New clues on "The Great Dying"


	New clues on "The Great Dying"

invictus

8-31-2008 9:55 PM

981 views

tags:

earth, mass extinction, carbon dioxide, greenhouse gases, atmosphere, geology, science

invictus says:

The lessons of the Permian-Triassic massacre are "directly applicable to the present," said John Isbell, a geoscientist at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. He said the world today is in danger of exceeding a CO2 "threshold" that could set off an environmental upheaval as great as the one 251 million years ago.

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<div style="margin: 12px 0px; font-family: arial; color: #333333; background: #ffffff; border: solid 4px #e5e5e5; width: 100%; clear: left;"><div class="CM_CTB_Content_Wrap" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;background-color: #ffffff;"><div style="border-bottom: solid 1px #dcdcdc; white-space: nowrap; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: #eeeeee ;background-image: url(http://clipmarks.com/images/source-bg.gif); background-repeat: repeat-x; height: 24px; line-height: 24px; vertical-align: middle; padding-bottom: 4px; color: #666666; font-size: 10px;" ><a href="http://clipmarks.com/clip-to-blog/" title="see clips that are hot right now"><img src="http://content.clipmarks.com/blog_embed/f46afa99-fe32-4d99-8bad-cb63270c46a7/7ACCFE0F-64E0-49A2-AD9F-11FD47FFD358/" alt="" width="19" height="19" border="0" style="vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px 4px; display: inline; border: none; float:none;" /></a>clipped from <a title="http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/5974698.html" href="http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/5974698.html" style="font-size: 11px;">www.chron.com</a></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/5974698.html"><P>
An estimated 95 percent of all marine species and up to 85 percent of land creatures perished, according to Peter Ward, a paleobiologist at the University of Washington in Seattle.</P></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/5974698.html"><P>
Scientists call it "The Great Dying." Life took millions of years to recover.</P></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/5974698.html"><P>
Scientific sleuths, however, now think they're making progress toward pinning down what caused the extinction of most plants and animals on Earth some 251 million years ago.</P></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/5974698.html"><P>
The perpetrator wasn't an asteroid or comet, like the impact that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago and inspired movies such as <EM>Deep Impact</EM> and <EM>Armageddon.</EM></P></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/5974698.html"><P>
Instead, it was a cascade of events that began with a monstrous outpouring of hot, reeking lava in Siberia. Repeated floods of lava released massive amounts of carbon dioxide, which produced a runaway greenhouse effect, oxygen-starved oceans and a poisoned atmosphere.</P></blockquote></div><div style="margin: 0px 6px 6px 4px;"><table style="font-size: 11px;border-spacing: 0px;padding: 0px;" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tr><td style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;">&nbsp;</td><td align="right" style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;width:107px" width="107"><a href="http://clipmarks.com/share/7ACCFE0F-64E0-49A2-AD9F-11FD47FFD358/blog/" title="blog or email this clip"><img src="http://content6.clipmarks.com/images/c2b-foot.png" border="0" alt="blog it" width="107" height="17" style="border-width:0px;padding:0px;margin:0px;" /></a></td></tr></table></div></div>

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