Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Would it be possible to distinguish the fall of a pre-human civilisation destroyed by industrial CO2, from a natural climate upheaval?
A New Study Suggests There Could Have Been Intelligent Life on Earth Before Humans
Looking for aliens across deep space is great, but have we looked hard enough in our own terrestrial backyard—here on Earth?
Becky Ferreira
Apr 17 2018, 1:13am
One author of the new study, leading climatologist Gavin Schmidt, wrote a work of fiction to explore its findings. Read ‘Under the Sun’, which we published at Terraform alongside the following piece.
The human yearning to connect with other intelligent life-forms runs deep, and it has become the driving force behind a dazzling range of scientific pursuits. From the SETI Institute’s radio sweeps of the sky, to the discovery of liquid water on neighboring worlds, to the thousands of exoplanets detected over the past two decades, there have been major gains in chasing one of the ultimate cosmic mysteries—whether or not we are alone in the universe.
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Outside of some science fiction stories and a speculative paper by Penn State astronomer Jason Wright, little serious thought has been afforded to the possibility that we humans are not the first species to build an advanced civilization in the solar system’s history.
“It actually hasn’t been explored that much,” climatologist Gavin Schmidt, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, told me over the phone. “It never gets brought up as a potential thing that you want to look for.”
So, Schmidt paired up with University of Rochester physicist Adam Frank to co-author a paper entitled “The Silurian Hypothesis: Would it be possible to detect an industrial civilization in the geological record?” The hypothesis borrows its “Silurian” title from the fictional reptilian species depicted in the science fiction franchise Doctor Who—these scaly Silurians flourished on Earth many millions of years before the dawn of our own society.
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“There’s lots of things that are going well for [human civilization], but there’s a big price that’s being paid in the ecology and biology,” Schmidt told me. He emphasized that many of these consequences can seem to be “out of sight, out of mind” due to conveniences like sewage infrastructure and garbage relocation. But when considered in totality, anthropogenic activities really add up, and impact the geological record. “All of the waste and footprint is being hidden from us, but it isn’t hidden from the planet,” he said.
It’s unlikely that any massive telltale structures would remain preserved through tens of millions of years of geological activity—that holds true for both human civilization and any potential “Silurian” precursors on Earth.
Instead, Schmidt and Frank propose searching for more subtle signals, such as byproducts of fossil fuel consumption, mass extinction events, plastic pollution, synthetic materials, disrupted sedimentation from agricultural development or deforestation, and radioactive isotopes potentially caused by nuclear detonations.
“You really have to dive into a lot of different fields and pull together exactly what you might see,” Schmidt said. “It involves chemistry, sedimentology, geology, and all these other things. It’s really fascinating.”
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The abstract of the study;
The Silurian hypothesis: would it be possible to detect an industrial civilization in the geological record?
Gavin A. Schmidt (a1) and Adam Frank (a2)
https://doi.org/10.1017/S1473550418000095Published online: 16 April 2018
If an industrial civilization had existed on Earth many millions of years prior to our own era, what traces would it have left and would they be detectable today? We summarize the likely geological fingerprint of the Anthropocene, and demonstrate that while clear, it will not differ greatly in many respects from other known events in the geological record. We then propose tests that could plausibly distinguish an industrial cause from an otherwise naturally occurring climate event.
Sadly the full study is paywalled, but I think we get the idea.
The previous referenced study was by Penn State Astronomer Jason T. Wright, which concluded that it might be easier to detect traces of any previous high tech civilisation by any technical artefacts they left on other planets or on Asteroids.
I’m skeptical of theories of past civilisations, because it is difficult to imagine an event or series of events which would completely finish off an established intelligent species, especially omnivores like humans, unless that species had a specific fragility which made it especially vulnerable.
Consider the hideous aftermath of the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, plants dead or dying, rotting corpses littering the landscape, a bonanza for cockroaches and scavengers. If something similar happened today, the luckiest and most determined humans would more than likely survive; if all else fails, humans can eat cockroaches.
Schmidt has also written a short fictional account about the discovery of traces of a pre-human civilisation which destroyed itself through nuclear war.
If traces of artificial isotopes were discovered, as in Schmidt’s short story, such a discovery would not necessarily end the debate. The presence of artificial isotopes is not necessarily the fingerprint of the nuclear technology of an ancient pre-human civilisation. 1.7 billion years ago a natural nuclear reactor fired up in Africa, creating artificial isotopes as byproducts of an uncontrolled natural fission reaction.
UPDATE: Gavin Schmidt has posted about it on “RealClimate” here
A british, german and french archeologist were discussing recent findings in their respective countries. The german says that they dug to a depth of ten metres, found remnants of copper wire and concluded that Germany had a telephone system 10.000 years ago.
The brit says they went down to twenty metres, found some thin glass strains and announced that UK had fiber optical transmission 20.000 years ago.
The french informed that they had gone all the way down to fifty metres, found absolutely nothing which of course proved that France had wireless communication at least 50.000 years ago!
They really have not read ss much SF as they should have.
This topic has been explored many timed by fiction wriyersuch more capable than these clowns.
No, no, no, we’ve got it all wrong. A previous civilization many millions of years ago existed, but it succumbed to The Stupid. The Stupid is a force afflicting mankind today, which wants to bring civilization down, and back to the Stone Age by attacking a phantom menace, fossil fuels, which is actually our friend. In an Age of Stupid, stupidity is revered, the stupider the better. Science becomes a mockery of itself, such that those standing in opposition to The Stupid are deemed “anti-science” and “d nayers” (a word so terrible it has to be disguised). If CAGS (Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Stupidity) happened before, then traces of it must exist, leaving Stupid footprints. I’m guessing that back then, though, there was no internet. I mean really, using sand to distribute information, and on a massive scale? Absurd.
Today we do have the internet though, which may just save us from The Stupid afflicting modern civilization.
We can only hope.
Bruce Cobb: The tragedy is that you seem to be right….
It used to be spelled ‘Teh Stoopid’. One of the symptoms of ‘Teh Stoopid’ is that those infected frequently barf up screed with flecks of bullshite in it.
The pandemic briefly waned as libtard eco-whackos took up the ‘don’t have kids to save the planet’ meme and thus fewer people susceptible to ‘Teh Stoopid’ were born. It was hoped at one time that the last few remaining libtards would die out from lack of breeding, and the planet will finally be rid of ‘Teh Stoopid’ once and for all.
But another of the symptoms of their disease is a compulsion to infect the young with ‘Teh Stoopid’ by barfing screed flecked with bullshite onto their brains… it’s an orally-transmissible infection, so it’s only natural that the libtard eco-whackos would become teachers and professors.
The only way to inoculate your children against ‘Teh Stoopid’ is to give them strong doses of reality daily and to teach them not to kowtow to so-called ‘experts’… because those so-called ‘experts’ are, generally speaking, those most infected with ‘The Stoopid’.
In the late 60’s there was Ericn Von Daniken and his bood “Chariots of the Gods” presented the “theory” that earth was visited by ancient astrononauts (who inspired god legends). He presented a number of ahistorical artifacts and artistic works that could be interpreted to show advanced technology. I would guess his “evidence” as bad as it was – still would not support the greater age of the silurians.
But a big difference between Daniken’s ancient astronauts and the Gavin’s silurians is that the ancient astronauts were limited visitors while the siluraians were home based. This would mean that tsigns of the much older and more widespread earthly civilization would have many more opportunities to turn up. Cemeteries, food containers, infrastructure, garbage, shelters for large civilizations – true most artificats would dissapear accross time but not all. We find bees in amber, jellyfish in rocks, fozzilized bones, petrified trees, crater impacts but the byproducts of silurians not so much. So we are supposed to imagine intelligent silurian beings that both catastrophically over utilized fossil fuel and also left behind a very clean campsite.
Here’s an alternative fairy tale – The earth fostered the evolution of an advanced civilization of of highly intelligent silurains. Initiially they used fossil fuels to support their development and advancement. Over time technology continued to improve so they got better and better technology with lincreasingly lower environmental footprints over time. Due to the long standing continual march of progress they were eventually able to completely clean up all signs of their environmental footprint on the earth. They continued to minimize their footprints on the earth and they eventually transformed into beings that were not dependent on matter but maintained a non-physical civilization that exists today with zero impact on the environment. As a result we can find no trace of them. But if we did it would likely be somthing minor that just got overlooked by their cleanup campaign.
Catastrophically polluting silurians and technological “clean” silurians are both fairy tales and at this point they don’t do anything but provide a potential narrative for true beleivers. No one with sense would promote either as deserving attention as a potential historical event that should impact our decision making at this time. The course of previous civiliations does not tell us how fossil fuels impact civiliations.
I do beleive our civilization can use technology to transition from fossil fuels at an APPROPRIATE time and that we will continue to support “cleaner and cleaner” environments. I don’t think we will be able to jump to non-physical beings though and that will always allow rom for some to bemoan our impact on the environment, push guilt and forsee some sort of “catastrophic” doom.
Actually Vernor Vinge speculated on something similar happening to humanity called “the singularity”.
In his excellent book, “Marooned in Real Time” his characters seek to unravel the mystery of humanity’s fate.
And there is even a deranged Archaeologist who seeks to exterminate humanity in order to preserve his pristine archaeological sites for posterity….
Sort of like modern climatologists….
My sf hypothesis is that the silurians were symbiotes, unable to survive on their own, and they are still with us.
Very intelligent but with no technology other than they could get their hosts to create. They motly had the appearance of pointy shaped beards or smug smiles and one of their main survival techniques was to reign back their hosts, to create a pool of sheep.
Goats were their most recent preferred hosts but who know where they will infest next?
Schmidt will use his considerable skills in fabricating records to fabricate Silurian fossil records
“The presence of artificial isotopes is not necessarily the fingerprint of the nuclear technology of an ancient pre-human civilisation. ”
Give me a break. Iguanas falling frozen out of trees in Florida is a fingerprint of global warming to these people.
Silurians and Gavin, has he looked in the mirror recently?
Not surprising Gavin is hunting. The Sleestak have always been mortal enemies of the Silurians.
Well I found a copy of the paper and they concluded with
Since when was a paper that summarized other papers considered worthy of publishing, anyway?
The rest of the paper was all yeah but no but yeah. Gavin has really fallen now. He’s taking another delusion path like Hansen took with his “If we burn all reserves of oil, gas, and coal, there’s a substantial chance that we will initiate the runaway greenhouse. If we also burn the tar sands and tar shale, I believe the Venus syndrome is a dead certainty.” statement.
Maybe its a prerequisite for the job.
Space aliens – global warming equal credibility
Space aliens – global warming
equal credibility
Should have written it this way
Excellent.
Loons are attracted to lunatic ideas.
Why does Schmidt et al get any attention for such trivial “studies”? Where is ANY evidence?
The article is also in Universe Today, which is a marxist-leaning astronomy site (how astronomy can lean marxist, it’s hard to understand, but they do it somehow).
PS — Why does Schmidt look almost exactly like Mann?
They are clones.
Weird thing is: the bartender at my local is actually their triplet.
Hey, maybe if Dr. Who is science, and not science fiction, Orphan Black is a documentary?
O/T…but of great interest. The Trump effect at work. …https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/17/north-and-south-korea-reportedly-set-to-announce-official-end-to-war.html
Okay, now I’m in the Twilight Zone. Has anyone seen Rod Serling lately?
I’ll go out and ask my cats.
Okay, okay, okay. You’ve all got it wrong. I know what Gavin is up to.
The real Gavin has been cloned and he’s locked in a small closet some place.
The Gavin Clone is a reptilian duplicate that thinks like the Silurians but looks like us, just as the Kardashians got plastic surgery to disguise their real appearance.
This Gavin Snake Clone is testing us to see who is a dupe or a Shtuupe, and who isn’t. Once that’s determined, the invasion begins.
We’ve been warned. Check your pantry for wide egg noodles and dry chicken broth. Buy some of that freeze-dried veg and fruit stuff, ’cause you’re gonna need it. That, and tabasco sauce, because that stuff make them explode like mosquitoes.
The Snakes are real. They’re here (the Kardashians) and they’re real (Gavin Clone) and they’re just waiting for the right moment to start raids. The “War of the Worlds” was just a preview of what’s to come, flaming passenger train and all.
Not sure, but I think they can be bribed with chocolate chip cookies, corn chips and cheap red CA wine, if you change the price tag on the bottle.
Wait… Gavin Schmidt is a Kim Kardashian clone? Something went horribly awry in the cloning process.
Really? No Planet of the Apes comments?
I was kind of surprised by that.
You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, d*mn you! God d*mn you all to h*ll!
As someone pointed out. The earths crust is recycled about every two million years. The tiny fraction that hasn’t been recycled is severally eroded. If human kind went extinct today, there would be almost nothing to say we had ever existed in less than one million years, except radio isotopes and the odd scattered bone. I have read some amazingly ignorant, and stunningly arrogant comments about human civilization and survival written here. Y’all need to get a clue. Humans have only been around for a few million years. Some day we will go extinct. Shortly after that in geologic terms there will be almost no trace that we were ever here. If there ever was an industrial civilization that came before us. It could have ended only a short time ago . Say just two million years, and there would be no trace left in practical terms. Even if it had been human and only 400,000 years ago there would be little evidence past soil anomalies, and the odd “out of place” stone or refined metal. If they were only slightly different, and say, didn’t use Atomic Energy. There might be little to suggest that they were ever there at all.
Why wouldn’t there be fossil records?
No records? Crust renews itself every 2 million years?
Then please explain, Ray, the existence of an iron ore accretion fossil shrimp from the Mazon Creek district, created 300 million years ago during the Carboniferous Era, and why it is sitting on my desk??? Also, please explain the alitopterid plant fossils I collected, and the crinoid fossils I occasionally find washed up on the shores of Lake Michigan, from the same time frame.
Also, please explain the finding of the fossilized remains of Lucy, deposited 3,200,000 years ago.
Thanks!
Ray, fossils over 2 million years old are found daily.
Footprints older than 2 million years old, as well as shells even older are widely available.
Perhaps you could clarify your assertion?
Closer to every 2 billion years.
Dear Ray,
No, the earth’s crust is not recycled every 2 million years
In Canada there are rocks 4.28 billion years old.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-rocks-ancientscience/oldest-rocks-on-earth-found-in-northern-canada-idUSTRE48O7JW20080925
In Western Australia there are rocks which contain mineral grains that are 4.4 billion years old.
https://www.livescience.com/43584-earth-oldest-rock-jack-hills-zircon.html.
In both Canada and Western Australia there are hundreds of thousands of square kilometres of rocks older than 1 billion years.
Plenty of space for our Silurians to have left some trace
Is that what’s coming? Is someone actually going to try and say that the evidence of much warmer ancient temperatures were the result of fossil fuel burning intelligent life?
If so, it will be CAGW’s ‘jump the shark’ moment.
Now, Grant, don’t panic. It’s fossil life forms that were burning things up.
Cue the “Twilight Zone”………
It is so absurd that only knuckledragging drooling eco loonies can identify with the fantasy.
Let me guess. The Silurians died out because of Silurian made global warming/climate change?
From the paper…
…so pretty much.
@Jimmy Haigh. No. Nuclear war. (Deduced from the abundance of Plutonium 244.) The article does claim that “the carbon cycle” was “disrupted”, and this *was* a period when CO2 was falling from 3800 ppm to 650 ppm (over millions of years). For information about the Ypresian, see https://sites.google.com/site/paleoplant/geologic-periods/0-000-0-543-bya-phanerozoic/cenozoic-era/tertiary/34-56ma-eocene/49-56ma-ypresian . Sounds quite habitable, actually. Apparently this is a time when large mammals got smaller. It’s blamed on “global warming”, natch.
It is pretty obvious what is going on. It can be only one of two things.
Option One: Gavin is trying to start his own church of Scientology like cult by “finding” a previous advanced civilization.
Option Two: This is a subtle attempt to create a pretext for explaining away the large amount of CO2 in the record, associating it in the public conscience with global warming. After all, the historical record is the number one reason that people capable of critical thinking reject AGW theory, so if you can introduce a sufficient lie you may be able to change some people’s minds. At the very least you create a pretext for minimizing and calling into question the historical record.
Option Three: Gavin is trying to justify the formal adoption of the Anthropocene Epoch… It backfired and he doesn’t even know it…
If the Anthropocene would be indistinguishable from otherwise naturally occurring climate events, it doesn’t merit adoption as a word, much less part of the geologic time scale.
The only way such a civilization could have existed and disappeared without leaving a trace, is if it was confined to the Antarctic land mass during a time when it was mostly ice-free. It seems extremely unlikely that a sufficiently advanced civilization capable of creating industry which would release the vast amounts of CO2 they claim would destroy such a civilization, would have no interest in exploring the rest of the globe incidentally leaving some trace of its existence in the fossil record. But, hey, what a cool science-fantasy idea!
Not new. H P Lovecraft already used that exactly that idea in “At the Mountains of Madness” (1931).
Gavin Schmidt did H. P. Lovecraft one better… he’s tunneled into the Mountain of Madness, and when he finally emerges out the other side, he’ll tell everyone that time is circular and we ARE the ancient Silurians… and we destroyed ourselves in the ancient past / will destroy ourselves in the future, both of which are only one event which keeps recurring like some Groundhog Day gone mad. He’ll claim our very existence proves his hypothesis! Then he’ll fabricate the data to corroborate his story.
An technological civilization in Antarctica say, 35 million years ago would have had very good reasons to maximize the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere!
Puma punku in Peru is close. The H blocks are remarkably precise and look to me like they came out of a C&C machine. Dating back many thousands of years (and perhaps longer), it’s extremely unlikely that the technology of the time was capable of constructing it.
It’s about 1500 years old.
tty,
All that is left is rock and this can’t be dated very well. There are multiple dates for the site, some going back 10K years or more. The older dates are very controversial to main stream archaeologists because of what it would imply. None the less, even 1500 years ago, they didn’t have C&C machines, 3-d printers of rock or any other known technology capable of constructing the site. Moreover; the Inca’s came later and as impressive as their technology was, it was still insufficient for the task.
They didn’t need any of those things to build those structures.
The ancients were smarter and more clever than many moderns want to admit.
Pumapunku is in Bolivia.
Nothing about it is time-inappropriate.
http://www.badarchaeology.com/bad-data/exotic-places/puma-punku-an-impossible-structure/
Just make a computer model, that should tell you if ancient aliens is actually true
Liberals, even those with science degrees, seem to want to share fantasies with other liberals. This could explain Gavin’s latest nonsense. Most liberals have difficulty telling the real from the unreal. Even highly educated ones. My brother-in-law is a Prof emeritus historian and has been a seethingly angry Marxist.
To look at the bright side:
Liberals, in the 1960s and 70s really believed in astrology, and in that “space” were relatively harmless. Back then, when first meeting, they would ask for your “sign”. Responding with ” Scorpio”, they would look at you sincerely and wisely nod their head.
Perhaps their focus can be changed back to harmless.
Bob Hoye
“What’s that like, being a Scorpio?” I was asked.
“It’s very difficult to describe; and no offence intended, it is impossible to describe to an Aquarius … “.
Uncomfortable silence from the Gemini and Libra; quiet laughs from the Cancer.
The conversation then ended.
Sounds like Schmidt is playing the reverse logic pivot on us.
Obviously, there is no past civilization level in the record but, also obviously, future archeologists would certainly find the “human” civilization layer. It would be easy.
He is just trying to force us to “remind ourselves” how much we are impacting the planet.
You give him too much credit, Bill.
My take on Gavin’s behaviour here is that he has an idea (ie The Silurian hypothesis) and then goes looking for evidence to support it. There is no actual evidence of course and he reasons that it’d be wiped away by time, unlike the actual fossils we do find.
When we find dinosaur sized Doc Martin footprints from 65M years ago, then I’ll believe him.
” he has an idea (ie The Silurian hypothesis) and then goes looking for evidence to support it”
That’s modern day climate science (as practiced by the warministas) in a nutshell.