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peterbrannen.bsky.social
I write about stuff that happened a long time ago. 1st book: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-ends-of-the-world-peter-brannen?variant=32121859801122 2nd book (Aug, 2025): https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-story-of-co2-is-the-story-of-eve
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Reading the book that this passage comes from was like a fucking spiritual awakening for me. Can't recommend highly enough

submitted 23 days ago • 3 comments

For my first scientific post here, I want to talk about the Phanerozoic temperature record we published last Fall, which unfortunately has been making rounds in the climate denier circuit 👀 First though hopefully you can appreciate the beauty of this reconstruction ✨...

submitted 27 days ago • 9 comments

Pic I took on shores of Lake Erie of the late Devonian mass extinction boundary (carbon-rich black shales from the seafloor of a dying ocean 375 million years ago, & tapped for country's 1st natural gas well in 1825), with decommissioned coal-fired power plant in the background for dramatic effect

submitted 31 days ago • 4 comments

What keeps me up at night: “It remains difficult to fully rule out warming of 4°C or above under current policy emissions scenarios. Carbon cycle feedback uncertainties play a role here, making it possible to have higher forcings under lower emissions scenarios”

submitted 37 days ago • 0 comments

CO2 rose faster than ever in 2024 www.noaa.gov/news-release...

submitted 37 days ago • 1 comment

The Museum of the Earth in Ithaca, NY, which is an absolute gem and houses one of the country’s most important invertebrate paleontology collections, is at imminent risk of foreclosure as donor pledges have fallen short ithacavoice.org/2025/01/muse...

submitted 40 days ago • 5 comments

"It remains to be seen whether a future large igneous province event will similarly end the current late Cenozoic ice age, or whether the emergence of an evolutionarily extremely successful organism (that is, humans) may lead to a geological-scale climate transition."

submitted 48 days ago • 1 comment

The climate books you should put on your 2025 reading list, including new titles from: 🌱 @kpaoletta.bsky.social 🌱 @madeleinewatts.bsky.social 🌱 @frediotto.bsky.social 🌱 @drkatemarvel.bsky.social 🌱 @mikegrunwald.bsky.social 🌱 @peterbrannen.bsky.social

submitted 54 days ago • 6 comments

Since wrapping up my book I've had a chance to read through some of the papers I downloaded in the past few years but never got around to, like this one about Neanderthals in the Pleistocene collecting seashells from the cretaceous some 90 million years earlier.

submitted 66 days ago • 0 comments

Had fun talking to @jessedamiani.bsky.social about ancient apocalypses, and soft launching an ill-considered mustache www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUar...

submitted 68 days ago • 2 comments

Need one of those paleoart images like the dinosaur looking over its shoulder at the asteroid only it’s a little bacteria guy

submitted 93 days ago • 1 comment

Took this picture when I was just chilling in the Boring Billion

submitted 100 days ago • 1 comment

Might as well come out with it here on the samizdat site. I have a 500-ish page book on the carbon cycle over all of Earth and human history coming out next year. The cover looks like this. Will have more to say about it once I finally wrap it up soon and the publisher takes the bounty off my head.

submitted 102 days ago • 36 comments

The consolation of deep time. Went to the Harvard art museum and saw this 2,500 year-old relief from Achaemenid Persepolis. Noticed the shell fragments in the limestone, tried to track down the geology & (as best I can tell) these creatures were alive over 100 million years earlier in the Cretaceous

submitted 109 days ago • 1 comment

I submit the following meme about the Earth from roughly 305 million years ago to 252 million years ago for your consideration

submitted 324 days ago • 1 comment

Freaky graph of the day. Negative carbon isotope excursion recorded in the rocks during the biggest mass extinction in Earth history, the end-Permian (from apocalyptic amount of light carbon entering the system), and the eventual modern carbon pulse (around RCP 6) www.nature.com/articles/s43...

submitted 415 days ago • 3 comments