Mystery of Earth's Greatest Extinction May Be Solved

[FourScore]

Mystery of Earth's Greatest Extinction May Be Solved
by FishOutofWater
Mon Jan 24, 2011 at 06:11:25 PM PST

Two hundred fifty million years ago the CO2 levels shot up in the atmosphere, the oceans turned into acid, temperatures skyrocketed and death embraced the earth, killing over 90% of marine species and 70% of terrestrial species. The prime suspect has long been a massive volcanic eruption in Russia known as the Siberian Traps. One of the other suspected causes was a meteorite impact, because basaltic volcanic eruptions don't emit enough CO2 to cause a global catastrophe. The cause of the massive spike in CO2 has been a mystery.

Now the missing clue, has been found: 250 million year old coal ash...

SNIP

...The Permian–Triassic (P–Tr) extinction event, informally known as the Great Dying,<1> was an extinction event that occurred 251.4 million years ago,<2><3> forming the boundary between the Permian and Triassic geologic periods. It was the Earth's most severe extinction event, with up to 96% of all marine species<4> and 70% of terrestrial vertebrate species becoming extinct<5> It is the only known mass extinction of insects.<6><7> Some 57% of all families and 83% of all genera were killed. Because so much biodiversity was lost, the recovery of life on Earth took significantly longer than after other extinction events.<4> This event has been described as the "mother of all mass extinctions".

Source: Wikipedia introduction on Permian extinction

The massive natural CO2 emissions from the Siberian traps' coal fires are analogous to the man-made CO2 emissions from burning coal for power and cement production. Humans are in the process of recreating the conditions that led to the greatest mass extinction event in earth's history.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/1/24/938595/-Mystery-of-Earths-Greatest-Extinction-May-Be-Solved

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. We are also in the midst of the Holocene extinction

:-)

Lovely thought, isn't it?

[RegieRocker]

2. Guess what? When CO2 goes up

oxygen goes down.

[Kaleva]

3. We don't know how much C02 was released 250 million years ago..

Reading the replies to the post, several people mentioned there is no known, at least to them, accurate way to measure how much C02 was released and thus one cannot for certain say that past event is analogous to today.

[opihimoimoi]

4. Help is on the way......The secret Reason Pill has been located and is being produced, dist, in mass

numbers

The Needles are Coming...

Come, we go Luau