By Tom Harris
Anyone not already familiar with the stance of geologists towards the global warming scare would have been shocked by the conference at the University of Ottawa at the end of May. In contrast to most environmental science meetings, climate skepticism was widespread among the thousand geoscientists from Canada, the United States and other countries who took part in GAC-MAC 2011 (the Joint Annual Meeting of the Geological Association of Canada, the Mineralogical Association of Canada, the Society of Economic Geologists and the Society for Geology Applied to Mineral Deposits).
The lead symposium of the conference, Earth climate: past, present, future, was especially revealing. Chaired by University of Toronto geology professor Andrew Miall, the session description starts: “The scientific debate about climate change is far from over. Some of the projections of climate change and its consequences contained in the 2007 Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the United Nations’ IPCC) have been called into question. This symposium will address some of these issues and present a geological perspective on the scientific debate.”
The talks were from “climate rationalists,” defined by Australian geology professor Bob Carter of James Cook University as “persons who are critical (on balanced scientific grounds) of the IPCC’s alarmism … reflecting the primacy that such persons give to empirical data and thinking. The climate rationalist approach contrasts markedly with the untestable worlds of computer virtual reality that so many climate alarmists now inhabit.”
Leading off the GAC-MAC climate symposium was fellow Australian, Ian Plimer, professor in the School of Civil, Environmental and Mining Engineering at the University of Adelaide. In a keynote presentation entitled Human-induced climate change: Why I am skeptical, Plimer completely dismantled the greenhouse-gas-driven climate-change hypothesis. He showed how climate has varied naturally on all time scales and how recent changes are not unusual. Plimer explained the lack of meaningful correlation between the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) and planetary warming and cooling, and how “climate models throw no new light on climate processes.” He concluded, “Pollution kills, CO2 is plant food, H2O vapour is the main greenhouse gas…. Humans can adapt to future changes.”
Following Plimer were 14 other climate presentations by leading geoscientists. Henrik Svensmark of the National Space Institute in Denmark spoke about how cosmic ray variations in the atmosphere are influencing climate by changing the microphysics of clouds. University of Ottawa emeritus professor Ján Veizer presented his research describing the role of the Sun and water vapour on CO2 and climate change. Calgary geophysicist Norm Kalmanovitch showed how satellite radiation measurements demonstrate that the “enhanced greenhouse effect” from greenhouse gas emissions has never even existed to any measurable extent. Carleton University researcher Hafida El Bilali showed how her work with paleoclimatologist professor Tim Patterson revealed that variations in the output of the Sun have had major influences on regional climate for the past nine millennia.
And so it continued. Although one speaker presented information that was consistent with IPCC claims, no other presentation in the symposium supported the UN’s human-caused dangerous global warming hypothesis. In the discussion period following the talks, climate rationalists decried the lack of media or public attention to the symposium or their research findings. In the exhibit hall, few participants seemed interested in human-caused global warming. The catastrophic messages that so overwhelm other climate-related conferences were nowhere to be found.
Where were all the other scientist supporters of climate alarmism? Did they not know that climate was a major focus of this, the largest geologic conference in the country?
They knew. According to Miall, even though some were directly invited, they either refused to participate or ignored the invitation. “The people on the IPCC side generally will not debate,” explained Miall. “Anything that’s brought up that they disagree with, they say has been dealt with and is no longer considered important, or is a minor effect. This is often quite wrong.”
In the Q&A following the public lecture at last June’s Canadian Meteorological and Ocean Society (CMOS)/Canadian Geophysical Union Congress in Ottawa, the prospect of a public debate between the two sides was put to keynote speaker Warwick Vincent of Laval University. Vincent was supportive, as was a CMOS past president communicated with later. Yet, when I approached CMOS executives and directors about taking the steps necessary to arrange such a public event, the responses were negative to the point of abuse and nothing transpired.
This was perhaps not surprising. Proposals for a proper climate science debate have been opposed by CMOS leaders for a long time. As early as 1990, the chairman of the CMOS congress scientific committee, Tad Murty (then a senior research scientist with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans’ Institute of Ocean Sciences) tried to arrange a global-warming debate. But it never happened. Murty cites a “lack of enthusiasm” from other committee members as the reason.
When the Kyoto Protocol was created in December 1997, long-time CMOS member Madhav Khandekar (then just retired from his research scientist position at Environment Canada) highlighted several uncertainties in IPCC science and called for an open debate on the issue in the CMOS Bulletin. His article, Global warming & climate change in Canada: A need for an open scientific debate, was completely ignored by CMOS executives and its membership at large.
At this week’s congress in Victoria, CMOS, like many organizations of its ilk, still maintains a rigid stance of climate catastrophilia. The congress includes sessions described with clearly mistaken statements such as “Recent research has highlighted the irreversibility of CO2-induced climate change on centennial timescales …..” Other, less extreme but also unjustified assertions abound: “It has become widely recognized that under a changing climate, the frequency and intensity of meteorological/hydrological extreme events and associated damage costs would more likely increase in the 21st century.”
The narrow-mindedness of CMOS and other climate alarmists matters because they have the ear of the mass media, most of which uncritically reports on CMOS’ statements that the science is settled and debate unnecessary. Recent surveys show that the public is highly influenced by these assertions and so seriously flawed CMOS messages are incorporated into government pronouncements.
Miall maintains that the views of geoscientists are crucial for a proper understanding of climate.
“This should have been accepted practice all along, not because geoscientists are necessarily right, but because this should be the normal process of science,” said Miall. “The idea that any science is ‘finished’ violates all the norms of the science process, which should, by definition, be permanently open to new data and new ideas. The history of science is full of examples of so-called ‘normal science’ that is shown to be wrong on the basis of a single critical piece of data or a new idea. That’s all we were trying to do at the GAC meeting — keep our minds open.”
Uncomfortable though it may be for geoscientists, society needs them to speak out forcefully now. Otherwise, the climate alarm, its science failing but the movement still heavily funded, will stagger on, leading society into wasting billions of dollars more and destroying millions of jobs worldwide.
Financial Post
Tom Harris is the executive director of the International Climate Science Coalition.
Short summary: Climate scientists not interested in debating geoscientists as reported in the Financial Post section of the National Post
Story title: Canadian Climate Scientists and Canadian Geophysicists – not birds of a feather
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HK says:
June 9, 2011 at 2:46 am
In that whole Spectator episode, Plimer seemed to be as slippery as they come. I can well understand why nobody would want to debate him.
OK so Ian Pilmer (depending on whose version you take) has a history of evasiveness and perhaps scientific skeletons in his cupboard. Who’s perfect anyway? But why is this a reason NOT to debate with him – on the contrary, if you feel you have the measure of your opponent, and can dish some dirt on him/her, and can expose contradictory positions etc., then this surely makes a debate even MORE attractive and winnable.
That is of course, unless you have your own skeletons and vulnerabilities that you would rather not have exposed.
The alarmist argument is based on the position that the past is not a reasonable explanation of the present and does not reflect the future, as man has become the dominant variable in the Earth’s climate. Geologists – and I am one – work on the premise that the mechanisms of the past explain the present and foretell the future. The alarmist and the geologist therefore come at situations in the world from different and incompatible positions.
The argument against the uniqueness of today’s position because similar, if not greater, CO2 levels of the past are not correlated with Earth’s temperatures will never succeed in convincing an alarmist who views this day as special. Could CO2 levels of the past and the temperature them be explained by additional or lesser levels of insolation, volcanic dust or some other, unknown variable? Of course we cannot define exactly what the world was like during the Jurassic heat or some previous ice age. So the warmist walks away content.
The only way to defeat the alarmist belief is to show that the predictions within his worldview are not happening. Even then there will be difficulty. Think of Harold Camping and his end-of-the-world prediction for 21 May 2011. Those who believe in the Bible (or the IPCC) accepted the date. When the world survived 21 May, he shifted the date to 21 October; those who believe Camping (and his interpretation of scripture) now await October. The belief holds strong, secure from a slight miscalculation of time.
Geologists rail – as I did – from an argument that does not legitimately hold if `today`is special. Only time will show the warmist his predictions are wrong. But then the shift is – I`m predicting here, note – going to be that the date is wrong, not the concept. The world is still warming to a disaster, but it will be 2150, not 2100. The End is still real, still made by man, but just a little further away and – thank the Lord! – we now have more time to mend our ways.
Or – I shudder here – the global temperature will no longer be considered an ìmmediate`threat, but ocean acidification will become the bete noire for our grandchildren. Fossil fuel CO2 will still be the reason, and man`s inhumanity to the world, the cause.
The historically based reasoning sciences can provide only a bedrock (pun intended) from which to argue that the IPCC position requires that today is special, that the IPCC needs to explain in what way today is different for climatological reasons from the past. Geology does not provide `proof`against AGW, but it does provide a reason to demand to know what about the present (at least that of 1980) is different from historical times, and so why now, and not then, CO2 input is such a critical matter.
HK, it still doesn’t account for the fact that Monbiot, if he believed he had Plimer bang to rights, needed to insist upon these pre-debate questions in the first place. If he wanted to nail Plimer then why didn’t he press his questions during the debate? Monbiot was the one who walked away, remember. Maybe because he didn’t want to answer a reciprocal set of questions set by Plimer.
Pot, meet kettle.
DCC: I see this all the time among liberal politicians. They are smart they never make mistakes and conservatives are stupid and not worth taking seriously. Dan Qualle was stupid as was George W Bush and Sarah Palin. John Karry and Al Gore are smart. Never mind that gore dropped out divinity school and got Cs in earth science. Never mind that Karry got worse grades than George W. Bush. Naturally the smartest person in history is Obama. Never mind that he thought he went to 57 states with one to go er two to go. Never mind that he can’t pronounce corpsman.
Geologists … heh … probably all funded by EEEEEEEEEvil big oil and big coal! /sarc
ginckgo says:
“How can anyone still take Ian Plimer seriously after the debacle that was Heaven & Earth?”
I see no reason why one could term Heaven & Earth a ‘debacle’. Wow. The book is comprehensive and sets forth a vast array of well organised information with more than 1000 reference to scientific publications supporting the view that there is nothing climate-unusual about the past 50 years which included a cooling episode, you will recall. In the same way the claim he has not proven that view (natural variation), neither has the CO2 idea been shown to be true, and as as I read it, the proponents of it have no falsifiable claims remaining – the majors ones have been falsified already (linear relationship to temp, tropical hot spot, continuous rise, exceptional weather, melting Antarctica, yatta-yatta). As there is more natural varation even in recent centuries that the past 50 years, there is nothing to be alarmed (literally) about.
It’s a shame that the AAPG (American Association of Petroleum Geologists) has bailed on the climate debate. The current leadership wants nothing to do with the subject because of the politics. They even altered the society’s position statement to be less out of tune with the so-called consensus.
It wasn’t that long ago that the AAPG was giving an award to Michael Crichton for State of Fear and actively engaged in the public debate. They even published one of the best climate science text books you can find: Lee Gerhard’s Geological Perspectives of Global Climate Change.
John B says:
June 9, 2011 at 7:13 am
The reason climate scientists do not debate skeptics is the same as the reason biologists do not debate crreationists. It’s all about the “Gish gallop”:
++++++
I find exactly this sort of thing dominating the (significant) volume of material put out per day in support of the CAGW meme. “Every time you start your SUV a polar bear dies, a child starves in Africa and a tornado is spawned in Kansas.” The utter tripe trotted out on a daily basis is nothing less than gagging Gish Gallop. The fact that the CAGW proponents use the creationist arguing technique is well known: if you have no answer, just paste in, “It is impossible to have a rational conversation with someone who is clearly …[insert epithet] of the oil industry…” It is not even childish. It is just silly.
It is also amazingly dumb. Do warmists think no one reads, or counts how many times fake AGW claims are refuted? Climate scientists, as you call them, are famous for talking to each other and when forced to debate, carefully choose the weakest possible person to debate, or someone who they can smear and walk away from if the debate turns against them, wihch is nearly inevitable because it is rooted in jiggery-pokery play-dough quality modelling. In genuine debates such as at Oxford, warmist nonsense does not fly in the face of intelligent observers, let alone their opposite. The audience understands the implications of a little fraud here and a little stretch there and a little overstatement on the other hand.
This will surely be one of the most intensely studied periods of human history: when ad-men took over henhouse and invited in the foxes. You know, if you subtract ‘x’ (the unknown) from foxes, you get ‘foes’. Someone is stealing the e-e-e-eggs…..!
Climate puffery and CO2 ‘1+1=5’ math has no future. Why support it?
phlogiston “But why is this a reason NOT to debate with him – on the contrary, if you feel you have the measure of your opponent, and can dish some dirt on him/her, and can expose contradictory positions etc., then this surely makes a debate even MORE attractive and winnable.”
UK Sceptic “If he wanted to nail Plimer then why didn’t he press his questions during the debate? Monbiot was the one who walked away, remember.”
Some people might fancy themselves in that situation. Monbiot didn’t hide the fact that he did not: he said this to the Spectator right from the very start. I wouldn’t want to either. If you can’t even get Plimer to give sources for his own book – in answer to questions he has already agreed to answer – what hope is there of getting a straight answer out of him in a debate. Why would you need to expose his slipperiness in a debate, when you have already exposed it in writing for all to see.
And the reaction of some people here shows why that would have been pointless. You have the evidence that Plimer dodged and evaded (all you have to do is read the emails – it’s not a question of “depending on whose version you take”) and yet people want to ignore it and say “why not debate anyway?” What would have happened if, in debate, Monbiot said “first answer the basic questions you already agreed to answer”? Plimer would have blustered (as he did in writing) and eventually the chair of the debate would have said “OK, I can see we’re not going to get anywhere on this, let’s move on.” So really, what would the point have been?
@Doug Proctor
actually I do think that geology is the ‘answer’ – and it does provide the proof against catastrophic AGW. its quite simple really – if co2 levels have been higher than current levels at any time in the past (+/- the uncertainties) then it it is clear that no ‘runaway/tipping point” was ever reached! it’s not rocket science – it’s pure logic. End of argument………
HK,
Let’s forget all the peripheral crap and push for a real debate, where all questions can be put to the opposition. Keep in mind that Moonbat is the one who set up his strawman debate, then quickly declared that he was out. So don’t be an apologist for the Cowardly Lyin’, let’s have that debate!
To everyone who says I know nothing about the scientific method, brush up on your reading comprehension; I said:
“The main problem for Ian is to show that the trend in the past 50 years is not from human activity (this falsification has not occurred); let alone show another likely mechanism that would explain the trend.”
You’ll note I said the main problem is for Plimer to falsify AGW, yet you’ve only focused on the part after the semicolon, which is simply a ‘it would be nice if he could then also find a different cause’. Falsification is part of the scientific method (rather than proving something), and it doesn’t matter who does it. Most scientists consider AGW in it’s fundamental form unfalsified and matching all available data better than other proposed explanations (which is where we get terms like ‘consensus’). Plimer is free to do his own falsifying, yet his attempts to date have been shown to be FUD.
Smokey – “Keep in mind that Moonbat is the one who set up his strawman debate, then quickly declared that he was out”. Not much point keeping that in mind, since (as the emails show) that is not what happened.
gingcko:
What if the predictions of the warmists were not coming true, and the predictions of geologists were coming true? Would that count as falsifying the warmists theory?
What standard by the warmists would be accepted as falsifying their hypothesis?
Jeroen B. said:
June 8, 2011 at 10:37 pm
These geologists, they’re the bedrock of the scientific method!
————————————————————————————-
Just don’t take them for granite.
ginckgo says:
June 9, 2011 at 5:51 pm
‘it would be nice if he could then also find a different cause’
I assume you mean cause for CAGW, strange your asking someone to find a cause to something that they do not believe is happening.
It’s simple the climate is changing, you state it’s humans that cause it, prove it, you can’t.
To then turn round and say it’s man doing it prove it’s not is double think and wrong. You cannot start with the default position that it’s man that causes all problems in the world, you must start with it is natural and work from there.
‘
John B says:
June 9, 2011 at 7:13 am
… “You may disagree, but that is the way the climate scientists see it.”
Obvious typo there –
“You may disagree, but that is the way the climate scientists play it.”
There you go, John. Fixed it for you.
Any idea why my comment to Smokey – which for hours was awaiting moderation, has been moderated out?
It wasn’t rude – it just pointed out that it is hard to “Keep in mind that Moonbat is the one who set up his strawman debate, then quickly declared that he was out” (as Smokey suggested) when the emails make it clear that that did not happen. The tone was at about that level – so why moderate it out?
[I don’t know I wasn’t on duty at that time . . the comment isn’t in spam or deleted folder . . try reposting perhaps? . . kb]
Thanks kb – it wasn’t there at the time of my last post but it is there now.
Kev-in-UK says:
actually I do think that geology is the ‘answer’ – and it does provide the proof against catastrophic AGW
Geology is only the answer if you agree that what was before is so now. The logic of it is irrefutable if you hold that position – which personally do. My point is that the alarmists take the position that today IS special and different, that different processes are in-place. The +/- uncertainties that you and I accept are present and unimportant are the items the warmists say make today special and different – whatever they are, which is not stated.
You cannot argue logic with a warmist on those ground. Their retort, “That doesn’t count”, or “It’s not the same, now”, invalidate the approach. It’s a child’s argument, for certain, and grounded in emotion (guilt or otherwise). But that is where we are at.
Logic doesn’t sway belief, but may make those arguing angry. Emotions, when challenged provoke anger; intellect, when challenged, provokes derision or confusion.
Doug Proctor says:
June 10, 2011 at 11:11 am
Yes Doug – I agree with your point..
But re the CO2 issue and any supposed tipping point, I find the stance of the alarmists really annoying. The logic really is simple, i.e. – consider the earth as a ‘closed system’ i.e. it receives bugger all ‘material’ from external sources (yeah, yeah, ok, we have had the odd metorite/asteroid!). But If we accept that the earth is a closed system, the quantities of water, carbon, and other components are essentially ‘fixed’ – only the relative ‘positions’ of such components within the earth cycle (e.g. water and CO2) have changed, either in ice, oceans, air or in the land. Taking the general ‘concensus’ (just to use one their own words!) that CO2 levels have been much higher in the past – which we know pretty accurately (in terms of relative qualitative values) from the types and analysis of the rocks deposited – and the subsequent result of said accepted high CO2 was NOT that the earth boiled dry or entered any kind of total runaway situation – indeed, it cooled back down again, etc, etc – The absolute deduction is that no catastrophic tipping point has ever been reached – life continued, flourished, adapted, etc….and ergo, the currently talked about CO2 levels cannot possibly be expected to create a thermal runaway or in the more techno speak – an ‘uncontrolled positive feedback’ with the end of the world doomsday scenario!.
Taking the basic premise/logic a stage further, if the so called GHG of CO2 is really THAT strong or SO bad for the planet, as they wish us to believe – then the logical deduction MUST also be that there is/was an equally strong negative feedback effect(s) to have prevented the alleged catastrophe! This point seems to be ignored, certainly in the media hype and so called ‘models’. These effects are quantitatively unknown and hence any model using a ‘guessed’ low negative feedback input will produce the results they want!
With respect to the ‘then was different to now’ argument – the closed system kind of refutes that – hey, even the carbon in human burning of fossil fuels was actually once ‘somewhere else’ in the carbon cycle! It could even be argued that we are simply putting it back where it once was – i.e as CO2 in the atmosphere! LOL (even though, of course, this fossil fuel carbon ‘volume’ pales into insignifcance when all the actual total ‘carbon’ reservoirs are considered, but they like to ignore that point too!).
One could argue that the current state of the earth (as in, with deep stored carbon as fossil fuels) does not necessarily reflect the ‘equilibrium’ state of the so called carbon cycle? And there lies the final point – where the feck is the equilibrium state? not just of CO2 – but of anything related to the earth and its resources – who the feck can say whether the current state is ‘optimal’ or indeed natural equilibrium. What is natural climate variation and its extremes? They can’t define it and to try to do so is folly, if for no other reason in that we know past earth has had massive changes, with no humans and no AGW! – and yet, if there was such a thing as natural equilibrium, with the ecosystem in perfect balance – the earths climate would not have varied much at all over the last billion years! So, obviously, Mr Warmist says, oh, that was the sun, plate tectonics, orbital variations, volcanoes, blah blah blah, etc – because its convenient to use them to dismiss the past – but wait a minute, curiously, we cannot use these same natural variations argument for ‘todays’ climate!!! Oh no, no, no – they say the variance in TSI cannot explain climate variation, but of course, it ‘used’ to, along with various other things, when it suits their argument! WTF??
It makes me laugh, it really does. I don’t doubt that initially some genuine science was responsible for identifying so called global warming (basically recovery from the LIA) – but the subsequent labelling of all global warming as human induced is pure fantasy. And now we have the idiots thinking man can play Canute and believing that we can ‘geoengineer’ the planet FFS !!?…..
and you’re right, getting emotional about the subject is pointless – but I would, just for once, like to see a documentary on mainstream media (indeed, played in every school like Gore’s film!) illustrating these basic facts without a hidden agenda!
The actual schedule of the event paints a very different story. The vast majority of the sessions weren’t even about climate change, as you’d expect given the meeting is of geologists.
Andrew Miall’s arguments seem to be the same old rubbish (climate’s changed before, it used to be warmer in X). If he wanted to debate scientists he could…I don’t know, send them an email asking them to explain things to him? Or he could publish his arguments online for us all to see. I bet they are not great at all.
The past climates of earth suggest high climate sensitivity and no barrier to the climate warming up far more than the current climate.
Someday I’d like to ask some of these alarmists exactly what happened to natural processes that change climate.
To listen to some of the interviews, you’d think that these natural variations simply ceased to exist and CO2 Global Warming took over in a blink of an eye, because all events now that are hyperventilaed over have happened before.
nomnom says:
June 10, 2011 at 5:45 pm
<>
Why use the word ‘sensitivity’ – when really, the more correct word should be ‘VARIABILITY’ ? You cannot say if the climate was highly ‘sensitive’, as you have no idea of the natural variations and their (probably) cyclic effects. The use of the term climate sensitivity, implies a knowledge of the processes and interaction between them and that at any time, the climate is in a state of ‘balance’ – which, just from the past extremes, is clearly unadulterated BS!. The processes, interactions and sensitivity aren’t known today, let alone in the geological past!
Let’s recall a known serious ‘event’ – an asteroid impact – this caused mass extinction and planetary wide climate change for a long time. But what happened in the end? The earths climate returned to its ‘natural’ state ! So how would one interpret the climate ‘sensitivity’ to such a massive event? Obviously, it was not catastrophic in the sense it didn’t cause a ‘tipping point’ scenario of ‘no return’! Yet, the warmist/alarmists want us to believe that the current climate is so ‘sensitive’ to minute iddy biddy changes in a few atmospheric parameters, and will reach a catastrophic tipping point in a relative flash of (geological) time? Hence, the reason I find such a stance to be crazy, illogical – and in my opinion, rather crass.
If Douglas Adams had been a geologist, maybe he would have started his preamble to “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” like this:-
Time is long. You just won’t believe how indefinitely, immensely, mind- bogglingly long it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long wait ‘til Christmas, but that’s just peanuts to Time.
So here we have the problem, geological time is just that “immensely, mind-bogglingly long”.
I remember at a first year Environmental Science lecture in 1971, we were shown a picture of a desert in the western USA, the foreground was riven by open fractures and we were asked to speculate on the cause of the faulting. I don’t think any of us knew the answer (I certainly did not). The cause was an underground coal seam fire. The desert water table was so deep, that atmospheric oxygen was able to reach and maintain the fire over decades of unchecked burning.
When I was a boy in the 1950s, a trip to Oldham would take us past colliery spoil heaps around St Helens, some parts of which were burning as the waste slack combusted on contact with the air. Considering that the frequent Lancashire rain did nothing to douse these coal waste fires, I should have realised then that coal seams in the desert, once ignited, would burn unchecked for decades.
After graduation, in my first job in the Institute of Geological Sciences in London, I remember talking to an experienced field geologist about his observation that detrital coal had never been observed in the Lower Permian desert rocks of the UK. This lack of carbonaceous material in early Permian sediments contrasted with the presence of reworked Middle Jurassic coal fragments in the deep marine sands of the subsequent Upper Jurassic sediments. I told him the story of the burning desert coal seams in the US and he agreed that the natural oxidation of Carboniferous coals in the extreme deserts of the early Permian could well account for the lack of detrital coal in these ancient desert rocks.
I later used this insight in analysing the sequence stratigraphy of the Carboniferous and Permian rocks of the Irish Sea basin, offshore from my native Lancashire. We were able to identify hundreds of feet of Carboniferous rocks, now devoid of any coals, that had been completely oxidised by the early Permian desert environment. In support of this observation I found a report about the Neston Colliery on the Wirral where the miners had worked seams in this concealed coal field. They found that the coal being won was replaced by calcareous rock as the seam approached from below the overlying unconformity that marked the ancient Permian desert surface.
The UK geological record shows us that in the interior of the immense Permian supercontinent, the surface rocks were oxidised to the extent the older Carboniferous coals were diagenetically removed and all the black (reduced) shales surrounding the coal seams were turned red. So here we have an example of another natural experiment, the combustion of coal is nothing new. The earth is so old that it has had time enough, and then some, to try all the geochemical experiments you can conceive of and still not yet managed to turn itself into a second planet Venus.
@Philip Mulholland
That is fascinating – thank you for sharing it. I would never have thought was possible that early coal is ‘missing’ due to natural processes.