Some geologists have a unique perspective on global warming and climate change that climate modelers sitting in front of their computers cannot even imagine.
"Boots on the ground", I think they call it. Theory backed by observation. Wisdom from "been there, done that" perhaps. So call us skeptics.
Here is a contribution from a respected friend and mentor. I think you will find it enlightening.
Peter
Peter,
Thanks for the forward below. I presume you've read "State of Fear". Amusing read. I come at global warming with some kind of pedigree since I was expounding about it 57 years ago when I read the stats on increasing atmospheric CO2 and the inevitability that this would cause a rise in sea level.
An increase of 2 feet in MSL was predicted by the end of the century and the usual jokes floated that you should forget about buying property around Newport Beach. In all the years since, I kept an eye on MSL, and it stayed put, though I doubt that is a permanent condition, and in the 70s and 80s a new Ice Age was predicted backed up by 17 straight years of satellite temp measurements and an alarmingly expanding snow cover moving south in Canada.
Then, along came Gore, and suddenly global warming turned from science into politics. Several months ago I predicted he'd probably receive an Academy Award for it from his like-minded nitwits in Hollywood. 20 billion dollars, I read, were spent trying to prove global warming, and I headed for the exit. Now I don't believe anything I hear about the subject, no matter that recognized PhDs of all persuasions, including Dermatologists, Psychologists, and Animal Behaviorists, have signed on.
Are we in a period of global warming? As I keep repeating, of course we are. We're coming out of an ice age aren't we. But in the meanwhile there have been peaks and pits in world temperature. This sounds familiar so I must have written about it in the past. Anyway, in all my professional career I've only seen signs of sea level retreat, not advance, all over the world.
Old sea ports in Korea are now stranded 2 km inland. The Dalaman River delta in Turkey has moved many Km out to sea and I recommended this environment as a placer platinum target since the Dalaman is Pt bearing and a retreating shoreline tends to concentrate heavy minerals.
I have mapped and drilled the raised beach deposits of western Liberia for stranded diamond placers along the old shorelines. Holland Syndicate, under Dr. Terpstra, had done the same in the 1930s during their worldwide gold survey and I was so lucky as to find one of Terpstra's former banka drillers, now a one-eyed old man named Mohammed, sitting on a bench at the LGS, and I borrowed him for my project.
I did a geomorph survey of the raised beach deposits of SE Sierra Leone, downstream of the "Blood Diamond" business now showing at a theatre near you. These raised beaches extend miles inland, and represent a pretty good diamond and heavy mineral target. You can see these on maps and global scans. They look like bathtub rings. While I was at Texas Instruments some idiot had seen the scans and recommended them as a petroleum target. I delighted in telling the assembled study group that I just happened to have walked the length and breadth of these things and they were fresh raised beach sand, showing several plateaux of sea level terrace of about 1.5 to 2m elevation difference. The target was diamonds, not oil. They thought I was a smart alec.
Then there is the SW coast of South Africa and Namibia. The famed "Oyster line" prospected by the Germans in 1913 or so. A major strip of raised beach hundreds of miles long. There is a similar raised beach along the Strait of Malacca. One Englishman's survey monument was lost and later found 2km inland owing to retreat of the shoreline.
Anyway, that's my story for the moment. I think a sulfide aerosol deployed into the upper atmosphere should be looked into to create global cooling on demand. Perhaps spread by international airliners. I am going to propose that to Branson if I can ever get my trash together. Cheers,
d
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