The Sky is Falling, Literally, or Fell Once Upon a Time!

Well, Al Gore keeps saying that the sky is causing the earth to warm up and he has historical precedents of all kinds to point to, although they are way far back in time. We are all now more or less familiar with the iridium layer between the Cretaceous and the Eocene which was caused by a 6-mile wide asteroid that hit the Yucatan Peninsula 65 million years ago. Now comes more and bigger precedents.

The Permian-Triassic Mass Extinction 251 million years ago dwarfed the Cretaceous die-off of the dinosaurs in duration and extent, as far as paleontologists can gather that far back. Back in the days when I would read Scientific American in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, I recall reading the mystery surrounding the fact that a species of giant land animal that was warm-blooded and superior in bone structure [diapcids?}to the dinosaurs had preceded the dinosaurs, but died out long before the thunder-lizards appeared on the scene.

Now it appears that a 30-mile wide asteroid that caused a gigantic crater hidden under the ice in Antarctica might have been the culprit causing the Permian die-off.

Yahoo's link above has a link to Space.com detailing the scientific knowledge of the Permian-Triassic border event 250 million years ago. Back then, a huge crater in western Australia was suspected to be the event horizon [or whatever they call the spot in the middle of the bullseye] for the more ancient extinction. South African scientists have been onto the story for a decade-plus.

Of course, unlike Gore's Apocalypse Now Redux movie-of-the-week, real science and real scientists don't follow Box Office or Voting Booths to ascertain the real condition of our planet's previous [and present] ecosystem.

For the latest info from that side of the pop-scifi pseudo-politics, just dial up your lefty bloggers and get the crystal meth view of political "science." The sky did fall twice, or at least huge space chunks destroyed the vast majority of life forms twice in earth's history.

Vote Democrat so it won't happen again!