Comments on: Some Geologists at Quelccaya

By: Steve Sadlov

Steve Sadlov — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 16:08:31 +0000

Pete – no meds, I’m simply in “irritated manager” mode this week ….

By: Tim Ball

Tim Ball — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 15:56:02 +0000

Re #13
Stephan you are correct. I had intended to remove the clause “apparently without understanding” which was part of a first draft response and failed to do so.

By: Peter Hearnden

Peter Hearnden — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 15:46:36 +0000

Re #51. Crikey, is that a compliment? Allways a good way to defuse things that . The right medication is a wonderful thing eh? – he said winkingly. Oh, but to add, my views are little different to those of Lee and JMS.

No, back to trying to keep up with all this stuff.

By: Steve Sadlov

Steve Sadlov — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 15:27:51 +0000

Pete, chill out mahn. People may jokingly call you a troll but in reality you are more like the principled opposition, at least in my opinion.

By: Peter Hearnden

Peter Hearnden — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 15:08:16 +0000

Re #49, Steve, have you taken your tablets? (that’s a joke as well btw). You certainly seem very fired up.

Strangly, when I mentioned John A had been call an ‘attack dog’ elsewhere (not by me!) it was deleted. It’s almost as if there is one rule for those supporting the party line here and another for dissidents. I bet you this post, but not yours, is deleted

By: Steve Sadlov

Steve Sadlov — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 15:01:58 +0000

It is apparent that neither Lee nor attacking pit bull JMS have ever been exposed to a proper geological report or a proper site assay. Either that, or, they pretend they have not. What a joke.

By: Steve McIntyre

Steve McIntyre — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 11:30:02 +0000

Decay processes in high, cold situations are very, very slow. I saw an interesting comment that Roman and Celtic coins from recent archaeological excavations in a high Alpine pass were in pristine condition.

I think that the possibility of very, very slow decay is the weak link in Thompson’s reasoning. I suspect that old plant material might be little changed at Quelccaya even if exposed for many thousand years. Thompson just arm-waves through this part of the argument without citing any authority on rates of decay.

The reason why detailed stratigraphy is important is because, at other sites, you have multiple sediment beds with occasional bulldozing of sediments into moraines. You could have (say) Roman sediments accunulating on Holocene Optimum sediments after a period of stasis corresponding to the Peyto Advance, then bulldozing in the large LIA advance.

By: JMS

JMS — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 06:20:12 +0000

Bender, yes you are correct. However I would suspect that at higher, drier locations it might take a while for succession to happen. Most peat bogs are found in low, cool and moist areas. I have no idea of what the ecology might be near the ice cap, but they are probably different…

By: bender

bender — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 05:44:21 +0000

It’s not the taxonomy I was trying to point to, but the time-scale of the ecological process of peat formation in cold climates – living moss that grows overtop of dead moss of the same species as a substrate. The older stuff is ‘peat’ and (in the case of sphagnum anyways) it doesn’t take long for the succession to happen. Mere decades. As I say, I’m not a peatland ecologist. Just throwing in my 2c where it may help.

By: JMS

JMS — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 05:33:08 +0000

Of course, sphagnum spp. is not found at those heights. I just finished reading a fairly extensive book on the coal industry and peat seems to be considered semi-decayed plant matter of no particular species. In some parts of the world it is mainly sphagnum.