The End is Beer!

The living world was subjected to a number of rapid warming-driven mass extinctions during the late Palaeozoic-early Mesozoic that nearly extinguished life from the planet. Why was life pushed to the brink so often during this period of Earth history and what were the lasting effects, both evolutionary and ecologically, from these crises?

Is the Earths biggest living thing really dying? Headlines such as this one, reporting on the demise of the Great Barrier Reef have featured heavily in the news over the last couple of years, and rightly so. Corals are the vast array of life they support are extremely vulnerable to changes in climate and human disturbance, and there are fears that if current trends continue, coral reefs could be lost entirely. However, there are reasons to remain optimistic. In this talk, James Cant will discuss the reasons why there is hope for global coral reefs.

In recent decades, atmospheric carbon dioxide has risen at an unprecedented rate in Earth's history, causing rapid climate change. Yet, Earth has experience periods of fast climate change before. For example, since the Last Ice age (20 thousand years ago), there have been episodes of rapid cooling, abrupt warming and the fastest major sea level rise ever recorded. In this talk, I will use the latest geological records and climate model simulations to try to answer the questions: What were the natural causes of these past changes and what can we learn for the future?