Countdown to Extinction

Professor: Methane Explosion Caused Ancient Mass Extinction

This is scary, if the amount of methane below the Deepwater Horizon site is anything close to that which caused a global kill hundreds of millions of years ago. I don't really think there's much of a chance of this happening again in the Gulf, but there is a buzz among some scientists who fear the worst. People are talking about one bad-luck lightning strike igniting the whole region if the sea floor were to crumble and release all the oil and methane at once. According to the professor cited in the article above, the ancient methane explosion released 10,000 times the amount of energy as the world's current nuclear stockpiles. Let's hope that BP isn't refusing to open their Top Hat again because they want the seabed to shatter.