[decimon]

Caption: Researchers walk through sediments deposited shortly after the worst extinction event in earth history, on the shores of Buchanan Lake, Axel Heiberg Island, Nunavut.

Credit: Credit: Steve Grasby, University of Calgary/NRCan

Usage Restrictions: With credit

[decimon]

Nunavut matters now ping.

[Nateman]

The total thickness of the lava layer is one mile thick. Laid down over a period of one million years it was almost too much for life on Earth to survive.

[SkyPilot]

About 250 million years about 95 per cent of life was wiped out in the sea and 70 per cent on land. Researchers at the University of Calgary believe they have discovered evidence to support massive volcanic eruptions burnt significant volumes of coal, producing ash clouds that had broad impact on global oceans. "This could literally be the smoking gun that explains the latest Permian extinction,"

Or that the Bible is true.

[sodpoodle]

Using semantic forensics; Sodpoodle determined that the use of ‘smoking gun’ and references to coal-burning plants emitting ‘greenhouse gases’ is but a prelude to bringing on another doomsday global warming bogey-man.

Read the article very carefully and match the catch phrases.

[GeorgiaDawg32]

Smoking gun or? Coincidence? I think not

Shot at 2011-01-23

[Just mythoughts]

About 250 million years about 95 per cent of life was wiped out in the sea and 70 per cent on land. Researchers at the University of Calgary believe they have discovered evidence to support massive volcanic eruptions burnt significant volumes of coal, producing ash clouds that had broad impact on global oceans.

There is NOT one shred of evidence to date this 'find'. Reading between the lines does seem to point to the 5% of 'life' being that hidden 'origins' also described by some as a hot steaming pot of primordial soup.

I do not doubt their find but their dating is what questions their motives.

[relictele]

Bush’s inaction and delay in ordering FEMA to help out clearly exacerbated the problem.

[Cicero]

An Adjunct Professor? Same grade as Obama. He knows which side his bread is buttered on. Maybe they’ll offer him a tenure slot now.

[chrisser]

So there was a massive extinction event caused by coal 250million years ago - before the dino extinction 65 million years ago.

If coal comes from dinosaurs, where did the coal come from?

[microgood]

The gathering of information is one of the most important roles of science and should always be done.

Forming theories about what and why things happened is much more problematic.

[Sequoyah101]

The neat thing about this picture to me is that the layers visible in the mountains were once flat-lying sedimentary rocks. Our time here has been so close to nothing for all this to have happened.

I’ve drilled sedimentary rocks thousands of feet deep near Ellesmere Island. It is all still unbelievable to me. Whether drilling into the planet at 3,000 or 30,000 and seeing rock never before seen or touched is still a an exceptional event.

That the scale of the earth, as in this picture, is so vast and we are so small pales to the reality that all the Earth is less than a speck of dust, infinitely small even, in God’s heaven.

[cripplecreek]

I tend to think all the mass extinctions were due to a combination of factors. At the time of the Chixalub impact things were looking pretty bleak for dinosaurs already. The indian subcontinent was experiencing a massive mantle plume eruption, the number of dinosaur species were already dwindling, The climate was changing, and a wave of radiation from a supernova was passing through our neighborhood around that time.

[umgud]

I’m torn between either Bush or Palin as being responsible for this.

[Verginius Rufus]

Amazingly enough, considering how long ago this happened, this was also George W. Bush’s fault. It was because he didn’t care about Eskimos.

[The Comedian]

Dogs-and-cats-dying-together-mass-hysteria ping.

Frowning takes 68 muscles.
Smiling takes 6.
Pulling this trigger takes 2.
I'm lazy.

[Mike Darancette]

I don’t thnk there was enough coal in the affected area.

[ForGod'sSake]

Gotta wonder why these brilliant academics, products and members of the Scientific Community™ don't spend more time and effort on something that happened yesterday, in geologic time. The Pleistocene/Holocene extinction event ~13,000 years ago that wiped out much of the megafauna on the planet along with much of humankind, has been relegated to over hunting by man when evidence of massive flooding and enormous waves are everywhere. With few exceptions one has to go back to work done 40 - 50 years ago to find any HARD science on the event. I'm sure some of IT is also suspect. Do these academics already know what they'll find and don't like what they see? Or is it possible, or even likely they will fall out of favor with the NSF and other scientific money changers?

Darwin himself had trouble explaining the discontinuities he found in the geologic record. His "theory" had holes in it; he knew it and actually owned up to it. That didn't stop others from taking his work, turning it upside down and creating the theory of evolution from whole cloth.

I truly get P!$$#D about this nonsense. Junk science bought and paid for primarily with our tax dollars.

Well, enough of that. I'll just give myself heartburn...