Permian extinction, also called Permian-Triassic extinction or end-Permian extinction, a series of extinction pulses that contributed to the greatest mass extinction in Earth’s history. Many geologists and paleontologists contend that the Permian extinction occurred over the course of 15 million years during the latter part of the Permian Period (299 million to 252 million years ago). However, others claim that the extinction interval was much more rapid, lasting only about 200,000 years, with the bulk of the species loss occurring over a 20,000-year span near the end of the period. The Permian extinction was characterized by the elimination of about 90 percent of the species on Earth, which included more than 95 percent of the marine species and 70 percent of the terrestrial species. In addition, more than half of all taxonomic families present at the time disappeared. This event ranks first in severity of the five major extinction episodes that span geologic time.
Shallow warm-water marine invertebrates, which included the trilobites, rugose and tabulate corals, and two large groups of echinoderms (blastoids and crinoids), show the most-protracted and greatest losses during the Permian extinction. Using the maximum number of different genera in the middle part of the Guadalupian Epoch (about 272.3 million to 259.8 million years ago) as a benchmark, extinction within marine invertebrate faunas significantly reduced the number of different genera by 12 to 70 percent by the beginning of the Capitanian Age some 266 million years ago. The diversity levels of many of these faunas plummeted to levels lower than at any prior time in the Permian Period. Extinctions at the boundary between the Guadalupian and Lopingian epochs (259.8 million to 252.2 million years ago) were even more severe—bordering on catastrophic—with a reduction of 70 to 80 percent from the Guadalupian generic maxima. A great many invertebrate families, which were highly successful prior to these extinctions, were affected.
The series of extinction episodes that occurred during both the last stage of the Guadalupian Epoch and throughout the Lopingian Epoch, each apparently more severe than the previous one, extended over about 15 million years. Disruptive ecological changes eventually reduced marine invertebrates to crisis levels (about 5 percent of their Guadalupian maxima)—their lowest diversity since the end of the Ordovician Period. The final extinction episode, sometimes referred to as the terminal Permian crisis, while very real, took 15 million years to materialize and likely eliminated many ecologically struggling faunas that had already been greatly reduced by previous extinction episodes leading up to the terminal Permian crisis.
The Permian extinction was not restricted to marine invertebrates. Several groups of aquatic vertebrates, such as the acanthodians, thought to be the earliest jawed fishes, and the placoderms, a group of jawed fishes with significant armour, were also eliminated. Notable terrestrial groups, such as the pelycosaurs (fin-backed reptiles), Moschops (a massive mammal-like reptile), and numerous families of insects also met their demise. In addition, a number of groups (such as sharks, bony fishes, brachiopods, bryozoans, ammonoids, therapsids, reptiles, and amphibians) experienced significant declines by the end of the Permian Period.
Causes
Temperature crises
Although other single-event causes have been suggested, current explanations of Permian extinction events have focused on how biological and physical causes disrupted nutrient cycles. Hypotheses of temperature crises, especially of those occurring in shallow marine (surface) waters, are based in part on studies of oxygen isotopes and the ratios of calcium to magnesium in Permian fossil shell materials. The highest estimated temperatures of ocean surface waters (estimated to be 25–28 °C [about 77–82 °F]) until that time occurred during the end of the Guadalupian Epoch and the beginning of the Lopingian Epoch. Subsequently, by the end of the Lopingian Epoch, calcium-to-magnesium ratios suggest that water temperatures may have dropped to about 22–24 °C (about 72–75 °F), decreasing further during the very beginning of the Triassic Period. One hypothesis proposes that water temperatures greater than 24–28 °C (about 75–82 °F) may have been too warm for many invertebrates; only those specialized for high temperatures, such as those living in shallow lagoons, survived.
Alteration of the carbon cycle
The ratio between the stable isotopes of carbon (12C/13C) seems to indicate that significant changes in the carbon cycle took place starting about 500,000 to 1,000,000 years before the end of the Permian Period and crossing the boundary into the Induan Age (the first age of the Triassic Period). These changes appear to coincide closely with two Permian extinction events, suggesting some cause-and-effect relationship with changes in the carbon cycle.
Several studies have suggested that changes in the carbon isotope record may indicate a disrupted biological cycle. Some scientists consider the unusually high amounts of 12C trapped in Permian sediments to be a result of widespread oceanic anoxia (very low levels of dissolved oxygen). They associate this anoxia with the prolonged eruption of the Siberian flood basalts (the so-called Siberian Traps), which probably led to higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Clouds of volcanic ash may have worsened the situation by restricting the amount of sunlight available for photosynthesis, thereby inhibiting the process of carbon fixation by plants and lowering the extraction rate of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. In addition, high amounts of carbon dioxide may have been injected into the atmosphere by the venting of volcanic gases from the eruption of flood basalts, combined with the ignition of large coal seams, or by the burning of forests by hot lava.
The Great Dying: The Permian Mass Extinction :nuke:
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Mostly I guess I want to know why you aren’t afraid of the state being just as dystopian as corporations like Amazon.
The point is to put control of the state into the hands of workers.
The state always exists to control society to some extent. In our current society by far the most powerful group are the small number of people who own the overwhelming majority of industry, a remarkably small group we call the 1% but really we could call them the 0.001% - the 0.001% of humanity, about 100,000 individuals, who own an estimated $10 trillion. The elite of the elite. The 1% of the 1%.
This group is defined by their wealth but it’s not just their ownership of finance and industry that makes them a supra-national government, it’s the fact they crosspolinate their boards by sharing board positions between this select group, participation in a set of “think tanks” that then determine government policy, advisory boards to government. The wealthy elite of society are in fact a ruling oligarchy for whom economic power and political power are in fact synonymous. Their economic power is their political power and the method by which they really do rule the world.
Now it’s true that we have elections and we can choose between red team or blue but the things we are voting on are only what we’re allowed to vote on. In a largely procedural sense there is truth to our democracy. We do cast our votes and I’m sure most of the time that vote is counted with scrupulous honesty. The problem is that your vote doesn’t really matter. We can squabble about abortion rights or trans rights but the reality is you can even see the high water mark of true democratic power in society and that is somewhere below the ability for the people to choose if they want a public option health care provider in the USA. Anything above that line isn’t really up to democratic debate and is in fact decided by the privileged elite.
Things like engineering consent to go to war in Iraq, deciding if we want to fund islamic extremists in afghanistan to fight the USSR, toppling regimes in South America, funding death squads in Nicaragua… there is a TON of shit that simply isn’t up for democratic debate and when it comes down to brass tacks the decision to embrace neoliberalism as the dominant ideology was not a democratic decision and it doesn’t reflect the ideological preferences of almost any of the USA but clearly it does represent the interests of the 0.001% so that’s why we live in a neoliberal society.
If you think “western democracy” is adequate to defend us against domination by a sneering elite, then you are wrong and blinded by repetitive propaganda. Demonstrably the policy choices we make always operate to benefit the 0.001% the most be it cutting taxes, setting interest rates, using public funds to bail out banks, going to war to establish control over key economic resources, none of this is done democratically and this stuff actually matters a lot.
What we exist in is not really a democracy. It does have various procedural trappings of democracy, like we do go and cast our votes, but really the democratic domain is highly restricted. It’s not the same as being fake, it’s more that while it’s real enough it’s limited to domain where democratic power doesn’t contradict the interests of societies true ruling class - the 0.001%.
We socialists call this a Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie. The state is in fact under the control of the financial elites, the bourgeoisie, and the procedural equipment of democracy we have is mostly just a facade incapable of actually changing the system, incapable of taking power away from the bourgeoisie, incapable of opposing their interests in any sustained manner.
There’s always a risk of the state coming under the domination of a small group who use that power to oppress others. Socialism can’t eliminate that risk since that risk exists so long as humans can hit each other with sticks. Instead socialism points out that we currently are living in a society where the privileged few who currently have power are using their sticks to enforce their own interests against the rest of us and that we should probably do something about that.
Create a Dictatorship of the Proletariat, meaning the proletariat control society instead of the bourgeoisie. The proletariat control the state. The proletariat means workers. So some democratic system where the privilege of participating in the vote means being working class.
You can think of the corollary, participation in the true ruling oligarchy of the Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie is limited to having an extremely large amount of wealth. Voting power in this system is defined by how much money you have, and some tiny group of people have an extremely large amount of money and this is what gives them power. Voting power in the current system, the Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie, is defined by how wealthy you are.
Voting power in the Dictatorship of the Proletariat will be limited to the working class. This is accomplished by limiting voting rights to workers and by eliminating private ownership of “capital”, meaning basically investment income will be banned and you won’t be able to earn money from investing anymore which means that having lots of money is no longer a form of political power.
Economic power is political power which is why the means of production should be owned by the workers. This isn’t just a matter of wealth redistribution. That’s also how political power is redistributed. The ability to vote is the smallest part of political power. It matters sure but really true political power, the true ability to have a voice in the shaping of society, is to have economic power. So to truly have a democracy we must have truly distributed economic power.
Amazon does what they do because they are profit-seeking. That is why they exploit people. Not all communists support the idea of a state (anarchists for example). MLs believe that if you eliminate profit-seeking as the primary motive in production it will produce better outcomes for people than under capitalism, and that states can be used as tools to reach goals faster
Even MLs think states should be abolished eventually
The state is as dystopian as corporations because both are run by the same people.
Think about it like this, the State is a tool for mediating the relationship between everyone that works and the bosses like bozos, Brandon, Gates, etc. Tools only work when they’re being held in your hand, and the State is held in the hands of those clowns I mentioned.
What communists want it to put the state in the hands of the people that actually work instead of being in the hands of those that profit from our work while flying on epstein’s fancy jet.
Before you say something about how they’re the same thing etc. Just think about why our overlords spend so much time trying to tell us everything other than what we got, where they’re in control, is either worse or the same so why bother changing the status quo.
After all if communists actually wanted the quick and easy path to power, why the hell would we go to the powerless instead of the rich and wealthy like the talking heads on TV do.
