lucky it could use a chronological structure because it didnt know how to organize the book so each is its own standalone Magazine Article that there are books on mass extinction t. Rex and the crater of doom the then from the university of of washington there is a book called under the green sky the first time i had heard the story of co2 Global Warming associative with some of the worst things that ever happened before that i only knew what happened in computer models so the idea we can much that the most extreme examples from planet earth is a revelation to me. It was very cool to talk to him for the book. How long did it take for those co2 levels to return to normal . It has a few ways of getting rid of excess co2 with the ocean turns over but the big ones are rock weathering steel to reacts with rainwater it erodes the of rocks and eventually it is turned into limestone and that takes at least 100,000 years that is why oppose it Ocean Acidification is the problem of we injected co2 it wouldnt matter over millions of years because they can keep up with that level but ocean start to acidify when you are faster than of the system so and longterm all coal and oil and gas will end up as limestone over hundreds of thousands of years. The scale of this species loss is dwarfed but what is contributing towards the Tipping Point . No. We are not at the say level of extinction as the past events but the scary is talk that i went to is custodian paleontologists that thought it unfolded the same way as a power grid failure. The eastern seaboard is up and running then there is a Software Glitch in ohio the whole eastern seaboard goes dark. So the things that we do now with desalination but extinction is not the main thing were doing. We could be edging up to the power grid failure that it seems that it takes our views abuse but then the ecosystem comes down allout once then it is mass extinction and it is too late at that point that is why conservation somebody thought that was said dig but it was an argument conservation is even more important because we dont know the edge we to go up to the wind and pass it then came over. There was a paper few years ago by a paleontologist bedded is reported like yes but even then it says a few hundred years of continued human destruction to those levels but the fact were even in that same conversation when india is covered in law but is pretty bad. So much of those geological records now is from land so to what extent to the geologists think there are lots that they dont know . Do eating there will be a time that we will understand that better . The oldest seafloors to madrid million years ago because it created the ended ocean ridges and and is destroyed but sometimes it is smeared some in japan there is a spot you to find zero ocean in the sea level was higher for the most part. You can find ocean rocks on every continent ohio, china ohio, china, it is true the record is biased in behalf of the very fragmentary picture of our history and what it was but there are ways to account for that bias and don foley have a pretty good big picture of what it looked like during these different periods. You interviewed heavy hitters and specialists so how well were you received by those individuals . With the process and the concept of the book . It is funny because the first year went to these geology conferences i was the one poking around asking questions people looked skeptically given the book did not come out to a half years after that but i kept showing up allegis some weird guy writing a book but now they know it is a real thing i have become friends with some of these people is kind of cool in some small way i have been adopted as an honorary paleontology bird. [laughter] are you more or less stoop to now . That is a great question i went into the project and not know if i am a pessimist but a realist and was aware the way we negatively influence the environment so it went in with the ecological gloom and doom taking everything down with us but i very much realized the planet will be fine in though longterm. One paleontologists said one of the extinctions was the best thing that ever happened because right after dinosaurs and crocodiles and mammals the world we know would not have been possible. It has renewed my faith in the plan its resilience but in the long run it will be just fine. With these growing pains as a species i would say i am more optimistic about longterm less optimistic shortterm. What was the hardest part . The learning curve i had it take a crash p negative ph. D. Ago figure would have risen this not knowing how much i did not know. That was pretty arrogant to think i could write a book about this and there was arcadian geochemistry theres so much jargon like 20 different ways the words are there for a reason but getting the vocabulary it was the hardest. What are your plans . Now have become obsessed with the topic gave little bit i feel now have a base of knowledge will serve me well as their right to other stories. Yes i wrote a story on the evolution of wailes a few months ago where i could lead to the big geological concepts of climate and tectonics change i think if i a did not have that background that story would have been impossible. You were accumulating so much information from well versed and arrogant people so how does it feel to go back to your riding by refusing those things into your own vernacular . Because i see how readable and accessible this is it is a really fanned a pleasure not to have endless footnotes you had to deal with the story not cutting corners. That is something a constantly had to remind myself is that close enough to the technical definition . But then i would have to step back to say i am not writing this book for geologist even aware wanted to win their respect as they are to white house now w