Alright, looks as though I have three rewrites of NOVA Earth series, for they just plain simply got it wrong on all three.

The Moon was not a satellite of Earth until about 90-66 million years ago. Earth was by itself until 90-66 million years ago. And being by itself meant it revolved around the Sun with one side of Earth staring into the Sun all the time and the other side of Earth in complete darkness. The day for Earth was equal to the year of Earth, when you have no satellite.

When the continents were on the side of Earth facing into the Sun all the time, then life flourished in abundance as in the Cambrian.

By the time the Permian ended some 253 million years ago, then most of the continents in the supercontinent of Pangaea, were in the dark side of Earth, especially Australia and much of India.

Siberia where the deccan volcanics took place were still somewhat in the Sun side of Earth and so the life there was the last to die off in the Great Mass Extinction.

And all of that motion of Plate Tectonics is the reason for the Deccan volcanics.

In the Permian, Earth was much smaller than it is today, as well as the Sun was much smaller, and both were closer in Space than today's astronomy. For planets and stars grow from Dirac's new radioactivities, not from silly daft nebular-dust-clouds.

It is bad when NOVA caters to explaining geology in terms of warnings of global warming and greenhouse gases and CO2, bad bad science.

Most of the Permian extinction took place in the seas and oceans. And that is because seas and oceans on the permanent sunny side of Earth would have become water far too hot for life in the oceans.

Just imagine today if the Earth day were the same as the Earth year and the oceans on the side of Earth in constant hot sunshine, no darkness. Why yes, the water would be almost a hot tub.

Some plant life that was not completely in the permanent dark of Earth survived on land.

And this program mentions the idea that when life re-emerged in the Mesozoic-- the Age of Dinosaurs, that it rained and rained on the continents. Well the Pangaea land masses returned to the Sunshine side of Earth where rain could take place once again.

It is very sad and bad for NOVA to preach about geology through the lens of modern day global warming and CO2 gas. How about another klutz explaining the downfall of flat earth theory because of CO2 atmosphere or the rise of the quantum mechanics of physics as due to CO2 gas rise. NOVA as of late, is explaining all of geology as some global warming CO2 mindless elixir.

When you have the key element of geological history-- the Earth faced the Sun on 1/2 of the planet permanently until 90-66 million years ago. Unless you have that fact in your geology understanding, then all your explanations of life on Earth or Earth itself from 4.5 billion years ago up to 90 million years ago will be silly and stupid and mindless explanations.

AP, King of Science
AP's 272nd book of science-- Clarifying NOVA's program Ancient Earth Inferno "How did life bounce back after a cataclysmic extinction wiped out some 90% of all species"