Methane-producing microbes blamed for biggest ever mass extinction

[ScienceRocks]

Methane-producing microbes blamed for biggest ever mass extinction

Methanosarcina churned out vast quantities of the greenhouse gas methane 252m years ago, sending temperatures soaring

Climate-changing microbes may have caused the biggest mass extinction in history 252m years ago, scientists believe.

Volcanic eruptions had previously been blamed for the sudden loss of 90% of all species on Earth at the end of the Permian era. But new research suggests volcanoes only played a bit part in the catastrophe.

The chief perpetrators appear to have been a microscopic methane-producing life form called Methanosarcina that bloomed explosively in the oceans. The enormous quantities of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, generated by the single-celled organism are thought to have sent temperatures soaring and acidified the seas. Unable to adapt quickly enough, countless species vanished from the Earth.

Analysis of geological carbon deposits reveals a significant boost in levels of carbon-containing gases – either carbon dioxide or methane – at the time of the mass extinction. But volcanic eruptions alone could never have produced the amount of carbon laid down in rock sediments during this period, the researchers claim.

Methane-producing microbes blamed for biggest ever mass extinction | Science | theguardian.com

 

[bripat9643]

Methane-producing microbes blamed for biggest ever mass extinction

Methanosarcina churned out vast quantities of the greenhouse gas methane 252m years ago, sending temperatures soaring

Climate-changing microbes may have caused the biggest mass extinction in history 252m years ago, scientists believe.

Volcanic eruptions had previously been blamed for the sudden loss of 90% of all species on Earth at the end of the Permian era. But new research suggests volcanoes only played a bit part in the catastrophe.

The chief perpetrators appear to have been a microscopic methane-producing life form called Methanosarcina that bloomed explosively in the oceans. The enormous quantities of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, generated by the single-celled organism are thought to have sent temperatures soaring and acidified the seas. Unable to adapt quickly enough, countless species vanished from the Earth.

Analysis of geological carbon deposits reveals a significant boost in levels of carbon-containing gases – either carbon dioxide or methane – at the time of the mass extinction. But volcanic eruptions alone could never have produced the amount of carbon laid down in rock sediments during this period, the researchers claim.

Methane-producing microbes blamed for biggest ever mass extinction | Science | theguardian.com

Now why would this "Methanosarcina" bloom explosively?

Me thinkst the AGW nutburgers are getting desperate.

 

[HenryBHough]

This is why many churches have eliminated Saturday night "Ham & Bean" suppers.

 

[TheOldSchool]

Worst thread ever

 

[ScienceRocks]

Worst thread ever

Real science makes it the worse thread ever? No wonder this country is screwed.

 

[Old Rocks]

The Siberian Trapps cooked some major coal beds, resulting in massive methane releases.

Explosive eruption of coal and basalt and the end-Permian mass extinction

The end-Permian extinction decimated up to 95% of carbonate shell-bearing marine species and 80% of land animals. Isotopic excursions, dissolution of shallow marine carbonates, and the demise of carbonate shell-bearing organisms suggest global warming and ocean acidification. The temporal association of the extinction with the Siberia flood basalts at approximately 250 Ma is well known, and recent evidence suggests these flood basalts may have mobilized carbon in thick deposits of organic-rich sediments. Large isotopic excursions recorded in this period are potentially explained by rapid venting of coal-derived methane, which has primarily been attributed to metamorphism of coal by basaltic intrusion. However, recently discovered contemporaneous deposits of fly ash in northern Canada suggest large-scale combustion of coal as an additional mechanism for rapid release of carbon. This massive coal combustion may have resulted from explosive interaction with basalt sills of the Siberian Traps. Here we present physical analysis of explosive eruption of coal and basalt, demonstrating that it is a viable mechanism for global extinction. We describe and constrain the physics of this process including necessary magnitudes of basaltic intrusion, mixing and mobilization of coal and basalt, ascent to the surface, explosive combustion, and the atmospheric rise necessary for global distribution.

Recent studies have brought the Great Dying at the end of the Permian Period into focus. Up to 95% of shell-bearing marine species and 80% of land animals perished (1, 2). The temporal association of the extinction with the Siberia flood basalts at approximately 250 Ma is well known (1–7), but a causal mechanism connecting the flood basalts to global extinction is not evident. The flows directly killed only those biota in their path, and basalt is not a massive source of greenhouse gases such as CO2 (8). Recent studies suggest flood basalts may have mobilized carbon in thick deposits of organic-rich sediments, resulting in global climate change and extinction (4, 5, 7, 9–13). New work also suggests magmatic release of CO2 from mantle-derived eclogite as a potential extinction mechanism (14).

Could there also have been a contribution from those microbes? Absolutely. The ash could well have fueled an oceanic bloom. And the rising temperatures created a massive outgassing of such clathrates as existed at that time. And, further into the article, you will find cited a possible deep source for additional CO2.

 

[theHawk]

So in other words, global warming and mass extinctions are natrual.

Does this mean we can stop the hysteria about 'carbon footprints'?

 

[Abraham3]

So in other words, global warming and mass extinctions are natrual.

Does this mean we can stop the hysteria about 'carbon footprints'?

No. It means that CO2 and methane can hurt you. The nonsense we keep hearing that it's good for our crops and that a warmer world is better than a colder world are complete crap.

BTW, dying is natural. Does that mean it's okay to stop trying to keep you (and everyone else) alive?

I didn't think so.

 

[editec]

There have been at least 5 mass extinctions and each one happened for different reasons.

Endangered Species International

We appear to be involved in another mass extinction event and this one is very much directly the result of mankinds 6.5 BILLION people destroying habitats around the world in various ways.

 

[westwall]

Now that CO2 has been exonerated from being an evil gas (after all the last 17 years have been flat global temp wise, in an ever rising CO2 atmosphere) they have to generate a new evil trace gas. And that is methane. This first came up in a really awful documentary called "The Day the Earth Died" (or something to that effect) where the producers tried to blame the extinction on methane. Ignoring the Siberian Traps, which erupted for MILLIONS of years and the global cooling that would result from that.

The fact remains the P-T extinction did occur relatively quickly on a geologic time span, 80,000 years give or take, but the evidence supports COOLING, not warming as a cause. The temperature of the world for over 75% of its existence has been much warmer than today.

 

[westwall]

There have been at least 5 mass extinctions and each one happened for different reasons.

Endangered Species International

We appear to be involved in another mass extinction event and this one is very much directly the result of mankinds 6.5 BILLION people destroying habitats around the world in various ways.

Only in the fevered minds of a environmental fanatic could the current time be considered an "extinction event". The title of the study below should put that particular bit of idiocy to bed.


Inventory lists 19,232 newly discovered species during latest count




Inventory lists 19,232 newly discovered species during latest count -- ScienceDaily

 

[Iceweasel]

First it was asteroids that killed the dinosaurs. Then volcanos. Now microbe farts? I can't keep up.

 

[Old Rocks]

First it was asteroids that killed the dinosaurs. Then volcanos. Now microbe farts? I can't keep up.

Sheesh. And even dumber **** than the norm for this board

 

[Old Rocks]

There have been at least 5 mass extinctions and each one happened for different reasons.

Endangered Species International

We appear to be involved in another mass extinction event and this one is very much directly the result of mankinds 6.5 BILLION people destroying habitats around the world in various ways.

Only in the fevered minds of a environmental fanatic could the current time be considered an "extinction event". The title of the study below should put that particular bit of idiocy to bed.


Inventory lists 19,232 newly discovered species during latest count




Inventory lists 19,232 newly discovered species during latest count -- ScienceDaily

Once again ol' Wallyeyes bolsters his reputation as a bald faced liar.

The Sixth Great Extinction: A Silent Extermination ? News Watch

LONESOME GEORGE

Lonesome George is a large, mud-loving Pinta tortoise (Geochelone elephantopus abingdoni), living out his long life in the Galapagos Islands. In 1971, George was found alone on Pinta Island and taken to the Charles Darwin Research Station, where scientists theorized that he was the last of his subspecies on the planet. When he dies, his genetic lineage will disappear forever. Unfortunately, his companionless circumstances are not unique. In fact, we are in the midst of the Sixth Great Extinction, an event characterized by the loss of between 17,000 and 100,000 species each year.

Are We in the Middle of a Sixth Mass Extinction? | Science/AAAS | News


Are We in the Middle of a Sixth Mass Extinction?
2 March 2011 1:01 pm
2 Comments
Earth's creatures are on the brink of a sixth mass extinction, comparable to the one that wiped out the dinosaurs. That's the conclusion of a new study, which calculates that three-quarters of today's animal species could vanish within 300 years. "This is really gloom-and-doom stuff," says the study's lead author, paleobiologist Anthony Barnosky of the University of California, Berkeley. "But the good news is we haven't come so far down the road that it's inevitable."

Species naturally come and go over long periods of time. But what sets a mass extinction apart is that three-quarters of all species vanish quickly. Earth has already endured five mass extinctions, including the asteroid that wiped out dinosaurs and other creatures 65 million years ago. Conservationists have warned for years that we are in the midst of a sixth, human-caused extinction, with species from frogs to birds to tigers threatened by climate change, disease, loss of habitat, and competition for resources with nonnative species. But how does this new mass extinction compare with the other five?

Barnosky and colleagues took on this challenge by looking to the past. First, they calculated the rate at which mammals, which are well represented in the fossil record, died off in the past 65 million years, finding an average extinction rate of less than two species per million years. But in the past 500 years, a minimum of 80 of 5570 species of mammals have gone extinct, according to biologists' conservative estimates—an extinction rate that is actually above documented rates for past mass extinctions, says Barnosky. All of this means that we're at the beginning of a mass extinction that will play out over hundreds or thousands of years, his team concludes online today in Nature.

 

[westwall]

There have been at least 5 mass extinctions and each one happened for different reasons.

Endangered Species International

We appear to be involved in another mass extinction event and this one is very much directly the result of mankinds 6.5 BILLION people destroying habitats around the world in various ways.

Only in the fevered minds of a environmental fanatic could the current time be considered an "extinction event". The title of the study below should put that particular bit of idiocy to bed.


Inventory lists 19,232 newly discovered species during latest count




Inventory lists 19,232 newly discovered species during latest count -- ScienceDaily

Once again ol' Wallyeyes bolsters his reputation as a bald faced liar.

The Sixth Great Extinction: A Silent Extermination ? News Watch

LONESOME GEORGE

Lonesome George is a large, mud-loving Pinta tortoise (Geochelone elephantopus abingdoni), living out his long life in the Galapagos Islands. In 1971, George was found alone on Pinta Island and taken to the Charles Darwin Research Station, where scientists theorized that he was the last of his subspecies on the planet. When he dies, his genetic lineage will disappear forever. Unfortunately, his companionless circumstances are not unique. In fact, we are in the midst of the Sixth Great Extinction, an event characterized by the loss of between 17,000 and 100,000 species each year.

Are We in the Middle of a Sixth Mass Extinction? | Science/AAAS | News


Are We in the Middle of a Sixth Mass Extinction?
2 March 2011 1:01 pm
2 Comments
Earth's creatures are on the brink of a sixth mass extinction, comparable to the one that wiped out the dinosaurs. That's the conclusion of a new study, which calculates that three-quarters of today's animal species could vanish within 300 years. "This is really gloom-and-doom stuff," says the study's lead author, paleobiologist Anthony Barnosky of the University of California, Berkeley. "But the good news is we haven't come so far down the road that it's inevitable."

Species naturally come and go over long periods of time. But what sets a mass extinction apart is that three-quarters of all species vanish quickly. Earth has already endured five mass extinctions, including the asteroid that wiped out dinosaurs and other creatures 65 million years ago. Conservationists have warned for years that we are in the midst of a sixth, human-caused extinction, with species from frogs to birds to tigers threatened by climate change, disease, loss of habitat, and competition for resources with nonnative species. But how does this new mass extinction compare with the other five?

Barnosky and colleagues took on this challenge by looking to the past. First, they calculated the rate at which mammals, which are well represented in the fossil record, died off in the past 65 million years, finding an average extinction rate of less than two species per million years. But in the past 500 years, a minimum of 80 of 5570 species of mammals have gone extinct, according to biologists' conservative estimates—an extinction rate that is actually above documented rates for past mass extinctions, says Barnosky. All of this means that we're at the beginning of a mass extinction that will play out over hundreds or thousands of years, his team concludes online today in Nature.

So, how many creatures have gone extinct in the last 1000 years? Compare that to the 19,000 new species listed. Then, take your stupid propaganda, and piss off.

 

[theHawk]

So in other words, global warming and mass extinctions are natrual.

Does this mean we can stop the hysteria about 'carbon footprints'?

No. It means that CO2 and methane can hurt you. The nonsense we keep hearing that it's good for our crops and that a warmer world is better than a colder world are complete crap.

BTW, dying is natural. Does that mean it's okay to stop trying to keep you (and everyone else) alive?

I didn't think so.

I'm not asking anyone to alter their lifestyle to help me live longer.

Carry on, Bozo.

 

[theHawk]

There have been at least 5 mass extinctions and each one happened for different reasons.

Endangered Species International

We appear to be involved in another mass extinction event and this one is very much directly the result of mankinds 6.5 BILLION people destroying habitats around the world in various ways.

Only in the fevered minds of a environmental fanatic could the current time be considered an "extinction event". The title of the study below should put that particular bit of idiocy to bed.


Inventory lists 19,232 newly discovered species during latest count




Inventory lists 19,232 newly discovered species during latest count -- ScienceDaily

Once again ol' Wallyeyes bolsters his reputation as a bald faced liar.

The Sixth Great Extinction: A Silent Extermination ? News Watch

LONESOME GEORGE

Lonesome George is a large, mud-loving Pinta tortoise (Geochelone elephantopus abingdoni), living out his long life in the Galapagos Islands. In 1971, George was found alone on Pinta Island and taken to the Charles Darwin Research Station, where scientists theorized that he was the last of his subspecies on the planet. When he dies, his genetic lineage will disappear forever. Unfortunately, his companionless circumstances are not unique. In fact, we are in the midst of the Sixth Great Extinction, an event characterized by the loss of between 17,000 and 100,000 species each year.

Are We in the Middle of a Sixth Mass Extinction? | Science/AAAS | News


Are We in the Middle of a Sixth Mass Extinction?
2 March 2011 1:01 pm
2 Comments
Earth's creatures are on the brink of a sixth mass extinction, comparable to the one that wiped out the dinosaurs. That's the conclusion of a new study, which calculates that three-quarters of today's animal species could vanish within 300 years. "This is really gloom-and-doom stuff," says the study's lead author, paleobiologist Anthony Barnosky of the University of California, Berkeley. "But the good news is we haven't come so far down the road that it's inevitable."

Species naturally come and go over long periods of time. But what sets a mass extinction apart is that three-quarters of all species vanish quickly. Earth has already endured five mass extinctions, including the asteroid that wiped out dinosaurs and other creatures 65 million years ago. Conservationists have warned for years that we are in the midst of a sixth, human-caused extinction, with species from frogs to birds to tigers threatened by climate change, disease, loss of habitat, and competition for resources with nonnative species. But how does this new mass extinction compare with the other five?

Barnosky and colleagues took on this challenge by looking to the past. First, they calculated the rate at which mammals, which are well represented in the fossil record, died off in the past 65 million years, finding an average extinction rate of less than two species per million years. But in the past 500 years, a minimum of 80 of 5570 species of mammals have gone extinct, according to biologists' conservative estimates—an extinction rate that is actually above documented rates for past mass extinctions, says Barnosky. All of this means that we're at the beginning of a mass extinction that will play out over hundreds or thousands of years, his team concludes online today in Nature.

Oh gawd, you ******* doom 'n gloom dopes just don't stop, do you?

Our world has always been in a constant state of change, and species have naturally been going extinct for billions of years. But liberals have a plan to stop all change!

What exactly is that plan again? Force everyone to give up technology and live in huts again?

 

[Abraham3]

So... you wouldn't object - or urge action to prevent - to the extinction of the human species if it might be natural? Pardon me if I don't follow your lead on that.

Additionally, I was tickled pink by Westwall's apparent belief that new species are discovered BECAUSE THEY HAVE JUST COME INTO EXISTENCE.

 

[JWBooth]

As with the same report on NPR, lots of maybe, could be, we guess. Yet no fossil evidence for a microbe bloom.
Nothing to see here but much meme supporting supposition.

 

[Abraham3]

JWBooth,

Did you actually expert certitude about an event that took place 252 million years ago? Do you expect certitude about any topic in the natural sciences? Do you understand how the scientific method works?

The answers to those questions would seem to be YES and YES because NO.