Guest eye roll by David Middleton
From Real Clear Science…
The Two Great Killers of ‘The Great Dying’
By Ross Pomeroy – RCP Staff
The Siberian Traps in northern Russia are picturesque. The expansive region is graced with serene slopes that jut into striking plateaus. Hiding behind this beauty, however, is a calamitous history, revealed by the basalt rock that underlies the region. Roughly 250 million-years-ago, the Siberian Traps exploded in a series of volcanic eruptions that continued off and on for two million years. When the upheaval finally concluded, 770,000 square miles of magma covered the land and an enormous amount of climate-altering gases had entered the atmosphere. As best scientists can tell, the global changes triggered by these gases resulted in the Permian–Triassic extinction event, “The Great Dying,” in which up to 96% of marine species and 70% of terrestrial vertebrate species disappeared. It was the worst mass extinction event in Earth’s history.
[…]
Simulating the global warming that occurred (as validated by geochemical data) during the Permian–Triassic extinction within a model of Earth’s climate, the researchers found that oxygen available in seawater to marine species would have fallen by 76 percent.
[…]
Could this calamitous scenario play out again given the current rate of ocean warming? Using publicly available IPCC data, the researchers estimated that by 2300, the oceans could warm to levels roughly ~35 to 50% of those required to account for most of the end-Permian extinctions. We may be on our way to a “Great Dying” sequel.
Source: Justin L. Penn, Curtis Deutsch, Jonathan L. Payne, Erik A. Sperling. “Temperature-dependent hypoxia explains biogeography and severity of end-Permian marine mass extinction.” Science. 7 Dec. 2018.
To paraphrase The Black Adder: “Ocean warming and oxygen deprivation stalk our oceans like… two giant stalking things.”
Ross Pomeroy is usually spot-on with his analyses of scientific studies. However, he tends to go off the rails when it comes to climate change. This was my comment on his article:
“Could this calamitous scenario play out again given the current rate of ocean warming? Using publicly available IPCC data, the researchers estimated that by 2300, the oceans could warm to levels roughly ~35 to 50% of those required to account for most of the end-Permian extinctions. We may be on our way to a “Great Dying” sequel.”
Only in an RCP8.5 fantasy land.
RCP8.5 yields a wide range of temperature increases by 2300. From 2 to 14 °C, with a mean value of 8 °C.
However, we know that RCP8.5 is 100% bull schist.
Temperature trends aren’t even on course to breaking out of the Quaternary noise level and 8 °C probably doesn’t even get us back to the Mid-Miocene Climatic Optimum.
And the Mid-Miocene Climatic Optimum was cooler than the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum and Early Eocene Climatic Optimum.
And the Early Eocene was a period of a explosive growth in biodiversity.
Could this calamitous scenario play out again given the current rate of ocean warming?
References
Christy, John. 2016. Testimony of John R. Christy. Washington, D.C.: U.S. House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, 23. https://docs.house.gov/meetings/SY/SY00/20160202/104399/HHRG-114-SY00-Wstate-ChristyJ-20160202.pdf.
Hoorn, C., Wesselingh, F.P., ter Steege, H.; Bermudez, M.A., Mora, A., Sevink, J., Sanmartin, I., Sanchez-Meseguer, A., Anderson, C.L., Figueiredo, J.P., et al. Amazonian through time: Andean uplift,climate change, landscape evolution and biodiversity. Science 2010, 330, 927–931
IPCC, 2013: Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change[Stocker, T.F., D. Qin, G.-K. Plattner, M. Tignor, S.K. Allen, J. Boschung, A. Nauels, Y. Xia, V. Bex and P.M. Midgley (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA, 1535 pp.
Wuebbles, D.J., D.W. Fahey, K.A. Hibbard, D.J. Dokken, B.C. Stewart, and T.K. Maycock. 2017. Climate Science Special Report: Fourth National Climate Assessment, Volume I. Washington, D.C.: USGCRP, 470. doi: 10.7930/J0J964J6.
Zachos, J. C., Pagani, M., Sloan, L. C., Thomas, E. & Billups, K. Trends, rhythms, and aberrations in global climate 65 Ma to present. Science 292, 686–-693 (2001).
I might have gotten onboard with this, if they’d only managed to work in some acidification a time, or two.
Blame Trump.
Is it too late for a Bush bash?
Actually, the volcano eruptions could have resulted in acidification because of the SO2 being “spewed” out of the volcanoes.
They would like the paper to imply that they would not be considering comparing the disaster of human-made global warming with the Siberian Traps Event. Wow. It’s really sad that they have to resort to such limp-wrested ploys
How can these dopes in any good conscience write this tripe? As Yule Brenner said, “This is a false lie”. This is the crap one expects to see in the check out lanes at the grocery.
Are false lies truths?
That’s how Captain Kirk defeated the androids in I, Mudd… 😎
Here ya go, David. One of ST’s best scenes:
https://youtu.be/wlMegqgGORY
This deserves to be the front page lead on the World News Daily.
https://worldnewsdailyreport.com/
The end Permian MEE was not the worst mass extinction event in Earth’s history. It was however worst of the Phanerozoic Eon, ie the past 541 million years.
The Great Oxygenation Catastrophe, at the start of the Proterozoic Eon some 2.4 Ga, was surely the most massive, wiping out much if not most of the anaerobic organisms then dominant. The rise of photosynthesizing cyanobacteria caused this disaster.
The end Proterozoic MEE of most Ediacaran Period biota was probably also more devastating, clearing the way for the Cambrian “Explosion” of modern phyla. The consumption of the cyanobacterial and algal slime mats on the ancient seafloor has been cited as the cause of this MEE.
So in both cases, ie the beginning and end of the Proterozoic Eon, new lifeforms were arguably responsible, first autotrophs, then heterotrophs feeding on the photosynthesizers.
PS: The Permian MEE was followed by the Triassic “Explosion” of Mesozoic life, which gave us, among other groups, modern amphibians, reptiles (including birds) and mammals.
The Great Oxygenation Catastrophe was also followed by a YUGE explosion… The Cambrian Explosion.
Did you see this?……..
Gusher: Feds ID largest energy find ‘ever,’ worth 7 years of fuel
The Interior Department has identified a massive basin of oil and natural gas in Texas and New Mexico, enough to cover nearly seven years of all U.S. needs.
“Christmas came a few weeks early this year,” said Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke in announcing the discovery, which his department described as the “largest continuous oil and gas resource potential ever assessed.”
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/gusher-feds-id-largest-energy-find-ever-worth-7-years-of-fuel
I have a post on it scheduled for 1:00 PM PST.
Your link took me to the Washington Examiner website that wouldn’t let me out again. At least not by the “Back” button, I had to re-type the Watts Up With That addy into my address bar again to get back here. So thanks for that. All in all I would have rather read it on David Middleton’s post. /chainyanking
Red, I just tried it again…didn’t do that to me
…tried again, nope, no problem with the back button
dunno why it did that to you
Only some 1.9 billion years later.
If you build it, they will come…and eat it!
It’s always a good idea to stay out of the way of large meteors.
No convincing evidence exists for a huge impact at that time, although of course no crater in the ocean would still survive.
Not so. The impactor would have had to hit near the antipodal point, which at the time was Antarctica.
So it may have been the Wilkes Land Crater, or it may have been nearby, off the coast of Australia, at Bedout.
Doubtful anyone can ever prove it, except that something must have caused a huge outpouring of flood basalt that went on for 2 million years in this location, and is by some accounts still going strong after creating Iceland.
Wilkes Land might not even be a crater, and Bedout is the wrong age.
John Tillman notes:
“The Great Oxygenation Catastrophe”
” wiping out much if not most of the anaerobic organisms”
“The rise of photosynthesizing cyanobacteria caused this disaster”
John correctly notes that what the cyanobacteria did is the first instance of chemical warfare on planet Earth. These bacteria wantonly exterminated countless species which were competitors. In perspective, nobody should be concerned about any extinctions humans might cause. As of yet, humans have not practiced chemical warfare on a global, planetary scale.
In Other News:
The latest month for the UAH satellite temperature data set was released a few days ago.
The data point is #480 in the monthly series.
This is 40 years, Happy Anniversary UAH
Congratulations and a hearty Well Done to John Christy and Roy Spencer.
Second your observation of the anniversary of the endangered, because honest, UAH program.
Far from waging chemical warfare against the biosphere, humans are allied with it, thanks to our release of plant food into the air.
+42 x 1042
How many bazillion izzat?
a gazillion bazillions
How many brazillians is it though?
How many brazillians is it though?
Depends on how fast the cilium grows?
No such number as a bazillion.
Did you mean to say bajillion?
Of course, the answer to the ultimate question. BTW, 6×9 is 42, in base 13. But you already knew that…
Amen!
Global warming occurred in the mid-Permian, coming out of the Carboniferous-Permian ice age. At the Permian-Triassic boundary, not so much.
If a deadly gas were involved, it’s more likely to have been hydrogen sulfide, leading to anoxia, rather than carbon dioxide or methane. A combo of course can’t be ruled out.
There are some of us who would assert that:
… is a pretty significant factor in why we are here and now even discussing it.
That was/is a pretty reasonable amount of new plant food, nutrition and fertiliser, kept Life on Earth actually alive and, shock horror, kinda corresponds to when a lot of our coal, oil and gas was laid down. Oui/Non?
“Out of the strong came forth sweetness” and all that jazz.
Well. It was sweet until Climate Science reared its head. Talk about Ocean Acidation – Climate Science is acidifying/poisoning everything.
And changed the balance of the earth.
Wait…. I thought volcanoes caused “Global Cooling” ?
They might well have done so. There is a lot of evidence for an abrupt regression near the P/Tr boundary, but it is nowadays glossed over since it implies major glaciation which doesn’t fit “the narrative”.
Volcanoes do whatever your theory needs them to.
Sort of like CO2.
Yup!
Hotter makes it colder, and also snowier.
Except for the times it does not, in which case it made it not get colder and also be less snowy.
The only significant uptick event concerning climate currently, is the unbelievable expansion of false scare stories being rushed out by the media.
Why are there even more alarmist and even more numerous than the background nonsense they normally keep themselves busy with?
Was Permian capitalism as selfish as Anthropocene capitalism? 😉
It was probably caused by Lystrosaurian capitalists, since they did best out of the extinction.
http://www.dododex.com/media/creature/lystrosaurus.png
Already kind of capitalist piggish looking (sometimes called a pig-lizard), this mammal-relative lacks only a top hat and cigar to fill the bill.
” Using publicly available IPCC data,…” Ah, that was their first mistake. They aren’t really “data”, but rather more like hyperventilations. But I guess the fact they are “publicly available” means they are OK.
Well-said!
So (1) CO2 was responsible for Permian warming? But the ice core records tell us just the opposite–CO2 ALWAYS lags warming! Bad assumption.
(2) global warming is catastrophic to life on Earth? Wrong! You need look no farther than comparison of the Medieval Warm Period with the Little Ice Age. Life flourished during the MWP but the LIA was catastrophic to civilization.
Supposing we accept this idea, then it looks to me like we might have 25 million years to adapt.
Paper doesn’t mention Ordovician extinction. Interesting how so many “scientists” engage in data exclusion when something might negate the theory.
Isn’t there something similar to the Hippocratic oath for scientists?
The Ordovician extinction coincided with a short but sharp glacial period. Not at all a PC extinction!
An inconvenient extinction.
As too were the Late Devonian extinctions during global cooling. If, as some think, the Permian MEE was also under cooling conditions, then a disturbing correlation pattern develops. Temperature also fell during the Triassic, culminating in a big MEE at the end of the period, followed by warming in the Early Jurassic, which saw the evolution of dinosaur gigantism.
“… Hippocratic oath for scientists …”
You’re thinking of something like … “Do no lying” or “Don’t torture the data” ?
GoodDay to David and all.
Sorry to interrupt with an OT observation.
Recently the BPA Balancing Chart was highlighted: Wind doesn’t blow
Have a look today and note the total load (red line) has a nice upward slant.
https://transmission.bpa.gov/business/operations/wind/baltwg.aspx
“…the researchers found that oxygen available in seawater to marine species would have fallen by 76 percent.” There they go again… trusting computer. If they’re following RCP8.5 as they appear to have been I’d love to know what happened to the +/- 6 °C. As you said ” RCP8.5 yields a wide range of temperature increases by 2300. From 2 to 14 °C, with a mean value of 8 °C.” I guess their model result for only a 2 °C rise in ocean temp wasn’t scary enough. Wouldn’t surprise me if most of them use the 14 °C high end ‘estimate’ since they have dug themselves into a hole where their livelihoods are now dependent on it.
David, between Figures 4 and 5, “cooler” rather than “cooled”?
Marcus is falling down on the job… Fixed.
Marcus is falling down on the job . . .
I wouldn’t. 🙂
One more since we’re doing typos:
“Temperature trends aren’t even on course to breaking out of the Quaternary noise level and 8 C probably doesn’t eve get us back to the Mid-Miocene Climatic Optimum.”
So… Marcus missed two of my typos? I’m shocked!
Sounds like a plea for more donuts.
..D’OH ! ; )
Actually David , I don’t bother with it anymore because my posts take 2 or 3 hours to go through..lol
Hey, Friday is my day off ! LOL
When does the part about CO2 creating darkened skies by the injection of ash begin ?
“ … series of volcanic eruptions that continued off and on for two million years.”
No need to visit Siberia to view such a landscape. There are also the Deccan Traps, and others.
Here in the Great Left State of Washington, we had our own flood basalts, not so long ago and not so vast. In addition the series lasted longer than 2 million years.
From Wikipedia:
“During the middle to late Miocene epoch, the Columbia River flood basalts engulfed about 163,700 km2 (63,200 sq mi) of the Pacific Northwest, forming a large igneous province with an estimated volume of 174,300 km3 (41,800 cu mi). Eruptions were most vigorous 17–14 million years ago, when over 99 percent of the basalt was released. Less extensive eruptions continued 14–6 million years ago.”
Knowing a bit about this, I wonder about the importance of the phrase “off and on” with regard to the Siberian events.
John beat me to it, but “Roughly 250 million-years-ago, the Siberian Traps exploded in a series of volcanic eruptions that continued off and on for two million years. When the upheaval finally concluded, 770,000 square miles of magma covered the land ”
It seems to me that anyone with a small amount of common sense and some working internal logic circuits might be able to draw an viable conclusion that plate tectonics and rifting in Siberia (and India) caused these massive eruptions, and therefore, the accompanying release of noxious gases contributed their part.
Does Mr. Pomeroy lack the ability to understand these things? Unless the triple plate boundary that meets at the Danakil Depression in Ethiopia suddenly cracks open and Erta Ale leads the way in spewing massive volumes of magma and gases within our lifetimes (unlikely), or some such thing happens, it is extremely unlikely that any of us will see the kind of catastrophe Mr. Pomeroy is envisioning in his fantasy.
However, WHEN that does happen, it will create a permament rift between Africa’s eastern portion from Ethiopia all the way south to Tanzania and will (eventually) result in a permanent change to the continent of Africa. I rather imagine it will change everything on Earth permanently, too. But it won’t happen in my lifetime, so I won’t worry about it.
Mr. Pomeroy seems to have lost sight of the simple fact that there are some things in nature over which we have no control. Continental rifting is only one of them.
Sara (somewhere above) posted a comment that referred to the Danakil Depression. Out of curiosity I dialed up a search and found this priceless pearl in an article by Simien Mountain Tours.
“The climate varies from around 25 °C during the rainy season to 48 °C during the fry season.”
I’m still grinning
cheers edi
I suffer under the apparently mistaken hypothesis that the Permian extinctions were due to the Karoo Ice Age; the last Great Ice Age prior to the Pleistocene. Also, my ignorance led me to believe that the Karoo Ice Age was caused by Gondwana/Pangaea consolidating over the South Pole, thereby cutting off oceanic circulation and allowing the pole to cool to continental ice sheet conditions, much like today. And that it wasn’t until Pangaea broke apart that Jurassic warmth returned.
Why has this antiquated hypothesis lost favor?
The Carboniferous-Permian Ice Age ended well before the end Permian MEE.
Next it was CO2 that created the Big Bang…
The God molecule!
But when there was nothing how can there be God?
I meant Triassic, not Jurassic. Sorry.
What’s a few million years between friends?
If indeed there was a huge increase in CO2, then it would have been converted into some form of a carbonate over the next few thousand years… CO2 will react chemically with Magnesium, Calcium and some other elements to produce carbonates until an equilibrium is reached. Testable, go find the increase in carbonates that must exist worldwide in raised seabeds of that period.
If there was a huge increase in SO2 (or friends) then there must be a huge increase in Gypsum or other sulfides over the next few thousand years… SO2 will react chemically with Magnesium, Calcium and some other elements to produce sulfides until an equilibrium is reached. Testable, go find the increase in sulfides that must exist worldwide in raised seabeds of that period.
If you cannot find these, then you are just guessing, and it is called speculation, not science.
The temperature ranges displayed for RCP 8.5 are atmospheric — the amount the ocean itself would warm by 2300 under that absurd scenario would necessarily be much, much less. How much did the ocean warm prior to permian extinction?
For my part so long as my kettle boils at 100C at sea level there is no prospect of catastrophic global warming. Why do you think that you may well ask? – Because I was taught thermodynamics as an engineering student. Dead simple. So how do you reach your conclusion? – Because gravity determines the temperature at which the phase change of water commences and that is more or less constant. But why is this significant? – we’ll best you teach yourself the intricacies of the Rankine Cycle and the properties of water.
However you won’t get much joy if you ignore enthalpy and it’s physical movement and confine yourself to matters of radiation. (a dig at the IPCC here)
So to return to the thread: Why do these authors confabulate this event with purported global warming? Beats me. Can’t see the connection, particularly as I see no prospect of catastrophic warming.
On the other hand I can well see the disaster if magma gets plastered over the ground.
Generally we ignore what is happening beneath our feet; mainly because we know so little about it.
Much easier to just deny access to cheap energy to the vast unwashed and keep control of the money.
Do Dinosaurs Pose a Gravity Problem?
https://youtu.be/okMOfYcbdI8
So could big sudden changes in pressure trigger mass extinctions? Just look how it complicates diving.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decompression_(diving)
I hope this isn’t too far off-topic here, but I’m looking for word from people who know better than I (likely geologists).
Has there been any/much attempt to correlate the crater impact off the Yucatan Peninsula with the flooding of the Deccan Traps around the same time, as possibly-correlated events: with my (very rough, non-professional) estimation, the crater location and Deccan Traps location would have been at approximately-opposite sides of the Earth 65 MYA; perhaps the asteroid impact sent shock waves around the Earth that met and superimposed on the far side (India), causing surface rupture that led to severe vulcanism.
Tying this, perhaps, back to the original article – would there be any way of seeing whether there may have been a similar event at the Permian Extinction, or was it maybe oceanic and destroyed in the 250 MY since.
That is an active hypothesis…
https://news.berkeley.edu/2015/04/30/did-dinosaur-killing-asteroid-trigger-largest-lava-flows-on-earth/
Thanks for the article link, David. I didn’t realize it was this recent. The coincidence between these 2 events struck me while I was taking an undergrad course about 6 years ago, but I didn’t recall reading anything linking them together.
This idea has been kicking around for decades.
At least since I was in my 20s and Sci Am was a reputable publications, which was a long time ago indeed.
Let’s not confuse the Cretaceous/Ternary (KT) extinction, ~60 mya (dinosaurs extinct, Deccan Traps), with the Permian extinction ~250 mya (Siberian Traps) which is the subject of this article. The former is definitely associated with a meteor strike, the latter possibly a meteor strike but no clear proof.
Look at a world map or atlas. Yucatán impact site roughly latitude 22 north
Entire Indian peninsula north of equator, so no where near “opposite sides of Earth “
This kind of sloppy geography infuses all kinds of popular speculation about geology and climate— but it is totally wrong
Early Landsat imagery led to a flood of peer-reviewed publications on the subject of mystical “lineaments “. Later derisively named “geo-linesmanship”
The human eye is quite adept at visualizing “alignments “ that have no physical origin or meaning (think constellations)
Same with climate “science”
Cr*p
At the time of the KT extinction the Indian subcontinent did not exist. At the time of the impact the sea floor at the antipode of the strike, latitude 22 south, was shattered causing major volcanism and the Indian subcontinent was formed. The Indian subcontinent then migrated to its present position north of the equator and impacted on the Eurasian continent. The Indian subcontinent was formed by a shock wave originated by the Chicxulub strike which was focused on the antipode of the strike and initiated the volcanism which, together with the strike itself, caused the KT extinction. Whether this is valid theory or not, the association did exist.
Interesting. I hadn’t heard this aspect of it previously. Most sources I’ve encountered talk about the Indian subcontinent existing and moving prior to this. This sounds eminently plausible though. The idea I’d mentioned earlier came from noticing that “India” would have been south of the equator 65 million years ago. I approximately aligned the 2 locations from looking at a globe, but wasn’t able to identify the assumed Chicxulub location at that time.
Point taken. I should have accounted for the location of the Indian continental fragment at 65 mya. Go to http://www.scotese.com for accurate illustrations of landmass configurations throughout the Phanerozoic Era (since 560 million years ago).
The Indian fragment was indeed south of the equator at 65 Ma, but only about 100 degrees longitude east of the Chixulub impact site in the Yucatan peninsula. Again, no where near “on the opposite side of the earth” from each other.
More to the point, why does anyone these days even consider CO2 as a driver for climate in past ages? – – when it is abundantly clear from modern history that CO2 has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH TEMPERATURE WHATSOEVER!!!
Ice core data show conclusively that temperature always changes BEFORE CO2 changes (both rising and falling)
CO2 was pretty much constant from 1880s to 1940s while temperature rose nearly 1 degree C
CO2 rose dramatically from 1940 to the present while temperatures fell through the 1970s (Ice Age scare and all)
CO2 and temperature kinda rose together from about 1970 to 1998 (whoopee)
but then CO2 continued to rise while temperatures flatlined through today (The Pause, which even the scientifically bankrupt IPCC had to acknowledge)
So if modern history makes it clear that CO2 has no effect on temperature, WHY WOULD ANY SENTIENT BEING BELIEVE IT WOULD HAVE DONE SO IN THE GEOLOGIC PAST??
As a career geologist, I am dumbfounded that a large percentage of credentialed geologists these days buy into this unsubstantiated CO2-T crap.
Grant-funding bias. Pure and simple.
Pochas, this is not the case.
India is a major tectonic plate, since ithe time it broke away from Gondwana some 140mya.
The plate includes a huge area which is now submerged to the south, as well as the parts what underthrust Asia and thus underlie the Himalayas.
India (along with the then adjoining plates) broke off from the Antarctica part of Gondwana and moved rapidly north across the Indian ocean.
The traps are merely one small province on the far larger Indian plate.
The fault lines (Ninety East Ridge for one) which allowed this motion are clearly visible on the sea floor of the Indian ocean, including the regular series of transform faults required for the motion.
The spreading centers which created the sea floor now existing include the Mid-Indian Ridge and the Southeast Indian Ridge, IIRC.
The motion may have been as much as 8 inches or so a year.
Recently, it has been proposed that a section of the northern margin of the Indian plate broke off and rifted northward ahead of the larger plate, and there were two collisions with some sea floor in between them.
This would help explain some discrepancies of timing and crustal shortening that have been noted.
The location of India prior to Gondwana breaking up is very well supported…there is no serious doubt that this happened.
It was contiguous with Madagascar on the Western flank, and in fact Madagascar and India broke from the larger sections they had been attached to at around the same time.
Australia was joined to it on the East side, and Antarctica to the south.
I think I first read about this in the late 1960s or early 70s, and as far as I can tell no one has refuted it.
It does seem plenty of details have been filled in and the exact timeline refined somewhat.
I doubt it could ever be proven after all this time, but it may be that the impactor which caused the Siberian traps either caused or added to the breakup of these plates.
India was not exactly antipodal to Chicxulub, at least it is not considered to have been by the most prevalent reconstructions, but the hypothesis does not require an exact alignment.
These are two rare events which are known to have happened very close to opposite one another at roughly the same time, although the timing too is not exact…but this may simply be errors in the timeline reconstruction.
Traps are flood basalts, and continental plates are mostly granitic
Atlantic ocean is spreading at between 0.8 and 2.0″ per year.
One inch per year is about one mile in 63360 years, or about a thousand miles in 63 million years.
1000 miles is about 15 degrees.
100 degrees barely gets you from the ninety east ridge to the west coast of Africa.
They were close to antipodal at the time of impact, but not exactly so.
Impactor caused increased volcanism all over the world?
https://phys.org/news/2018-02-seafloor-global-volcanism-chicxulub-meteor.html
Wow Jim, I am very surprised to see someone with geology in his name not take into account the movement of the plates over the last 65 million years or so.
India is well known as a case study in just how fast a plate can move under ideal conditions…many times faster than anything we see nowadays.
The impact with Asia was recent, which is one reason why the Himalayas are the tallest and largest range on Earth…they are the newest and in fact still rising as India continues to move north under Asia.
This was old news in the 1960s.
The Permian extinction that, did not occur at 252 mya, that is when it ended. It is the point where the number of new species evolving equals the number of species going extinct. Extinctions started exceeding evolving species around 15 million years before that. The ice age ended around 275 mya and coincided with a rapid decline in oxygen. Oxygen during the ice age had increased to some 30 to 35% of the atmosphere, when the ice age ended it dropped over 25 million years to a low of 12 % causing the oceans to become anoxic.
The Siberian traps have been dated at 254 mya (if I remember correctly) and therefore could not have been responsible for the extinctions. An increase in sulfur appeared somewhere in that time frame and could have been the final straw as bacteria convert sulfur compounds to H2S which is more toxic than cyanide.
The increase in CO2 does not coincide with the progression of the extinction. In fact much of the increase could have initially been from decomposition of the species going extinct and later on from the Siberian traps. When the rate of extinction was exceeded by the rate of evolution of new species CO2 had risen to 1600 ppm.
One could make a good case for the rise in CO2 stimulating plants to the point where they reversed the decline in O2 levels and saved life.
More recently 20,000 years ago CO2 dropped to 180 ppm, dust storms ravaged the planet, plants were on the verge of dying from lack of CO2. If the greens had their way and got CO2 back to 270ppm then when we return to the ice age levels will again drop 100 ppm below that to around 170ppm. Plants die around 160 ppm.
As Einstein said.”only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity and I am not sure about the former”
Your dates and explanation are widely refuted.
The Siberian traps are almost universally considered to have spanned the boundary of these two periods.
http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/1/7/e1500470
I think I have to dispute the contention that hydrogen sulfide is more toxic than cyanide.
I am thinking you must be referring to hydrogen cyanide
Both are very toxic, for sure, but we have enzymes that can neutralize a small concentration of H2S.
Not so for hydrogen cyanide.
In any case, the dose makes the poison, and people are exposed to hydrogen sulfide all the time.
10 PPM is the amount of continuous exposure permitted for H2S, but for cyanide it is half that.
Both nicotine and vitamin D are even deadlier, so…
When I first read the summary of the research, I had a question. They talked about tropical marine life already being adapted to low oxygen levels and not needing to migrate. However, what about the mid-latitude marine life? Why didn’t it migrate north towards cooler water that could dissolve more oxygen? Surely Arctic waters were cooler than mid-latitude waters and weren’t as warm as tropical waters!
I’m dubious that the polar regions experienced the greatest loss as a result of high surface water temperatures. After all, half of the year there is no warming at all, and the other half the intensity of sunlight is low as a result of the cosine law. Considering that there was a concomitant loss of 70% of land life, something more than a reduction in dissolved O2 would seem to be in play. More likely that it was a combination of warming, decreased pH (especially from sulfuric acid), and toxic fumes. Trying to pin it entirely on warming sounds to me like a bid for more grant money.
Earth was in an extensive glaciation (ice age) over ~350-250 Gyr ago, and CO2 was quite low (similar to today) for an extended period. It has been suggested CO2 was low because plants developed ability to make large structural tissue which no organism could destroy for some time. Extensive coal was produce in this time.
Might the 250 Myr volcanic eruptions ended the ice age?
The ice age ended in the mid-Permian, not at its end.
Although there was a brief (~80,000 years-long) ice age at the end of the Permian, probably caused by SO2 from the initial Siberian Traps volcanism, which has been blamed for the mass extinction.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/03/170306091927.htm
The warming phase only occurred some 500,000 years after the cold-caused wipeout.
http://notrickszone.com/2018/05/28/2-new-papers-permian-mass-extinction-coincided-with-global-cooling-falling-sea-levels-and-low-co2/
Didn’t post below, so will try here.
I note also that the graph shows Cretaceous O2 levels lower than now, further showing false the conjecture that giant pterosaurs could only fly due to a denser atmosphere, with more oxygen.
SO we don’t need SUVs to create mass extinctions, they can occur naturally; so can globale warming. What are the reasons given by the hand-wringing moralists that the current variations are not natural?
Proof of the pudding is in the eating, its obvious that the fact we are still here that things were not a bad as said by the article. Many species are evoling all o the time, so a lesser version dies out, and the better version carries on. Look at the Neandrails and us, they obviously interbred to some degree as we all have a bit of their DNA, but the earlier race simply ceased to be as it was not up to the conditions. Its called “Survival of the fittest ” as per Darwin.
MJE
This is research that identifies fakirs and exposes scam artists.
A) The IPCC has highly questionable biased data current to at best 2016. Whatever these characters used for their 2300 and beyond estimate, it is not data!
B) Somehow, according to these shysters, a few centuries of CO₂ emissions are equivalent to two million years of multi-chemical volcanic emissions.
C) Once again, warmist alarmists model doom and disaster fantasies and pretend it is science.
Pathetic.
Gawd, what have the Warmunists wrought this week?
“Could this calamitous scenario play out again given the current rate of ocean warming? Using publicly available IPCC data, the researchers estimated that by 2300, the oceans could warm to levels roughly ~35 to 50% of those required to account for most of the end-Permian extinctions. We may be on our way to a “Great Dying” sequel.”
What even is a percentage of a temperature?
This diatribe just shows how nonsensical the IPCC models are.
”To paraphrase The Black Adder: “Ocean warming and oxygen deprivation stalk our oceans like… two giant stalking things.”
They wouldn’t know a Permian Extinction if it painted itself purple, jumped onto a harpsichord and started singing” Permian Extinctions are here again”
Mosh in 3…2…1
“Could this calamitous scenario play out again … the oceans could warm to levels roughly ~35 to 50% of those required”
So in one word, “NO”. Worse than that, it’s models all the way down.
Ross Pomeroy suggests “We may be on our way to a “Great Dying” sequel.”
The ocean heat content is over 1000 times greater than the atmospheric heat content (5.6×10^24 ocean vs. 5 x10^21 Joules/Degree Kelvin for atmosphere) as presented on WUWT here:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/04/06/energy-content-the-heat-is-on-atmosphere-vs-ocean/
In addition, 90 % of the total volume of ocean is found below the thermocline in the deep ocean where much of water is between 0-3 degrees Celsius. I would be interested in seeing the calculations showing how atmospheric CO2 will change the planet by 2300 in a similar way as the Siberian Traps changed it over a period of two million years.
Cold extermination: One of greatest mass extinctions was due to an ice age and not to Earth’s warming
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/03/170306091927.htm
Two other papers reach the same conclusion, ie that cold not heat killed:
http://notrickszone.com/2018/05/28/2-new-papers-permian-mass-extinction-coincided-with-global-cooling-falling-sea-levels-and-low-co2/