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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“Al Gored says:
February 8, 2012 at 4:45 pm
I just realized how catastrophic my life is. I have been gradually dying since I was born.”
No, you have been gradually dying since the very first cell division just after your mother’s egg let that one sperm in. Remember we are not getting out of here alive!
Someone said, “Good Health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die”, therefore gradually heading to hell in a handbasket is a very healthfull method vrs instant doom!
So, essentially, being a fish, it is an equal hell to be brought to a boil and cooked alive until you die and getting a sound whacking and killed before you get cooked. Somehow I dare to doubt it, although I wonder, is it the same for sushi fishy’s, because that would be awesome to torment the fake veggies with. :p
Runaway greenhouse warming?
A runaway requires positive feedback; a ball balanced atop an inverted bowl is an example. The slightest nudge from the balance point results in the ball being accelerated away from its original position until it irreversibly rolls off of the bowl. The consequences of runaway greenhouse warming are also irreversible, yet here we are today. This cognitive dissonance can be resolved by dismissing the concept of “runaway” anything regards to major feedback mechanisms that govern Earth’s climate. They are fun if you like scary stories but otherwise don’t have much practical utility.
Why are we here today despite the Siberian Trap poisoning of 250 million years ago? Set the bowl right side up and place the ball in it. Now any disturbance that moves the ball generates an opposing force that works to restore it to its original position (that’s negative feedback to a EE).
The earth is the opposite of fragile, it is in fact nearly impervious to upset. Proof is the significant disturbances it has seen in the past, yet here we are today.
Haven’t read the paper yet, but it sounds like a load of bulls**t. Can you imagine how much Ash/SO2/whatnot would make it into the stratosphere? Or how if the gas were so “well mixed” it’d stay in the NH for 100,000 years?
Look at the GCR minimum which coincides perfectly with the event. We went into the GCR minimum, then came out of it, hence the grouping and timables to extinctions of different species. All it takes to mess with the environment, even to “barren” form, is to perturb the conditions the species were used to living under.
Perspective and scale.
These sorts of studies have academic value only.
250,000,000 years ago for goodness sake. Has no relavence to what might or might not happen in my lifetime or that of my kids or their kids or their……their….their….kids.
Yes good to know, yes interesting, yes good discussion point, but irrelavent.
‘“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.”‘
Oh. My. God. That would have been like 911 times 1,344,834!!!
@jon Jermey says:
February 8, 2012 at 4:22 pm
“[…]
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.”
Yeah, but the upside is you can still vote in Chicago elections. The downside is you won’t know who you voted for.
“Around 90 percent of all living species disappeared then, in what scientists have called “The Great Dying.””
Umh… we don’t know how many species are living actually now on this planet. Lots of them are still unknown.
How can he state “90% of all livin species” back then? Have there been scientists cataloging 100% of all species? Wow… must have been diligent people.
“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.
In the quote above it says that they “look” for the evidence that was washed away, not that they “looked” for it. It sound like they are still looking for the evidence and haven’t found it yet. Maybe they can look for Trendbert’s “missing heat” while they’re at it.
At least they give us some assurance that “irreversible climate change” isn’t really as irreversible as Hansen claims. After a few hundred thousands years (according to the evidence they’re still searching for), everything goes back to normal.
“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.”
Umm, did the physical laws change again? As with massive CO2 in the past NOT causing run-away global warming, this quote demands repeated rebuttals.
If, as the authors say, the magma burned through the coal bed, would the methane released not ignite instantly (upon reaching the 02 filled atmosphere) under such heat as well?
The key to the Permian-Triassic extnciton event is that it took tens to hundreds of thousands to millions of years.
Form this one can infer that the earth’s atmosphere and oceans are rather resistant to large scale changes and mass extinctions, it takes a very long time (hundreds of thousands of years) to heat the atmosphere and oceans and cause major problems, the AGW brigade want to push it into just decades.
This is where I think they will be shown to be wrong, their rates of geological change are all mixed up, by several orders of magnitude. Humans have never understood ‘deep time’ with regards to geological science very well.
“runaway greenhouse warming leading to sizzling temperatures.”
The money phrase—there always has to be one. It’s a rule.
Form available science, a runaway greenhouse effect is impossible.
The implication of the headline “gradual doom as bad as extinction” is that what happened in this extinction is the same as the present day.We know that there was a lot of volcanic activity at this time which would have caused an increase in greenhouse gasses but the atmospheric pressure was higher at this time than it is know which mean that we cannot compare the effects that greenhouse gasses had then with the effects they might have now.It is not wrong to compare what happened in this extinction to our increasing level of co2 in the atmosphere today,it is dishonest ,and this dishonesty is found in nearly all of the so called overwhelming evidence in favour of agw.
How does magma “burning through coal” generate methane? Even if this is some hydrogen rich magma what’s to stop any methane (and hydrogen) reacting with oxygen in the air?
I submitted a ‘opinion piece’ to WUWT about this very subject. On analysis, the radiometric dates for the Siberian Traps show a central tendency which POST-dates the P/Tr boundary:
Traps: 251 – 249 million years before present;
Accepted date of Permo-Triassic boundary: 252.3 million years before present
WUWT????
Mark H.
REPLY: I get hundreds of emails a day, I haven’t seen it, but I’ll look again -Anthony
A recent science program on the BBC a biologist had a kitchen mock up in which food and drink was monitored for six weeks as it changed from a smelly rotting mess to compost.
One statement really amazed me : He said that at the beginning of the Carboniferous era nature created a new substance : lignin. There was nothing which could break it down and recycle it, so for 70 million years ALL the lignin [wood] created could not rot, hence the creation of coal seams. It also elevated the oxygen levels in the atmosphere. Eventually nature adapted and lignin could be recycled.
If carbon from the atmosphere was sequestered for 70 million years I wonder what its composition was during this period, especially CO2. I have the impression that this era was very warm. It also explains why the elevated oxygen levels came about [I thought up to 30%] which allowed the giant insects to thrive. I also thought dinosaurs relied on higher oxygen levels than we have now.
Part II: The Deccan Traps
Part III: Columbia Plateau
Part IV: to be announced
A large scale release of methane into the atmosphere heralds a large scale anoxic event as the methane oxidizes to CO2 and water. Runaway global warming? I don’t think so. A rapid reduction of atmospheric oxygen would be a real killer and with many plant species caught in the extinction due to the sulphur released by the eruption of the traps oxygen replenishment would take a long time.
The Mediterranean is what is left of the Tethys ocean.
Earth was in the state of Pangea at the time of the Sibirian Traps eruptions. This theory was put out some time ago & was shown several years ago on BBC2’s Horizon science (when it was one)programme. Interestingly, no mention in the programme was made of Pangea, leaving many people probably with the impression that Earth was as it is today. The theory was that the eruptions raised temperatures globally by 5°C, but not enough to cause mass extinction in itself (interesting point re AGW), but this of course was supposed to have melted the methane clathrate in the sea floors raising temperature by another 5°C, causing the extinction events. Old news!
Mark Hladik said:
“I submitted a ‘opinion piece’ to WUWT about this very subject. On analysis, the radiometric dates for the Siberian Traps show a central tendency which POST-dates the P/Tr boundary.”
The start of a mantle plume is often the most violent, as the ascending magma mushrooms to the surface. So the start of the traps might have been severe, but which is now largely buried under the extensive overlying traps. Just a thought. Nearly all the large mantle plumes are associated temporally in the geological record with increased/mass extinctions.
Jon Jermey says:
February 8, 2012 at 4:22 pm
““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. ”
You won’t escape extinction by not having kids.
anticlimactic says:
February 9, 2012 at 1:00 am
“One statement really amazed me : He said that at the beginning of the Carboniferous era nature
created a new substance : lignin. There was nothing which could break it down and recycle it, so for 70 million years ALL the lignin [wood] created could not rot, hence the creation of coal seams.”
That statement would have amazed me as well, as fire is easily capable of breaking down lignin. So the only reason this wouldn’t have happened would be a lack of oxygen, and with a lack of oxygen, it also becomes pointless for any microorganism to try to use lignin as food. I would think that during all that time, all the mutants that tried to make their living chewing lignin simply had a bad business model and vanished again.
It will be a momentous day for science when all concede that there is no such thing as a greenhouse gas once the greenhouse ventilators have been fully opened to space. Open up those ventilators and the major greenhouse gas, air we call it, commences on its outward journey and those few molecules that are better able to absorb, and emit, heat, such as water vapour and CO2 go along with it. The whole ‘convects’ rapidly and photons are emitted at the speed of light. The heat goes back to space and there is nothing that I have been able to find in accepted physics that would suggest that any overall warming of the atmosphere can take place. The AGW people have their ‘back radiation’ which seems to me to be the postulation of a sort of effective pissing into the wind. Even the skeptics tend to allow that there must be some warming but the laws of thermodynamics do not permit even that.
I would like just one skeptic to attempt to convince me that there is any warming at all. Start with an atmosphere consisting solely of methane (adjusted to match the present atmospheric mass) and convince me that the temperature out on my stoep would increase by a fraction of a degree. I would not be impressed by an explanation that began hundreds of million years ago when terrestrial thermal conditions were not remotely similar to those of today.
.
Anthony:
Just in case, if you sent a fax number to my primary e-mail, I could fax it to you. All of the formating and subsection headings disappeared when it showed up in the “Submit a Story” box.
Thingadonta (“toothed item?”): Not disputing that something happened in regards to the Siberian Large Igneous Province (LIP). I used some University of Leicester (sp?) data which showed the accepted radiometric dates (cross-matched and based on several methods) are centered on 250 million years ago. If that is the case, then most, if not all, of the Traps were erupted AFTER the Permian extinction had taken place.
It was in the course of researching my submission to WUWT that I found the new boundary date had been accepted by the geological community.
If Anthony and his team of moderators decide to post my article, you will see the detail I go into.
Thanks to all,
Mark H.
Mark Hladik says:
February 8, 2012 at 11:34 pm
I submitted a ‘opinion piece’ to WUWT about this very subject. On analysis, the radiometric dates for the Siberian Traps show a central tendency which POST-dates the P/Tr boundary:
Traps: 251 – 249 million years before present;
Accepted date of Permo-Triassic boundary: 252.3 million years before present
—————————————
The best paper on the Siberian Traps was co-authored by all the main experts on it. I assume it was meant to be a consensus piece.
All of the various volcanic outflows are dated to starting at 252.7 Mya and some outflows are dated as late as 242.1 Mya (now remember we are going backwards in time here).
http://www.le.ac.uk/gl/ads/SiberianTraps/PDF%20Files/Reichow%20et%20al.%202009.pdf
So the extinction at 252.3 Mya falls within what might have been the most intense period.
———————-
Right at the extinction event, the do18 isotope data says global temperatures fell by up to 9.0C, not increased as the pro-AGW set likes to imagine. I used a 1 million year smoothing program on the isotope data to produce a higher resolution temperature estimate timeline. The peak of the downspike is at 251.4 Mya. I think this downspike has been missed before because others using this data have used a longer smoothing program (Veizer, Shaviv – 50 million years; Royer, Berner 50 million years – Rhode at global waming art used 3 million years).
http://img823.imageshack.us/img823/9508/tempco2570mlefttoright.png