Termite Flatulence Alone Did Not Cause The Great Dying, There Was Probably A Microbial Alliance
The Great Namazu Explains "The Great Dying"
As I explained in my essay IN DEFENSE OF THE REEMPLOYMENT RIGHTS OF DEMIGODS I am a personification of forces of nature. Demigod was not a job description that I chose. As I explained to my now friends from the religious right as a giant catfish I'm ineligible for baptism though, as I explained, personally I'm a monotheist. But as a product of the human imagination, as a personification of forces of nature I'm very concerned with the future of intelligent bipeds on this planet since I'm utterly reliant on your collective imagination for continued existence. So when certain political elements start playing fast and loose with scientific data I fell obligated to apply my 3,000 years of accumulated wisdom to set things straight. In looking at how little real data you bipeds have on weather over even the last 200 years my 3,000 year perspective has been a pretty accurate BS detector. But I have to admit in the interest of scientific accuracy that I have no particular advantage of hindsight when we start talking about events 252 million years in the past. Yet we know that about 252 million years ago the greatest extinction of life forms ever on this planet happened. Knowing why would be most instructive in helping the intelligent bipeds, and consequently we surviving Namazui, to survive a similar event.
Over 252 million years ago the carbon mix in the earth's atmosphere changed radically in a relatively short time. This created climate change, and something often referred to as the "Great Dying". The end-Permian extinction event caused the extinction of roughly 90% of the life forms in the oceans and wrecked similar havoc on land. In previous posts on massive natural climate change we focused on mega climate changers like massive volcanic activity, planetary orbital changes, planetary axis wobble, comet and meteor strikes. But we also mentioned how the planet acquired most of its atmospheric methane content not by man and his domestic animals but from termite flatulence over many more millions of years than any of you mammals have been on the planet. Obviously the Great Dying occurred before any of you bipeds were walking above ground. Scientists have long wondered about the "Great Dying" and most often in the past speculated that the event was related to one of those macro agents of climate change. Our discussion of termite flatulence was the first hint I issued that sometimes agents of macro climate change can be micro in nature.
Now a number of scientist reviewing the latest data on the Great Dying are starting to theorize that the cause of the macro climate change was indeed micro in nature, indeed smaller individually than the termites ,which by the way, survived the "Great Dying".
New data indicates that the change in the carbon percentage in the atmosphere may have been caused by some microbial unwitting alliance with the termites. It is speculated from new data that a microbe mutated and ran wild fire through the oceans. This microbe evolved ( via a rather sudden mutation ) an ability to digest organic material into methane. To come to this new understanding of the causation of the "Great Dying" scientists had to look at the geochemical clues, the most prominent one in the geological record is a sudden swing in the balance of carbon isotopes stored in rock of the same period. If geologists can determine the cause of the sudden carbon profile shift they will be able to identify the cause of the "Great Dying". In the past science has speculated about the usual culprits, macro causes like massive volcanism, or a drop in sea level, but none of the macro causes quite match the data and you bipeds weren't around to blame things on. So far, the microbial explanation seems to be working out as the best fit.
Here at the Namazu School of Climatology we vehemently deny being "climate change deniers" ( a political , not scientific term) Climates change , that's what they do. We may possibly be having an effect on climate right now but in terms of rising temperatures that effect, if any had been decreasing for some time when two years ago a bunch of solar flares at least temporarily gave us two harsh winters that dropped average global temperatures back below a fraction of a degree of their average when we first began to notice "global warming". The predictions are that these solar flare events will continue to drive colder than average winters through 2012, though that seems a bit speculative. Our point is that climates change, that's what they do. The causes may be macro or micro but nature has plenty of such climate change mechanisms and there is nothing we can do about them. However if we'd simply admit that climate change can be sudden, drastic, and happen independent of man's actions we might finally be able to concentrate some governmental, corporate, and individual effort on doing what we can technologically to insure the survival of human civilization in time for the next major event. Its not a case of if, its a case of when. But by addressing building codes, flood control, and food production security large urban concentrations of bipeds will be able to survive. Right now such a climate change would result in a "Great Dying" of the bipeds.
Here are some links to some more scientific explanations:
http://www.space.com/26654-microbe-innovation-started-largest-earth-extinction.html?cmpid=514648
http://www.astrobio.net/topic/solar-system/earth/geology/an-extinction-in-the-blink-of-an-eye/
Accidents covered in this E-book include:
