In the wake of Karl et al. 2015, which revises data to match a consensus, we can all take a lesson from how scientific consensus has operated in the past
Guest essay by Dr. David Deming
The world stands on the verge of committing itself to limits on the emission of carbon dioxide that would drastically reduce the use of fossil fuels. If this fateful decision is made, the economies of developed nations will be strangled. Human prosperity will be reduced. Our ability to solve pressing problems, both human and environmental, will be severely limited. We have been told that these shackles must be imposed to forestall a hypothetical global warming projected to occur some time in the distant future. But to date the only unambiguous evidence for planetary warming is a modest rise in temperature (less than one degree Celsius) that falls well within the range of natural variation.
The validity of warming predictions depends upon the questionable reliability of computer models of the climate system. But Earth’s climate system is complex and poorly understood. And the integrity of the computer models cannot be demonstrated or even tested. To anyone with an awareness of the nature and limitations of scientific knowledge, it must appear that the human race is repeating a foolish mistake from the past. We have been down this road before, most notably in the latter half of the nineteenth century when it appeared that mathematics and physics had conclusively answered the question of the Earth’s age. At that time, a science that had been definitely “settled” fell apart in the space of a few years. The mathematical models that appeared to be so certain proved to be completely, even ridiculously wrong.
The age of the Earth is one of the great questions that has puzzled people for thousands of years. In Meteorologica, Aristotle (384-322 BC) asserted that the world was eternal. But with the advent of Christianity and Islam, scholars began to assume that humanity was coeval with the Creation of the world. It followed that the age of the Earth could be estimated from a careful examination of sacred writings.
The first person to make a quantitative estimate of the Earth’s age was the Islamic scientist al-Biruni (c. 973-1050). al-Biruni based his chronology on the Hindu, Jewish, and Christian religious scriptures. He divided the history of the world into eras, and concluded that it had been less than ten thousand years since the Creation.
Working in the tradition begun by al-Biruni, Bishop James Ussher (1581-1686) estimated the age of the Earth by meticulously studying the Bible and other historical documents. In The Annals of the World Deduced from the Origin of Time, Ussher pinpointed the date of Creation as the “night preceding the 23rd of October, 4004 BC.” Ussher’s scholarship was impressive, and his dates were accepted as the standard chronology. Bible editors began to place Ussher’s dates in the margins of their texts.
Isaac Newton (1642-1727), the greatest scientist of the age, was also a Biblical fundamentalist who believed in a young Earth. Newton explained to his nephew, John Conduitt, that the Earth could not be old because all human technology was of recent invention. Like Ussher, Newton wrote his own universal history, Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended, that was published posthumously in 1728.
The procedures for establishing a scientific estimate of the age of the Earth were laid out in the seventeenth century by the Danish anatomist, Nicolaus Steno (1638-1686). Steno was the first person to state unequivocally that the history of the Earth was not to be found in human chronicles, but in the Earth itself. Steno’s principles of geologic investigation became the basis for establishing the relative age of rock sequences and the foundation of historical geology.
Armed with Steno’s principles, eighteenth century naturalists began to seriously consider the implications of the rock record. It became apparent to them that an immense amount of time was required to deposit the rock layers that covered the Earth’s surface.
One of the first to recognize the scope of geologic time was the Scottish philosopher James Hutton (1726-1797). In the year 1788, Hutton was accompanied on a field trip by his friend, the mathematician, John Playfair (1748-1819). They traveled up the coastline of Scotland to Siccar Point, and Hutton described the history implied by the sequence of rocks exposed there. After listening to Hutton’s exposition, Playfair later wrote “the mind seemed to grow giddy by looking so far into the abyss of time.”
By the time Charles Darwin (1809-1882) published Origin of Species in 1859, geologists were of the opinion that the Earth was practically, although not literally, of infinite age. With infinite time at this disposal, Darwin was able to invoke the slow mechanism of natural selection as an explanation for the organic evolution evidenced in the fossil record.
To demonstrate the vast extent of geologic time, Darwin offered the erosion of the Weald, a seaside cliff in England, as an offhand example. Darwin assumed an erosion rate of an inch a century, and then extrapolated that some 300 million years were apparently necessary to explain the total amount of erosion that had occurred.
But Darwin’s estimated erosion rate of one inch per century was little more than speculation. The number was unconstrained by any measurement or scientific observation. Nineteenth-century geologists lacked any quantitative method for establishing dates. The rocks of the Earth’s crust might represent the passage of ten million years. But just as easily, the amount of time could have been a hundred, a thousand, or ten thousand million years.
Darwin and his geological colleagues were soon taken to the woodshed by the greatest physicist of the nineteenth century, William Thomson (1824-1907). Better known as Lord Kelvin, Thomson was a man of prodigious gifts who possessed enormous intellectual stature. He published his first scientific paper at age sixteen, and had been appointed a chaired professor at the University of Glasgow at the precocious age of twenty-two.
In 1861, Lord Kelvin began to seriously address the question of dating the Earth. He was aware that the Earth radiated internal heat. This process could not have been going on forever. By maintaining that the Earth was infinitely old, the geologists in effect were postulating that energy was not conserved. This violated the First Law of Thermodynamics, and Kelvin was aroused to do battle.
In the nineteenth century, the only known source for the internal heat of the Earth was the original mechanical heat of accretion. Reasoning that the Earth had been molten at the time of its formation, but cooling ever since, Kelvin was able to construct an elegant mathematical model that constrained the age of the Earth on the basis of its measured geothermal gradient. Much the same method is used today by coroners who estimate the time of death by taking the temperature of a cadaver.
In 1862, Kelvin published his analysis in a paper titled On the Secular Cooling of the Earth. He arrived at a best estimate for the age of the Earth of 100 million years. Kelvin’s estimate was no idle speculation. It was based on a precise mathematical model constrained by laboratory measurements and the laws of thermodynamics.
Kelvin attacked Darwin directly. He raised the question: were the laboratory measurements and mathematical calculations in error, or was it more likely “that a stormy sea, with possibly channel tides of extreme violence, should encroach on a chalk cliff 1,000 times more rapidly than Mr. Darwin’s estimate of one inch per century?”
Darwin was devastated. He wrote to his mentor, Charles Lyell, “for heaven’s sake take care of your fingers; to burn them severely, as I have done, is very unpleasant.” Geologists were left sputtering. They had no effective rebuttal to Kelvin’s calculations. Within a few years, the geological establishment began to line up with Lord Kelvin. Among the influential converts was Archibald Geikie, President of both the British Association for the Advancement of Science and the Geological Society of London.
Researchers began to look for evidence that would confirm Kelvin’s calculations. In 1865, Geologist Samuel Haughton had estimated the age of the Earth as 2300 million years, a number reasonably close to the modern value of 4500 million years. But under the influence of Kelvin’s authority, in 1878 Haughton drastically shortened his earlier calculation to 153 million years.
A lone voice of dissent was raised by the biologist, Thomas Huxley (1825-1895). Huxley pointed out that there was a fundamental weakness in Kelvin’s mathematical model. “Mathematics may be compared to a mill of exquisite workmanship, which grinds you stuff of any degree of fineness; but, nevertheless, what you get out depends on what you put in.” Put in more modern terms, Huxley’s observation amounted to “garbage in, garbage out.”
But as the end of the nineteenth century approached, the scientific community was beginning to regard Kelvin’s estimate of 100 million years as a near certainty. Writing in the American Journal of Science in 1893, geologist Warren Upham characterized Kelvin’s estimate of the age of the Earth as the most “important conclusion in the natural sciences…[that] has been reached during this century.”
The science was definitely settled in 1899 by the Irish physicist, John Joly (1857-1933). Joly hit upon a robust method for calculating the age of the Earth that was entirely different from Kelvin’s. Joly’s calculation was childishly simple, yet apparently foolproof. He estimated the age of the Earth by dividing the total salt content of the oceans by the rate at which salt was being carried to the sea by the rivers. He found that it would take 80 to 90 million years for the ocean’s salt to accumulate.
In consideration of the uncertainties involved, Joly’s age estimate was essentially identical to Thomson’s. With different methods yielding the same result, it seemed evident that the result was conclusive: the Earth was 100 million years old. It seemed that to deny this reality, was to deny not only the authority of the scientific establishment but the very laws of nature themselves.
The ingenious calculations of Kelvin and Joly were soon to be overturned by an improbable empiricism. In the thirteenth century, modern science began when philosophers came to the realization that logic alone could never uncover the secrets of the cosmos, no matter how seductive its appeal. Contemplation of the mysterious properties of the magnet convinced Roger Bacon and his contemporaries that nature contained occult or hidden forces that could never be discerned or anticipated rationally, only discovered experimentally.
In 1896, Henri Becquerel accidentally discovered radioactivity when he found that photographic plates were exposed when placed next to certain minerals. By 1904, it became apparent that there were radioactive minerals inside the Earth releasing heat. Lord Kelvin’s assumption of no internal heat sources was wrong. At the beginning of the twentieth century, it was not even clear if the Earth was cooling or heating. Thomson’s calculations were precise, but he had no way of knowing about radioactivity.
Radioactivity also provided a rigorous way to calculate the age of the Earth. The accepted modern estimate for the age of the Earth is 4500 million years. The nineteenth-century estimate of 100 million years that seemed so certain was wrong, not just by 20 or 30 percent, but by a factor of 45. In retrospect, the reason that Thomson’s estimates had been independently confirmed is that geologists looked for data that would support Thomson’s physics. The consensus that had emerged was the product of a human psychological process, not objective science. The nature of science is such that people who look for confirming evidence will always find it.
Compared to modern climate models, William Thomson’s models were simple, and contained only a few assumptions. In contrast, global warming models are hideously complex, and contain numerous hidden assumptions, many of which are highly uncertain. The most significant of these is whether water vapor will exert a negative or positive feedback on the warming induced by carbon dioxide. All the major climate models assume the feedback will be positive, exaggerating any possible warming. But recent research indicates the feedback may be negative. We don’t know.
There is also much we do not understand about why Earth’s climate changes. It is possible that cosmic rays, modulated by the Sun’s magnetic field, cool Earth by inducing the formation of clouds. We don’t know why Ice Ages end so spectacularly and suddenly. Once they begin, Ice Ages should continue indefinitely, as cooling is reinforced by a number of positive feedbacks.
We ought to be intelligent enough to acknowledge that we don’t know what we don’t know. Science is never settled. We should keep in mind Seneca’s admonition. “Nature does not reveal all her secrets at once. We imagine we are initiated in her mysteries: we are, as yet, but hanging around her outer courts.”
There has never been a time when the need for understanding the limits and nature of scientific knowledge is so compelling, or the ramifications of ignorance so consequential. Those who ignore history are apt to repeat its mistakes.
David Deming (ddeming@ou.edu) is a geophysicist and professor of arts and sciences at the University of Oklahoma. He is the author of a history of science in three volumes, Science and Technology in World History.
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In a similar vein, the Nyquist/Shannon theorem that no electronic system could transmit data at more than twice the carrier frequency held back the development telecoms for decades. It has now been quietly forgotten that textbooks once stated boldly that no phone line could carry data at more than 2400bps, so there was no point in trying. Because of the existence of that theorem, for a long time no-one tried. When someone did actually have the brass neck to try… they found out it that 9600bps was easily attainable, and speeds of up to 56000bps were eventually achieved using trellis encoding of the same 1200Hz carrier.
If nobody had had the nerve to ‘deny’ that particular piece of ‘settled science’ then I’d be typing this on a Wildcat BBS, using ASCII graphics.
That’s not what the Shannon theorem says. Shannon’s theorem says that an encoding can be found to transmit data without error as long as it does not exceed the capacity of the channel. I know of no statement claiming that telephone circuits could not pass data at a rate more than 2400 bps, boldly or otherwise.
I am reasonably sure that is what USED to be said. In fact, I know it was. The fact that it is not said now, and the textbooks have been surreptitiously corrected, might give us some inkling of how climate theory will be corrected when they finally give up on the warming scare.
1953 text: “If the essential frequency range is limited to B cycles per second, 2B was given by Nyquist as the maximum number of code elements per second that could be unambiguously resolved, assuming the peak interference is less half a quantum step.”
BTW, this had nothing to do with noise as in Shannon-Hartley; it was claimed to be a simple hard limit.
The 1953 text is quoting the 1928 Nyquist paper entitled ‘Certain Topics in Telegraph Transmission Theory’. The concept became known as the Nyquist rate for a telegraph channel.
See the following article to see how this idea was developed, first by Ralph Hartley in 1928 and later by Claude Shannon during WWII.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon%E2%80%93Hartley_theorem#Historical_development
Shannon’s theorem about capacity and bandwidth also includes the s/n ratio as a consideration. Noisy channels are lower capacity, no matter how great their bandwidth.
And the channel capacity issue is quite separate from the sampling theorem attributed to Nyquist and Shannon (and numerous others.)
All this stuff came about when we had that great Bell Telephone Laboratories, National treasure, before a busybody government destroyed it.
g
That was when the telephone system actually worked. I have an ATT “telephone”, that is a piece of unmitigated garbage. We use a rubber band to hold the handset on the wall unit. That NEVER happened when Western Electric built the telephone hardware.
I think you are confusing the Nyquist-Shannon theorem with the Shannon-Hartley theorem; it is the latter which deals with the maximum capacity of a channel of a specified bandwidth. The Shannon-Hartley theorem still seems to apply even to very fancy encoding schemes – they just require higher signal-to-noise ratios.
Really good essay, thank you.
In other words, something we have all known; cutting edge science is only cutting edge for a few years until it is replaced by something that could not be predicted.
Astronomy is another science that has improved out of all recognition. due to unforseen technology. I was always taught that telescopes no mater how big could not capture any more detail than they could in the 1940’s when the 200″ Mt Palomar Reflector was built, due to atmospheric distortion and if they could, grinding a bigger mirror was difficult if not impossible due to the weight and resulting distortion distortion. Computer technology has negated the atmospheric distortion and much bigger telescopes can be built using hundreds of computer controlled compound mirrors. It was said that exo-planets could not be seen due to the glare from the star they orbit around. Who fifty years ago could have predicted that measurement of stellar light could ever become do precise that a transit could be detected?
It is frightening that advances such as these will end because of lack of cheap. reliable power based on the lie of AGW.
E.M. Smith (Chiefio) wrote sometime ago:
What if the whole thing can be explained in a very different way? I have read several people offer much different theories of why our planet keeps such a relatively stable temperature. One fellow, an amateur I think, said:
I don’t think it is that simple myself. I think that fellow hit upon a large and important part of it all, but there are other factors. Perhaps many other factors.
My point being that the CO2 effect, “taken for granted”, need not be true at all. There are many other factors far more important; as time will demonstrate to us.
I pretty much agree with the quote and what you’ve stated….and I wonder if the folks that are doing all those climate models include the convection currents.in them. The rotation of the planet (night/day cooling/heating) and the winds from the equator to the poles and back again, and opposing seasons keep the planet pretty stable temperature-wise. It would take a lot more than our relatively minor contribution to CO2 to change all that.
Came across an interesting article with some possible parallels in current edition of IEEE Spectrum magazine, about attempts to model the recent Ebola outbreak (link http://bit.ly/1dVFbBx )
Summary – model predicted exponential growth, and >>10X the actual number of deaths that actually occurred by start of 2015.
In this case, validation (or otherwise) was possible on a timescale of months, not decades. Patchy historic data, paucity of observations, complexity of multiple factors all contributed.
Perhaps, to quote J L Borges, “The machinery of the world is far too complex for the simplicity of men”
I wonder why Dr Deming forgot to mention the fact that Nicolaus Steno (1638-1686) was a Catholic priest.
and became a bishop and was beatified but when he was a scientist, he was a lapsed Lutheran.
Great article; probably the best for a long while. Many people tend to forget that Science is about empirical fact, not rational argument.
FD
The most loaded word in law is: “reasonable”.
I would say it is the phrase; “in other words”. In “other words” lies “other meaning”.
Lawyers always try to get you to use “other words” than the ones that say what you intend to say.
I always use my words; they mean what I intend them to say.
I would like to know if those who were so outspoken and wrong about the age of the earth suffered in any way. I have a great fascination for stories like this one. There have been many, some were very costly to many people.
Alas, as one historian has said, science advances one funeral at a time…
“But with the advent of Christianity and Islam, scholars began to assume that humanity was coeval with the Creation of the world. It followed that the age of the Earth could be estimated from a careful examination of sacred writings.”
And the first Christian quoted as an example of that claim is Archbishop Ussher who lived from 1581 to 1656. That’s virtually 1500 year after the start of Christianity. That’s rather a long gap. You would think that if such scholars existed as claimed by Dr Deming he would have found one much earlier.
For those who prefer to look at the real data rather than the fanciful notions expressed by Dr Deming, they might like to refer to St Augustine (354 to 430) on the matter in hand. St Thomas Aquinas (1225 to 1274) is also worth a look. The thing to notice about both those gentlemen is that they were Catholics, not fundamentalist Protestants.
Augustine was a young earth creationist. He shared with other figures in the early Church the chronology of the Septuagint, by which a host of Church Fathers computed that Creation occurred around 5400 to 5600 BC. Calculations based upon the Masoretic text yield dates around 4300 to 4400 BC.
For the first several centuries of Christianity at least, the Greek Septuagint chronology prevailed, starting with Clement of Alexander, who came up with 5592 BC. He was followed by many others in the first millennium.
The Byzantine calendar dated the creation of the world to September 1, 5509 BC, Greek Orthodoxy still uses the Septuagint as its Old Testament text.
Book XII of Augustine’s “City of God”:
http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/120112.htm
Chapter 10.— Of the Falseness of the History Which Allots Many Thousand Years to the World’s Past.
Let us, then, omit the conjectures of men who know not what they say, when they speak of the nature and origin of the human race. For some hold the same opinion regarding men that they hold regarding the world itself, that they have always been. Thus Apuleius says when he is describing our race, “Individually they are mortal, but collectively, and as a race, they are immortal.” And when they are asked, how, if the human race has always been, they vindicate the truth of their history, which narrates who were the inventors, and what they invented, and who first instituted the liberal studies and the other arts, and who first inhabited this or that region, and this or that island? They reply, that most, if not all lands, were so desolated at intervals by fire and flood, that men were greatly reduced in numbers, and from these, again, the population was restored to its former numbers, and that thus there was at intervals a new beginning made, and though those things which had been interrupted and checked by the severe devastations were only renewed, yet they seemed to be originated then; but that man could not exist at all save as produced by man. But they say what they think, not what they know.
They are deceived, too, by those highly mendacious documents which profess to give the history of many thousand years, though, reckoning by the sacred writings, we find that not 6000 years have yet passed. And, not to spend many words in exposing the baselessness of these documents, in which so many thousands of years are accounted for, nor in proving that their authorities are totally inadequate, let me cite only that letter which Alexander the Great wrote to his mother Olympias, giving her the narrative he had from an Egyptian priest, which he had extracted from their sacred archives, and which gave an account of kingdoms mentioned also by the Greek historians. In this letter of Alexander’s a term of upwards of 5000 years is assigned to the kingdom of Assyria; while in the Greek history only 1300 years are reckoned from the reign of Bel himself, whom both Greek and Egyptian agree in counting the first king of Assyria. Then to the empire of the Persians and Macedonians this Egyptian assigned more than 8000 years, counting to the time of Alexander, to whom he was speaking; while among the Greeks, 485 years are assigned to the Macedonians down to the death of Alexander, and to the Persians 233 years, reckoning to the termination of his conquests. Thus these give a much smaller number of years than the Egyptians; and indeed, though multiplied three times, the Greek chronology would still be shorter. For the Egyptians are said to have formerly reckoned only four months to their year; so that one year, according to the fuller and truer computation now in use among them as well as among ourselves, would comprehend three of their old years. But not even thus, as I said, does the Greek history correspond with the Egyptian in its chronology. And therefore the former must receive the greater credit, because it does not exceed the true account of the duration of the world as it is given by our documents, which are truly sacred. Further, if this letter of Alexander, which has become so famous, differs widely in this matter of chronology from the probable credible account, how much less can we believe these documents which, though full of fabulous and fictitious antiquities, they would fain oppose to the authority of our well-known and divine books, which predicted that the whole world would believe them, and which the whole world accordingly has believed; which proved, too, that it had truly narrated past events by its prediction of future events, which have so exactly come to pass!
Book XV:
http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/120115.htm
An absolute pleasure to read – lots of facts from our human history (but will we learn?); and all so eloquently presented. Thank you
I’ve always loved how they talk about how long it took for that little bitty narrow river to carve the grand canyon, when it’s quite obvious that it’s one giant gully-washer. Whether there was a glacial lake that softened the soil before the dam broke, or it happened some other way, it’s still quite obvious it’s one giant gully-washer – no different than those large, if somewhat smaller, canyons in the NW. The idea that erosion on that great of a scale doesn’t take into consideration (hmmm, sounds like global warming theory) a whole lot of other factors.
When it comes to evolutionary science, we only see changes within species; we have yet to see one species change into another – and that needs to be observed and tested. So far, it hasn’t happened. On the other hand, we see species reproducing themselves on a daily basis.
I meant to say that they kept changing the age of the earth to fit the theory on those issues as well, i.e., it took longer to carve the Grand Canyon; it took a longer period to evolve life from non-life, etc.
Next time you fly over the states surrounding the Colorado River or even the Mississippi River, look carefully at the proliferation of erosion, and washed out areas that could only be caused by a massive outflow of water. It is clearly obvious in the drier states where these artifacts are not hidden by foliage. Along areas of the Missouri River near me there are flat valleys more than 5 miles wide that could only have been caused by the release of a major dam break, older than any dam other than the ice age could have caused.
The Grand Canyon was not formed by glacial lake outbreak floods like the channeled scablands of Eastern Washington State. It was formed by the Colorado River’s cutting into the rising Colorado Plateau.
New species evolving from old has been observed so often as to be trivial. Speciation events observed in the wild have been recreated in the lab. Evolution is a consequence of reproduction.
Evolution has never been observed happening across species. No, that itty bitty river did not carve that mile wide canyon.
Observed speciation events.
Regarding evolution, why would you make such a baseless assertion so easily shown false?
Not only new species but new genera have been made by people, both rapidly and slowly.
Your unfounded assertion re the Grand Canyon is also false. The same forces which made it over millions of years are still observable today. In 2008 the beginning of the process was reliably dated.
Please name one “kind” that has been observed changing into another.
4Times,
Please define what you mean by a “kind”? If it isn’t a species, what is it?
You’ve been shown copious examples of species evolving into new species by a variety of means, and of new genera evolving from existing genera naturally and of being created in the lab.
If the Bible be your “biology” text, then “kind” clearly means species, since the Ark had breeding pairs (or seven of each clean kind, depending upon by which of the myth’s self-contradictory passages you swear). However if you in spite of this fact still maintain that a biblical “kind” is a higher taxon than species, the farthest you can go in the Linnaean system is family, since among the Ark’s passengers were both crows (or ravens) and doves, which are not just in different families but orders and higher taxa in the clade Neoaves.
Make that “Evolution is a consequence of **slightly imperfect** reproduction.”
Among the anecdotal pointers to the reality of evolution are curious facts, such as the hippo being closer genetically to the whales than to pigs, horses or cows. Or teeth, which no bird possesses, being coded in silent bird genes like deleted files on a hard disc, quite easy to switch back on with a little genetic manipulation.
Genesis itself talks about “the earth producing” plants, animals, and “the sea producing” fish. This allows many Christians to accept the overwhelming evidence for evolution. Genesis did not say “God waved a magic wand and such-and-such animals, birds etc. appeared out of nowhere”. “Let there be light” is not a bad 1500 BC approximation to the big bang.
D. Cohen
June 8, 2015 at 5:43 am
Evolution also occurs without mistakes. The “slight imperfections” help, though.
“Please name one “kind” that has been observed changing into another. ”
Spartina maritima and Spartina alterniflora to Spartina anglica. Happened around 1870 in southern England.
There are any number of examples.
Tty,
The instances of observed speciation are legion, which is why 4Times has given up on science and reverted to the biblical “kind”, which has no precise scientific meaning, but clearly from the Old Testament means “species”, as it’s commonly used. But being imprecise, it provides wiggle room. Hence, it can mean anything from the family “bears” (thus allowing for a grizzly to evolve into a polar) to an entire kingdom, as in bacteria (thus allowing sugar-eating bacteria to evolve into nylon-eating bacteria by a single base pair mutation).
IOW it allows anti-scientific fundamentalists to d*ny the fact of evolution while using it to explain away, for instance, how so many “kinds” were crammed onto the Ark, requiring rapid evolution after the waters–three times the volume of all the planet’s present oceans (over 29,000 feet across the entire globe)–which somehow came from above and beneath the earth receded to wherever they went.
For “kingdom”, please read “domain”.
Ever heard of “meandering” ??
If you think that the Grand Canyon was washed out in a year, please explain why unconsolidated sediments would not have flowed in to fill it. There should be no near-vertical walls. The pressure on the mud at the bottom would be about 5000 psi. On the other hand, if the walls were already lithified, how long would it have taken the sediments to be deposited and cemented? The young canyon idea just doesn’t hold water. It is also interesting that there are igneous intrusives in the canyon walls.
I didn’t give a time frame. I merely said it was a gully washer. I have no idea how long it took. Gully washers are notorious for doing their job in a relatively short period of time.
The problem is that there is zero evidence in favor of your assertion and all the evidence against it.
Mount St. Helens has been given by some to be an example of the kinds of erosions that can result in formations like what you see in the Grand Canyon. Some were formed in very soft recent, And others formed through long established deposits by a rapidly flowing mud slurry. I don’t know the current status of the formations, and how much they have hardened. But, certainly they can form in a year, and last many years since.
http://www.icr.org/research/index/researchp_sa_r04/
Joe,
Apparently you’re unaware that the ICR is a pack of shameless, paid liars.
Sturgis, are you stating there was no rapid canyon carving at the Mt. St. Helens locale, or that those canyons do not persist to this day? Or are you just vilifying the messenger?
SR
Bones, a very reasonable question (at 1:39).
I have seen eroded canyons that were dug by narrow streams, such as in the Badlands of South Dakota. These canyons are typically deep, narrow V shaped valleys. Each (very narrow) side canyon is separated from its neighbor side canyons by a narrow knife ridge. The bottom of each canyon is only the width of the greatest runoff that occurs during periodic washouts.
A continued flow creates a deeper canyon over time, not a wider one.
On the other hand, the coulees in the scablands of the Columbia Plateau in Washington State are wide and flat bottomed, and are believed to have been carved very rapidly by very large flows. It appears the width of a canyon’s floor is directly related to the magnitude of the flow of water that created it.
I have also seen small streams carving miniature canyons through beach sands washed smooth by high tides on the Washington coast. These little canyons were always flat bottomed and vertical sided. When the sides did collapse, it was usually by vertical slabs toppling into the stream flow, to be rapidly carried away. Even though the sand was easily eroded, the mini-canyons were always much wider than deep.
Note that the Grand Canyon is carved through a plateau. It is rimmed by flat topped mesas consisting of sandstone layers deposited by flowing water. These deposits are hundred of miles in extent. The ridges separating side canyons are flat topped. The main canyon consists of a very wide canyon with a deep, narrow canyon carved within. Most of the canyon walls are tall cliffs.
The physical layout of the Grand Canyon is consistent with strata laid down by a flood of at least continental proportions, followed by a very large sheet runoff producing a very flat landscape, dwindling to very large rivers which carved wide, flat bottomed canyons. Bones, this first canyon carving episode would have occurred as the flood waters receded, but was not to the full depth of the present day Grand Canyon. As you pointed out, the pressures at depth within these layers would have been tremendous. The greater the pressure, the faster consolidation would have progressed. Upper layers would have eroded more easily during this first runoff, promoting canyons that were much wider than deep, just the way beach sand eroded.
This first catastrophic runoff was followed by a smaller flood flowing within the main canyon, carving out a deep inner canyon. The water for this flood was probably provided by the Canyonlands Lake. Think of the Lake Missoula flood. Note that there is very little fallen rock at the base of the tall cliffs that form much of the inner canyon. This indicates that the flow that carved the inner canyon filled the valley floor from cliff to cliff and flowed with enough force to carry away all debris. Finally, the present day Colorado river flows within the inner canyon. That there is still very little fallen rock at the base of the canyon cliffs indicates the brief age of the canyons.
Like every scenario of past events, confirmation is difficult to come by, but this scenario is consistent with all my observations of present day erosion.
The Colorado river could have carved a deep canyon over eons, but not a wide canyon, no matter how much time passed.
PS. A lava flow dated at 6 million years appears to have flowed from one side of the canyon to the other. This puts a maximum age on the canyon of 6 million years, assuming lava dating can be trusted.
SR
Steve,
I’m saying that the St. Helens floods do not contribute to understanding the formation of the Grand Canyon.
I don’t know which lava flow you have in mind there from six million years ago, but the Grand Canyon was dammed repeatedly during the active volcanism that began about three million years ago. The dams and their lakes each didn’t last very long, but there were a lot of them, including 150 in just one 625,000 year period ending 100,000 years ago.
The layers exposed in the canyon are ancient. They generally range in age from Triassic (~200 to 250 million years ago) and Permian (Paleozoic) at the top down to Paleoproterozoic (~1.8 billion years old) at the bottom. Most of the newer deposits from the later Mesozoic and Cenozoic have eroded away on the plateau. Marine layers alternate with terrestrial. That a single flood could have caused the plateau to form is simply preposterous, as is the notion that one flood carved the canyon through it.
Actually the Grand Canyon (and the other dramatic landscapes of the Colorado Plateau) are fairly young. They are all due to the plateau having risen a kilometer or more in just 5-6 million years.
Assuming that massive floods occur from the rupture of ice dams at the end of each glacial period. Over millions of years there have been quite a number of huge floods. Thus it is logical that large floods have contributed both to broad river valleys in general as well as the grand canyon.
Tty,
Correct. The Colorado River cut through its plateau rapidly (since the Pliocene Epoch) because the landscape has been rising.
However the plateau itself is composed of ancient rocks, exposed by the cutting of the canyon. Its cake is missing some layers (eg Ordovician and Silurian Periods), but otherwise is a good record of the past going on two billion years.
Bellator Deus
June 8, 2015 at 1:02 pm
Ice dams not so much in the case of the Colorado, but the pluvial intervals of the Pleistocene ice ages did increase its flow and make it a more vigorous canyon cutter.
The parallels with CAGW,,AGW, Climate Change and the ideologically driven followers just stagers the mind. What I still find amusing is that a value for the effects of “CO2” were calculated in the very early 20th century, about the same time that radio and TV were getting started, and has not been refined, changed, OR PROVEN since. AS if to do so would be blasphemy. The tactics of the Believers are the same (actually worse) than those that followed Kelvin, more like the Spanish inquisition. Their fame, fortune, and devoted following came from the power that they abused. And we still “honor” these charlatans, con-men, etc., by naming scientific attributes and parameters after them. How much have they set back science? How much money time and lives were wasted? Would you name a college, hospital, or restaurant after Jeffery Dahmer? A rape center after Ted Bundy?
In addition to the 18+ year global warming hiatus, climatology seems to be also suffering from a Scientific Method Hiatus….
It’s depressing to see climatologists like Karl arbitrarily adjust raw data to force the data to conform to CAGW hypothetical projections. That is not how the Scientific Method works…
Normally, when hypothetical projections fail to match empirical data within statistically significant boundaries, the hypothesis is either tossed in the trash bin or the hypothesis is modified to match reality… Not so with the CAGW hypothesis; It’s far easier to just “fix” the raw data to keep the hypothesis within the disconfirmatiin boundaries.
The way things are going, Karl 2015, will not be the last of the “fixes”…. As long as there is a Scientific Method Hiatus, there will always be creative ways to “fix” the raw data to keep the hypothesis on life support…
I’m just thankful UAH, RSS and radiosonde data have not all been “fixed”….yet….
I’m with you, Samurai.
This whole AGW-driven corrosion of science, incredibly aided and abetted by such institutions as the APS, has nearly destroyed the joy of science for me. I’ve become cynical about every announcement these days, almost no matter the field.
There is no scientific method hiatus see
http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/2015/04/climate-and-co2-exchange-with-freeman.html
A most enjoyable and enlightening essay. A scientific genius like Kelvin was shown to be wrong in that theory only by the discovery of new knowledge. No such advance is required to expose the weaknesses of the scientific mediocrities who pushed CO2 as a catastrophic threat, aided and abetted by highly talented political operators and lucky political opportunists.
It is worth noting here that Logic can only tell us what is necessary given the premises we have assumed. Which essentially guarantees that we can only guarantee that the theorems arising from Logic are correct when our chosen premises are all fictitious — or otherwise disconnected — from reality. In every other case, perfect Logic will lead us to a perfectly wrong conclusion.
But this is highly desirable. This is not a case of “It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.” From the get go, if we attain absurd results — either that they are self-inconsistent or inconsistent with reality — then we know at least one of our premises is false. But we cannot necessarily state which one or how many. This is highly desirable as it tells us when and where we’re hunting unicorns.
Conversely and perversely, however, it cannot tell us when we’ve attained the Alpha and Omega of right answers unless our knowledge of the system goes far deeper than that part of the system we’re speaking about. And that gets into a whole mess of notions relating to Godel’s Incompleteness theorems. In the loosest sense, we cannot prove that we have ‘the’ answer unless we can entirely simulate the reality we’re discussing. But that requires that we simulate reality to the same level of detail. At various limits this becomes impossible due to computational constraints. For everything else we necessarily take a fuzzy and statistical notion of things. Which simply means that any testable notions must exist where the signal is greater than the noise.
It is unsurprising then that the productive theoretical output of science busies itself with the unknowns within the realm of statistical insignificance. Even if it cannot be tested now, it may be able to be tested someday. But if it cannot be tested now, then it’s as useful and interesting as any random navel gazing of a street corner preacher. It is Philosophy writ large, and has no current connection to empiricism or falsifiability.
This is ably shown in the discussion about the age of the Earth. Where the responsible and scientific statement was never: “The Earth is 100 million years old.” But: “if we assume that heat only came from accretion, and that accretion is the only manner of genesis of a planetary body, and that there do not exist mechanisms that would accelerate cooling of the body, then the Earth is 100 million years old, give or take.”
These assumptions and hypotheticals exist even when they’re not stated; a notion that can be found discussed in the writings of Popper and Quine. But one can hardly uphold theoretical navel gazing as having the same imperious majesty of engineering if one sketches out such doubt explicitly. One can hardly dictate national or global policies without engaging in such mendacity — not even on a precautionary principle basis. And one can hardly elevate themselves and their peers to the status of religious clergy if one sketches out all the doubts and notions that must be swallowed to reach a conclusion that cannot yet, if ever, be demonstrated.
But if you discard such requirements of logic then you’re well in hand to establish a new revealed religion. Undoing the entire work of the enlightenment from Baruch Spinoza on.
The Weald is not a sea cliff, but an eroded rock dome between the North Downs, where Darwin lived, and the South Downs. It extends from Kent to Hampshire.
Darwin did however derive his estimated erosion rate from the effect of the sea on nearby rock cliffs. It turns out that his estimate was off for the Weald. It’s quite a bit younger than 306 million years, but did yield some important dinosaur fossils.
IMO Lord Kelvin was not the greatest 19th century physicist. I’d vote for Faraday or Maxwell, two of Einstein’s three heroes (with Newton).
I go with Maxwell without a doubt.
Kelvin was one among many greats in the 19th century flowering of physics . Maxwell would get my nod too .
I’d vote for the Scot too but I’m partial to Englishman Faraday as well because of his lack academic credentials.
I go with Faraday, also without doubt. Probably the greatest experimentalist of all times.
However, being a self-learned man without an university education he was unable to give a strict mathematical formulation of his results. This was done by Maxwell (“Maxwell’s equations”)
Evolution is a chaotic process. The Earth’s climate system is incompletely or insufficiently characterized and unwieldy. Science is a frame-based philosophy that establishes a fourth logical domain with accuracy inversely proportional to the product of time (or perhaps motion) and space offsets from an established frame of reference. Scientific theories begin in the philosophical domain and remain there until there is a probable path (excluding unreasonable assumptions of uniformity and continuity, reasoning through inference, and establishment with circumstantial evidence) to apply the scientific method; otherwise, they are shunted to one of the remaining logical domains: faith and fantasy.
That said, climate science is more aptly suited to service a risk management protocol, rather than as a skillful scientific discipline. Perhaps climate science could be reduce to weather forecasting in a prospective but still limited frame of reference. The scientific method was intended to constrain conflation of the logical domains, but has failed in its purpose in in the post-normal era, where people believe that science and technology are omniscient and omnipotent. respectively, and many “scientists” are eager to exploit their unearned status.
One problem I see is that there is no one definition even of “science”. Nor one explanation of the “scientific method”.
There are two broad definitions that I have come across: modern science, also known as empirical science, is limited to that which can be observed. Noticed, I didn’t say what can be explained, for observations often can’t be explained until more observations are made. The identity of the observer is unimportant as long as the observations are accurately made. The other is pre-modern science, also post-modern science is following the same pattern, which is dependent on models, explanations and the reputation of “scientists” rather than observation as the primary source of scientific knowledge.
What makes it confusing is that researchers often mix the two different definitions, and get garbage out.
A good example is Kelvin’s determination of the age of the earth. In order to be accurate, he needed to know the original temperature of the earth, what was the rate of cooling over time, were there any factors that may have changed the rate of cooling or created a bump in the temperatures, none of which are based on observation. Yes, he got a date “assuming” all the factors that could be observed and measured stayed constant, but did they? Can’t be observed, therefore not modern, empirical science. By mixing together the different ways of thinking, he gave a result that appears to be scientific, but is it?
Now apply that to CAGW—post-modern science—the models and explanations must be correct, the experts have told us so, therefore go out and try to back up the models. Most skeptics base their skepticism on modern science—where are the observations? These are two different ways of thinking, two different ways of practicing science. Which is more accurate?
You’ve damned and proclaimed Climate Science and Kelvin together. The problem with Climate Science is that it is “assuming” all manner of factors — no differently than Kelvin. But Climate Science is also predicated on factors that can and have been observed, measured, and assumed to be constant — no differently than Kelvin.
And yes, mixing definitions is a huge problem. For example, modern means… well, ‘now.’ But your example of modern is historical and your example of post-modern is modern. And where they are not differentiated at all in the underpinnings of their notions or of the observations of their outcomes. And that’s aside that ’empirical’ is not restricted to ‘can’ be observed — but has been.
The only manner in which to differentiate Kelvin and Climate Science is not in their premises but in their conclusions. Climate Science states that it is True despite a match between observation and theory. Did Kelvin say the same? For if all Kelvin stated by conclusion was ‘assuming these things, then…’ we do indeed find a difference. Otherwise, not so much.
“Bible editors began to place Ussher’s dates in the margins of their texts.” BIBLE EDITORS! In the words of Bill Hicks: “I have never been THAT confident.”
The Weald is about 80 million years old, so Darwin was wrong by a factor of 4. Which is a lot better than Kelvin! But not all scientists meekly accepted Kelvin’s figures. Darwin had a vicarious revenge on Kelvin, as his son George Darwin, a mathematical physicist, was one of the first to point out that the discovery of radioactivity invalidated Kelvin’s estimates.
David,
I’m far from an expert on the Weald, but my impression is that it is Early Cretaceous in age rather than Late Cretaceous. This is not based upon geological work there, but simply stems from the fact that Early Cretaceous fossil dinosaurs have been found within it, namely Mantell’s famous Iguanodon and more recently the spinosaur Baryonyx, from 125 to 130 Ma.
Yes, you’re right about the age of the Wealden deposits – Lower Cretaceous, before about 100mya. I didn’t look it up, I just guessed at around 80mya based on the Greensand being the last layer below the Chalk.
The age of the Weald as a geomorphological feature – an eroded anticline – is another matter. The anticline can’t be older than its top layer – the Chalk – so I suppose erosion must have started after 65mya. (On a quick glance at Wiki, the folding of the anticline is dated to the Oligocene, around 35mya. So Darwin was out by a factor of 10. Still better than Kelvin!)
Excellent article.
Kelvin based his estimate of the age of the Earth on the work by Joseph Fourier who many cite as one of the fathers of global warming (the other being Svante Arrhenius).
While Kelvin originally came to a value of 100 million years he later reduced it to a more accurate value of 20 million years.
The Bible never says how long ago Genesis 1:1 occurred.
An excerpt from a comment I made on another blog.
(https://sunriseswansong.wordpress.com/2013/07/11/attention-surplus-disorder-part-two/
PS Please don’t respond there. Caleb has allowed this to remain but he has no dog in this fight and I won’t respond.))
As far as I know, not much is said about how it became “without form and void” beyond,
2 Peter 3:6 Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: (KJV).
(Hence the need for the firmament, the space, in Genesis 1:6)
So, how old does the Bible say the Earth is? It doesn’t. Might evidence remain of the “the world that then was”? Yes.
Does any of that have much to say about CO2 and CAGW? No.
(Though II Peter 3:7 does mention “heat”, that heat ain’t going to be Man-Made.)
I found this essay very interesting, a good analysis which I enjoyed to read.There are several issues connected to the global warming, and one of the most important is the human one. Humans are, in the same time, factors and victims of global warming. Although you cannot say that the greenhouse gasses are the major factor that contributed to the climate change, you can’t say either that people don’t influence climate at all. There are other ways in which humans affected climate: through oceanic activities (sailing, navigation, warfare, etc). You can see what I’m talking about here: http://www.arctic-warming.com. In conclusion, when talking about global warming, we should discuss also the topics of: humans, environment and – last, but not at least! – oceans.
My guess is that over time alarmist positions will simply be steadily revised down into a non-alarmist shadow of their former selves and then forgotten about.
And that any great insights which lead to any greater understanding that will arise, will be credited to official state-sanctioned science.
Official science will be unlikely even to credit those such as Curry, Pielke Sr or Christy who threatened the mainstream from within.
But, bit by bit, people will start to say things along the lines of, “we now know that in the light of new evidence or the latest research, that earlier concerns were overstated.”
In rare instances that might say, “this completely changes how we think about topic X”.
As a perfect example of how this phenomenon may play out, just look at what WUWT was saying about coral atolls 5 years ago, here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/27/floating-islands/
And see how five days ago, the popular magazine for nerds, alarmists and fantasists – New Scientist, reports on the same conclusions here:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn27639-small-atoll-islands-may-grow-not-sink-as-sea-levels-rise.html#.VXSH_EZbqKa
Presented as though nobody had ever thought of this before.
So, no apology from the same magazine that was specifically telling everyone that Tuvalu could be GONE by the middle of the century, here:
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2008/11/top-5-islands-that-are-going-t.html
And no credit given to the rare individuals who managed to remain unconfused on this topic, throughout. Unconfused, despite the best efforts of alarmist scientists, journalists and politicians to try to muddle everyone up, including themselves.
Is “sorry, we were wrong”, to much to ask?
Actually this was described by Darwin in detail in The structure and distribution of coral reefs. Being the first part of the geology of the voyage of the Beagle, under the command of Capt. Fitzroy, R.N. during the years 1832 to 1836 in 1842.
So I suppose it is about par for the course that the news have now reached New Scientist
The problem is that the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere does not depend on C02. There is no such observations. In contrast, the direct absorption of solar radiation by water, the density of the clouds, the amount of precipitation, wind speed influences the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere. In particular, the role of wind strength is underestimated.
The discovery of radioactivity is not what discredits Kelvin’s calculation on the age of the Earth. Adding in heat from radioactivity makes little difference to his 100 million year calculation.
Kelvin’s method was challenged quietly by his assistant John Perry who saw Kelvin’s assumption of a uniform heat distribution from the interior to surface as likely wrong. Perry argued that the interior of the Earth could be more efficient at heat transfer (if it were a liquid, for example). This would produce a higher thermal gradient, transferring more heat to match known measurements, but producing an age for the Earth as high as 2-3 billion years.
If Kelvin had accepted Perry’s argument and revised his work, he would have reached the right answer (using wrong assumptions). Instead Kelvin ignored Perry’s criticism.
In 1904 Ernest Rutherford (the father of nuclear theory) addressed a crowd in front of Kelvin and stated that Kelvin had succeeded in limiting the age of the Earth provided that no new source of heat had been discovered. The discovery of radioactivity allowed Kelvin to now be wrong, even though his original assumption on the transfer of heat from the interior to the surface of the Earth was what invalidated his theory.
http://www.es.ucsc.edu/~pkoch/EART_206/09-0108/Supplemental/England%20et%2007%20AmSci%2095-342.pdf
Worth the read.
What Kelvin did accomplish was to force a discussion on the age of the earth that did not allow for an infinite age on one hand (geologists) or 10,000 years on the other (creationism).
Geologists in the late 18th and 19th century did not imagine that the age of the earth was infinite. That;s based upon a false interpretation of Hutton’s famous statement regarding the cycles of erosion and deposition that “we find no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end”.
Based upon what was known about the planetary crust during Lord Kelvin’s time, geologists estimated that the oldest rocks were thousands of millions of years old, not tens or hundreds. They were right as to order of magnitude, although generally a little on the low side.
In this case, the geologists and biologists were correct and a leading physicist and his supporters (including Darwin’s son) were wrong.