Rincker.nl

Lets talk big picture for a second. Humanity is now, suddenly, over the course of one hundred years, raising global average temperatures by 4 to 6 degrees (4 degrees estimated this century). This is having several effects: droughts, floods, forest fires, melting poles, melting methane hydrates escaping from the seabed. Reduced oceanic oxygen causing dead zones.

This has happened before. 251.4 Million years ago, at the end of the Permian. Vulcanic eruptions in Siberia covered an area of 7 million square kilometers of land with lava. It also ran into the shallow waters of the continent that then had a different shape, it melted and released methane hydrates in the shallow continental shelves. This riased global temperatures by an average of 6 degrees. It stopped the movement of ocean water, because the temperature differential between the poles and the equator dissapeared. Oxygen was reduced in the atmosphere as well.

Life disappeared. All but most that is, 96% of ocean life, because it needs oxygen. 86% or so of land animals disappeared. Even most insects died. Did the atmosphere become poison? That period is known as the 'Great Dying' as it was the biggest extinction event in our planets history. It took 500.000 years for any stabile life forms to reappear, which might be considered a miracle.

We have republicans and democrats bickering over a climate bill. What we should worry about is arresting the temperature increase and preventing a similar 'methane burp' to occur (which is staring now around the poles and on the melting tundra's, all methane release). Perhaps it is still possible.