Earth, The Villain
Submitted by YOUR NEW REALITY
It was the greatest mass extinction of plants and animals in the history of the planet. Comparatively little life “The Great Dying”, a quarter of a billion years ago.
“An estimated 95% of all marine species and up to 85% of land creatures perished…”
For decades the popular theory was that a comet impact was to blame. But the truth, according to new theories, may have been even more spectacular :
…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.
Over a period of about a million years, an enormous quantity of lava from deep in the Earth’s interior oozed up through giant cracks in Siberia’s crust. The molten mass “froze” into step-like slabs of flood basalts, volcanic rocks known as the Siberian Traps.
Enough lava gushed out to cover an area almost as large as the continental U.S.
The lava from the Siberian Traps sent huge quantities of carbon dioxide and methane (natural gas) into the atmosphere. These greenhouse gases caused an epic spell of global warming. Toxic acid rain drizzled from the sky, and the ozone shield in the atmosphere thinned, letting deadly ultra-violet radiation pass through.
…the Earth warmed more near the poles than it did at the Equator. The smaller temperature difference slowed the great ocean currents that keep the waters circulating. The oceans stagnated and lost most of their oxygen. Marine plants and animals suffocated.
Some researchers believe that bacteria in the ocean, living on sulfur instead of oxygen, churned out vast quantities of hydrogen sulfide (H2S), a lethal gas with a rotten-egg smell. As the hydrogen sulfide gas emerged from the sea, it choked half of all land creatures.
Theories for now. But very interesting ones. Comets are clearly owed an apology.
We really have little idea of the world before “The Great Dying”, 250 million years ago. What creatures hopped or crawled across those vast lands consumed by all that lava? We sift through fossils and old rocks and pick up clues, possibilities that spark new ideas which become new theories. We find mostly tiny shards of the past. We lose the history of this planet as fast it it creates itself, covers itself, destroys itself. We try to make sense of events tens of millions of years ago, billions of years ago, but we mostly only have theories.
While scientists may be close to locking down the cause of such a beyond-armageddon event as “The Great Dying”, there may be another explanation entirely we haven’t even begun to examine, yet alone contemplate.
The truth of our planet’s history is mostly dark to us, beyond the dim light of fairly certain knowledge that stretches back a few thousand years, at the most. There are still vivid arguments about what methods exactly were used to construct The Great Pyramids.
It’d be interesting to know how people 500 years on from now look back on our most popular theories today, particularly about the ultra-ancient history of the planet. Do they mock us, as we now roll our eyes at 500 year old scientific theories about dinosaurs and primitive man?
The article, quoted above, ends with the now standard warning, about The Warming :
While the evidence points to natural processes on Earth as the culprits in the P-T mass extinction, scientists warn that humans may now be contributing to a repeat.
“In the late Permian, Earth itself was the villain, but today we’ve stepped in as the villain,” Kump said.
“Earth was the villain.” What an utterly bizarre thing to say.
Those pushing these new theories behind “The Great Dying” describe what happened as “natural processes”, and yet Earth itself is “the villain” in a mass extinction?
Definitely sounds like a convert to my favoured theory of Vengeful Nature’s War On Humans.
