LogFAQs > #980102957

deoxxys posted...

Existential dread
[snip]

This but orange

Honestly, I find the actual existential dread is stuff relating to climate change and, well, the other dozen or so major issues. A big theme in lovecraft is that the normal person's thought is "it surely isn't actually THAT bad, right?"

But it IS that bad, if not far worse. The worst case scenario, which is far more likely than even the scientists want to say, is a Canfield ocean. If that happens, the majority of macroscopic life will die, as oxygen levels plumet to between 50 and 70% of current, and the ocean takes to emitting toxic gas instead of oxygen.

It happened once before. We call that mass extinction the "Great Dying." The planet did recover by our standards, and life got back to its business. But not before 95% of all variation known to exist before that time died for good. Fungi didn't have much of a problem though.