Galactic Origin For 62M-Year Extinction Cycle?

Hugh Pickens writes "Cosmologist Adrian Mellott has an article in Seed Magazine discussing his search for the mechanism behind the mass extinctions in earth's history that seem to occur with a period of about 62 million years. Scientists have identified nearly 20 mass extinctions throughout the fossil record, including the end-Permian event about 250 million years ago that killed off about 95 percent of life on Earth. Mellott notes that as our solar system orbits the Milky Way's center, it oscillates through the galactic plane with a period of around 65 million years. 'The space between galaxies is not empty. It's actually full of rarefied hot gas,' says Mellott. 'As our galaxy falls into the Local Supercluster, it should disturb this gas and create a shock wave, like the bow shock of a jet plane,' generating cascades of high-energy subatomic particles and radiation called 'cosmic rays.' These effects could cause enhanced cloud formation and depletion of the ozone layer, killing off many small organisms at the base of the food chain and potentially leading to a population crash. So where is the earth now in the 62-million year extinction cycle? '[W]e are on the downside of biodiversity, a few million years from hitting bottom,' writes Mellott."

Comments

Just no

[Yvanhoe]

The interval between extinctions is 62 million years only if you accept ~30 millions of year of error margin.
The current downfall of biodiversity is really fast compared to the time scale mentioned here. Its most likely reason has two legs, two arms, a big brain and a various set of forest-destroying machines as well as a bad habit of dumping various materials into the ocean.

Re:Skeptics

[rally2xs]

Skeptics? You bet, because this global warming nonsense is just that: Nonsense.

Here's a nice report of the EPA attempting to stampede congress into making the wrong decision to adopt the Cap and Trade disaster by witholding information:

http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=50301

The major points:

(The TSD is EPA's Technical Support Document that it uses to promote the regulation of CO2.)

--The TSD glosses over long-term cyclical variations in ocean temperature, similar to El Nino, which "are by far the best single explanation for global temperature fluctuations," says the report.

The Pacific Decadal Oscillation and the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation are such variations, and occur in roughly 60-year cycles, as opposed to the 3-5 year El Nino cycle. Their role is "not really explained in the draft TSD," the report says. "(A)t the very least, there needs to be an explanation as to why (EPA) believes that these evident cycles do not exist or why they are much more unimportant than we believe them to be."

--The TSD neglects to explore the "strong association between solar sunspots/irradiance and global temperature fluctuations." It dismissed solar variations based on data obtained by a U.N. climate panel, but the veracity of that data has since been called into question. New research "suggests that solar variability could account for up to 68 percent of the increase in Earth's global temperatures."

-- The TSD's assumption that greenhouse gases have triggered global warming is hard to verify, because "changes in (greenhouse gas) concentrations appear to have so little effect that it is difficult to find any effect in the satellite temperature record, which started in 1978."

--Global temperatures have declined for 11 straight years, and at the same time, "atmospheric CO2 levels have continued to increase and CO2 emissions have accelerated." The TSD does not reconcile these findings.

--The TSD finds that there is endangerment to Americans' health and welfare due to greenhouse gas emissions, but the dissenting report says there is an "obvious logical problem posed by steadily increasing U.S. health and welfare measures."

But of course the EPA sat on that, so nobody would know the fraud that is being perpetrated on America, as the "globalization" effort goes forward to carry jobs out of the USA to the "poor" of other countries, and thus make more poor in our country.

Somebody needs their a** kicked, and should the economic collapse that is virtually inevitable if this Cap and Trade disaster is passed occur, they will get it (kicked.) Out of office at a bare minimum, although the massive civil war between liberals and conservatives, alluded to in a previous slashdot article concerning a Russian scholar that predicts that such a war would start next year and break the USA into 5 major areas all under different foreign influence may also take place and totally obliterate the country as we know it.

If it happens, it'll be our own d*** faults for not taking an interest in our politics, but simply going to the beach and having a good time while Rome burns. For instance, we have an answer to our economic problems in the proposal for the "Fair Tax", but since a Republican thought of it, Democrats have all decided to be partisan and oppose it for no other reason than it's a Republican idea. We could be the manufacturing center of the world (again) with a tax structure like that, but... it isn't going to happen, because we've got our heads up our a**** about 5 miles so even the best of ideas will not be implemented.

Maybe things will get better after Civil War II, at least for the places that are NOT under the Russian sphere of influence...

Re:Brain full?

[corbettw]

Yes, you're right. We should just go ahead and stop trying to invent things, perhaps even close down the patent office. Surely everything that can be invented already has been.