Anthropogenic Climate Change and John Day National Monument
Anthropogenic Climate Change and John Day National Monument
21 May 2017
Above: Bishop at Foree Area of Sheep Rock Unit of John Day Fossil Beds National Monument. Central eastern Oregon. 21 May 2017.
The park is known for its well-preserved sediment layers containing fossil plants, mammals, amphibians and reptiles that lived in the region between the late Eocene, about 45 million years ago, and the late Miocene, about 5 million years ago.
The monument is made up of three units (Sheep Rock, Painted Hills, and Clarno) comprising 14K acres of semi-desert shrub lands, riparian areas and colorful badlands situated along the John Day River.
A year ago, while motorcycling in the area, I stopped briefly at the Clarno Unit, about eighty miles northeast of here (Sheep Rock). There were a few story boards which I read, but there was no visitor's center, and I didn't take the time to walk one of the two improved trails.
Our visit here today, at the Sheep Rock unit, a year later was a bit more purposeful than last year's stop at the Clarno Unit.
Today, at the Foree Area of the Sheep Rock Unit, John Galt, Zimmatic and I walked the half mile to trail's end where the above image was captured. There were no fossils visible from our trail, and we had no permission to walk in the area of the fossil beds. But, in walking here, one gets a sense, being up close, of the process where fossils are discovered and how paleontologists' catalog and examine the specimens to open vistas into the earth's remote past.
Last year, on the return from my motorcycle ride to Alaska, I also stopped at Hagerman Fossil Beds National Monument, near Hagerman Idaho.
Hageman is a 4.3-thousand-acre fossil bed exposure in Idaho on the Snake River which is considered the world's richest known fossil deposits from the late Pliocene epoch, 3.5 million years ago. Hagerman's plants and animals represent the last glimpse of that time that existed before the last ice age. Hagerman was made famous for its plentiful specimens of fossil horses... popularly known today as "the Hagerman Horse."
There is a visitors center here at the Sheep Rock Unit of John Day Fossil Beds National Monument. I attended the 20-minute video showing about the monument.
When you visit a place like this you are forced to think about geologic time. It's difficult, if not impossible, just to imagine what a million years must be when our own life experience is measured over only 80 years or so. Forget about trying to comprehend the 4.6-billion-year age of the earth.
"Civilized man" has only been on the earth for ten thousand years. Yet, here at John Day Fossil Beds, we're talking about a period of forty million years! And this period, the Eocine to the Myocene, is after the dinosaurs! The dinosaurs have already gone! They left during an extinction at the end of the Cretaceous Period, some 75 million years ago.
We learn that over the forty million years here, there were numerous geological and climate changes. The ash beds seen in the image above were made by nearby erupting volcanos' airborne ash caught and brought to the surface as mud by rains. Such climate events led to mass extinctions. The volcanic eruptions subsided, and new, evolving life returned to the area to flourish until the next eruptions wiped them out...and so the process repeated (repeats?) itself.
I have relevant personal experience. In 2006 I was motorcycling in Sicily in the vicinity of ash spewing Mr. Etna. It began to rain and within a few minutes my motorcycle and I were totally splotched with ash-mud. I didn't realize it then, but I had experienced a pre-extinction event firsthand!
Riding my 2015 Ducati Multistrada motorcycle north on US 97 (Oregon) yesterday I saw majestic Mr. Hood off to the west. The volcanos that were near here have since been destroyed by tectonic activity. Some of these ancient volcanos, now gone, were larger than Hood!
The average temperature of this place has been eight degrees centigrade higher than during our era and three degrees centigrade lower than today at various points during the John Day area's forty million years.
For me, it is a forgone conclusion that at some point in future geologic time, there will be a new extinction precipitating cataclysmic event in this area. We know of continuing tectonic subduction movement of the Pacific plate under the north American plate. The Kilawea volcano in Hawaii erupts as I write. The creation process of the earth is ongoing in our day.
It may happen tomorrow...it may happen in 100 thousand years, both negligible time frames in the context of geologic time, but "roughed up" again the John Day area will be.
Ongoing inevitability of cataclysmic tectonic, and naturally occurring climate events speak to mankind's need to hedge its survival by populating another planet. Stephen Hawking was, and Elon Musk is, an advocate of seeding other planets with earth sourced human settlement. But this is another discussion!
I once saw an exhibit at Dinosaur National Monument, which straddles the state line of northeastern Utah and northwestern Colorado, which put geological time into some perspective. If the 4.6 billion years age of the earth were indicated on a 12-hour analogue clock dial, the dinosaurs would have been on the earth at 11:55 to 11:57... the Jurassic and early Cretaceous period of one hundred million years or so. "Civilized" mankind (10K years ago) would have appeared on the earth at 11:59 and 59 seconds!
Aaarrrrragghhhh! It's so hard to imagine such long-time frames when your own frame of reference is but a very tiny fraction of historical geologic time periods.
I was impressed that there were a lot of kids present at the monument visitors center. Forty or fifty twelve-year olds were part of an organized school group.
I wasn't so impressed with the ubiquity of monument storyboard explanations about man's role in creating the "current" earth warming trend. Is the threat of man caused climate warming now US Government/Department of Interior, National Parks Service official dogma? These kids were getting plenty of man caused global warming dogma at this visitor's center.
The message was... more or less... to the effect...."We know that the climate has changed many times over the millennia, and we can see the effects of those changes in the various layers of sediment at this national monument. In the past the climate changed due to natural causes... but, today, mankind has been the primary driver of global warming."
It seems incredible on its face, that considering the massive temperature swings and climate change over the eons noted here at John Day, that all of a sudden only mankind has any impact on temperature. And, that projected, "human caused" temperature swings of far less consequence than already seen at John Day, represent, not part of the ongoing creation cycle (ho hum), but an imperative for mankind to cease the carbon usage on the back of which mankind's progress has ridden.
Look I'm not a scientist. I don't know enough to be a "man caused climate change denier." But I'm skeptical of the notion that man is primarily responsible for climate change.... mostly because of the way the man-made climate change argument is put forward.
Man caused climate change skepticism today is met with invective and ridicule coming from putative proponents... mostly people who accept the notion of anthropogenic global warming and its projected insidious consequences, on faith and not on study of underlying scientific principles and real-world evidence.
For example, there is little discussion by the believers of man caused climate change in the context of other climate inputs... solar cycles... ocean current... volcanic activity...periodic earth oscillations etc... the same factors influencing the massive climate and temperature fluctuations of the period under study at John Day. Are we to assume that all these factors influencing climate over the eons are no longer relevant as mankind has "stepped into the breach?"
Furthermore, many of the dire predictions made thirty years ago by the climate alarmists have not come to pass per their forecast timing.
The alarmists talk about the "consensus..." 95% of scientists agree yada yada that man's actions cause climate change. 95% may agree that man's activity impacts climate... but, there is no consensus among the "believers" on how much that putative impact is.
Scientists such as Bjorn Lonborg believe that while man's activities influence climate, the impact is negligible. Lonborg decries mandated CO2 caps and goals (think Paris accords) as unwarranted. Lonborg says that mankind should direct efforts to adapt infrastructure to accommodate byproducts of climate change... a much less costly effort compared to national commitments to reduce industrial production and to implement costly alternative energy programs.
And... there are some credible "deniers." Richard Lindzen, Head of Atmospheric Sciences at MIT, correctly points out that, over the eons, there has been no correlation between changes in CO2 and temperature. He further notes that atmospheric CO2 today stands at 400 parts for million. The earth's most fertile periods, he notes, were when atmospheric CO2 was 800 parts per million.
Judith Curry, erstwhile climate professor at Georgia Tech, is another strong denier. She was recently drummed out of her job at Georgia Tech for her "heretical positions." She continues to speak out forcefully on her own account.
My point here is not do "deny" man-made climate change. There are however many legitimate questions on the topic that are kept from public discussion. The way one argues a point says much about what the underlying validity of that point is. The arbitrary, insulting MO of the absolutists doesn't speak well for the underlying strength of their argument.
That the expression "scientific consensus" is used by alarmists to legitimize their position to me is scary. Science should not be a matter of scientific consensus. It is a matter of proof... and the proof for significant man-made climate change is not there.
So, I was perplexed, if not saddened, by the unequivocal support of monument story boards for the position that mankind is the primary driver of climate change. There are a lot of questions that remain unanswered about man's so-called role in influencing climate... and, if so... to what extent.
Those kids visiting John Day National Monument today deserve a better explanation than the pure indoctrination the received reading the monument's story boards.