Siberian flood basalts and the end-Permian environmental crisis

Paul bristolia at yahoo.com
Mon Dec 29 00:58:40 EST 2008

In press in the "Earth and Planetary Science Letters" is:

Svensen, H., S. Planke, A. G. Polozov, N. Schmidbauer, F. Corfu,
Y. Y. Podladchikov, and B. Jamtveit, in press, Siberian gas
venting and the end-Permian environmental crisis. Earth and
Planetary Science Letters.

The PDF file for this paper can be found at:

http://folk.uio.no/yuripo/papers/svensen_epsl_09.pdf

They concluded that that heating of Tunguska Basin sediments by
the ascending magma of the Siberian Traps Large Igneous Province
was capable of playing a key role in end-Permian environmental
crisis. They argue that the cooking of organic-rich shales and
petroleum-bearing evaporites around sill intrusions produced
sufficient volumes of greenhouse gases and halocarbons to cause
warming and atmospheric ozone depletion on a global scale. They
estimated that the metamorphism of organic matter and petroleum
generated over 100,000 Gigatons of CO2 that were released through
enormous pipe structures associated with kilometre-sized craters.
They also argue from laboratory experiments that cooking of
petroleum-bearing rock salt at high temperatures by the magmas
generated huge quantities of methyl chloride and methyl bromide
that have resulted not only in global warming but also global ozone
depletion.

PDF files of ther papers of Dr Henrik Svensen can be found at:

http://folk.uio.no/hensven/publications.htm

The source of PDF file of related papers where noted in
"[meteorite-list] Online PDF files about Permian-Triassic
extinction" at;

http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/meteorite-list/2008-December/048424.html

Note: I am only summarizing what the above paper states. As
result, this post reflect only the opinions of the authors
of the above paper and **not** my own opinions on this subject.
Thus, any disagreements should directed to the paper and it
authors and **not** me. Furthermore I feel no obligation to
defend their conclusions as I am still in the process of
evaluating the arguments made in this paper.

Yours,

Paul H.