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
Was L Ron Hubbard a con man turned SiFi writer, or was he a SiFi writer turned con man?
Would L. Ron Hubbard be proud of Gavin Schmidt, or would he laugh at the inept hack and take away his wife/girlfriend (if he had one)?
@DonM re L. Ron Hubbard: yes he was. Both. He published science fiction in the 1950s. I have several old issues of Analog with stories of his in them. He had a series in which the protagonist was a doctor roaming from planet to planet with a four-armed servant who was, I kid you not, made of gypsum. His “Dianetics” article was published in Analog; I have a copy of that issue too. Then DIanetics became Scientology and he disappeared from SF for a while, re-emerging with Battlefield Earth. Some sociologist should write a thesis on parallels and contrasts between CAGW and Scientology.
There’s nothing like a climate scientist to try to discover the field of taphonomy.
Well, hell, I guess we were all planted by aliens now, too.
I hesitate to make sarcastic remarks like that – it just reinforces the eco-nut totem that we are an invasive species with no right to live on the planet.
It’s more likely people rose to the level of incompetence and foolishness we see now, everything was on computers and the society collapsed due to an EMT or simple inability to maintain a modern society. All information was lost when the EMT went off or the digital record was destroyed, so there’s no record. It could have happened dozens of times. That’s more plausible than Gavin’s fiction.
That’s because there’s so little intelligent life among humans to begin with.
As a Geologist, it strikes me the number one thing humans are going to leave behind in the geologic record is actually an absence – an absence of economic concentrations of natural resources! Most economic mineral deposits occur in certain geological environments. If humans were erased and a new intelligent race came along, they’d also work out where these deposits *should* be – and in their place, find voids infilled with lithified (formerly) unconsolidated rocks and stuff… To date, we have never found an ‘absence’ of resource defined by unconsolidated rocks. The oldest mines only date back a few 1000 years so I would posit there has been no advanced race on this planet so adept at extracting resources on as massive scale as humans are today.
Schmidt insults every geologist known with his tripe.
There was one absence I’m aware of, the natural nuclear reactor. It was discovered because nuclear authorities were required by law to investigate the unexpectedly low availability of U235 in samples mined from the site of the reactor – they had to prove that someone hadn’t stolen a whole pile of U235.
Well now, Gavin, you’d just have to wax all sciency & stuff, now wouldn’t you:
“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.”
Yeah. You “Might See” that your climate has been in a continual state of flux from day one. Yes, it is fascinating. But apparently not to you! Despite the geologic record slapping you in the face while revealing its secrets, none of it has gotten through to you. You are determined to force-find ANY evidence to try and fuel your rotten little hypothesis, despite the abundance of evidence for well-established theory oozing out of every outcrop.
Dolphins! “So Long and Thanks For All The Fish”.
For poor Gavin a species that did NOT leave any physical evidence of it’s existence must be an advanced alien technology because it IS indistinguishable from magic … just like his beloved global warming er climate change.
Ha ha
No doubt Dr Schimdt is exploring careers posit-GISS by examining a SciFi writing role.
Let’s help him find it.
Defund GISS.
MAGA. Trump!
“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.”
The idea that an advanced civilisation would spring into existence without leaving traces of its development is farcial beyond comprehension, even across millions of years.
Any prior civilisation would leave traces of its rise from using pointed sticks, moving on to sharpened stones, pottery, early metal alloys, iron and steel and all the infrastructure that requires, roads, cities and so on.
Perhaps massive structures might not survive but the footings would, erosion resistant bricks and corrosion resistant metal alloys. And piles of debris, the garbage dumps of the civilization.
An interesting exercise but I hope it was carried out in their spare time and not at taxpayers’ expense.
Considering all the paleontological related artifacts that have been uncovered to date it would seem unlikely that there was a previous age of some type of civilization on Earth that we have so far found no evidence of.
Gavin Schmidt IS a Silurian. Definitely not a Devonian.
I’m with Gavin on this one! Why not a previous habitation of earth by “Lizard People”. You need to just keep your mind open to the possibilities!
In the era of dominance by the Lizard People, their genetic modifications got out of hand and created dinosaurs. Then in their playful ways they cross bred with their pet chickens and rabbits thus the ostrich and kangaroo were created. In other parts of the world their playfulness with their pet pigs led to the creation of elephants which ended up with a lizard tail on the wrong end but they still called it a trunk. Crocodiles were created as a result of inbreeding within the families of the Lizard people. As a result of all this inbreeding and playfulness the children of the Lizard people were kept in small cages where they evolved to escape through small openings whence the snake evolved.
So with all the issues as a result of their playfulness with other species the Lizard People lay low for a long time until they could make a comeback as politicians and academics as well documented by university educated sleuths.
Why were people wittering on about the Silurian people when the story explicitly says FIFTY-FIVE MILLION YEARS AGO? This is the Ypresian period in the Eocene, long after the death of the dinosaurs. Schmidt’s palaeocivilisation would have been mammals.
Honestly, the story is a moderately competent piece of science fiction. The principal character is cardboard, The science is a bit iffy: the half-life of PCBs in the environment is 3 to 210 DAYS depending on what kind of PCB and what the conditions are. Most people don’t know that (I didn’t) and won’t look it up (I did). It’s also pretty derivative; I’ve read quite a few paleocivilisation stories (including one that explained the iridium layer as a civilisational marker) and any number where the humans figure out what killed off another civilisation just as we succumb to something similar. And of course the dismal ending was telegraphed quite early on. But it’s not bad. I think that Schmidt has a future in writing science fiction.