The featured image is a USGS picture of a boulder from a debris flow in Venezuela. I chose not to use the photos from the Earther article to avoid any copyright issues.
Apparently Storms Can Push 600-Ton Boulders Around
Maddie Stone
On the rocky shores of a windswept island just west of Ireland, the 620-ton boulder looks almost at home. But careful analysis of its position over the last few years has revealed something odd: between the summers of 2013 and 2014, the boulder shifted a couple meters toward the sea. That discovery is causing scientists to rethink what they know about the impacts of powerful storms.
In fact, the rock is one of more than a thousand boulders—including a handful of Very Large Boulders (VLBs and yes, that’s a technical term) weighing over 50 metric tons—shuffled around by the powerful storms that pounded Ireland’s west coast during the winter of 2013-2014, the stormiest in decades. Described in a new paper in the journal Earth Science Reviews, these boulders offer some of the first concrete evidence that storm waves, not just tsunami waves, can pack enough punch to hurl giant chunks of Earth around. (For comparison, 100 metric tons is about half the weight of a Boeing 747.)
In a warming world where more energy in the oceans and atmosphere could mean more powerful storms, that’s an important insight.
“Ten years ago, it was possible to say storms can’t move 50 ton boulders,” lead study author Rónadh Cox, a professor of geosciences at Williams College, told Earther. “If you were building a model of storm intensity or thinking about risks posed by severe storms, then your upper level for storm energy were to some extent informed by that understanding.”
[…]
Earther
“Ten years ago, it was possible to say storms can’t move 50 ton boulders”… This is where I rolled my eyes.
https://imgur.com/gallery/uzBxh
But, 20 years ago, it was possible to say that storms did move VLB’s around (Ms. Stone is correct about VLB’s being a genuine technical term)…
QUATERNARY RESEARCH 48, 326–338 (1997)
ARTICLE NO. QR971926
Boulder Deposits from Large Waves during the Last Interglaciation on North Eleuthera Island, Bahamas
The greatest weight (from an estimated denasity of 2.4 g/cm3) is about 2,300 tons for Boulder 1.
OK… The largest Eemian Bahama Boulder was 2,300 tons. It was ten times the size of Holocene boulders moved by waves. That would be 230 tons. Yet, 10 years ago, storms couldn’t move 50 ton boulders.
For that matter, the Irish boulders which couldn’t be moved by storms 10 years ago, were very likely deposited by storms…
PUBLIC RELEASE: 27-NOV-2017
Boulder deposition by tsunamis and storms
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES
A study explores the origin of boulders deposited on cliffs in western Ireland and New Zealand’s North Island. The question of whether tsunamis or storm waves are responsible for the presence of boulders on ocean cliffs remains unsettled. John Dewey and Paul Ryan compared two deposits of boulders weighing more than 30 tonnes on the coastline of Annagh Head, western Ireland and on the Matheson Formation, a Miocene deposit in New Zealand. Oceanographic data, field measurements, and historic storm accounts indicated that Annagh Head deposits, which weigh more than 50 tonnes, are subject to 20-30-meter-high storm waves. Field measurements of the Matheson Formation indicated that a 12-13-meter tsunami with a period of approximately 1 hour could have deposited the boulders, some of which weigh more than 140 tonnes. Further, compared with the Annagh Head deposits, the Matheson Formation deposits are spread over a large geographic region and include a large proportion of ocean floor sediments–both of which are indicative of a tsunami. A numerical model of storm waves indicated that boulder size, shape, and density determine the site at which waves deposit boulders. According to the authors, the Matheson Formation likely represents the deposition of a single tsunami over 1 hour, whereas the Annagh Head deposits likely represent the result of centuries of storms.
Article #17-13233: “Storm, rogue wave, or tsunami origin for megaclast deposits in western Ireland and North Island, New Zealand?,” by John F. Dewey and Paul D. Ryan.
Looking at the accompanying image, a vary reasonable possibility is that the wave action eroded some of the smaller rocks supporting the stone allowing it to slide towards the water line
I’ll have to try this line…. “Officer, the wind from global warming must have shifted my car toward the bottom of the hill: only a DENIALIST would blame the parking-brake!”
Along with the fact that water is lower than land, and the article expressly says that the boulders shifted towards it. To wit: But careful analysis of its position over the last few years has revealed something odd: between the summers of 2013 and 2014, the boulder shifted a couple meters toward the sea.
And how fardown? The article doesn’t mention that part. What rolls down hills,
in warming or chills?
Everyone knows, a boulder!
Uluru…
•is 348 metres (1141 feet) high
•rises 863 metres (2,831 ft) above sea level
•is 3.6 km long (2.2 miles)
•is 1.9 km wide (1.2 miles)
•is 9.4 km or 5.8 miles around the base
•covers 3.33 km2 (1.29 miles2)
•extends about several km/miles into the ground (no-one knows exactly how far)
Back in 1991, a hurricane, Bob, hit the coast of Maine. Afterwards, the Coast Guard was apparently missing a large concrete pier. They assumed it had broken its supports and sank into the sea. However, they located it about a hundred yards inland on the other side of a low hill. Storm waves pack a huge punch and the buoyant force cannot be ignored.
Is a VLB similar in size and texture to a BFR (big f*****g rock)? There are a lot of BFR’s on whitewater rivers. Not sure if they moved to their location or if everything else just left, or both. Like ‘climate’, everything should always stay the same. Prime flow rates should always stay the same, otherwise the BFR could become a BFH (big f*****g hole).
Andre Lauzon
January 25, 2018 11:39 am
How did they get where they were in the first place???
Venezuela goes a ways inland, back towards the headwaters and lower hills. Depends on the altitude, the distance that specific area was from the (potential) glaciers coming down from the Andes. But it also is many thousands of kilometers closer to the equator.
Wow, did I just read the wrong paper…Ireland not Venezuela…bur would an island off the coast have been in the glacier path. Storms and tsunamis have always been able to move large rocks.
Andre Lauzon “How did they get where they were in the first place???”
What are you, some DENIALIST, with your “null hypothesis” that anything existed before that?
As a child playing at the seaside or in rocky streams I found it was possible to move fairly large stones by directing a water flow in just the right area at the leading edge of the stone and this could be enough to lift it to move. Don’t ask me the hows and whys but it did work.
James Bull
You don’t have to lift a boulder to move it across a surface. A massive boulder can be rocked back and forth using a tiny fraction of the force required to lift it, and if the base is irregular this kind of rocking motion is enough to make it walk. That is conjectured to be how the Easter Island statues were moved. Waves supply exactly the kind of intermittent force needed to make a boulder walk.
Close to 10,000 years ago there were these pranksters……(sarc)
Extreme Hiatus
January 25, 2018 11:40 am
“Apparently Storms Can Push 600-Ton Boulders Around”… by “Maddie Stone.”
This has to be a joke, right? Maddie Stone writing about boulders?
“Ten years ago, it was possible to say storms can’t move 50 ton boulders”
Sure. It was possible to say that. It was possible to say just about anything as is shown by some of the ridiculous things that were said then, or now.
There are some interesting sociological studies that have found an unusual correspondence between people’s names and professions. There’s even a term for it, something like “nomen… determinism.” I like it. it demonstrates that there’s an unknown whimsical force at work in the world.
Spoon Smith – Messer Schmidt [German][ – IF I have remembered the spellings and that.
Yes, Surnames [Family Names] did sometimes take the profession – Cooper; Hunt – or Hunter; Carpenter; Mason..
There are – IFRC – some seven types;
Others include
Location – Scott, London, Haythornthwaite, York(e);
Descriptors – Long; Short; Black;
Local points – Hayfield, Byhill Underhill; Greenfield;
Significant roles in community – [Plays – like King; Knight, even Foule]; Councillor;
And two more I cannot remember – sorry.
Auto
Extreme Hiatus: “Ten years ago, it was possible to say storms can’t move 50 ton boulders”
Actually they CAN, by causing floods and landslides.. which is exactly how this 600-ton boulder was moved a few meters toward the sea– and sea level as well:
it SLID.
As in DOWNHILL.
But I guess those signs saying “WATCH FOR FALLING ROCKS” are didn’t exist before Global Warming winds started blowing them downhill, since clearly gravity wasn’t the culprit.
Ian – I think you missed my point. I was quoting the words of a ‘scientist’ from this article. It is possible to say anything, as shown by the CAGW Gang here and elsewhere/everywhere. That doesn’t mean it is true or anywhere near close to true or even worth listening to.
For example, I can say that gravity doesn’t exist. See. I just did.
‘Extreme Hiatus- that’s my point, The cagw gang is ALSO saying that gravity doesn’t exist.’
You beat me to it. I was going to suggest ‘gravity’.
Now if the wind blew a six hundred ton stone UPHILL… well, that would be impressive.
They rocks are moved by ice rafts. The rafts act like huge horizontal sails, developing enough wind friction to be moved along, and dragging any embedded rocks with them. Which is why the rock-tracks are usually parallel.
R
I believe I read about something similar occurring somewhere in South America. The rocks were at the end of a long trail in the sand.
Latitude
January 25, 2018 11:48 am
It takes a special kind of brain damage to even come up with this stuff….
and there’s too many of them out there with it!
makes you not want to leave the house!
“makes you not want to leave the house!”
No kidding. Wouldn’t want to get hit by one of these boulders in a storm.
Solomon Green
January 25, 2018 11:56 am
Anyone who has walked in a wadi will know that flash floods following storms can move boulders far heavier than 600 tons. About twenty years ago one flash flood caused a boulder the size of several double decker buses to dam a ravine in the Great Maktesh. Three years later another flash flood moved the rock about two hundred meters and cleared the lake that had formed.
Anyone who has seen the videos of floodwaters carrying boulders in Iceland after Eyefjalljokul erupted knows that water can move ANYTHING it wants to, including your entire house, contents and all, fully-loaded semitruck trailers, and freight trains.
Solomon Green “Anyone who has walked in a wadi will know that flash floods following storms can move boulders far heavier than 600 tons”
Yes, it’s called a mudslide. Gravity does the moving, because they always move downhill.
Actually in the case that I cited the first sift was downhill on dry stony river bed. The second, however, although obviously gravity inspired, was due to the sheer volume/weight of water, which had remained after the first flood and been added to by succeeding rains, forcing the boulder cork out of the ravine even though at the point where it had previously come to rest there was a rock ridge some 2 to 4 feet high. In other words the boulder was pushed uphill, albeit a small hill.
ResourceGuy
January 25, 2018 12:04 pm
Just keep staring at it….and earn tenure and promotion too.
tty
January 25, 2018 12:08 pm
Since the previous interglacial (MIS 5e, Eemian/Sangamonian) was significantly warmer than the present one there has been a great deal of effort expended on trying to find traces of politically useful climate catastrophes (collapsing ice-sheets, sudden sea-level rises etc). Paul Heartys specialty is catastrophic super-hurricanes (note that tsunamis are not a politically correct explanation, since they aren’t climate related, it’s gotta be hurricanes).
These data from Ireland is seriously bad from this point of view since there are no tropical hurricanes at all there, just ordinary North Atlantic storms.
By the way, doesn’t anyone remember what happened to the “Mulberry A” artificial harbor off Omaha beach in the storm 19-22 june 1944. 21 out of 28 concrete caissons weighing from 2,000 to 6,000 tons, filled with sea-water and standing on the seabottom were quite simply washed away.
Heartys stipulated that tsunamis were a possible explanation. However, the Holocene boulders moved around by storm waves were still much larger than 50 tons. The truly ironic thing is that the Irish boulders which couldn’t have been moved around by storms 10 years ago, were probably deposited by storms.
Mulberry A worked just about as well as DD Sherman tanks did.
Wikipedia suggests the DD Sherman tanks worked fairly well. On D’Day, only Omaha beach with its much larger waves (6 times what the DDs were designed for) presented major issues.
Even us biologists keep things around like Wiegel’s “Oceanographical Engineering,” published in 1964. Whole chapter on wave forces, uses lots of logarithmic graphs. 1997-20=1977.
Author probably never swam in the surf. Closest thing cited in Bahamas article to an engineering study is a Soil Survey. Where do you keep getting these papers? Actually maybe not that hard to find, impressive until you really read them. Does the paper use the word erosion anywhere? D has a hole in it. Last time I looked coastal engineers preferred denser granite because calcareous rocks move too much among other problems.
Don’t be silly. CO2 just interferes with gravity, doesn’t alter it.
its all that extra co2 that causes the denser atmosphere and therefore the increased buoyancy on the rock ….
(need to ask the authors how much that 50 ton rock weighs when it is under water; and how much force a wave surge imparts on the face (or back) of the rock; and why that surgeforce would be different now as compared to any other historic/future timeline)
Even Nick Stokes recognizes the gravity of this situation.
Vincent
January 25, 2018 12:42 pm
Maddie Stone – boulders.
You guys have been suckered !-)
Dog
January 25, 2018 12:45 pm
This person has obviously never heard of the Sailing Stones of Death Valley nor the Living/Growing/Moving/Breeding rocks of Romania. Boulders and rocks do some pretty funky stuff but this observational study is the least funky of them all.
“Ten years ago, it was possible to say storms can’t move 50 ton boulders”
Uh oh he may be on to something: https://www.google.com/search?q=boulder+landslides
Some of these boulders traveled nearly a mile so we better act NOW before we all get crushed by boulders!
Forget the boulders. It’s those rouge asteroids that plan their attacks to occur during government shutdowns we must worry about.
Edwin
January 25, 2018 1:01 pm
“Water is fluid, soft, and yielding. But water will wear away and move rock, which is rigid and cannot yield. As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft, and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard. This is another paradox: what is soft is strong.”
― Lao Tzu
Ironically, Neil De-Grass Tyson is an AGW-proponent. I guess it beats obscurity… the real “inconvienient truth” is that it doesn’t pay for academics to tell the truth, and so the ones who support Climate Change are a bunch of pimps and whores.
Come to think of it, Peter Strzok looks like Eddie Munster.
jclarke341
January 25, 2018 1:08 pm
One of the defining postulates of the current climate change paradigm is, “If I haven’t seen it before, it has never happened before.”
Is that delusional, or what?
Climate “scientists “ ignore geology at their own peril. Sedimentary geology only records all past climate… surely there must be something to be learned there /sarc.
IMHO, the best climatologists are actually sedimentary geologists
rbabcock
January 25, 2018 1:13 pm
I’m sorry.. this is important why? Are we concerned about boulders decimating NYC due to climate change?
Indeed, my first response was “soil erosion,” while the fact of their moving towards the ocean gives a clear hint that they were shifting downhill. To wit: “between the summers of 2013 and 2014, the boulder shifted a couple meters toward the sea.
Pardon me, but doesn’t land tend to descend toward the sea-level? I notice that the boulder’s elevation was not mentioned, and I wondered if it might also have dropped a few meters…i.e. basically, it rolled downhill, as per the law of gravity. You know, Newton, the apple-guy who’s not Steve Jobs.
But then, I suppose that 600-ton boulders are nothing for the wings of a Climate-Change theorist’s imagination, where the laws of physics do not apply…and the big winds of their endless talk can move mountains– or build them in the path of human progress with endless fearmongering. They certainly have done much of that.
What role do actual ice age(s) with massive glacial movement – growth & melt – have on these theories?
What is their (glacial-weight, mass, ice, melt) effects on these huge stone movement(s), their displacement, the deposit of stone, & their original placement vs. later placement?
How does that alter or disprove each of the 2 theories presented here?
Water, water everywhere : If water movement can carve out the Grand Canyon over millenia, why not consider it’s effects – slow & steady, or rapid & ragged, on stone masses?
Like rolling rocks in the Mojave, the ‘friction’ holding those rocks in place is greased by seasonal rains, then the boulders there are easily blown about by the trade winds (and even leave a trail!). Exciting, almost magical stuff!
— We’re all just hanging out between ice ages, awaiting the next big chill.
It’s not water that moves it, it’s _gravity._ Water just goes alone for the ride.
The article expressly says “the boulder shifted several meters toward the sea–” i.e. toward sea-level, which is thus downhill.
Only friction holds it in place; and when erosion and/or rainfall etc. sufficiently creates a net-force to overcome the friction-coefficient, symbolized as “u,” then voila– it falls, whether by sliding, rolling or both.
Saying “the climate-change caused wind to to it,” is a new low in stupidity even for them.
Sheri
January 25, 2018 1:31 pm
Note that Ms Stone started with a theory, wove the circumstances into the theory, will wait for boulders to follow the theory and most likely will ignore everything that does not fit her world view. She is very invested in her world view—she IS going to see a boulder move. She does at least do field work, but it’s quite obvious that field work can be just as filled with confirmation bias as a model. Ms. Stone seesh what she wants to see.
The Melon Gravels deposited by the flood average three feet in diameter, but some well-rounded boulders range up to 10 feet in diameter. These boulders are composed almost entirely of basalt broken from nearby basalt flows. Only several miles of transportation by the flood was sufficient to round the boulders after which they were dumped in unsorted deposits up to 300 feet thick. Melon gravel bars are as much as one mile wide by 1.5 miles long.
“On a ridge” … “some situated on limestone” … oh my, it must be the wind with such a stable base ….
Looking at the accompanying image, a vary reasonable possibility is that the wave action eroded some of the smaller rocks supporting the stone allowing it to slide towards the water line
As the article states, the picture is not from the paper in question.
Maybe I should have noted that at the beginning of the post.
I’ll have to try this line…. “Officer, the wind from global warming must have shifted my car toward the bottom of the hill: only a DENIALIST would blame the parking-brake!”
EROSION – it works, has been for…. well since ever.
Along with the fact that water is lower than land, and the article expressly says that the boulders shifted towards it. To wit:
But careful analysis of its position over the last few years has revealed something odd: between the summers of 2013 and 2014, the boulder shifted a couple meters toward the sea.
And how fardown? The article doesn’t mention that part.
What rolls down hills,
in warming or chills?
Everyone knows, a boulder!
Uluru…
•is 348 metres (1141 feet) high
•rises 863 metres (2,831 ft) above sea level
•is 3.6 km long (2.2 miles)
•is 1.9 km wide (1.2 miles)
•is 9.4 km or 5.8 miles around the base
•covers 3.33 km2 (1.29 miles2)
•extends about several km/miles into the ground (no-one knows exactly how far)
That’s not a boulder. THIS is a boulder! (See picture above)
“extends about several km/miles into the ground (no-one knows exactly how far)”
I do, just about about 3,960 miles.
Apparently, everybody must get stoned.
http://www.songlyrics.com/bob-dylan/everybody-must-get-stoned-lyrics/ — By Bob Dylan
You’d HAVE to be stoned to think that “the wind BLEW the rock downhill.” Usually they just do that by themselves.
Nah, that’s that gravity stuff, mate!
Climate Change can move a VLB, one RCH at a time. Derp.
Back in 1991, a hurricane, Bob, hit the coast of Maine. Afterwards, the Coast Guard was apparently missing a large concrete pier. They assumed it had broken its supports and sank into the sea. However, they located it about a hundred yards inland on the other side of a low hill. Storm waves pack a huge punch and the buoyant force cannot be ignored.
Is a VLB similar in size and texture to a BFR (big f*****g rock)? There are a lot of BFR’s on whitewater rivers. Not sure if they moved to their location or if everything else just left, or both. Like ‘climate’, everything should always stay the same. Prime flow rates should always stay the same, otherwise the BFR could become a BFH (big f*****g hole).
How did they get where they were in the first place???
Storms…
Glacial Deposits
My cat Punkin Squawkypants was looking for mice. She can move mountains to find a mouse.
Bryan,
Were you being funny or sarcastic? Glaciers never reached Venezuela that I know of, too close to the equator.
Venezuela goes a ways inland, back towards the headwaters and lower hills. Depends on the altitude, the distance that specific area was from the (potential) glaciers coming down from the Andes. But it also is many thousands of kilometers closer to the equator.
Wow, did I just read the wrong paper…Ireland not Venezuela…bur would an island off the coast have been in the glacier path. Storms and tsunamis have always been able to move large rocks.
Owen
Not sure where Venezuela comes in, the article in Earther is talking about islands off the west coast of Ireland
https://earther.com/apparently-storms-can-hurl-600-ton-boulders-around-1822379669
Here is the extent of the ice sheet during the last great glaciation
See if this one works better
Natural causes.
One must also realize that they started out as bigger rocks.
Andre Lauzon “How did they get where they were in the first place???”
What are you, some DENIALIST, with your “null hypothesis” that anything existed before that?
As a child playing at the seaside or in rocky streams I found it was possible to move fairly large stones by directing a water flow in just the right area at the leading edge of the stone and this could be enough to lift it to move. Don’t ask me the hows and whys but it did work.
James Bull
You don’t have to lift a boulder to move it across a surface. A massive boulder can be rocked back and forth using a tiny fraction of the force required to lift it, and if the base is irregular this kind of rocking motion is enough to make it walk. That is conjectured to be how the Easter Island statues were moved. Waves supply exactly the kind of intermittent force needed to make a boulder walk.
Close to 10,000 years ago there were these pranksters……(sarc)
“Apparently Storms Can Push 600-Ton Boulders Around”… by “Maddie Stone.”
This has to be a joke, right? Maddie Stone writing about boulders?
“Ten years ago, it was possible to say storms can’t move 50 ton boulders”
Sure. It was possible to say that. It was possible to say just about anything as is shown by some of the ridiculous things that were said then, or now.
There are some interesting sociological studies that have found an unusual correspondence between people’s names and professions. There’s even a term for it, something like “nomen… determinism.” I like it. it demonstrates that there’s an unknown whimsical force at work in the world.
“Nominative determinism”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_determinism
Maybe this Dr. Cox (as well as Jonathan Overpeck) were destined for Chickenology or something more suitable, but went astray.
The last name of Smith. I always figured that, somewhere up the family tree, there was a black/silver smith.
Spoon Smith – Messer Schmidt [German][ – IF I have remembered the spellings and that.
Yes, Surnames [Family Names] did sometimes take the profession – Cooper; Hunt – or Hunter; Carpenter; Mason..
There are – IFRC – some seven types;
Others include
Location – Scott, London, Haythornthwaite, York(e);
Descriptors – Long; Short; Black;
Local points – Hayfield, Byhill Underhill; Greenfield;
Significant roles in community – [Plays – like King; Knight, even Foule]; Councillor;
And two more I cannot remember – sorry.
Auto
Also Raper or Reaper, derived from grain harvesting.
Extreme Hiatus: “Ten years ago, it was possible to say storms can’t move 50 ton boulders”
Actually they CAN, by causing floods and landslides.. which is exactly how this 600-ton boulder was moved a few meters toward the sea– and sea level as well:
it SLID.
As in DOWNHILL.
But I guess those signs saying “WATCH FOR FALLING ROCKS” are didn’t exist before Global Warming winds started blowing them downhill, since clearly gravity wasn’t the culprit.
Nobody noticed it before, therefore it wasn’t happening before.
Ian – I think you missed my point. I was quoting the words of a ‘scientist’ from this article. It is possible to say anything, as shown by the CAGW Gang here and elsewhere/everywhere. That doesn’t mean it is true or anywhere near close to true or even worth listening to.
For example, I can say that gravity doesn’t exist. See. I just did.
Extreme Hiatus- that’s my point, The cagw gang is ALSO saying that gravity doesn’t exist.
‘Extreme Hiatus- that’s my point, The cagw gang is ALSO saying that gravity doesn’t exist.’
You beat me to it. I was going to suggest ‘gravity’.
Now if the wind blew a six hundred ton stone UPHILL… well, that would be impressive.
Once again, Everybody Must Get Stoned.
Let us not forget the “Mysterious” moving boulders in Death Valley…at least they leave tracks….
beat me to it
+1
They rocks are moved by ice rafts. The rafts act like huge horizontal sails, developing enough wind friction to be moved along, and dragging any embedded rocks with them. Which is why the rock-tracks are usually parallel.
R
The clay minerals help.
Yes, and even up hill.
I believe I read about something similar occurring somewhere in South America. The rocks were at the end of a long trail in the sand.
It takes a special kind of brain damage to even come up with this stuff….
and there’s too many of them out there with it!
makes you not want to leave the house!
“makes you not want to leave the house!”
No kidding. Wouldn’t want to get hit by one of these boulders in a storm.
Anyone who has walked in a wadi will know that flash floods following storms can move boulders far heavier than 600 tons. About twenty years ago one flash flood caused a boulder the size of several double decker buses to dam a ravine in the Great Maktesh. Three years later another flash flood moved the rock about two hundred meters and cleared the lake that had formed.
Anyone who has seen the videos of floodwaters carrying boulders in Iceland after Eyefjalljokul erupted knows that water can move ANYTHING it wants to, including your entire house, contents and all, fully-loaded semitruck trailers, and freight trains.
But those were downhill or level-land movements. Lifting big boulders high above sea level is Something Else.
Solomon Green “Anyone who has walked in a wadi will know that flash floods following storms can move boulders far heavier than 600 tons”
Yes, it’s called a mudslide. Gravity does the moving, because they always move downhill.
Actually in the case that I cited the first sift was downhill on dry stony river bed. The second, however, although obviously gravity inspired, was due to the sheer volume/weight of water, which had remained after the first flood and been added to by succeeding rains, forcing the boulder cork out of the ravine even though at the point where it had previously come to rest there was a rock ridge some 2 to 4 feet high. In other words the boulder was pushed uphill, albeit a small hill.
Just keep staring at it….and earn tenure and promotion too.
Since the previous interglacial (MIS 5e, Eemian/Sangamonian) was significantly warmer than the present one there has been a great deal of effort expended on trying to find traces of politically useful climate catastrophes (collapsing ice-sheets, sudden sea-level rises etc). Paul Heartys specialty is catastrophic super-hurricanes (note that tsunamis are not a politically correct explanation, since they aren’t climate related, it’s gotta be hurricanes).
These data from Ireland is seriously bad from this point of view since there are no tropical hurricanes at all there, just ordinary North Atlantic storms.
By the way, doesn’t anyone remember what happened to the “Mulberry A” artificial harbor off Omaha beach in the storm 19-22 june 1944. 21 out of 28 concrete caissons weighing from 2,000 to 6,000 tons, filled with sea-water and standing on the seabottom were quite simply washed away.
Heartys stipulated that tsunamis were a possible explanation. However, the Holocene boulders moved around by storm waves were still much larger than 50 tons. The truly ironic thing is that the Irish boulders which couldn’t have been moved around by storms 10 years ago, were probably deposited by storms.
Mulberry A worked just about as well as DD Sherman tanks did.
Wikipedia suggests the DD Sherman tanks worked fairly well. On D’Day, only Omaha beach with its much larger waves (6 times what the DDs were designed for) presented major issues.
Something like 16 out of 17 DD Shermans sank off Omaha Beach. I think they launched them further out to sea than the other beaches.
Thank you tty!
I was thinking that same thought. There are pictures of the devastated mulberry shortly after the storm.
Even us biologists keep things around like Wiegel’s “Oceanographical Engineering,” published in 1964. Whole chapter on wave forces, uses lots of logarithmic graphs. 1997-20=1977.
Author probably never swam in the surf. Closest thing cited in Bahamas article to an engineering study is a Soil Survey. Where do you keep getting these papers? Actually maybe not that hard to find, impressive until you really read them. Does the paper use the word erosion anywhere? D has a hole in it. Last time I looked coastal engineers preferred denser granite because calcareous rocks move too much among other problems.
CO2 doesn’t only cause warming, it alters gravity. Is that the theory?
Don’t be silly. CO2 just interferes with gravity, doesn’t alter it.
its all that extra co2 that causes the denser atmosphere and therefore the increased buoyancy on the rock ….
(need to ask the authors how much that 50 ton rock weighs when it is under water; and how much force a wave surge imparts on the face (or back) of the rock; and why that surgeforce would be different now as compared to any other historic/future timeline)
CO2 may be the one thing responsible for time dilation when waiting for the bus to arrive on a cold, dark winter night.
Don’t hold your breath.
Oh my. The sea must have been angry that day…
Waiting for Nick or tone to come and defend this idiocy. 🙂
Even Nick Stokes recognizes the gravity of this situation.
Maddie Stone – boulders.
You guys have been suckered !-)
This person has obviously never heard of the Sailing Stones of Death Valley nor the Living/Growing/Moving/Breeding rocks of Romania. Boulders and rocks do some pretty funky stuff but this observational study is the least funky of them all.
“Ten years ago, it was possible to say storms can’t move 50 ton boulders”
Uh oh he may be on to something:
https://www.google.com/search?q=boulder+landslides
Some of these boulders traveled nearly a mile so we better act NOW before we all get crushed by boulders!
Or this: http://bondifreshdaily.com/post/127512378251/the-big-rock-bondi-mermaids-this-is-a-great
Forget the boulders. It’s those rouge asteroids that plan their attacks to occur during government shutdowns we must worry about.
“Water is fluid, soft, and yielding. But water will wear away and move rock, which is rigid and cannot yield. As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft, and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard. This is another paradox: what is soft is strong.”
― Lao Tzu
The explains the persistence of this “Soft Science” behind AGW… it doesn’t yield to facts.
My eyes rolled at that very statement.
Ironically, Neil De-Grass Tyson is an AGW-proponent. I guess it beats obscurity… the real “inconvienient truth” is that it doesn’t pay for academics to tell the truth, and so the ones who support Climate Change are a bunch of pimps and whores.
It was either Neil Disgrace Tyson or Herman Munster…
I went with Tyson for the sarcastic value.
David, that looks more like Robert Mueller.
Come to think of it, Peter Strzok looks like Eddie Munster.
One of the defining postulates of the current climate change paradigm is, “If I haven’t seen it before, it has never happened before.”
Is that delusional, or what?
The delusion is unprecedented.
Reg…your response made me laugh, but, unfortunately, such delusion is all too common throughout human history.
Climate “scientists “ ignore geology at their own peril. Sedimentary geology only records all past climate… surely there must be something to be learned there /sarc.
IMHO, the best climatologists are actually sedimentary geologists
I’m sorry.. this is important why? Are we concerned about boulders decimating NYC due to climate change?
It’s happened before…
http://epod.usra.edu/blog/2014/09/glacial-evidence-in-central-park.html
I think that was “frozen” water.. 🙂
Indeed, my first response was “soil erosion,” while the fact of their moving towards the ocean gives a clear hint that they were shifting downhill. To wit:
“between the summers of 2013 and 2014, the boulder shifted a couple meters toward the sea.
Pardon me, but doesn’t land tend to descend toward the sea-level? I notice that the boulder’s elevation was not mentioned, and I wondered if it might also have dropped a few meters…i.e. basically, it rolled downhill, as per the law of gravity. You know, Newton, the apple-guy who’s not Steve Jobs.
But then, I suppose that 600-ton boulders are nothing for the wings of a Climate-Change theorist’s imagination, where the laws of physics do not apply…and the big winds of their endless talk can move mountains– or build them in the path of human progress with endless fearmongering. They certainly have done much of that.
At least they didn’t try to explain that as evidence of accelerating sea level rise.
Only because they didn’t think of it.
That is the next paper.
What role do actual ice age(s) with massive glacial movement – growth & melt – have on these theories?
What is their (glacial-weight, mass, ice, melt) effects on these huge stone movement(s), their displacement, the deposit of stone, & their original placement vs. later placement?
How does that alter or disprove each of the 2 theories presented here?
Water, water everywhere : If water movement can carve out the Grand Canyon over millenia, why not consider it’s effects – slow & steady, or rapid & ragged, on stone masses?
Like rolling rocks in the Mojave, the ‘friction’ holding those rocks in place is greased by seasonal rains, then the boulders there are easily blown about by the trade winds (and even leave a trail!). Exciting, almost magical stuff!
— We’re all just hanging out between ice ages, awaiting the next big chill.
It’s not water that moves it, it’s _gravity._ Water just goes alone for the ride.
The article expressly says “the boulder shifted several meters toward the sea–” i.e. toward sea-level, which is thus downhill.
Only friction holds it in place; and when erosion and/or rainfall etc. sufficiently creates a net-force to overcome the friction-coefficient, symbolized as “u,” then voila– it falls, whether by sliding, rolling or both.
Saying “the climate-change caused wind to to it,” is a new low in stupidity even for them.
Note that Ms Stone started with a theory, wove the circumstances into the theory, will wait for boulders to follow the theory and most likely will ignore everything that does not fit her world view. She is very invested in her world view—she IS going to see a boulder move. She does at least do field work, but it’s quite obvious that field work can be just as filled with confirmation bias as a model. Ms. Stone seesh what she wants to see.
Will it help her if we hire David Copperfield to support her need to see a boulder move?
I know the perfect spot in northern Portugal. There is a boulder the size of stretch limo that can be rocked back and forth with very little effort….
Sara: what could it be a boulder move than hiring David Copperfield?
Megafloods also moved boulders
The ice age outburst megafloods also swept along “particles” of up to 10 m (30 ft) or larger in diameter. e.g., See Walters Butte boulders, Helverson Bonneville boulder, and “Lake Bonneville Flood boulders”
Lake Bonneflood Flood – Melon Gravels
See ice age outburst megafloods
e.g.
Lake Bonneville, USA
Lake Bonneville: A Scientific Update, Charles G. Oviatt, John F. Shroder Eds. 2016 preview At Google Books http://bit.ly/2kOxAN9
Lake Bonneville Flood, Digital Geology of Idaho, Idaho State Univ. http://bit.ly/2zGpcBU
Glacial Lake Bonneville YouTube http://bit.ly/2yiVWUY
Lake Missoula, USA
Ice Age Floods – Study of Alternatives Section D-Background NPS.gov http://bit.ly/2gEYZMY
Cataclysms on the Columbia: The Great Missoula Floods, By John Eliot Allen, Marjorie Burns, Scott Burns 2nd Ed. 2009. Google Books http://bit.ly/2yqC55T
Glacial Lake Missoula, YouTube http://bit.ly/2xFWOn4
Altai (Altay) Flood, Chuja (Chuya)-Katun River, Siberia
Ice Dammed Lake Outburst Floods in the Altai Mountains, Siberia – A Review with links for further resources, J. Herget, Tomsk State U. J. Biology 2012, 1(17) 148, bit.ly/2yJkRBq
English Channel
Two-stage opening of the Dover Strait and the origin of island Britain, S. Gupta et al. Nature 2017, http://bit.ly/2ibOrZm;
A megaflood in the English Channel, Jenny Collier, 2016 Harold Jeffreys Lecture, http://bit.ly/2gEN4i3
Megaflood: How Britain became an island 41:03, Dr. Jenny Collier, Dept of Sci & Engineering, Jul 11, 2012 Imperial College London
http://www.imperial.ac.uk/earth-science
Prehistoric English Super Flood, YouTube, http://bit.ly/2xFBein
PS Anti-catastrophic world views continue to censor and erase such interesting material from geological textbooks.
My understating is that on Easter Island the big rock statues are reported to have walked to their current site.
http://cdn.architecturendesign.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/AD-Easter-Island-Statue-Bodies-4A.jpg
That is not to say that I believe it.
But what buried them up to their necks like that?
Looks like soil to me
Are YOU a denier…. 97% of the science is settled (:-))