Trees are Destroying the Earth (Again)

Thanks everyone for another fantastic Pizzamas, and also for being on this earth and witnessing it and participating in it. What a thing...

One thing I didn't include in this video beacuse I'm not 100% sure it's true...the UK ended up being such a good place for coal production hundreds of millions of years ago in part because it was, I think, very wet. Trees can totally break down and release their carbon back into the atmosphere very quickly if FIRES can happen, but in swamps, fires can't happen, because everything is so dang wet. So wet places with lots of vegetation were very good for coal production. Anyway...I'm pretty sure that's right, but I need to look into it more!

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[emilycarr]

“And if you didn’t get high, you were in the shade, and you died” -Hank Green out of context, 2024

[TheRupertmcgee]

I think its a bit fascinating that if you think about it, it's not just "trees" that are involved in the two events, it's THE SAME TREES

[mamfab]

That last coal fired power plant is so close to my home I can see it from my living room window. It’s so weird to not see the steam from the cooling towers now.

[Robertlavigne]

There was a fun xkcd comic this week talking about how over the course of the industrial revolution the UK dug up and burned 3 inches of their entire country.

[elliottmcollins]

Comparing something to trees usually feels like a good thing, so I was not ready for "Humanity is like a forest in that it is precipitating a mass extinction event."

[char]

It actually blows my mind that there was a time where wood existed but NOTHING could decompose wood.

Like yeah it makes logical sense, but the idea that organic material can just be sitting around and they'd never decompose because nature just... didnt know how to is mindblowing to me

[simonmeadows]

British person here.
Much as we are trying to reduce use of fossil fuels, our main target is to try to use sarcasm as a source of fuel. Once we crack that, then we can power the world. Or at least, the parts of it that can spell colour and aluminium correctly.

[okayheykae]

Hank got too used to saying "I'll see you tomorrow" but he won't see him until Tuesday now 😭 (Thanks for a great Pizzamas - everything is a little stressful and this has been good!)

[LynxChan]

The next time it's raining sideways and I'm staring forlornly at the tattered remains of another umbrella I'll remember to thank "the complete geographic luck that is the UK's relatively fantastic position with regards to wind resources". Clean air, wet heads, can't lose! 🌧️

[TristanSharman]

Longtime British viewer here, thanks for the little spotlight! I’m amidst similar circles in celebrating, it’s an exciting milestone that I just hope can encourage others to set a goal to do the thing, and then *do the thing*!

[GinoGiotto]

This video has a few mistakes. Hank mentions the late devonian mass extinction, but it has nothing to do with what he's talking about. The crash of CO2 concentrations happened in the LATE CARBONIFEROUS, 300 million years ago. Also, the pangea picture he shows is from the triassic period, not even the paleozoic! In the late carboniferous the land masses were not fully assembled together like that yet. Also, the extinction event of the late carboniferous is not considered a MASS extintion, because it wasn't that much big of a deal for animals, only for plants. It is usually denoted as "The late carboniferous forests collapse", which caused the break up of big forests into smaller and scattered ones, eventually leading to the partial desertification of the permian period.

So he mixed the devonian mass extintion with a carboniferous event and showed a map of the triassic... what a mess!

[Fluffy_Cow]

So what I'm hearing is that a group of tree from millions of years ago accidentally caused a mass extinction event. And now, those exact same trees are gonna help accidentally cause another mass extinction event. Wonderful, just wonderful.

[mrdeanvincent]

0:55 "and if you didn't get high... you died"

[PlutosTimeslot]

Just a note: "Natural gas" is mostly methane (about 80-90%), which you probably know, but the natural gas industry does a metric fck ton a greenwashing to pretend that they aren't part of the problem.

Anyways, it's always great to hear good news. Great video! :)

[kristateraberry]

I always get weirdly emotional thinking about how everything throughout history led to this moment of me living in incredible plenty at the expense of the environment. Beautiful and tragic

[IlIlllIllIlIIIll]

The "nothing could break down lignan" hypothesis is starting to be called into question. There are thoughts that the coal band is mostly just a coincidence of an era where lots of biomass got buried.

[lilybeth]

thank you so much for mentioning helene, we are working hard to reconstruct here in western nc. it’s been truly gut wrenching and heartbreaking here

[StuffandThings_]

0:34

With all due respect, this isn't _quite_ right. The forests you're talking about here sound a lot more consistent with what was going on in the Carboniferous period, not the Late Devonian when they triggered the extinction. The earliest forests arose roughly 390 MYA (at least this is the earliest ones we have found so far, though those are diverse enough that they likely arose even earlier and this will be pushed back, as it already has been) and occurred in Euramerica, before Pangaea assembled! By 300 MYA these forests had already been around for quite some time and advanced a lot to the point of having early seed plants, not just a 50 million year sprint to the sky. Additionally, the diversity of tree species in the Devonian was rather poor (IIRC, for a bit during the Late Devonian Archaeopteris was the sole dominant tree species) and their roots were actually pretty shallow, the Lycopsids in particular are notorious for having weak root systems that caused them to topple all the time. Additionally, much of the famous coal formation of the Carboniferous was partly due to the marine transgressions triggered by the Late Paleozoic Icehouse, from the already lowered CO2 from all the vegetation.

So, yeah trees _are_ triggering a mass extinction again in a way, but its not quite the same trees responsible for both, they're separated by at least a few millions of years and consisted of vastly different species. Additionally, its important to note that deforestation is causing massive sedimentation in the modern day, not unlike the sedimentation triggered from aforestation in the Late Devonian.

[rivereee]

Just want to clarify that the Devonian Kellwasser event took place around 372 Ma, the Coal Measures in the UK are from about 318 Ma, and Pangea was full assembled at 250 Ma. These events are ultimately related in Earth's story, but they happened about as far apart from each other as we are from the dinosaurs

[Martcapt]

Maybe, when Octupi are writing their ancient history in 50M years, they'll say: Humans. Quaint little creatures. Killed themselves quickly. Some of them seemed nice.