extinctions, nitrate

CO2 leads to stinky extinctions:
sciam

.. enough H2S was produced by such ocean upwellings at the end of the Permian to cause extinctions both on land and in the sea...
Around the time of multiple mass extinctions, major volcanic events are known to have extruded thousands of square kilometers of lava .. enormous volumes of carbon dioxide and methane .. rapid global warming. During the latest Permian and Triassic as well as in the early Jurassic, middle Cretaceous and late Paleocene, among other periods, the carbon-isotope record confirms that CO2 concentrations skyrocketed immediately before the start of the extinctions and then stayed high for hundreds of thousands to a few million years.
But the most critical factor seems to have been the oceans. Heating makes it harder for water to absorb oxygen from the atmosphere; .. conditions for the deep-sea anaerobic bacteria to generate massive upwellings of H2S. .. virtually no form of life on the earth was safe.
.. A poisoned ocean and atmosphere would account for the very slow recovery of life after that mass extinction as well.
.. could it happen again? Although estimates of the rates..are uncertain, the levels .. are known. The so-called thermal extinction at the end of the Paleocene began when atmospheric CO2 was just under 1,000 ppm At the end of the Triassic, CO2 was just above 1,000 ppm. Today with CO2 around 385 ppm, it seems we are still safe. But with atmospheric carbon climbing at an annual rate of 2 ppm and expected to accelerate to 3 ppm, levels could approach 900 ppm by the end of the next century, and conditions that bring about the beginnings of ocean anoxia may be in place. How soon after that could there be a new greenhouse extinction?

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440 kilograms of ammonium nitrate missing
smh October 26, 2006

..The theft occurred on October 6 about 6.30am as the freight train sat idle at Glendale, near Newcastle, waiting for another train to pass.
The driver of the second train alerted authorities after noticing some of the granular substance had spilled on to the tracks.
.."We can confirm that the train was tampered with, was broken into and a substantial amount was spilt on the ground.
"Until we confirm otherwise, we are treating it as a theft."
Mr O'Dell said the state's counter-terrorism unit has been alerted and is keeping a close watch on the investigation, which continues to be run by detectives from the Lake Macquarie Local Area Command.
..
The chemical fertiliser was used in the 2002 Bali bombings, which killed 202 people, including 88 Australians, and the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

[I believe Bali was actually chlorate. More of a burningfireball. people saw others vanish right in front of them.
The worry is, locals here say, the Newcastle police are notoriously inept. Too busy running hos to notice major crime. Hopefully their links to bike gangs may turn up some suspects. I hope the feds are keeping an eye on drag strips for excess nitro draw-down]

extinctions nitrate