Mass Extinctions By Brian Simpson

     People who spend most of their time thinking about narrow economic issues may not take a cosmic view to the rest of reality. It is humbling to consider life, and death, on earth. If you go by evolution, over the long time periods, there were mass extinctions, where most life died off. Even by creationist accounts, there were also mass extinctions, perhaps equal to the materialist world view events, and the Real Big One, Judgment Day is a coming. Anyway, scientists believe that they have uncovered a new mass extinction event:
  https://phys.org/news/2019-09-unearth-extinction.html

“A team of scientists has concluded that earth experienced a previously underestimated severe mass-extinction event, which occurred about 260 million years ago, raising the total of major mass extinctions in the geologic record to six. "It is crucial that we know the number of severe mass extinctions and their timing in order to investigate their causes," explains Michael Rampino, a professor in New York University's Department of Biology and a co-author of the analysis, which appears in the journal Historical Biology. "Notably, all six major mass extinctions are correlated with devastating environmental upheavals—specifically, massive flood-basalt eruptions, each covering more than a million square kilometers with thick lava flows." Scientists had previously determined that there were five major mass-extinction events, wiping out large numbers of species and defining the ends of geological periods: the end of the Ordovician (443 million years ago), the Late Devonian (372 million years ago), the Permian (252 million years ago), the Triassic (201 million years ago), and the Cretaceous (66 million years ago). And, in fact, many researchers have raised concerns about the contemporary, ongoing loss of species diversity—a development that might be labeled a "seventh extinction" because such a modern mass extinction, scientists have predicted, could end up being as severe as these past events.

The Historical Biology work, which also included Nanjing University's Shu-zhong Shen, focused on the Guadalupian, or Middle Permian period, which lasted from 272 to about 260 million years ago. Here, the researchers observe, the end-Guadalupian extinction event—which affected life on land and in the seas—occurred at the same time as the Emeishan flood-basalt eruption that produced the Emeishan Traps, an extensive rock formation, found today in southern China. The eruption's impact was akin to those causing other known severe mass extinctions, Rampino says. "Massive eruptions such as this one release large amounts of greenhouse gases, specifically carbon dioxide and methane, that cause severe global warming, with warm, oxygen-poor oceans that are not conducive to marine life," he notes. "In terms of both losses in the number of species and overall ecological damage, the end-Guadalupian event now ranks as a major mass extinction, similar to the other five," the authors write.”

     Not only do civilisations collapse, and all so far have, but life itself seems to go through cycles of death and rebirth. Looked at from this perspective, those elites who now define themselves as “gods” on this planet, are little more than upstart primates, who are totally dependent upon the cosy womb of civilizational comforts. All of that can be removed in an instant by any number of natural events, which I will cover in articles at this site.

     For one thing, while the science news has been big about asteroids passing close to earth, covered in a previous article, what is not mentioned very much is how frequently relatively small meteorites strike earth, most with the power to destroy entire cities:
  https://www.ibtimes.com/asteroid-impacts-earth-are-increasing-scientists-are-not-sure-why-2755028
  https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2014/04/22/asteroid-strikes-b612-foundation/8000343/

“Space rocks big enough to destroy a city hit the Earth much more often than thought, according to an estimate by a private group devoted to preventing disaster from such orbital killers. It took a space rock the size of San Francisco to finish off the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, but a decent-sized metropolis could be reduced to smoldering ruins by a boulder that could fit inside a soccer field. The strike rate for such large space rocks, properly known as asteroids, has been estimated at once every 3,000 years, but the B612 Foundation, a planetary defense group, says the true figure could be as high as once a century. Outside scientists say that frequency is plausible but could well be too high. "There are people who say, 'Oh, once every million years we have something we have to worry about.' That couldn't be more wrong," says physicist and former space shuttle astronaut Ed Lu, chief executive officer of the B612 Foundation. "Eventually you're going to get hit, because it's just a matter of time."”

     Just imagine if one such rock lobbed on the City of London, Hollywood and/or Wall Street. Now that would be a tragedy wouldn’t it!