Guest “geology lessons” by David Middleton
One of the things I love about writing for Watts Up With That, is the fact that reader comments often inspire me to research and write subsequent posts. In my recent post about the origins of the Moon, one commentator suggested that the rate of lunar recession (tidal acceleration) indicated that the Earth was much younger than 4.5 billion years old and/or somehow disproved the geological Principle of Uniformitarianism. I didn’t give much thought to my reply. I simply calculated the distance from the Earth to the Moon 1 billion and 4.5 billion years ago. The Moon is currently receding (moving away) from the Earth at a rate of about 3.8 cm/yr. This has been directly measured with lasers.
At 3.8 cm/yr, the Moon would have been 215,288 miles away from Earth a billion years ago. It is currently an average of 238,900 miles away. At 3.8 cm/yr, it still would have been 132,646 miles away 4.5 BY.
If the Moon did did originate from a collision with Earth, it would have been a lot closer to Earth 4.5 BY than 100,000 miles.
David Middleton
At first thought, 215,288 miles apart didn’t seem problematic. It is well outside the Earth-Moon Roche Radius, however, at a steady rate of 3.8 cm/yr, the Moon’s orbit would have been close enough to Earth, that 1.5 billion years ago, the tidal forces of the Earth-Moon system may yielded catastrophic results:
Tracing the history of Earth’s tidal deceleration and the evolution of the Moon’s orbit is a major challenge for geology. The implications of employing the present rate of tidal energy dissipation on a geological timescale are catastrophic: Around 1500 Ma the Moon would have been close to Earth, with the consequence that the much larger tidal forces would have disrupted the Moon or caused the total melting of Earth’s mantle and of the Moon [Lambeck, 1980].
Williams, 2000
Apart from the classic bad science fiction movie, 2012, or the junk science of Hapgood and Velikovsky, there is no evidence whatsoever, of lunar disruption or the total melting of Earth’s mantle 1.5 billion years ago.
So… How do we solve this conundrum? We solve it by applying the principle of Uniformitarianism.
Most criticisms of Uniformitarianism start out with a fundamental misunderstanding of, or the intentional redefinition of, this basic geological principle.
UNIFORMITARIANISM VS CATASTROPHISM
Initial thinking on earth history was inspired by the bible. The recognition that major rock series are characterized by a distinct set of fossils lead to the belief that the fossils of each rock series were result of a creation and then were subsequently destroyed by some catastrophic event (e.g. the biblical flood). The main proponent of this theory was the French naturalist Georges Cuvier. In the 18th century there was even a case when some unfortunate geologist (Johann Jacob Scheuchzer, 1672-1733) found skeletons of giant salamanders and identified them as the victims of the biblical flood. The problem was that upon close inspection, these flood victims had long tails and sharp claws. Thus, it earned the proponent quite a bit of ridicule. Generally speaking, this way of looking at the geologic record, namely to assume that a series of immense, brief, and worldwide upheavals changed the earth greatly and produced mountains, valleys, and various other large scale features, came to be known as catastrophism.
The theory of catastrophism was challenged by James Hutton in the late 18th century, who in his theory of uniformitarianism proposed that uniform gradual processes (such as for example the slow erosion of the coast by the impact of waves) shaped the geologic record of the earth over an immensely long period of time. He assumed that the acting processes were the same than those that we see in action at present (rivers, volcanoes, waves, tides etc.). Darwin later on based his theory of the origin a species on Hutton’s theory.
The sedimentary structures that we saw earlier in this lecture serve as a good illustration how uniformitarianism works. Cross-bedding for example can be observed to form in modern river channels and also in experimental setups called flumes. We learn from these observations what kind of current velocities are needed to produce cross-bedding in a given grain size, and we realize that cross-bedding can be used as an indicator of current flow direction. We can apply what we learn from modern cross-beds to interpret the rock record in terms of flow velocities and flow direction. Likewise, finding ancient equivalents of modern mudcracks suggests to us that we look at sediments that dried out beneath the air, and were thus deposited on land.
In more modern times, some amendments have been made to the theory of uniformitarianism. One of these would be that it was recognized that catastrophic events are as much part of geologic history as the uniform action of the everyday processes. For example, sediment supply to the oceans is not a constant flux of matter. There is a considerable episodic component to sedimentation, e.g. storms are major agents of sediment redistribution in shelf seas, floods and exceptionally strong rains are responsible for most of the erosion and sediment redistribution on the continents. Undoubtedly, the physical and chemical principles (e.g. gravity, thermodynamics) that govern geologic processes of the present have also applied in the past. Yet as is visible in the present, frequent small deviations from equilibrium and unstable behavior (minor catastrophes, such as earthquakes, floods, storms) must have been an integral part of these processes. Similarly, the evolution of life was not a single succession of tiny evolutionary steps as originally envisioned by Darwin. We are now able to see that there were episodes of accelerated (punctuated) evolution, usually as a response to a change in environmental conditions, such as climate (ice ages, warming of the earth), the advent or immigration of new predators and the utilization of new food sources. Extremely rare (and catastrophic) events, such as the impact of large meteors, may have had a profound influence on our planet. Yet meteors fall onto the earth on a daily basis, just as it rains every day. In that sense, meteorite impacts are quite normal and part of the spectrum of everyday processes. Only very rarely does a “doomsday” meteorite that is 10 or more km in diameter hit the Earth and cause severe disruptions. To sum it up: The natural laws do not change with time and they have and will determine interior and external processes of the earth. Even the extremely rare event (e.g. meteor impacts) is part of the many geologic processes governed by these laws. Even though something, like for example the December 2004 tsunami, appears to us as a unique catastrophe, over the long run it is a normal and recurring event. It does not follow, however, that the rate of geologic processes is the same today as it was in the past. Some processes, such as mantle convection do probably stay stable over long time periods, but others, such as glaciation were at times very intense in the past (ice ages), but are presently less significant for continental erosion. So, a brief definition of Uniformitarianism would be: the natural laws that govern geologic processes have not changed over geologic time, but the rate at which certain geologic processes operate can vary. Uniformitarianism also has been paraphrased as “The Present is the Key to the Past“.
Indiana University
Uniformitarianism doesn’t preclude catastrophic events; nor does it stipulate that all processes must occur at a constant gradual rate. And it certainly doesn’t blind geologists to actual evidence of past catastrophic events, like impact features. Many of the world’s 190 confirmed impact craters (technically 189 because they count Upheaval Dome as confirmed) would be unknown if not for geologists employing uniformitarian methods to identify them. 34% of the confirmed impact craters are not exposed at the surface. 53% of the confirmed impact craters have been drilled, either intentionally or inadvertently while drilling for something else. The craters without surface expressions were identified by uniformitarian geologists/geophysicists interpreting geological and geophysical data.
Uniformitarianism says “The Present is the Key to the Past.” Understanding present day geological processes enables geologists to decipher the geologic past. It enables us to translate the language of the rocks.
So, what does this have to do with lunar recession?
Two words: Tidal Rhymites
The sedimentary record in Muir Inlet, a macrotidal fjord in Alaska, is dominated by cyclic silt–mud rhythmites. Couplet thicknesses vary systematically in a vertical sequence and reflect a semidiurnal tidal regime. Semimonthly, monthly, bimonthly, and annual cycles can be identified both visually in cores and by spectral frequency analysis. An average annual sedimentation of 22.5 cmyr-1 occurs over a four-month meltwater season and is confirmed by 210Pb dating. These modern deep-water tidal rhythmites can be used to verify interpretations made on ancient rhythmites in the stratigraphic record, and they also provide a dating tool to interpret high latitude successions for high-resolution climate change.
Cowan et al., 1998
Tidal rhymites are the result of very high frequency depositional cycles. The length of the day, the number of days in the month and months in the year can all be calculated from tidal rhythmites. Fortunately for geologists, Earth was kind enough to preserve at least a few very old tidal rhythmite deposits.
BIG COTTONWOOD CANYON
By Sandra Eldredge
This tour begins 1 billion years ago when the area was a tidal environment at an ocean shoreline. The tidal environment is preserved in the now-tilted layers of quartzite and shale that make up the canyon walls for the first 6 miles. In some areas, the shale is metamorphosed into argillite or slate.
[…]
Tidal Rhythmites
One-billion-year-old records of the rhythm of ancient ocean tidesOne of the best documented and oldest known records worldwide of tidal rhythmites is in Big Cottonwood Canyon. Discovered in the 1990s, this record is enthusiastically being researched, in large part to provide clues to ancient lunar cycles.
Yearly, monthly, and even daily and semi-daily tides are recorded in the black shale of the 850-million to 1-billion-year-old Big Cottonwood Formation.
Within the shale are thin, alternating layers of light-colored sand and dark-colored silt and clay. The sand was carried by peak (strong, dominant) flows and the silt and clay by slack (weaker, subordinate) waters at changing tides. Thus, these thin individual bands record daily tides and can be counted much like we count tree rings.
Because the gravitational pull of the moon and the sun cause tides, the length of an ancient day and lunar month can be determined from these tidal rhythmites. Long ago, the moon took less time to orbit the Earth, the Earth was spinning faster, and thus the days were shorter and there were more of them in a year. These records in stone indicate that one billion years ago, a day on Earth lasted only 18 hours, there were 13-plus months in a year, and about 481 days in a year!
(Information supplied by Marjorie A. Chan, University of Utah and Allen W. Archer, Kansas State University).
Utah Geological Survey
Tidal rhyhmites and other paleontological data tell us that the days have been getting longer, while the number of days per year have been decreasing over the past 500 million years.
Tidal rhymite formations enable geologists to reconstruct “the history of Earth’s rotation and lunar orbit” (Williams, 1990) over the past 2.5 billion years.
The recent recognition of cyclically laminated tidal rhythmites provides a new approach to tracing the dynamic history of the Earth-Moon system. Late Proterozoic (~650 Ma) elastic rhythmites in South Australia represent an unsurpassed palaeotidal record of ~560 years’ duration that provides numerous palaeorotational parameters. At~650 Ma there were 13.1 ±0.1 lunar months/year, 400 ±7 solar days/year, and 30.5 ±0.5 solar days/lunar month. The lunar apsides and lunar nodal cycles were then 9.7 ±0.1 years and 19.5 ±0.5 years, respectively. The indicated mean Earth-Moon distance of 58.28 ±0.30 Earth radii at ~650 Ma gives a mean rate of lunar retreat of 1.95 ±0.29 cm/year since that time, about half the present rate of lunar retreat of 3.7 ±0.2 cm/year obtained by lunar laser ranging. The rhythmite data imply a substantial obliquity of the ecliptic at ~650 Ma, and indicate virtually no overall change in the Earth’s moment of inertia, which militates against significant Earth expansion since ~650 Ma. Early Proterozoic ( ~2,500 Ma) cyclic banded iron-formation in Western Australia, that may record submarine fumarolic activity triggered by earth tides, suggests ~14.5 ±0.5 lunar months/year and a mean Earth-Moon distance of ~54.6 Earth radii at ~2,500 Ma. The combined rhythmite data suggest a mean rate of lunar retreat of ~1.27 cm/year during the Proterozoic (~2,500-650 Ma); the indicated increasing mean rate of lunar retreat since~2,500 Ma is consistent with increasing oceanic tidal dissipation as the Earth’s rotation slows. A close approach of the Moon during earlier time is uncertain. Continued study of tidal rhythmites promises to further illuminate the evolving dynamics of the Earth-Moon system.
Williams, 1990
The rate of lunar recession was highly variable during the Proterozoic Eon. The closest the closest approach of the Moon’s orbit to the Earth, as estimated from Precambrian tidal rhymites was ~51.9 Earth radii (~206,000 miles) approximately 2.45 billion years ago.
Green et al., 2017 indicate that the modern recession rate is anomalously high, about twice the average of the Proterozoic Eon. However, the rate appears the have even been higher than it currently is, during the Pleistocene Epoch’s Last Glacial Maximum.
It was recently shown through numerical tidal model simulations with higher resolution than in previous studies that the tidal dissipation during the early Eocene (50 Ma) was just under half of that at present (Green and Huber, 2013). This is in stark contrast to the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, around 20 ka) when simulated tidal dissipation rates were significantly higher than at present due to changes in the resonant properties of the ocean (Green, 2010, Wilmes and Green, 2014, Schmittner et al., 2015). However, the surprisingly large tides during the LGM are due to a quite specific combination of continental scale bathymetry and low sea-level, in which the Atlantic is close to resonance when the continental shelf seas were exposed due to the formation of extensive continental ice sheets (Platzman et al., 1981, Egbert et al., 2004, Green, 2010). It is therefore reasonable to assume — and proxies support this — that the Earth has only experienced very large tides during the glacial cycles over the last 1–2 Ma and that the rates have been lower than at present during the Cenozoic (Palike and Shackleton, 2000, Lourens and Brumsack, 2001, Lourens et al., 2001). Such (generally) low tidal dissipation rates may have led to reduced levels of ocean mixing, with potential consequences for the large scale ocean circulation, including the Meridional Overturning Circulation (Munk, 1966, Wunsch and Ferrari, 2004).
Green et al., 2017
Conclusions
Science starts with observations (what we know) and then works to form hypotheses to explain the observations. The hypotheses are then tested to see if they can become scientific theories. Ideally, the hypotheses are tested empirically, in controlled experiments. Unfortunately, in geology, most hypothesis can only be tested by gathering more observations. This is why Chamberlin’s Method of Multiple Working Hypotheses is taught by many geology departments. For every given set of Earth Science observations, there are, almost invariably, multiple working hypotheses (non-uniqueness). As more observations are collected, some hypotheses will survive, others will have to be modified or discarded.
In the case of lunar recession, we started out with two observations:
- The Moon has been receding from the Earth at a rate of 3.8 cm/yr.
- The Earth and the Moon are approximately 4.5 billion years old.
We know the current recession rate from decades of laser ranging. While the ages of the Earth and the Moon aren’t known with as much certainty as the lunar recession rate, radiometric dating precludes them from being significantly younger than 4.5 billion years old.
At first glance, the physical cause of the first observation would seem to contradict the second observation. This means that either: 1) the recession rate was much slower in the past or 2) the Earth and Moon are less than 1.5 billion years old. Since we can’t run a controlled experiment, the best we can do is to see if the rocks can tell us anything about past recession rates. The rocks tell us that modern recession rate is anomalously high, and that the Moon’s orbit has not been catastrophically close to Earth at any point in the past 2.45 billion years. Without the Principle of Uniformitarianism, geologists wouldn’t be able to “translate the language” of the rocks.
Hat tip to hiskorr for his (or her) comments.
I had never given this subject any thought before. I actually found it quite interesting when I started digging into it.
Day 9 of America Held Hostage by CHICOM-19
Yesterday, Dallas County Commissioner Clay Jenkins issued a “shelter in place” order for Dallas County. Judge Jenkins, a liberal Democrat, looks like Howdy Doody and talks like Forrest Gump. The latest numbers indicate that there are 169 CHICOM-19 cases in Dallas County, and there have been 5 deaths. Dallas County has a population of 2,637,772 2,637,767 people.
| Dallas County | CHICOM-190 | |
| Population | Cases | Deaths |
| 2,637,772 | 169 | 5 |
| % of population | 0.0064% | 0.00019% |
99.9936% of Dallas County does not have CHICOM-19 and 99.9998% of us haven’t died from it.
The shelter in place order means that I get to work from home for at least another two weeks. So, I set up my work station on the island in our kitchen and have the TV on. The other day I watched The Big Lebowsky while I was working in the shorts and tee-shirt that I had slept in, wearing slippers. I could get used to this. Meetings are much more fun this way. Instead of a conference room, we get to WebEx and see our co-workers at home in shorts and flip-flops.
The shelter in place order only allows essential businesses to remain open, which, oddly, includes liquor stores (Hoo-Ahh!). As nearly as I can tell, most white collar workers have been told to work from home, if possible, while the businesses that mainly hire illegal aliens appear to be unaffected.
References
Cowan, E., Cai, J., Powell, R. et al. Modern tidal rhythmites deposited in a deep-water estuary. Geo-Marine Letters 18, 40–48 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1007/s003670050050
Green, Mattias & Huber, M. & Waltham, D. & Buzan, Jonathan & Wells, Martin. (2017). “Explicitly modelled deep-time tidal dissipation and its implication for Lunar history. ” Earth and Planetary Science Letters. 461. 46-53. 10.1016/j.epsl.2016.12.038.
Williams, G. E., “Tidal rhythmites: Key to the history of the Earth’s rotation and the lunar o”rbit”, J. Phys. Earth, 38, 475-491, 1990.
Williams, G.E. Geological Constraints on the Precambrian History of Earth’s Rotation and the Moon’s Orbit, Reviews of Geophysics 38 (2000), 37-59.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
…and how does the accumulation of water over the billions of years affect the moon-ocean resonance?
Is there not also tidal resonances with the earth’s molten core?
Once the moon became tidally locked, tidal resonances on the moon wouldn’t have been possible.
… I was working in the shorts and tee-shirt that I had slept in, wearing slippers. I could get used to this …
So they found the lizard people = “The problem was that upon close inspection, these flood victims had long tails and sharp claws.”.
David
First block quote, “… a lost closer to Earth .. ”
Other than that, I’m sure that Jimmy Hutton would be pleased.
Fixed.
Loss of atmospheric gas density accounts for an increase in the escape speed of the moon.
It IS that simple. The current velocity is not original.
By the way, the Millennium Falcon completed the Kessel Run in less than five hours because it had a massively powerful drive that allowed it to delve deeper into the tidal spaces off the sides of the known space-way. It was supposed to push barges in hyperspace.
So now you know George Lucas was smarter than you too.
12 parsecs is 5 hours?
“Loss of atmospheric gas density accounts for an increase in the escape speed of the moon.”
More explanation please.
“These records in stone indicate that one billion years ago, a day on Earth lasted only 18 hours, there were 13-plus months in a year, and about 481 days in a year!”
So what does this say about the age of the Universe, currently estimated at 13.7 billion years old. Is that age of 13.7 billion years based upon current time keeping as a present year is equal to one orbit of the Earth around the Sun in 365.25 days, (with 24 hours in a day) or all of the averaged time that the good Earth spent revolving around the Sun at the orbital time that would have been in effect at the time and changing over vast periods of time including all the time before there was a present Earth orbiting the Sun as our present time keeper? Just a billion years ago, there was 481 days in a year and a day only lasted 18 hours.
It would seem to me that the current 13.7 billion years old could be out by a factor of 25% younger if just accounting for time keeping relativity since the last billion years. Please explain, if there is a credible explanation? Or is 13.7 Billion years old for the Universe just a WAG or fudged to try and match current time keeping which is just the arbitrary orbital time with a variable speed spinning of our planet while orbiting around the Sun which has also been highly variable over vast periods of ‘time’? Given the Earth, Moon and present Sun are all only about 4.54 billion years old.
Days were shorter and the years had more days. This is a function of Earth’s rotation and the Earth-Moon system. It doesn’t really tell us anything about Earth’s orbit around the Sun.
24 hrs x 365 days = 21 hrs x 417 days
1st – thank you for an extremely interesting post in the current covid climate
2nd – I just wish you’d choose to use either metric or the Yankee doodle dandy units so comparisons are easier rather than converting from miles to kilometres.
for example, cm is metric but miles is old school for me – as an Aussie – we’ve converted to the metric systems
thus suggest if using cm units (metric) – please use kilometres rather than miles and I know u guys spell kilometres – kilometers – goodness sorry maybe it’s google classroom that has exhausted me today
cheers to all
Great reading. I thank you for that and have emailed the link to someone I would like to get hooked onto this site.
Point well made David. Uniformitarianism is what drives the issue of anthropogenic global warming too. What people are forgetting is that although the physics and the chemistry of the processes we observe today must be the same now as they were in the distant past, the rates at which they happen vary all the time. Earth having the 5th largest moon of the solar system while having just 0.2% of the planetary mass is quite anomalous. It would seem that the only process by which this could have happened is by Jupiter with its enormous gravity having pulled apart an antecedent planet and by doing so creating the inner solar system from the remnants, as well as the beginnings of Saturn.
Another point to be made is that the lunar orbit is changing all the time. Like most other things we’ve only been able to measure that for a short period of time, without knowing which part of the curve we are measuring. The facts that Earth currently has an equatorial rotational velocity of around 1,677 km/h and Venus has a reverse rotation of just 6 km/h suggest that the moon has everything to do with that. Jupiter and Saturn continuously vary the speed and distances of Earths orbits, vis-a-vis the speed of its rotation. I recently plotted Earth’s orbital anomalies. It shows that Earth’s orbits change dramatically over time and have changed enormously since the Appollo missions. All we can really do is to continue to make observations for a long enough period of time so we can recognise the respective cycles. Projecting short period trends of a curve is of little value.
Current variations in the moons orbit are modelled by vulgar polynomial fits, frequently adjusted to observation. IAU would like to get back to deterministic modelling but so far this has been illusive.
IOW we fundamentally don’t understand it so we just curve fit for practical short term needs.
Where did all of that come from?
There is no need for Jupiter to tear apart anything, current theories have the inner planets forming from gas and dust that existed in the inner solar system. They lost most of their gas when the sun started fusing and blasted most of the gas out of the inner solar system.
The only way for Jupiter to tear apart a planet would be for that planet to get within Jupiter’s Roche limit. Any object that close would have remained in the orbit of Jupiter.
While the gravity of Jupiter can influence the orbit of the earth, there is no way for it to influence the rotation rate of the earth. It’s physically impossible.
There have been “enourmous” changes in the orbit of the earth since the Appollo (sic) missions? And not a single astronomer (or calendar maker) noticed?????
Rhymite; 4 occurrences. Rhythmites; 16 occurrences. Spiel-checker induced error?
I noticed that too. It looks like David always used the former, the quoted texts always used the latter.
Damn I was about to point that out as well – says Old Geologist!
Great posting David, thank you.
Has the term “punctuated equilibrium” fallen out of fashion or did I miss something?
PunkEke is specific to the evolution of life, but the fundamental concepts are interrelated.
PE was a Marxist ideological construct with no valid place in science. That evolution occurs at different paces in different times and places was understood long before Gould and his coconspirator tried to hijack biology for “Critical Studies”. His secular religion led him fundamentally to misunderstand the Cambrian Radiation, for instance. He has not worn well.
The shelter in place order is not a legally enforceable mandate that people can’t assemble in public if they so chose to do so, or be out and about if they so choose. The First Amendment has NOT been suspended, much to socialist Democrat’s displeasure. Quarantine orders for individuals can be made by public health authorities and legally enforceable when an individual has a medically diagnosed contagion. This has been done in the past with infections such as TB. Typhoid Mary ignored legally enforceable “do not work in food services” and spent the rest of her life in forced quarantine for her behavior endangering public safety in the pre-antibiotic era, as another example. But these are individual orders once a person is diagnosed with a contagion. As such, general “quarantine” orders for masses of undiagnosed people are unenforceable. They are merely recommendations.
Joel,
I, too, have been wondering about the first amendment right to assemble. I think yours is the first mention of this I have seen. Not sure what our judicial system would say if some trouble maker were to make a legal challenge to restrictions being arbitrarily imposed right and left by politicians at all levels. Even though I hope the public complies, if only to be able to assess, after the fact, how effective social distancing really is, I have real concern about the precedent that is being set.
js
All those college kids in Florida last week on the beaches, nothing the cops could do. The cities can close parks they own and operate of course. They can force businesses that need license and inspection to close temporarily to public access. But they cannot, in the US, deny the right of the People to peaceably assemble. No quarantine order of un-diagnosed people is enforceable by law enforcement.
No other country has 1st Amendment guarantees of speech, religion, press, assembly and petition though. The Libs and authoritarian mindset of Big Government types hate the US 1st Amendment, and even more the 2nd Amendment as the final check on an abusive government put in place to protect the 1st. The men who wrote the Bill of Rights understood the need for those rights reserved to the People, both in concept and in practice.
The fact that the “shelter in place” order “exempted religious gatherings” is both an affront to the first amendments guarantees of religious freedom and peaceable assembly. The government has no right or authority to either “permit/grant” or “deny” those assembly rights reserved to the People.
Juan,
If you stop and think about the viral epidemic situation we are now in, we have now governments across the spectrum in the US, several states, many counties and municipalities have declared public health emergencies over COVID-19 cases and issued “remain/shelter in place” orders to the masses who are un-infected/un-diagnosed for the SARS-CoV2 virus.
These cannot be legally enforceable in our Republic. If we allow those “public health and safety general orders” to be enforceable, then there would be no stopping an abusive government down the road.
Climate Change: We see everyday how the Socialist-Totalitarians are using junk climate change science as a Trojan Horse. They want governments to declare a fake “climate crisis” to empower more political power grabs. All they would have to do next then is declare climate change is public health crisis to begin suspending 1st Amendment guarantees, like free speech and the right to peaceably assemble and petition the Government for redress of grievances. If they could do it for COVID-19 (the Right to peaceably assemble), then what would prevent the same for their fake climate crisis after declaring it poses an existential threat to humanity?
We see all the time totalitarian regimes like China and Russia, where those constitutional rights do not exist, and when the people try to do them anyway (protest and write on-line opinions in the press) the government sends in troops and police to crush them or uses the police powers of the State to make them disappear. Here in the US, the Left in their quest for total political power, would love to come after climate skeptic blogs like Anthony’s WUWT (here), or Tony Heller’s RealClimateScience blog and his videos exposing the climate shake-down scam of NASA/GISS and NOAA making intentioanl alterations to climate temperature records to try and keep up with junk climate model projections.
You can bet they (WUWT, RealClimateScience, and others) are on the Left’s radar, both in the US and at the UN to further their fake “climate crisis” Trojan Horse to acquiring raw power over the people of the Western democracies. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren both openly stated their first day in office as US President would be to declare a “climate emergency” using the fake climate change alarmism. And if you don’t think a befuddled, feeble-minded, dementia-ridden Joe Biden wouldn’t be manipulated into the same declaration by his owners (Bloomberg and Soros) you’re being naive and foolish.
The same situation would exist for the 2nd Amendment if fake public crises could be contrived to suppress freedoms reserved to the People by an abusive government. We see all the time the Leftists in this country want to declare gun violence as public health emergency/crisis, and thus order all privately held/owned guns turned-in (as happened in New Zealand last year and in Australia before that), in an order to suspend “the right of the people to keep and bear arms.” All it takes is a properly conditioned public to think these are rights the Government has given to the People, rather than these are rights reserved to the People, and thus a place where the government shall not infringe.
The Democrats are desperate to grab total political power at the Federal level this November. They know they next 4 years are going to see the departure of at least 2 maybe 3 sitting Liberals on the Supreme Court. If Donald Trump , in their view, is allowed to replace them with jurists faithful to the written US constitution, then all their work of 40 years of subverting the US to Socialism will be set back by at least a generation. Their 40 years of efforts on the Trojan Horse climate scam will collapse if Trump is re-elected, they know that. Everything they have fought for is at stake, and that is why we cannot let this COVID-19 “shelter in place” orders to be publicly accepted as enforceable on a us. Use common sense. Avoid crowds voluntarily, wash your hands frequently, call your elderly mom and dad and talk, but don’t visit. Make those your common sense decisions, not the government’s forced on you.
Joel,
I agree with much of what you write. However, I think we are in danger of being called for being off-topic. Even though DM did kind of open the door by sharing his work-at-home experience. Since these political topics are now recurring, I think I’ll just go back and hide in the bushes until I spot the next target of opportunity.
js : >)
CHICOM-19
well done
Why not try whipping up a bit more racial hatred so the “Cletus’s ” can horse whip and stone a few Chinese back to “their” country.
There is no need to assign any country to any virus there is a more than adequate name for the disease covid-19
Spanish flu was not even Spanish!!!!!
You dumb bugger. Do you even know what COVID-19 Stands for? You are right though as the Spanish flu had very little to do with Spain apart from them being honest about the reporting of it.
But the Asian flu was Asian and the Hong Kong flu as well. MERS came from the Middle East. They’re just labels of origin. No ethnic slur intended.
The Spanish flu was misnamed since neutral Spain was not under wartime censorship, so its press covered the outbreak. King Alfonso XIII’s serious sickness was widely reported.
Nobody knows for sure where and how the H1N1 pandemic arose, but it’s an avian flu.
PS: We have the Chinese Communist Party to blame for the pandemic, due to its coverup and barring of Western researchers from Wuhan. ChiCom-19 is this justified, but IMO as a name for the virus Wuhan works. The disease isn’t a flu, so SARS-2 might fill that bill.
Plus… I am more fed up with the PC horst schist than I am with the hysteria over the Kung Flu!
John
I object to you using the term “Chinese” in front of “Communist Party.” It is racist of you to associate the Chinese ‘race’ with the derogatory “Communist Party.”
Can’t tell if your comment is meant to be facetious or not.
The Peoples’ Republic of China is a country, not a race. “Chinese” refers to China, the state, in this case, not to a group of people. China includes many subject ethnic groups besides the majority Han. Compare “American” citizen for citizen of the USA, for instance.
The ruling tyranny calls itself in English the Communist Party of China, commonly abbreviated CCP, for Chinese Communist Party, rather than CPC.
John
I’ll give you a hint as to whether it was sarcasm. Trump was accused of being racist for blocking travel from China.
In short “Chinese” is an adjective describing the Communist Party of the country China.
There are Labour Parties in countries other than Britain, hence, the British Labour Party.
Not racist. In any case, as noted, Chinese isn’t a “race”. In the biological sense, humanity has no races. We’re all genetically remarkably similar, much moreso than common chimps, though they’re limited to a swath of central Africa.
[What’s our policy on posting blatant propaganda from Communist China? Leaving this post in “pending” for now for Charles or Anthony to decide. -mod]
“PS: We have the Chinese Communist Party to blame for the pandemic, due to its cover-up and barring of Western researchers from Wuhan.”
I am afraid you are repeating neocon globalist propaganda. I don’t blame you personally, as Western media have been saturated with it, and anyone who is not already monitoring non-MSM media on the topic is likely to think that what you said is uncontroversial – just as everyone in the West knows that ‘bat soup’ is part of Chinese cuisine, and might have been a vector for inter-species infection. In actual fact, bat-eating is practically unknown in China. True, there are videos of Chinese people eating bat soup, but those people are tourists, who are gingerly trying out a traditional local delicacy in their holiday destination. Ironically, considering the way that American media have been using the story to induce anti-Chinese disgust, that destination is usually the Pacific island nation of Palau, which is a US protectorate. And it turns out that many Chinese, having ordered the dish thinking that it is just a soup made with bat-meat, are so disgusted when presented with a whole bat that they send it back untouched. (Details at https://observers.france24.com/en/20200203-china-coronavirus-bat-soup-debunk-videos-viral-palau-indonesia .)
The narrative that the Chinese were incompetent or nefarious in the early stages of the outbreak is equally unsubstantiated. It seems to be designed to deflect away from our rulers the blame for wasting the month or two that the discovery of the outbreak in Wuhan should have given us to prepare. (https://www.thedailybeast.com/white-house-pushes-us-officials-to-criticize-china-for-coronavirus-cover-up/ .) With that warning, we should have been able to fight the epidemic even better than the Chinese, and prevent it becoming a pandemic. In fact, the Western reaction has been abysmal in comparison.
The Chinese proactively traced all possible contacts, and tested and quarantined them. In contrast, the USA has actually been forbidding concerned medics from testing suspected cases, instead restricting testing to those recently returned from China and to contacts of confirmed cases. (See https://www.epsilontheory.com/dont-test-dont-tell/ – but the author is wrong about what happened in Wuhan. For the truth, see https://mronline.org/2020/03/05/yellow-caking-an-epidemic/ , especially section 12 and appendix 2. Sorry about the mentions of global warming – nobody can be expected to see through all of the fake narratives immediately.) This American policy mirrored an early Chinese mistake of only testing people who had visited the wet market, but it was left in place for weeks, rather than days. The result is that community infection is now rife throughout the West, but has been practically eliminated in China; Chinese people now fear Westerners as possible sources of infection. (Daniel Dumbrill, a Canadian living in Shenzhen, describes this here: https://youtu.be/0Jw2xSRsn9c?t=44 . I don’t agree with his criticism of such fear of putative sources of infection – the Westerners who were avoiding Chinese people in January were rational and considerate of the population as a whole, while those who ‘virtue signalled’ by participating in a ‘hug a Chinese’ publicity stunt potentially spread the disease and killed people.)
In Wuhan, there was certainly some initial confusion, as might be expected when a novel disease first appears. Especially with hindsight, some people are open to criticism, for instance for not passing concerns up the hierarchy quickly enough. They have been disciplined. (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-51453848 ) But there is zero genuine evidence of any organised ‘cover-up’. The ‘evidence’ presented in the NYT, Guardian etc. depends on lies of omission in detailing time-lines, confusion of epidemiological terminology, and outright lies of commission. (See https://asia-review.com/186/no-china-didnt-cover-up-the-covid-19-outbreak/ . The article https://mronline.org/2020/03/05/yellow-caking-an-epidemic/ mentioned earlier gives further evidence, including a detailed timeline of events. A timeline of possibly connected events is given at https://www.moonofalabama.org/2020/03/news-nugget-about-the-coronavirus-pandemic.html?cid=6a00d8341c640e53ef0240a4f1cb00200d#comment-6a00d8341c640e53ef0240a4f1cb00200d .)
I admit to myself occasionally calling COVID19 ‘Wuflu’ as it is such a mellifluous name, but the practice of naming epidemics after their place of discovery has long been officially deprecated. (The 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic, which killed up to 575 000 people, was not called ‘San Diego flu’.) This is partly for the politically-correct reason of avoiding stigmatisation, but mainly because it is so easy to get it wrong – ‘Spanish flu’ probably originated in Kentucky, and ‘San Diego flu’ in Mexico. The true source of a pandemic is often only definitively established long after the peak of the crisis, by detailed epidemiological study. Americans who insist on calling COVID19 the ‘Chinese virus’ or ‘ChiCom-19′ are demanding that such research is not needed; their narrative about its origin can be taken on trust, because, well, Americans never lie or make a mistake. In the real world, epidemics often turn out to have started in a small way many months before they are first noticed, and sometimes in a different country. New diseases can hide among the larger numbers of victims of similar old diseases for a long time as they gradually build up numbers, especially if the first few generations are among people with habits giving a low R0, or in a fairly isolated group of individuals who tend to have no, or limited, symptoms. (Healthy young soldiers or athletes, for instance.) Unless someone is proactively looking for new diseases (as the Chinese have been doing since SARS), the new disease may only be discovered when its exponential growth means it is no longer plausible to put its effects down to a particularly bad year for seasonal flu. Once the disease is identified and tests designed, it may then be hard to distinguish between an exponential increase in the disease and an exponential increase in testing, and therefore confirmed cases – though of course both will typically be occurring.
It is therefore perfectly plausible that the virus did not jump species to humans in Wuhan, but was brought to the city by one or more of the teams in the world military athletics games which were held there at about the time the virologists calculate the Wuhan infection probably started. It would then be discovered not because the outbreak there was initially more intense than in its place of origin, but because the Chinese are paranoid about SARS-like viruses, and Wuhan is a high-tech city which is the centre for research into them. The subsequent explosion in cases that initially overwhelmed Wuhan’s hospitals arose there, rather than at the origin, because of a high big-city R0 value, which becomes even higher at Chinese New Year, when everyone visits everyone.
The plausibility of this hypothesis is increased because the failure of the case-tracing which would normally have been expected to track down Patient Zero if he or she was a Wuhan resident. Also, it is known that five of the foreign athletes at the games came down with a serious fever, and were treated with chloroquine, in the belief that they had malaria. The treatment helped, which is consistent with the disease being non-pneumonial COVID19. (The Chinese informed all other nations’ health authorities that chloroquine was a promising treatment early this year; a month later the Americans proudly announced that they had discovered that chloroquine was a promising treatment.) Also, there are reports coming in from several parts of the world that a particularly nasty flu-like illness was going around very shortly after, simultaneously with, or even before the disease was detected in Wuhan. My wife and I had something that fitted the symptoms of the non-pneumonial form from mid-January to the end of the month. At the time we assumed it couldn’t be Wuflu, as it was more than seven months since we’d been in Wuhan, and nobody had suggested that the disease could have reached Britain from there in the short time since its supposed recent origin. Now, I am not so sure.
The Chinese have not officially said who they think brought the disease to Wuhan, nor (more-or-less equivalently) have they given the nationality of the sick soldier-athletes. Semi-officially, it’s the Americans. It is also rumoured that they have proof that the earliest (though not earliest-discovered) nexus of infection was not at the famous wet market, but at the Oriental Hotel, which is one (big) city block away from the market. It would be natural for guests at that hotel who wanted to sample the local colour to wander into the wet market. (I didn’t resist a similar temptation in Xi’an, and saw something somewhat similar inside a Walmart in Shanghai. Wet markets are far from the hell-holes presented in Western media.) Apparently the American team stayed at the Oriental hotel. Also, it seems, before leaving for Wuhan at least some of them trained at a facility close to Fort Detrick, Maryland. Which is the USA’s main bio-warfare facility. And which was temporarily closed down last August because of concerns about lax bio-security. To sum up, the Chinese strongly suspect that America’s attempt to popularise the name ‘China virus’ is intended to preclude the names ‘Maryland virus’ and ‘Detrick virus’. They think that the enforced American policy of testing only those recently returned from China and those who were contacts of confirmed cases was designed to guarantee that any epidemiological study based on American data would point to China as the source of infection. (Studies in other countries have tended to point the same way to begin with, as travellers from China were being tested preferentially. But more recently, there has been evidence that in many countries the bulk of the subsequent infections are descendants of varieties of the virus found in the USA but not in China. See, for instance, https://www.globalresearch.ca/covid-19-two-major-waves-of-global-infection-towards-global-contamination/5707588 )
I am not committed to this account of the start of the pandemic. There are other candidate explanations, such as a species-jump in the wet market or somewhere else near Wuhan, accidental release of a bioweapon or of a research-tool from the Wuhan virology research facility (which is also quite close to the wet market), deployment of a bio-weapon against China by a foreign power, and deliberate release by China in the belief that their more cohesive society would be less damaged than would their more fractious Western rivals’. All explanations have problems. The question is very much open. Your terminology tries to close it prematurely. I suspect that similar terminology is being promoted in the USA for three reasons. To divert possible blame. To stoke hostility to China in order to promote a desired ‘decoupling’ of the two economies. And, judging by Senator Cotton’s ravings, to justify a selective default of America’s debts to China under colour of law.
More projection from a socialist. Who’s surprised?
Once again, ghalfrunt is eager to prove to the world that it has nothing intelligent to say.
“Unfortunately, in geology, most hypothesis can only be tested by gathering more observations. This is why Chamberlin’s Method of Multiple Working Hypotheses is taught by many geology departments. For every given set of Earth Science observations, there are, almost invariably, multiple working hypotheses (non-uniqueness). As more observations are collected, some hypotheses will survive, others will have to be modified or discarded.”
ahem
If climate “science” only worked the same way… 😉
ahem…..
Don’t mess with the consensus, David! The Climate Seance is Settled! };>)
In case, the working hypotheses of geologic sciences have falsifiable predictions in them. Mainstream Climate Change science descended in the realm of junk science when it discarded falsification.
From the article: “Many of the world’s 190 confirmed impact craters”
David, I get a “404 (Page Not Found) Error” at that link.
I would love to see a world map of the locations of all these craters.
Thanks for this great article.
Be creative–simply do a search for ‘earth impact database’.
There’s a map!
Including “database” in the search gave the results. Using just “earth impact” didn’t show anything useful as far a map, on the first page, anyway. Thanks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Impact_Database
I copied that from another post. Sometimes the links go stale. I’ll see if I can update the link.
covid=corona virus disease!
the virus defined by
Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome – Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)
“Official statements by the Chinese government to the World Health Organisation reported that the first confirmed case had been diagnosed on 8 December. Doctors who tried to raise the alarm with colleagues about a new disease in late December were reprimanded. Authorities did not publicly concede there was human-to-human transmission until 21 January.”
So the world had from 21st January to prepare. On 12 march Trump still says US has it all controlled and it will go away!!!.
https://therecount.com/watch/trump-coronavirus-calendar/2645515793
with this attitude would the US have been better prepared if they had known a month earlier?
Any chance to bash Trump. You’re pathetic.
Trump limited flights from China on January 31. The ChiCom regime which you so admire knew about the outbreak at least in November, but suppressed the news.
Had Trump been alerted sooner, he could have restricted flights on December 31 or earlier, saving the lives of the WA nursing home patients and others. He also could have ramped up test kit production and discovered the CDC’s tests’ flaws and its inability to meet demand as well as quality.
The Red Chinese government is responsible for deaths around the world.
Are you actually claiming that the world should go on a war time footing everytime a disease is recognized as being able to pass from human to human.
Your pathetic attempts to pass the blame away from China are duly noted.
That bring up the question, why would the Chinese government suppress information of a new dangerous pathogen? If it was simply a product of a naturally occurring mutation to an existing virus in the environment there’s no reason to suppress information. At the very least the proximity to a bio-weapons lab would have made them hedge on getting blamed.
1) They might want to suppress the news if the new virus was spawned in Wuhan wet markets.
2) But even more so if it escaped from a bioweapons lab.
Either way, the natural tendency of a Communist regime is to cover up and deflect blame.
PS: All governments have the CYA tendency. The difference in a totalitarian state is that there’s are no independent organs, such as a free press, to call BS on their lying Commie a$$es.
John
Yes, I wish we had a free press here in the US to call BS from the liberals. /sarc
Thank you, David, for a most informative response to my challenging post. It was the kind of information I was hoping for. Having spent many years dealing with satellite orbits and the forces necessary to modify them, I focused on the balance of forces necessary to achieve the current lunar recession rate. Briefly, I was delighted to find that the tidal bulge, caused by the gravitational force of the moon, and offset by the earth’s rotation, provided just the right energy transfer from the earth to the moon to cause the moon’s current precession and the earth’s slower rotation ( conservation of angular momentum, and all that). That being so, what would have happened in the past, when the moon’s gravitational force was larger (inverse square of the distance) and the rotational offset of the tidal bulge was increased. The result– disaster not too long ago (1.5 billion years).
The solution: science (observation) to the rescue! The tidal forces half a billion years ago were not nearly what we would expect them to be. Why would that be–let me count the ways. Let’s start ~20,000 years ago. The oceans 450 feet below current level, the continents bigger, ergo the tidal bulge much less than currently. For that matter, would there be any tidal effect at all during “iceball earth” periods? On the other hand, during ice-free periods, especially with a panghea single continent, the tidal effect must have been much greater than today. In short, we have no way of knowing the precise orbital history of the moon, except for occasions when we can determine the rotation of the earth (e.g., half a billion years ago- 484-day year) which allows us to calculate what the moon’s orbit must have been (energy conservation). Therefore, precession must have been highly variable in the past, and calculations such as “average precession” over an extended period have about as much utility as calculating the “average temperature” of the earth.
However, the conclusion that the moon could not long have existed in a stable orbit lower than 200,000 miles does have much to say about the theory of an impact origin of the moon.
I apologize for more or less dismissing your comment. Once I started digging around, I found the subject to be quite fascinating.
I agree, it doesn’t help us much with the lunar origin hypotheses.
David, thanks for an interesting post and you and I actually
agree on somethin. I had to verbalize Kung Flu several time
but I now use it.
Based on my very scientific experience with my yoyo, I always
assumed that orbital speed slowed as distance increased.
“Green et al., 2017 indicate that the modern recession rate is anomalously high, about twice the average of the Proterozoic Eon.”
AAAAHHHHHH!!!! Anthropomorphic moon recession! We’re all gonna die!!!!!!
David Middleton – My set of rocks arrived yesterday, and a lot of them do not look like I was imagining them from Press & Sievers. Looking forward to going back to the beginning of the book with the set in hand. Also looking forward to identifying some of the rocks around me. One thing I get from today’s post is how important cross bedding is. I will pay much more attention to that now.
When my wife and I went to Hawaii back in 2006, my attitude was “Basalt is basalt. Once youv’e seen one lava flow, you’ve seen them all.” I was wrong 🙂
Aa!
Why did you censor me?
(You had ZERO posts approved, which automatically place you into the Moderation bin, I have approved two comments a minute ago, but under a different name than what you use here, which is a violation of board policy, don’t use your name again, use the other one to avoid trouble) SUNMOD
You might have used banned words.
Anthony has several words in his moderation filters that will send your comment lost to moderation. Two words I know will send your comment to the moderation bucket, “k1ll” and “m-ur der”, spelled correctly of course. You cannot even use the word “sk1ll” as the filter will catch that “k” word embedded in that commonly used word to refer to the ability of a weather model to be accurate.
Also using more than 4 URLs, or too much HTML markups in a comment will send your comment to moderation bucket and likely lost for hours, days, or forever until a moderator reviews it for approval.
That’s some switch, that k!ll switch!
The problem with that policy is that it disadvantages those who are arguing against a commonly-held position, and feel that they have to cite appropriate factual references in order to overcome the general assumptions on a topic. You end up encouraging lots of more light-weight conversational stuff instead.
For instance, my quip about Noether’s Theorem and perpetual motion machines (which frankly anyone could do without) appeared immediately. But I have almost given up hope of ever again seeing my long and heavily-referenced answer to John Tillman’s calumnies against China, which was infinitely more important. (John seems to be excellent on anything not China-related, but he seems like a different person once the topic of China pops up.)
P.S. I usually post here using my own name, but I occasionally forget and use the nic that I made up yonks ago for use on the ironically-named “Comment Is Free” facility on the Guardian. If that might count against me, I’ll be more careful in future. (Needless to say, I eventually got thrown off CIF for taking their name literally. No, come to think of it, it was worse than that. I was thrown off for posting facts, not commentary. The whole quote from their editor back in the time when the Guardian was an actual newspaper was “Comment is free, but facts are sacred”. He must be turning in his grave, whether he is thinking about the first half of that sentence or the second.)
It now transpires that Maatje Benassi, of the American Women’s cycling team at the World Military Games, is married to Matthew Benassi of Fort Detrick.
(But the significance of that statement will not be clear to readers here until my reply to John Tillman comes out of moderation, or it becomes the crucial fact in a major international conflict. Remember – you heard it here first.)
Uniformitarianism works 95% of the time…..
That claim is right except when it isn’t.
If the Moon is retreating from the Earth at 3.79 cm/yr, it will have less influence over the tides. Given that the sea level is reported as increasing at around 1/10 that rate, is there the chance that the Moon’s retreat is creating conditions that are misinterpreted, in whole or in part, as a change in sea level?
No
How far away do you think the Moon has to move in order to reduce peak tides by 1mm?
PS: DNA and RNA aren’t “digital”, if by that you mean binary. Each nucleic acid stores protein-making information in packets of three, using four signifiers.
I’m not sure what the argument here is about, but concerning digital: digital =/= binary, it just means discrete, as opposed to continuous.