Apocalypse revisited

[dArKeR]

George Monbiot


03 March 2004 05:33




It is old news — 251-million years old — but the story of what happened then, now told for the first time, demands our urgent attention. Its implications are more profound than anything taking place in Washington or Iraq. Prehistory may soon repeat itself, not as tragedy but as catastrophe, unless we understand what happened and act upon that intelligence.

The events that brought the Permian period between 286-million and 251-million years ago to an end could not be determined clearly until the mapping of key geological sequences had been completed. Until recently palaeontologists had assumed that the changes that took place then were gradual and piecemeal. But three years ago a precise date for the end of the period was established, which enabled geologists to draw direct comparisons between the rocks laid down at that time in different parts of the world.

They made a shattering discovery. In China, South Africa, Australia, Greenland, Russia and Svalbard the rocks record an almost identical sequence of events, taking place not gradually, but instantaneously. They show that a cataclysm caused by natural processes almost brought life on Earth to an end. They also suggest that a set of human activities that threatens to replicate those processes could exert the same effect within the lifetime of some of those on Earth today.

http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?o=43885

[meow mix]

1. tappity tappity tap

i hear little tiny roach feet, dancing...

[Karmadillo]

2. More on methane hydrate.

http://www.hydrogen.co.uk/h2_now/journal/articles/3_Methane.htm

<edit>

The most likely cause of this rapid global warming over such a short period is the release of methane into the atmosphere. Methane is 60 times more powerful than CO2 as a greenhouse gas but only remains in the atmosphere for about ten years and so looses it's greenhouse effect quickly compared to CO2 which remains in the atmosphere for 100 years. CO2 would not be available in sufficient quantities to achieve the rapid warming and if CO2 was the cause then the raised temperatures would last a lot longer.

Methane hydrates occur extensively today all over the world. They consist of methane stored within unstable water bound deposits that if disturbed release the methane. They occur in major river deltas such as the Amazon delta and in old delta areas such as the Gulf of Mexico. Major rivers carry millions of tons of silt containing vegetable matter that continues to decay after the silt is deposited in the river delta. This anaerobic decay produces methane which gets trapped in the silt as methane hydrates until the conditions of water temperature and pressure change which can release the methane in vast quantities very quickly. Another form is a frozen slush/ice methane hydrate where the methane is trapped in an ice/water mixture which releases the methane when it warms up or the pressure on the ice is reduced. Frozen methane hydrates can contain 170 times their own volume of methane. These frozen hydrates occur in the seabed deposits of the Arctic Ocean.

Methane can also be trapped by permafrost layers which over-lay lower unfrozen layers of vegetable material that is decaying and producing methane which remains trapped by the frozen permafrost on top. If the permafrost layer were to melt then the methane in the layers below would escape into the atmosphere. Given the vast areas of permafrost in northern latitudes there is a significant potential for methane to be trapped that would be released if the permafrost melted as a result of global warming.

The theory for these rapid rises and falls of temperature, based on the geological records from 55 million years ago, is that gradual global warming due to some natural cause had resulted in temperatures 5 to 7 degrees centigrade higher than average ( i.e. higher than today's temperatures). At this point methane trapped in methane hydrate deposits started to be released into the atmosphere and accelerated the rate of warming. This would result in further warming releasing more methane. As the atmosphere warmed different types of methane deposits would start to be released and so a cycle of methane release leading to increased warming leading to more methane release from other areas of methane deposits elsewhere in the world would become established as global warming effected different areas of the world.

more...

[Sliverofhope]

3. My, this is a future that looks absolutely splendid

I hope all of these can't be true, but it just seems the horrors will never cease.

[Renew Deal]

8. One after the other after the other

Peak Oil, Global warming and Cooling. A new ice age, floods, droughts, and the Bush economy.

[Dogmudgeon]

4. Asteroid Impacts and Die-Offs

There was also a major asteroid impact at that time, probably from an object larger than the one that slammed into Chicxulub 65 MYa. That one was 8-12 km in size (average diameter).

The "Iceball Earth" period (1100-700 MYa) may have been caused by a really big impact. There was also a well-researched impact, and die-off, about 2 million years ago. The object is called the Eltanin impactor, after the name of the ship that discovered it in the South Pacific. Eltanin was about 1-2 km in size.

The odd thing is that all the known impacts related to die-offs came after a die-off was in progress. There are also increasing amounts of evidence for multiple impacts. The K-T impactor was one of at least two, and possibly more, impact events in a short amount of time. This leads some people to believe that increases and decreases in cosmic dust and rock, as the solar system moves through the galactic spiral arms, are common factors to each.

We're in the middle of a massive die-off right now, but fortunately it's nowhere near as intense as the Permian and K-T die-offs.

--bkl

[minkyboodle]

5. Question

Doesn't the Mayan end of the long count coincide with a passage through a galactic spiral arm? I know its some kind of galactic alignment but its too early in the AM for me to be sure if I'm remembering right. However, I have also heard from some that the Mayan end date was really a new beginning that would bring greater consciousness to all of humanity.. Should be an interesting time.
Scott

[Dogmudgeon]

6. I don't think so, but I may be wrong

The Long Count is 26,000 years or so ... right? Wrong?

Spiral arm transit is less regular, but not too irregular. We enter and exit spiral arms about every 50 million years.

I'm sure you're aware that the end of the Long Count is supposed to be on Christmas Eve 2012. But many Mayan scholars have come forward and explained that the beginning date was chosen at random, and that the subcycles' lengths are what really have significance.

Terrence McKenna's work (like Invisible Landscape) is interesting in this regard. I wouldn't attribute scientific precision to it, but it'll get you thnking.

Higher consciousness? That presupposes we've achieved low consciousness. That's a quantum leap I'm not prepared to make -- "Get me out of here, Al!" :)

--bkl

[minkyboodle]

7. agreed

Like you said the Long Count is 25626.8 tropical years and the interactions with spiral arms are on a much longer scale of time. I was thinking of the alignment of the elliptic and the galactic core (more to do with precession). I think the end date is December 21st 2012 on the Winter solstice. I agree that the main thing about all these speculative historical/astronomical connections is not to take it as concrete fact but interesting speculation but damnit I do find this stuff really fascinating :) Are you a believer in the lost parent civilization ideas? I must say there are many interesting connections but I'm too much of a layman to confidently speak on some of the subjects. Like I said fun stuff to read about though.
Scott

[Dogmudgeon]

9. In the Arms of Lost Civilizations

I don't believe the ideas, but I wouldn't be too astounded if it turned out to be true.

I'm more of a "believer" in Anthropocentric ideas, but again, I wouldn't be too astounded if I turned out to be wrong.

I do think it's likely that there was an ice-age civilization that got itself flooded out by the rapid end of the last ice age. It may not have been as advanced as ours, but given several thousands of years, their expertise in astronomy could have been formidable. Major climate changes, both within and outside of ice ages, seem to happen every 13k years, which is one-half of the Long Count and polar precession.

There are a lot of very interesting data that dates to the time before the Younger-Dryas "event", but it's poorly studied and comes from jumbled messes of strata, as you might expect by objects subjected to repeated flooding and freezing. For instance, there's a lot of intresting things to be found in the Aleutian Islands, which was largely spared from the ice, but it's difficult for archeologists to work there.

Astounding Siberian finds periodically emerge but are discredited quickly -- largely because many scientists from that area are unusually superstitious. The artifacts should be subject to renewed study to see if we can piece together history from before the major glacial melts.

From this distance, it's easy to ascribe unearthly influences to our ancestors, but I don't think aliens figured into our history at all. In fact, alien meddling would probably make it easier to understand pre-flood humans. Human beings seem to be the strangest things in the universe, the universe itself running a close second.

--bkl

[Nihil]

10. Could you expand on this please?

> Astounding Siberian finds periodically emerge but are discredited
> quickly -- largely because many scientists from that area are
> unusually superstitious.

"Discredited"? By whom?

"Scientists from that area"? Pardon my ignorance but does this mean
people from the area who have trained elsewhere and returned or are
there major educational/research establishments there?

"Unusually superstitious"? As in religious? Unconventional?
Ultra-orthodox (i.e., "Victorian")?
Are they superstitious in their examination, their reporting or their
theories? Are they superstitious about the raw materials or the
interpretation of events?

Thanks,

Nihil

[treepig]

11. if you want information on lost civilizations

you really have to go the primary sources, in this case The Journal of Hieroglyphics. here are some comments on the issue currently at hand: