Coal Fires May Have Contributed To Permian Mass Extinction, New Study Finds

250 million years ago was not a fun time to live on earth. Studies now suggest that around this time, volcanic eruptions sparked coal fires that may have led to the extinction of over 90 percent of marine species.

The end of the Permian period culminated in a mass extinction, know as the "Great Dying." Researchers had speculated that volcanism contributed to this, and now there is evidence to accompany the theory. According to Discovery News, researchers reported in Nature Geoscience that they found charred particles in the Arctic. The particles may be coal fly ash, created from burnt coal.

Stephen Grasby, the lead author, and his colleagues believe that huge volcanic eruptions east of Siberia could have set coal seams on fire. This would have sent huge amounts of highly toxic fly ash into the atmosphere. After dispersal, the ash would have settled in the water, limiting light penetration. The ash would have created poisonous conditions, thus supporting the theory that coal ash contributed to mass species extinction.

As further evidence of this theory, it appears that a large amount of char was deposited right before the mass extinction, which could have come from the combustion of coal. According to Gransby, "It's the first literal smoking gun to show that coal combustion was occurring."

Fast-forward 250 million years. Today, coal-fired power plants scrub the toxic fly ash from their emissions. But concern has recently been raised over the dangers of coal ash following a coal ash spill in Tennessee, and the sickening of Pennsylvania residents living near a dump site. When pressed two years ago, Homeland Security wouldn't disclose the location of coal ash dump sites as a matter of national security -- the toxic sites were considered too high a hazard.

Comments

[biffthuringer]

01:25 AM on 01/31/2011

How is this relevant to today, you ask? At the very least, as a cautionary tale. As bad as coal-based plant emissions can be, they pale in comparison to the effects of coal ash, as it is allowed to be disposed of currently, on the health of people living in the vicinity of these vast, toxic impoundments. In the U.S., new EPA “regulations" concerning coal ash are being bought with coal dollars, and abetted by pro-industry puppeteers with their hands on Obama’s strings. The coal industry’s growing list of paid apologists now includes CNN, which, according to the following After the Press video report, aired a story recently about a giant coal ash dump on the W. Va./Penn border – with the “report" in fact sponsored by an airbrushed spot for The Coalition for Clean Coal:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Lwr2SA5Pec

[The Lucid Lens]

07:37 AM on 01/30/2011

Centralia, Pennsylvania

Underground coal-fires have been burning unchecked for decades.

The coal fire, which underlies some 400 acres (1.6 km²), is producing massive amounts of heat; temperatures easily reach 1000°F. Since the government, can't/won't afford a project to put the fire out, wouldn't it make sense to use the location for massive geothermal type operations, maybe scrubbing emissions from the many vents in the town in the process.

Seems like it would help: clean up a horrible disaster, create new economic growth in a decimated area, and provide a relatively low cost source of reliable energy.

In 1979, a measurement was taken of the temperature of the fuel inside a buried tank at a local gas station, and it had reached an alarming 172 °F (77.8 °C).

With water buried slightly deeper in larger tanks, built for the purpose, you would have an incredible amount of steam available for the foreseeable future. The fire is estimated to burn for another 250-500 years and will likely increase in area.

It is a man made blight on the land, but I am surprised nobody has hit up the state for rights to work in the area since the whole place has been condemned, (the zip code was revoked in 2002) with only an estimated four residents remaining.

Maybe I am crazy for even contemplating it, but it seems only right to make the best of a horrible situation. Anyone up for some venture capitalism?

[BluePhantom2]

08:29 PM on 01/28/2011

I'm just glad to hear it wasn't Bush's fault!

[PlutocratsSuck]

09:38 PM on 01/28/2011

No but it may have been one of his_slimy aquatic ancestors.

[BluePhantom2]

09:53 PM on 01/28/2011

Love the picture and new you were out there!

[mamacat]

10:56 AM on 01/28/2011

It isn't in HuffPo yet, but AP has a new headline about climate change causing a mass extinction event 450 million years ago. Seems like a rather ridiculous thing to say. It was about 450 million years ago that oxygen went from being a trace element in the atmosphere to making up about 20% of the air we breath. Both plant and animal life on land came about after plant life in the oceans finally overwhelmed the atmosphere with oxygen. To characterize drastic changes in the earth's properties as climate change seems very disingenuous, and without more background, useless.

[jimboy71]

01:21 PM on 01/28/2011

It's about life being responsible for a mass extinction. I think it is entirely relevant. If bacteria can cause a mass extinction, then surely, we can.

[blueken]

10:31 AM on 01/28/2011

One thing is fairly certain, during a mass extinction Earth is not a nice place to live. We are also certain that if there is another planet that can sustain complex life forms, it is very, very, very, very far away. We should take good care of this planet. A good planet is hard to find.

[maslin]

01:29 PM on 01/28/2011

Not sure I agree 100% with you, but I do like the idea of trying not to screw up our home.

[esquilax]

10:05 PM on 01/26/2011

...and methane burps from permafrost may have in the past too.

Hmmmm, I wonder if that problem is creeping up again?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/14/arctic-permafrost-methane

[blueken]

10:35 AM on 01/28/2011

No doubt whatsover. Methane that has been trapped in permafrost for 100s of thousands of years is being released in Alaska and Siberia. There is also evidence that methane trapped in frozen sea floors could release even more methane if ocean temperatures rise, even a just a few degrees.

[freethinking moderate]

09:23 PM on 01/26/2011

Hmmmm, perhaps some volcanic eruptions could be beneficial to combat global warming. Lets test this theory.

[jimboy71]

01:22 PM on 01/28/2011

???

[tjconkster]

09:14 PM on 01/26/2011

So much for clean coal...

[alexj]

06:49 PM on 01/31/2011

The "cleaner" coal we have today could be more insidious in a way. Not only releasing CO2 at a high rate from the world's power plants, but doing it without as much bothersome particulate and sulfur pollution. It's like most of today's vehicles: Many people assume they're "cleaner", but they still release just as much invisible, odorless CO2 per gallon of fuel as when the internal combustion engine was invented.

[Prescott Auburn]

08:10 PM on 01/26/2011

I recall reading a report that Charbroiled Meat increased the chances of Cancer. Haven't had a coal fired burger since.

[idelwind]

09:02 AM on 01/27/2011

The air you breathe is loaded with toxins that can cause cancer also, now what?

[Prescott Auburn]

03:30 PM on 01/27/2011

I have been studied at U.C.L.A. Medical School for many years, because of a suspected genetic Immunity to certain virus strains. Now they have concluded that I am also statistically far less likely to develop Cancer. This is also because of a genetic resistance, compared to the average person. Having grown up in Smog filled L.A., it makes me sort of a "Highlander" compared to some of the kids I grew up with that were nonsmokers, yet died of lung cancer. I am sad for them. It is important to me to be aware of the environment, for those I love. I'll be ok, though. You, Idk.

[CollectiveId]

08:55 AM on 01/28/2011

Overcooked meat is basically coal. That black stuff sticks to your insides and accumulates over the years.

Not to mention statistically it has been proven eating read meat lowers life expectancy.

Doubt that matters to must Americans who will continue to stuff their mouths eating for fun.

[rambot02]

08:08 PM on 01/26/2011

Don Blakenship was alive 250M years ago? Who knew?

=^..^=

[doubleB]

09:39 PM on 01/26/2011

:D

[HarryP]

10:42 PM on 01/26/2011

rebirth?

[gene-garcon]

06:51 PM on 01/26/2011

There needs to be more substantial evidence in order to clarify that coal fires did indeed kill off life in the Permian era. It would have to be a hell of a lot of coal to emit from that particularly point East of Serbia.

[jimbobuddy]

01:11 AM on 01/27/2011

Siberia

[ken607]

06:19 PM on 01/26/2011

any body hear anything new on the bird die offs? i sure havenot.

[Snerdgronk]

08:47 PM on 01/26/2011

No ... but they're burning the 'midnight oil' to find out

Snerd

[Highlander0666]

02:27 AM on 01/27/2011

They have reported the bird die offs in Arkansas have conclusively been tied to blunt for trauma. So either it was fireworks scaring them enough to fly into buildings or it really was the UFO :P

The 80k drum fish in the Arkansas that died, they still have no explanation for. Chemical and bio disease testing came back normal. That does not, however, conclusively rule out a lighting strike or possible trauma caused by man such as using a welder to electrify the water which I have heard several idiots talk about doing or possibly a sudden drop in oxygen levels which could be cause by many factors.

[ken607]

07:07 AM on 01/27/2011

fireworks? how does that explain the bird dieoffs around the world? really can we believe anything they say anymore

[ken607]

06:18 PM on 01/26/2011

the gop says thats not true. emmisions can kill? wait let me go see by smelling my exhaust.. i'll be right back in 20 min..........................

[rambot02]

08:10 PM on 01/26/2011

Ronnie Raygun called trees "polluters". Oy.

[mamacat]

06:13 PM on 01/26/2011

For more than 90% of the history of the Earth, there was essentially no plant life on dry land. Fossils of simple forms of plant life on land arise about 420 million years ago. Large forests occurred during what we call the Devonian period, around 370 million years ago. We know that there was not a lot of animal life capable of culling the land plants, and there is a lot of evidence that the plant life became very thick over the surface of the Earth. There is also evidence that the percentage of oxygen in the atmosphere was much higher then than now, and we know that increasing the amount of oxygen increases the ability of fire to consume even wet plant life. Under those circumstances, it is certainly conceivable that there could have been unimaginably large fires, of plants, peat, and exposed coal. It is pretty much a given that that environment would have seen huge fires.

To say that any one particular burning of the carbonaceous environment caused mass extinctions of animal life seems a bit of a stretch. On the other hand, the massive eruptions known to have occurred at about the time mentioned might have caused atmospheric changes sufficiently drastic to cause the mass extinction event also known to have occurred at that time. Still, it is an interesting hypothesis.

[Snerdgronk]

08:50 PM on 01/26/2011

So ... more CO2 would decrease the chances of fire ...?

Snerd

[Carol Gebert]

04:06 PM on 01/27/2011

I agree with your skepticism. The title of the article is misleading. While evidence of coal fires during the eruptions has been found, this does not prove causation. According to more in-depth scientific articles, there was extensive acidifcation of the atmosphere during the Permian extinction, leading to greater erosion of minerals into the oceans. This led to over-growth of micro-organisms and hypoxia in the ocean. So it the coal fires were an add-on, but the main cause of extinction was sulfurous gases from the eruptions themselves. I suspect the journalist coining the title wants to make an alarmist reference to modern industrial gases.

[Earfling]

06:05 PM on 01/26/2011

have to laff at the railing against "Big Coal", "Big Oil". Next it will be "Big Solar Power", "Big Wind". Do these posters actually think they get the juice to run their computers from the
"desalinization of tofu"? We certainly could curb energy use to pre-Roman times but it would be
a heckuva sell (especially to the Chinese and Indians).

[Snerdgronk]

08:53 PM on 01/26/2011

So ... if one uses electricity thye have no right to complain about it's source? It seems to me a pretty simplistic, juvenile (R)-Goo-mint

Snerd