From the National Science Foundation:
Global Extinction: Gradual Doom as Bad as Abrupt
In “The Great Dying” 250 million years ago, the end came slowly
The deadliest mass extinction of all took a long time to kill 90 percent of Earth’s marine life–and it killed in stages–according to a newly published report.
It shows that mass extinctions need not be sudden events.
Thomas Algeo, a geologist at the University of Cincinnati, and 13 colleagues have produced a high-resolution look at the geology of a Permian-Triassic boundary section on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic.
Their analysis, published today in the Geological Society of America Bulletin, provides strong evidence that Earth’s biggest mass extinction phased in over hundreds of thousands of years.
About 252 million years ago, at the end of the Permian period, Earth almost became a lifeless planet.
Around 90 percent of all living species disappeared then, in what scientists have called “The Great Dying.”
Algeo and colleagues have spent much of the past decade investigating the chemical evidence buried in rocks formed during this major extinction.
The world revealed by their research is a devastated landscape, barren of vegetation and scarred by erosion from showers of acid rain, huge “dead zones” in the oceans, and runaway greenhouse warming leading to sizzling temperatures.
The evidence that Algeo and his colleagues are looking at points to massive volcanism in Siberia as a factor.
“The scientists relate this extinction to Siberian Traps volcanic eruptions, which likely first affected boreal life through toxic gas and ashes,” said H. Richard Lane, program director in the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Division of Earth Sciences, which funded the research.
The Siberian Traps form a large region of volcanic rock in Siberia. The massive eruptive event which formed the traps, one of the largest known volcanic events of the last 500 million years of Earth’s geologic history, continued for a million years and spanned the Permian-Triassic boundary.
The term “traps” is derived from the Swedish word for stairs–trappa, or trapp–referring to the step-like hills that form the landscape of the region.
A large portion of western Siberia reveals volcanic deposits up to five kilometers (three miles) thick, covering an area equivalent to the continental United States. The lava flowed where life was most endangered, through a large coal deposit.
“The eruption released lots of methane when it burned through the coal,” Algeo said. “Methane is 30 times more effective as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
“We’re not sure how long the greenhouse effect lasted, but it seems to have been tens or hundreds of thousands of years.”
Much of the evidence was washed into the ocean, and Algeo and his colleagues look for it among fossilized marine deposits.
Previous investigations have focused on deposits created by a now vanished ocean known as Tethys, a precursor to the Indian Ocean. Those deposits, in South China particularly, record a sudden extinction at the end of the Permian.
“In shallow marine deposits, the latest Permian mass extinction was generally abrupt,” Algeo said. “Based on such observations, it has been widely inferred that the extinction was a globally synchronous event.”
Recent studies are starting to challenge that view.
Algeo and co-authors focused on rock layers at West Blind Fiord on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic.
That location, at the end of the Permian, would have been much closer to the Siberian volcanoes than sites in South China.
The Canadian sedimentary rock layers are 24 meters (almost 80 feet) thick and cross the Permian-Triassic boundary, including the latest Permian mass extinction horizon.
The investigators looked at how the type of rock changed from the bottom to the top. They looked at the chemistry of the rocks and at the fossils contained in the rocks.
They discovered a total die-off of siliceous sponges about 100,000 years earlier than the marine mass extinction event recorded at Tethyan sites.
What appears to have happened, according to Algeo and his colleagues, is that the effects of early Siberian volcanic activity, such as toxic gases and ash, were confined to the northern latitudes.
Only after the eruptions were in full swing did the effects reach the tropical latitudes of the Tethys Ocean.
The research was also supported by the Canadian Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Exobiology Program.
In addition to Algeo, co-authors of the paper are: Charles Henderson, University of Calgary; Brooks Ellwood, Louisiana State University; Harry Rowe, University of Texas at Arlington; Erika Elswick, Indiana University, Bloomington; Steven Bates and Timothy Lyons, University of California, Riverside; James Hower, University of Kentucky; Christina Smith and Barry Maynard, University of Cincinnati; Lindsay Hays and Roger Summons, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; James Fulton, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; and Katherine Freeman, Pennsylvania State University.
-NSF-
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Oooo! Runaway greenhouse warming! The juicy plum, sodden with grave portent, slides into the text. Of course it was. I’ll bet there is absolutely no evidence for such an assertion.
“Around 90 percent of all living species disappeared then . . .”
Just curious, isn’t this based on models of how many species supposedly would have been alive millions of years ago under various hypotheses? Seems like the number of different fossilized remains actually discovered doesn’t even come close to this number? Even accounting for lack of fossilization in certain areas and with certain types of organisms, I’m wondering how accurate this number is.
In any event, it is pretty hard to argue that slow extinction is as bad as abrupt. Certainly not for the many individual members of the species who lived out their lives just fine, thank you very much, during the slow decline. Indeed, some pundits have suggested that humans will eventually go extinct and may even be on the road now. Sure. OK. But I’ll take that over an abrupt extinction event tomorrow afternoon.
“Gradually heading to hell in a handbasket just as bad as instant doom”
Is this headline meant to be serious or sarcastic? Because it’s obviously not at all as bad. If I know things are getting bad I can take steps to alleviate them and avoid exposing others — not having kids, for instance. But if a meteor comes out of nowhere, say, I can’t do any of that.
Even if I knew with absolute certainty that the world would be crap in five hundred years, why should that bother me? I plan to be dead.
…at the same time modern corals evolved
“The eruption released lots of methane when it burned through the coal,” Algeo said.
This is pure speculation I would think. If the lava was hot enough to burn thru the coal, it should have easily ignited any methane to turn it into CO2. Also, shouldn’t all of the sulfur and ash have sent the earth into the deepfreeze? A few minor volcanoes these days are thought to have caused up to 2C of cooling over short periods of time. In addition, a little sulfur dioxide and particulates from the Chinese coal power plants these days are being blamed for overpowering the warming effect of the massive emissions of CO2 from man.
Agreed with Mike Bromley. Assertions of “runaway global warming” are in contradiction with temperature measurements from ice-cores. They pulled that one straight out of their @…
Fascinating article.
I disagree with just one of the contentions – that earth almost became a lifeless planet.
This sounds like Bill ‘the-end-is-nigh’ McKibben speak for ‘quite a lot of change happened’ (but over hundreds of thousands of years….)
From a slightly different perspective, at the end of that period there were in the region of one million species on earth, all extremely well-adapted to the conditions of the time – hot, acidic, whatever.
Change doesn’t have to be a terrible thing, even if it is dramatic! Does anyone have a particular fondness for the species that existed before the change, as opposed to those that appeared in the great ‘explosion’ of new life that occurred after it?
Yeh, I’m betting on it. That’s prolly exactly what happened.
“They discovered a total die-off of siliceous sponges about 100,000 years earlier than the marine mass extinction event recorded at Tethyan sites.”…… cause over 100,000 years nothing would replace it…… Happens all the time. That’s almost how nature works.
But the question remains, what could have triggered such violent and sustained volcanic activity?
For species that can built spaceships, long time-scale extinction events are really not a problem… why didn’t those sponges built spaceships…
I’ve got news for those people, someday our sun will go supernova and before that there will be some other space calamity coming to earth. It’s a bumpy road in space. We better start planning our escape instead of trying to bring humanity back to the stone ages.
… The lava flowed where life was most endangered, through a large coal deposit.
“The eruption released lots of methane when it burned through the coal,” Algeo said. “Methane is 30 times more effective as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.”
Must have been crappy brown coal, not anthracite which is 92%+ carbon. Could have been lignite.
Question: Peat is considered a precursor to coal. Could this “large coal deposit” have actually been a large peat deposit, of which virtually any wetlands may qualify as one, which turned into coal during the 250+ million years since the event?
Alrighty then.
If there was ever a time for the urgent development of a UN volcano suppression project, it is now, or maybe later.
Start with a convention. Bali would be nice as Krakatoa is in the neighborhood.
P.S. “Around 90 percent of all living species disappeared then, in what scientists have called “The Great Dying.””
Who calls it that? Smells like a Greenpeacian word to me.
You may want to note that the Permian-Triassic was coincidental with a major galactic cosmic ray flux minimum while our solar system was between spiral arms of our galaxy. If you think the SKY and CLOUD experiments have any validity, there is a much simpler truth struggling to get out into the open.
“Celestial driver of phanerozoic climate?” (Shaviv & Veizer 2003) is as good a reference as any for this.
I just realized how catastrophic my life is. I have been gradually dying since I was born.
The NSF’s capacity for idiocy continues to astound. Do they not study history and humanity’s fantastic abilities to adapt to an environment? Do they know this lesson but are unable to extrapolate from our current technological base into a worthwhile picture of future adaptation?
This paper has been published and will now sink without a trace. I always thought volcanism was associated with cooling, not warming.
Here is something somewhat related to this story. The Canadian CBC, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, our version of the BBC and Australia’s ABC has an interesting science program called Quirks and Quarks. It is interesting until they get into any subject on climate change Now science should follow the scientific method, but this show true to warmist form does not when it comes to climate warming change. The host Jay Ingram is very biased. Here is a link, follow down to Launching the Little Ice Age and have a listen. One of the points being because of warming caused by increasing C02 there now can be no cooling by volcanism.
Must have been that “fundamental transformation” that Obama yaks about. Who knew he had a time machine? 😉
@nc February 8, 2012 at 5:25 pm
I think you may be confusing Jay Ingram (who at least has a BSc and an MSc) with Bob McDonald (who has neither). In the interest of truth in posting … from:
http://archives.cbc.ca/programs/601-11853/page/3/
There’s also this little item:..’it has been widely inferred that the extinction was a a globally synchronous event.
Recent studies are starting to challenge that now.’
Well blow me down, does that mean the science is never settled? Who woulda thunk it!
I’m skeptical about a geologist named A-one geo, especially when long term global extinction is liked to a heated coal deposit. There is an immediate feel that the time scale, the volume scale and the chemistry is wrong. However, I have committed the sin of not yet reading the paper, so please regard this as gut reaction.
well, the “survival of some States” is at stake!
1 Feb: AP: Karl Ritter: Nobel peace prize jury under investigation
Nobel Peace Prize officials were facing a formal inquiry over accusations they have drifted away from the prize’s original selection criteria by choosing such winners as President Barack Obama, as the nomination deadline for the 2012 awards closed Wednesday…
Fredrik Heffermehl, a prominent researcher and critic of the selection process, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that “Nobel called it a prize for the champions of peace.”…
Especially after World War II, the prize committee, which is appointed by the Norwegian Parliament, has widened the scope of the prize to include environmental, humanitarian and other efforts, he said.
For example, in 2007 the prize went to climate activist Al Gore and the U.N.’s panel on climate change, and in 2009 the committee cited Obama for “extraordinary efforts” to boost international diplomacy…
Geir Lundestad, the nonvoting secretary of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, dismissed Heffermehl’s claims.
“Fighting climate change is definitely closely related to fraternity between nations. It even concerns the survival of some states,” he told AP…
http://news.yahoo.com/nobel-peace-prize-jury-under-investigation-152500580.html
Not to worry! Head out to Mars with this new nano technology. Do not panic. All is well.
http://m.gizmodo.com/5882725/the-miraculous-nasa-breakthrough-that-could-save-millions-of-lives/
The volcanic deposits are up to 5 kilometres thick, 16,000 feet, higher than the Rockies.
All science papers that touch on climate have to talk about greenhouse gases or they don’t get published. This study just says the extinction event took hundred of thousands of years, which almost everyone assumed anyway given the Siberian Traps volcanoes lasted for over a million years.
The Tethys sea extinctions are probably related to the fact that it got too warm in that ocean for complex life in the Permian. It would have been up to 45C in the relatively enclosed margin of the sea at the equator at the time.
“The eruption released lots of methane when it burned through the coal,” Algeo said. “Methane is 30 times more effective as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.”
————————————————
Isn’t 30 times almost nothing still almost nothing?
The earth will end someday. This is a fact.
So-do we commit suicide today? or next week?
Um-but one thing pops to mind. Those extinctions. Are they ‘real’ extinctions or some of those: “Oh golly we THOUGHT it was” kind of extinction that we hear about every week or so?
Too often these days when one reads a headline, you have a hard time determining if the story’s from a politician or a ‘scientist’. (If you thought you sense a sneer on both-you’d be correct.)