Permian Extinction

[mBear]

Quote: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...

Grasby and colleagues discovered layers of coal ash in rocks from the extinction boundary in Canada's High Arctic that give the first direct proof to support this and have published their findings in Nature Geoscience...

...Previous researchers have suggested massive volcanic eruptions through coal beds in Siberia would generate significant greenhouse gases causing run away global warming.

"Our research is the first to show direct evidence that massive volcanic eruptions -- the largest the world has ever witnessed -caused massive coal combustion thus supporting models for significant generation of greenhouse gases at this time," says Grasby...

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/201...131014.htm

[The Doctor]

I always loved the Gama Ray Burst theory.

[No J.]

God did it. He just put decoy evidence in the ground so he could fool intellegent people and send them to hell. Heaven must be full of redneck IDiots.

[BnW]

Quote: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...

I thought that coal was formed in a similar fashion as oil, basically the compression of carbon subject to millions of years of stress. Or did I not understand coal correctly? Is it just oil that comes from carbon under pressure (for a really long time obviously)? How does coal naturally occur?

I suppose early extinctions could account for the earlier coal, but it seems odd that at that point in Earth's history there would be enough to have that type of impact. Or, again, am I just wrong on coal?

I'm confused and I don't like being confused because it's confusing.

[mBear]

No, you have it right. When CO2 and plant material get trapped underground, coal forms slowly over millions of years.

The earliest recorded fossil of fungi and plants was dated to be approximately 480 million years ago, and molecular data suggests that fungi and plants colonized land approximately 1000 million years ago and 700 million years ago respectively. (I got all this information from Wikipedia because it was more convenient and I have to study for a test tomorrow, so you could double check more reliable sources if you want ). I wasn't able to find out a good approximation of how long it takes for coal to form naturally, but from the time the first plants colonized land, until the volcanic eruptions, there would have been enough time for coal to form (unfortunately for whatever was alive at the time)

If I'm wrong, please correct me