Posted on 11/29/2006 7:31:52 AM PST by aculeus
Could a dangerous gas buildup at the bottom of the ocean bubble up and wipe out most life on Earth? According to some researchers, it already has done so; several times.
Scientists mostly agree that it was an object from space that crashed into Earth 65 million years ago, killing off much of the planet's life, including most of the dinosaurs. But geologists have found evidence of four other major mass extinctions and more than a dozen other smaller similar extinctions over the past 500 million years. In addition they've not found any corresponding evidence of a collision from an object from space.
Peter Ward, Biology and Earth and Space Sciences Professor at the University of Washington says, "Try as people would, they could not find evidence for impact other than at, really, the age of dinosaurs." Writing in Scientific American, Ward says instead that, "A new type of evidence reveals that the earth itself can, and probably did, exterminate its own inhabitants."
The killer is a type of bacteria that needs lots of sunlight but very little oxygen to thrive. It gives off the gas hydrogen sulfide, which even in small concentrations is lethal. People generally call the gas "sewer gas."
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencentral.com ...
Let's hope it's not a burp that contains Polonium 210, large or small!
Probably all the SUVs they drive down there.
Well, I'd best run out and buy up all the oxygen tanks I need... /sarc
An enviromentalist's worst nightmare - life on Earth gets wiped out, not by humans and their evil factories and SUVs, but by the Earth letting out one big, giant fart.
Dammit, now I'm gonna have to go out and get drunk after work after reading that.
Wait a minute. I already had planned to do that anyway before reading the article.
I believe that this would be a Deadly Ocean Fart, rather than a burp.
exactly - we all know about SBDs!
didn't Clive Cussler write abotu this phenonema?
Today, instead of volcanoes, it's human activity that is creating greenhouse gasses like carbon dioxide, causing the earth to warm. Ward worries, "The last time we had one of these extinctions, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was a thousand parts per million. Today, we're at 385 parts per million and rising." He says some estimates put us reaching a thousand parts per million in 200 more years.This is a grotesque oversimplification of an exorbitantly complicated atmospheric process. Any real scientist would be ashamed to make such an assumption.
I hadn't stopped to think of blooms being deadly via the air.
It's not likely we'll ever see it, though.
So think the next time you drop the rest of that uneaten burrito into the ocean.
It would seen that "A thousand and one ways the earth will be destroyed" has become a cottage industry. I guess the "God is dead" generation is worried. I'm not. God is still in control. He started it, He will finish it. Why should I worry?
It hasn't stopped them so far.
I had a brother who could emit enough hydrogen sulfide to wipe out an entire civilization.
Agenda before science.
This is confirming proof that the decision to stress science in schools has created a bunch of idle scientist that are looking for government largese to fund their lifestyle thru the research of jackassery.
Follow the money.
Why has FEMA not done anything to prevent this? It's Bush's fault.
Does anyone else out there believe that the earth is a giant etch-a-sketch for aliens?
I mean crop circles, all the environmental stuff that goes on as well as the present status of Islam.
Sometimes I get the feeling that God and Satan are really two aliens that chose up sides and are using earth as their own playground.
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