A few years ago, I noticed some interesting presentations by geology undergraduates at the Keck Symposium – see 4 papers online here – describing fossils from the Miocene and Pliocene (both well after the Cretaceous) in the Arctic. Here’s a tree from the Pliocene – which is not “hundreds of millions” of years ago, but the period immediately preceding the very cold Pleistocene.
One of the paper specifically reports on Alaska temperature over the Tertiary (post-dinosaurs: the last 50 million years or so)
In Alaska (paleolatitude of 60°N) the MAT dropped from ca. 11° to 4° C between 12 and 13 Ma with concomitant changes in the vegetation (Wolfe 1997).
This is illustrated with the following graphic:
I’m sure that any geology undergrad could make an excellent reading list for an inquisitive Secretary.
Climate Audit 
73 Comments
Late Miocene alligator fossils have been found in upper East Tennessee at the Gray fossil site so the climate was sub-tropical sometime between 4.5 and 7 Mya.
Re: DeWitt Payne (#2),
Isn’t it fairly well accepted that the world was fairly warm until the Antarctic/Australia breakup?
Re: Soronel Haetir (#3),
Temperatures have been declining since the Eocene Optimum ~50 Mya. But the real kicker may have been the closure of the gap between North and South America about 3Mya. That coincided with a sharp drop in global temperature according to oxygen isotope ratio data from foraminifera in ocean cores.
Re: Soronel Haetir (#3),
Not really. There is evidence of four cold epochs during the Phanerozoic – roughly the last 600 ma. Three of these periods precede the break up, although the cool period immediately preceding the breakup appears to have lacked polar ice caps. An even colder event seems to have affected the entire planet during the Proterozoic when nearly the entire planet seems to have frozen.
When even my horribly conservative hackles are raised, this must be getting pretty provocative. LOL.
Re: jae (#4), JAE – I agree. To my mind this is a provocative post. I think a more useful way of discussing any potential dismerits of Dr Chu’s response to Congressman Barton’s question would have been (for example) to post an open letter to Dr Chu requesting clarification and highlighting the area’s of concern with the impression his response could have made.
[snip – Scott has made allegations on motive that are not permitted on blog policies. I’ve deleted his comment and your reference to it. ]
Re: curious (#51),
Dr. Chu’s office still has not responded to inquiries requesting clarification of his statements in the testimony.
Mr. Barton’s office immediately and cheerfully answered a telephone call and inquiry in regard to Mr. Waxman’s office barring the testimony of Lord Monckton alongside Al Gore in the full committee hearings.
Re: curious (#49), Yes – I thought it was a bit strong; saved the page I was so surprised!
Not to parse words Steve, as you’ve probably gathered, I thought the posts on Dr Chu and Barton’s 6 second “storm in a tea cup” were off target. Could have been/be an opportunity to ask Dr Chu to answer the question Barton could/should have put directly in the first place. It’s no fun for anyone to be kicked around the playground and it didn’t fit with what CA seems to be about. I’ll not go on.
Enjoyed the new post on trends and learnt something new. C
I wonder if you could revise the OP to include the full quote from Chu, RE: “hundreds of millions” of years ago.
Ouch!
I think you forgot to say, “You’ve been served.”
The Pliocene paradox when external factors where essentially the same and temperatures higher.Co2 was 280-300ppm eg Pagani et al 1999.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/285/5429/876
Federov 2006
Science 9 June 2006:
Vol. 312. no. 5779, pp. 1485 – 1489
DOI: 10.1126/science.1122666
Interesting arguments in the latter ,but none that fit,the paradox remains
Re: maksimovich (#8),
When viewed on the geologic timescale of the Phanerozoic about 546 million years during which multi-cellular life colonized the terrestrial landscapes, the relationship between temperatures and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations have been highly unccordinated and very often counter-related. Only by selecting relatively very short periods out of the overall time period can anyone demonstrate a fleeting and very very temporary correlation.
DeWitt Payne
Federov et al
The Paradox remains
Bender – here is what Curious transcribed from the youtube clip.
Two New Dinosaurs Discovered in Antarctica
Re: John (#12),
With Google Earth, you cannot find a place in Antarctica that is 3,200 km from the South Pole. This rather makes nonsense of the quote from “Nature”. I’ve told them a million times not to exaggerate in climate science.
Re opening remarks by Students at Keck, the limited description of flora is reminiscent of present country in West Yunnan/S-W Sichuan, China. Kunming has a world famous Botanical Institute. It would be interesting to run these papers past them to see if they agree with comments like
Maybe it is better to understand today’s distributions and ecoclimates before going back some tens of millions of years.
Re: Geoff Sherrington (#15), Careful reading of the linked article scared up the two relevant place names: James Ross Island and Mount Kirkpatrick. Those two happen to be fairly close to 2000 miles apart according to a quick stretch of the Google Earth ruler between their approximate locations.
The article is wrong to describe Mt. Kirkpatrick as “only a few miles from the South Pole” as Google Earth would have it be more like 350 miles.
On the whole, I think they got the distances right on this one. You are right that even the Northernmost tip of the peninsula is less than 1800 miles from the pole, and most of the coastline is a lot closer than that.
The above link is to the National Geographic article I mentioned in an earlier thread that talks about the Cretaceous climate in Antarctica.
Does all this futile argument stem from the myth that oil and gas come from dinosaurs, when it is generally accepted that it came from plankton and algae? Cold-water plankton are well-known and cold-loving algae have been found in the Arctic. So while Chu was ignorant, Barton wasn’t really any better.
snip – no abiotic oil speculations please
Steve: yes, there are coldwater algae but coldwater algae are not the provenance of the North Slope oil and gas. This is discussed in the other thread. In this particular case, Barton was on home turf and Chu was ill-advised to assume that he was stupid.
Re: JamesG (#16),
It is no myth that dinosaurs did in fact contribute in very small part to the formation of oil and natural gas deposits. There were a number of species that were inhabitants of the marine environments, and their corpses contributed to the organic rich sediments which were subsequently reduced to hydrocarbons. The fact that algae and plankton did not lend themselves to making logos for Sinclair Oil and Shell oil does not change the fact that the large animal species contributed at least in small degrees to the hydrocarbons as well.
Barton asked questions, and none of his questions were wrong in any way whatsoever. What is wrong, however, is your implication that “Cold-water plankton […] and cold-loving algae” are major contributors to commercial scale depostis of oil and natural gas in comparison to tropical and sub-tropical species. When marine plant and animal life die and are deposited in the marine sediments, their carbon compounds are oxidized by bacteria and converted in large part to carbon dioxide and carbonate sedimentary rocks containing no commercial deposits of liquid hydrocarbons. In other words, their carbon compounds are consumed by the bacteria before they can become buried to any great concentration required to produce commercial deposits of oil and natural gas. Commercial deposits of the organic or biotic hydrocarbons occurred during special conditions in tropical and sub-tropical shallow sea environments, because the warmer sea temperatures sometimes created the anoxic conditions required to keep the organic matter from being oxidized and consumed by the bacteria before the organics could be buried beyond the reach of the bacteria.
Cold polar seas during ice ages and deep oceanic basins, however, were very poor places for the formation of oil and gas deposits. The cold water of polar seas during ice ages are typically well oxygenated, so bacteria oxidize the organic matter before it can be buried and subsequently converted to liquid hydrocarbons. Likewise, the deep ocean basins tend to be relative lifeless deserts by comparison to the seas of the continental shelves, and what organic matter there is tends to once again become oxygentated by cold bottom waters which permit bacteria to oxidize most of the commercial quantities of organics before they can become buried in the sediments. Knowing that warm anoxic shallow seas were required for the formation of the Alaskan commercial oil and gas deposits, Barton offered Chu an opportunity to acknowledge the warmth of the past Alaskan climate in the high latitudes. Chu miserably failed to do so.
Unfortunately, you have badly misunderstood and misinterpreted what you have been reading, so the comment about massive ignorance is highly inappropriate. Yes, Titan is loaded with hydrocarbons. So what? The Earth also used to be loaded with hydrocarbons as well. What happened to them, you may ask? Many things happened to Earth’s hydrocarbons. A great part of the Earth’s early methane, ethane, and other complex compounds were destroyed by sunlight, the Earth’s environment, and pushed by the Solar wind to the outer Solar System, where they were incorporated into Jupiter, Saturn, Titan, and other gaseous and icy worlds. Much of the Earth’s carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, hydrosphere, plant life, animal life, and carbonate lithosphere were converted from Earth’s early reserves of methane, ethane, and hydrocarbons. Move Titan into a somewhat warmer orbit around the Sun and turn loose some of Earth’s microbial life, and you can watch as the life forms consume Titan’s hydrocarbons and radically change that world’s environmental chemistries as they did on the Earth. There are fundamental differences between the commercial deposits of oil and natural gas in Alaska and the abiotic hydrocarbons found on Titan and inside extraterrestrial chondrite meteorites. All life on Earth, for one example, produces a levro or left rotating chain in the organic molecule of oil. Abiotic sources of liquid hydrocarbons do not necessarily produce molecular chains rotating in only the one direction. Likewise, there are other characteristics of oil derived from living organisms which differentiate the oils from inorganic sources.
So, no, the hydrocarbons on Titan do not require scientists to “rethink how hydrocarbons, like oil and natural gas, came to be on planet Earth.” They have long known and/or suspected Titan’s atmosphere was likely a much colder example of Earth’s early atmospheric composition. Earth being so much warmer produced very different results. Anytime you want to find where so much of the Earth’s earliest massive stores of hydrocarbons went, simply look at your nearest carbon-based lifeforms, the carbonate rocks they sit upon, and the atmospheres of Jupiter, Saturn, Titan, Uranus, and Neptune.
Re: D. Patterson (#20),
Well I stand corrected. You went overboard though with the “very small part” from dinosaurs and you disagree with Pat Frank in saying that abiotic methane did exist on Earth. But can you tell me more about how this balmy Alaskan climate came about? Did the planet swing about on it’s axis or was it greenhouse gases?
This intrigues me too:
“Commercial deposits of the organic or biotic hydrocarbons occurred during special conditions in tropical and sub-tropical shallow sea environments, because the warmer sea temperatures sometimes created the anoxic conditions required to keep the organic matter from being oxidized and consumed by the bacteria before the organics could be buried beyond the reach of the bacteria. Cold polar seas during ice ages and deep oceanic basins, however, were very poor places for the formation of oil and gas deposits.”
Since the North slope is not a major deposit in comparison to Venezuela or Arabia I clearly didn’t imply that “Cold-water plankton …and cold-loving algae” are major contributors to commercial scale depostis of oil and natural gas in comparison to tropical and sub-tropical species.”. However you seem to tell us that Alaska was not just warm, but actually sub-tropical. Quite a claim!
Does it come perhaps from here?
“Palaeoclimate: A balmy Arctic in Nature 432, 814-815 (16 December 2004)”:
“Analyses of sediments retrieved from a drifting ice island suggest that the Arctic Ocean may have been ice free and as warm as 15 °C about 70 million years ago. Therein is a challenge for climate models. Various lines of evidence show that Earth’s climate was much warmer during the Cretaceous period than it is today. Yet that evidence — fossil plants and animals, sedimentary features and geochemical indicators — is sparse, spotty and often inexact, making the magnitude and distribution of Cretaceous temperatures highly uncertain.”
Given these high uncertainties you seem to be hugely overconfident in your assertions and Barton, far from being on “solid ground”, as Steve puts it, is likely relying on speculative science.
Speculation presented as fact – just what we accuse the climateers of…
Re: JamesG (#27),
Re: D. Patterson (#20),
A dexterous exposition, much appreciated. But we chemists usually spell it “levo”
Re: Geoff Sherrington (#39),
Yes, I dexterously miswrote that [g]. Thanks.
Re: D. Patterson (#20), With regard to your assertion that commercial oil deposits were formed only in anoxic basins, why is it then, that many of the most productive oil fields are located in prograding deltaic sedimentary packages?
Re: Peter (#57),
check out the source rocks. I’ll bet that you find that source rocks even in prograding deltaic sedimentary packages come from anoxic events. I use the term “event” here rather than “basin”. However, this point is rather far afield from CHu’s bizarre attempt to attribute evidence of past warmth in the Arctic to plate tectonics.
Re: Steve McIntyre (#58),
And the Douglas firs growing in the Canadian Arctic 10000 years ago were transplanted there by aboriginals moving up from the tropics.
Re: bender (#60),
Whoops. Off by a few orders of magnitude. Still, you get my point.
Re: bender (#60),
Have you seen the Barrow Arctic Palm Trees?
http://www.wunderground.com/wximage/viewsingleimage.html?mode=singleimage&handle=NorthernNoni&number=265&album_id=100&thumbstart=0&gallery=
Re: Peter (#57),
Do you have in mind some reason why the high biological activity occuring in the upper waters of the fluvial freshwater from the prograded delta is not going to result in anoxic bottom waters at depths of a few hundred meters?
Upwelling of anoxic bottom waters is reported to be the source of rich nutrients for biological activity in the upper waters along the shoreline which produced the Shublik Formation of Alaska’s North Slope. Upwelling carried organics from the bottom waters too anoxic for bacterial activity into the oxygen rich upper waters. The rich growth of biological activity in the upper waters in turn further enriched the anoxic bottom waters to continue and reinforce the enrichment of the environment with organics suitable for rapid burial in the sedimentary environment.
Re: D. Patterson (#59), I would suggest that the source of the organic material is not local in nature but is instead transported into the delta from upstream. I would further submit that delta progradation is of an episodic, rather than gradual nature. Rapid internment of organics could occur during flood events that simultaneously emplace large amounts of sediment and associated organics to create the foreset beds of the delta. I suppose that it is possible that the delta could prograde over flat laying anoxic basinal sediments, but that seems too rare of a circumstance to explain the large numbers and wide distribution of productive deltaic formations.
As for Chu’s statement… the guy is not a geologist and I would not expect him to have a deep and abiding understanding of either plate tectonics or petroleum geology. Perhaps he would be wiser to just admit when he doesn’t know something, especially when confronted with “gotcha” questions from ringers.
What I don’t understand is why you all think is is such a revelation that high latitudes could have been warmer at various times in Earth’s history. Further, I would suggest that a northward flowing river system could have carried organics and debris far from their points of origin, giving the impression of warmer environments at their terminus. An analogous situation would be the Mississippi delta containing the remains of species from Minnesota.
Re: Peter (#63),
This is not what geologists think. And, for example, it does not explain in situ Pliocene trees in the Arctic Islands, let alone the “warm” Cretaceous foraminifera in source beds throughout the Arctic. I suggest that readers unfamiliar with geology spend a little more time familiarizing themselves with geological evidence and a little less time thinking up fanciful hypotheses.
Re: Steve McIntyre (#64), I am not suggesting the tree fossils of the Beaufort Fm are the result of the mechanism I outlined above. I am mere suggesting that it is quite likely that deltaic sediments from long N-S aligned river systems, such as the Mississippi or the Nile will result in the displacement of plant and animal remains from the environments in which they grew. Whole pines from Minnesota can wash into the Mississippi and be deposited largely intact in the delta sediments.
I am unconvinced that the paleoenvironmental conditions Patterson described as responsible for the emplacement of organic material would be common enough to be the main means by which source rock is formed when one considers the vast commercial deposits of petroleum source rock scattered around the globe Further, he alludes to
Burial by what means? What is the source for the rapidly deposited, thick sediment required to sequester and preserve these anoxic deposits? Noah’s Flood? (j/k) I freely admit that I am not familiar with the specific sedimentary history of the North Slope oil fields. Are they drilling deltaic sequence packages? If not in a deltaic environment, how was so much sediment so rapidly accreted to the sea floor?
While I am not a petroleum geologist, I have studied a great deal of sedimentology (including some excellent courses in seismic interpretation), stratigraphy, and paleontology as a part of my Masters and PhD studies in paleontology. So if you would Mr Mcintyre, keep your snide remarks to yourself. I’ll bet I know considerably more geology than you.
Re: Peter (#68), there have been some pretty fanciful hypotheses presented recently on the provenance of warm Arctic fossils by people who admit to not knowing any geology; I apologize for assuming that you are in that group.
Re: Peter (#68),
Here are excerpts from a couple of sources. Parrish, Whalen, and Hulm address the upwelling and anoxic conditons. In these days I no longer have access to other technical discussions I had seen a long time ago, but they too talked about similarities between some of the Alaskan formations being generally representative of the coastal waters frequently producing the conditions necessary for anoxic burial of the organic matter responsible for many other petroleum systems [around the world]. I expect Parrish, Whalen, and Hulm are reasonably representative of those other sources to the extent of which they discuss this issue.
The second source is just an example of how there are paleontological sources which discuss the same type of Mesozoic assembleges of shellfish elsewhere around the world as were used by Parrish, Whalen, and Hulm in the study of the Alaskan shelf environments.
Do these sources address some of your questions?
Re: Peter (#63),
The sources of organic matter included in the sediments varies in each instance, however, the NPR and ANWR petroleum systems demonstrate a trophic pattern common to a coastal marine system experiencing density stratification and an upwelling of rich organic nutrient loads. Freshwater flows into the coastal marine system, where it overlies the denser and colder saltwater. This increases stratification of the coastal waters. The stratification of the coastal waters reduces wave action, tidal mixing, dissolving of oxygen in the waters, and increases thermal stratification. Coastal currents result in upwelling along the tidal shelf and transport eutrophic nutrient loads in to the upper waters. The estuary also supplies eutrophic and hypertrophic nutrients to the coastal environment. The rich nutrient loads in the stratified upper waters result in intense biological activity that depletes the coastal waters of dissolved oxygen. The bottom waters become even more anoxic as the organic matter settels to the bottom and further depeltes the dissolved oxygen in theat environment. The effect worsens as the denitrification pathway becomes blocked with the loss of the organisms which cannot inhabit the anoxic bottom waters. In the specific example of the NPR and ANWR petroleum systems, the coastal water system began as a broad coastal embayment from an incised valley. This embayment went through a series of progradational and retrogradational events while the offshore upwelling produced a series of organic rich sedimentations along the coastal and deltaic shelves of the embayment and subsequent coastal plains. These types of hypoxic and anoxic conditions are common to coastal waters, which is why such conditions are not at all limited to a scenario of anoxic basinal or estuarine sediments associated with the deltas.
It’s the “at various times” which seems to prove an obstacle with important segments of the general public and more than a few scientists uneducated in the rudiments of geology. For the fun of it, try surveying family, friends, and acquaintances to see how many of them believe the Earth since the continents were formed has usually experienced climates (1) about the same climate as present, (2) much colder than present, (3) much warmer than present, or (4) the present climate after being created only some millenia ago.
Sorry, there are far too many in situ genera and species for such an explanation to have any remote validity whatsoever. On the extreme microscopic scale, molecules of petroleum are identifiable by the genetic codes of the hydrocarbons from which they were derived. On the macroscopic end of the scale scale, we have the macroscopic fossils and their in situ derived compositions eliminating transportation before deposition. See Halobia for one example.
Re: D. Patterson (#65),
So you’re saying that we can reconstruct the petroleum-producing process backwards from mineral alkane to biological hydrocarbon to the organism that produced it? That’s amazing! Where may I read more about this?
Leaf margin analysis? Redrawn and modified graph? I’m not sure this would last long against a rigorous McIntyre treatment…
Steve: touché 🙂
Wait a minute. Everybody knows that the earth was flat until 500 years ago. 😉
I’m always amazed by what we “know”. As Will Rogers said, “It isn’t what we don’t know that gives us trouble, it’s what we know that ain’t so.” Which is why we’re in so much trouble now.
The Chu-Barton exchange was all about politics, not science. Rogers — “If you ever injected truth into politics, you would have no politics.”
Revkin isn’t going to write about this. If he does, it won’t be a straightforward account. Because the Times is about politics, not news. And Revkin doesn’t run the paper.
Re: stan (#18),
I could not agree more. In the meantime, I find it interesting taking the measure of the defenders of Chu and his orthodoxy with some rather unconventional conjectures. It goes from Chu cannot be wrong to Chu might be wrong but Barton cannot be right.
Of course, none of these conversations say anything about AGW, but instead more about how the conversations about AGW are framed.
A textbook about the Cretaceous that Chu might find interesting:
http://www.cambridge.org/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9780521831123&resISBN13=9780521538435&parent=1443&ss=res#resource
“The Cretaceous World” – written as one of 3 texts for an Open University course (S369) on the geological record of environmental change.
(This book is used to discuss a Hothouse world and is matched with “The Great Ice Age” to consider the icehouse world.)
It is well established that the polar ice caps have come and gone through geologic history. For example the Cretaceous source rock at the North Slope “was deposited in water depths greater than 1,000 feet (300
meters) in the starved basin that formed as the North Slope rifted away from its northern source
terrain at a paleolatitude of about 80°N.” (-www.oiltracers.com/inc/doc/mastersonphd.pdf-)
More relevant for this dicsussion in my opinion are the dated wood fragments from alpine glaciers, (Schlüchter & Jörin, 2004,-www.climateaudit.org/?p=772) .
The real clincher about warm arctic climates is that at least during two intervals in the late Cretaceous (86-92 million years ago) and Early Tertiary (50-55 million years ago) climate on Ellesmere Island (about 80 degrees North) was warm enough for Champsosaurs and Crocodiles to live there, which means that temperatures below freezing cannot have occurred more than very briefly even in winter.
There was a warm climate freshwater Asian turtle fossil discovered recently dating about 90 million years old.
Re D. Patterson (5-5-09, 7:28 a.m.): Thank you! Very interesting and informative, and, IMO, clearly and cogently expressed.
Thanks for the post. It is not a news that at one time there was very warm on our planet. undoubtedly, there are so many facts that I have never seen before. Well, we are in some trouble now. AS I remember there were four cold epochs during the Phanerozoic. And the cool period appears to have lacked polar ice caps. An even colder event seems to have affected the entire planet during the Proterozoic when nearly the entire planet seems to have frozen. Well, there will be something that menace our planet always. We cant do a thing with it.
Wonder what Dr. Chu thinks of the coal deposits in Antarctica . . .
JamesG,
I don’t think anyone doubts that the “magnitude and distribution of Cretaceous temperatures [is] highly uncertain.” However, if you will re-read the discussion above and the exchange which set this discussion in motion, you will note that neither Barton, nor anyone on the board, makes positive assertions concerning exactly how warm it might have been in Alaska during the Cretaceous period (although the existence of oil deposits in that location is evidence of much higher temperatures then we have at present).
Rather, the discussion was sparked by Dr. Chu’s observation that continental drift was “certainly” the explanation for the existence of oil deposits in Alaska and the wild applause which followed. You do not re-habilitate Dr. Chu or his fans by observing that it is difficult to measure tempratures in the distant past. “Speculation presented as fact” is hardly a fair discription of this discussion.
Re: bmcburney (#31),
Exactly. Chu needs certainty about past temperatures in order to say that current temperatures are certainly unprecedented. Barton need only provide some doubt about past temperatures to invalidate that proposition. Fact is there is lots of doubt about past temperature. Lots. That is why NAS expressed confidence only as far back as 1400AD. End of discussion.
I think this whole discussion misses the key points of today’s energy strategy, and I can’t imagine why Chu is such a big burr under Steve’s blanket. If this discussion went on at RC, Steve would probably (and rightly) be the first to criticize it. Why should Chu know much of anything about Geology, and how would such knowledge help him di his job better? He’s a physicist for heaven’s sake, and has probably been much too busy in that field to keep up with geology. I can remember my geology in first year science (pre-engineering) to some degree, and for sure we never learned anything about plate tectonics or ancient Alaskan temperatures. I wonder how much physics Steve has kept up with.
The real problem we are facing is declining supply of petroleum world-wide, and of NG in North America, both severely aggravated by recent cut-backs in development due to low prices, resulting from dropping demand resulting from the global financial crisis. If belief in the risk of AGW motivates Chu to address the issue of energy intelligently, (reducing Carbon by reducing fossil fuel use) so much the better. His misconception is to our benefit. So far he is right on with major focus on energy efficiency and renewables. Those are the priorities we need, and that is good, regardless of what Chu believes. Let’s give him credit for being on the write track, regardless of what motivates him. Murray
Re: Murray (#31),
snip – no policy
Re: Murray (#31),
LOL.
Re 28 and 30
Yes, certainly there is doubt about past temperatures, equally certainly there is no doubt that Arctic North America was vastly warmer in the past than it is now . Just have a look at the species found in the early Eocene (c. 55 MA old) Eureka Sound Formation: Bowfins, Pike, Alligators, Turtles, Varanid lizards, Dermoptera. And that was almost a thousand kilometers north of the North Slope. The climatic tolerance of those animals suggests that the climate was somewhat similar to the southeastern US today.
As recently as about 2 million years ago the fossils from the Kap Köbenhavn formation on Peary land, northern Greenland (the northernmost land area on earth) shows that boreal forest was growing there.
Please excuse typos. For write read right.
Murray #31
He was a physicist, now his job is energy secretary. Our main source of energy is still fossil fuel…a little knowledge of Geology should be essential.
Re: Doug (#34),
It’s not a matter of “keeping up”. This information has been known since long before Chu was in grade school.
If one doesn’t know whether the Cretaceous was before or after the Carboniferous, then it’s prudent not to pontificate about geology to an engineer from Texas, regardless of his politics. You’re liable to step into something.
Doug #34:
He was a physicist, now his job is energy secretary. Our main source of energy is still fossil fuel…a little knowledge of Geology should be essential.
And how do our past energy secretaries do on this litmus test that you have decided is essential?
Jack,
What bothers me (and, I believe, others here) about Dr. Chu’s comment isn’t so much that the Energy Secretary does not have specific information concerning the latitude of Alaska during the Cretaceous period or doesn’t know when oil deposits in Alaska originated. Obviously, nobody knows everything. He could have admitted a lack of knowledge on this specific subject without provoking any criticism at all. The problem is that he confidently dismissed Barton’s inquiry with a bold and ignorant misstatement. The implication, it seems to me, is that Dr. Chu does not feel it necessary to consider the possiblity that the Cretaceous period was significantly warmer than the present. He rejects the possiblity out of hand, and does so in a way which indicates that he is not even aware of the basic evidence.
One thing for certain, there are Douglas Fir cones in the upper 1,000 of sediment at Prudhoe Bay. Probably grew in the Brooks Range and were carried near the Coast by the Sag River. Pretty compelling evidence of warmer in the not so distant past.
Dumb question but is there a possibility that any of those seeds from those cones viable?
Re: Dennis Wingo (#43),
Don’t know, didn’t test them, but the cone was in pristine condition, mousetails and all. Feel rather stupid now for not testing, but found it in 1974. I suspect one could find more if you are willing to stand in the mud pit looking at the screen rejects while they drill the surface hole.
Terry
Re: Steve (#36) Ahh. So pontificating is his sin. Big deal. C’mon Steve, you have better things to do. Murray
Steve: Nope. The problem is that he didn’t know what he was talking about. As I;ve said in this thread, this bothers me on two levels – 1) the lack of general knowledge of the earth’s history on the part of a scientist; 2) a scientist testifying with the guise of authority who didn’t know what he was talking about. People pontificate all the time – but if you don’t know what you’re talking about and you’re supposed to be an expert, it seldom ends up well e.g. Colin Powell and aluminum tubes.
Re: Murray (#45),
and 3) and Steve’s background in in geology so someone getting things wrong in his particular area is bothersome to him…
…three there three levels that bother Steve:
1) lack of general knowledge…
2) guise of authority …
3) his geological background
4) and an almost fanatical devotion to the IPCC party line…
… Cardinal Fang…
snip – you are speculating on motives.
Again with the attacks on Chu about that ridiculous exchange? And a pathetic attack at that.
It is sad to see CA to go down this path … and it isn’t a discussion that emerged from lively debate among commenters, but the focus of multiple posts from the author. Disappointing for sure.
Re: Brian (#48),
Somehow I cannot seem to find an iota of discussion about science amongst all of those ad hominems. Are we to understand you do not want anyone to discuss and critique any scientific dismerits in the testimony of the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy?
What amazes me the most about this Chu testimony is the number of defenders he has and the contortions that they are willing to go through to show that he might be correct or at least not so much wrong.
The exchange was political and even though Chu gave a political reply that was apparently wrong in the science, the consensus of the blogosphere says he won politically. Given that premise what incentive do future givers of testimony on related subjects have for getting it “right” or at less more clear?
A more general point, I think, can be extrapolated here and that is the validity of expert testimony before the US congress on any number of subjects and who beyond those with some knowledge in the field can call it to account or even have an incentive to do so. I doubt that Dr. Chu is the exception. His defenders and their arguments are the more surprising to me.
It’s so interesting that when I (BSEE) said the same thing as Peter (PhD), you (B. Math) completely ridiculed and dismissed me and closed the thread. Why did you get mad, if my arguments were so stupid?
Why do you continually distort what I am saying to be “the arctic was not warm”, when I’m clearly not saying that.
Peter says something important when he says “What I don’t understand is why you all think is is such a revelation that high latitudes could have been warmer at various times in Earth’s history”.
Exactly. It obviously was warm. Folks, no one is saying that the arctic was not warm in the past. You are knocking down a straw man.
The issue that Peter brought up was:
The point is that the organics were embedded because of a flood event, and not because the climate was warm.
Kellar’s paper makes the assertion that the major cause of die offs is magmatic events. The Deccan Traps are a giant new oil find.
I asked Dr Chatterjee about what causes oil formation, and he sent me a paper entitled “SHIVA STRUCTURE: A POSSIBLE KT BOUNDARY IMPACT CRATER ON THE WESTERN SHELF OF INDIA”.
The point is that in this case, a warm climate did not cause oil formation.
And as for Anoxic events, Chemistry Daily says:
Conclusion: Bartons’ second question does not follow logically from the first.
Re: Gunnar (#71),
Respectfully, Gunnar, the problem is that you are not familiar enough with the subject matter to recognzize when you are making incongruous connections and therefore incongrousou conclusions from between otherwise valid facts. It’s sort of like addig 3 oranges to 4 turnips and expecting it all to add up to 7 servings of fruit salad. We recognize that you believe abiogenic oil is a great discovery. Unfortunately, the world’s petroleum systems have biomarkers which demonstrate they are composed of hydrocarbons which come from organic sources of carbon. Flood events are not the only or even necessarily a primary source for the organic matter which produced the major petroleum systems. Anoxic events are poorly understood because there are so many of different and overlapping origins which remain to be sorted out, and not because their actual multifold existence is doubted.
Have some fun. Be an experimental scientist. Survey a bunch of people and see how many people believe the Earth has always or almost always had an ice cap at the North Pole.
Re: D. Patterson (#72), my comments have nothing to do with abiogenic oil theory, and your reference to that seems like merely a poor attempt to discredit my argument.
Exactly, which means that since oil is formed in a variety of different ways, one cannot say that “climate warmth is a necessary cause of oil”.
Exactly, which makes it very dubious to claim that Only Warm climate causes Anoxic events, which are the only cause of oil formation.
Re: Gunnar (#73),
The basalt floods and the impact craters off the coast of India have been used in the past to argue for abiogenic oil, which is why your mention of them in conjunction with your past arguments gave the appearance of your doing so again.
Given the fact I never said “Only Warm climate causes Anoxic events, which are the only cause of oil formation,” you are once more making an improper and unnecessary arguement. I said, “Cold polar seas during ice ages and deep oceanic basins, however, were very poor places for the formation of oil and gas deposits.” I didn’t say impossible places or only places. That is not the same as saying “only” and “never” under any circumstances. I indicated that known petroleum systems have been associated with warm climates and not cold climates, because there were no cold climates in the Northern hemisphere and required geological ages before the Neogene besides a piece of Siberia. The fact that the world’s petroleum systems have been identified as originating in warm climates by geologists ought to put you on notice there is likely to be some very good reasons why this has happened. You might want to consider reading some sources on why this is so before you attempt to infer from your readings something to the contrary. The fact that you refuse to recognize these essential differences and make totally improper inferences is why having a rational discussion with you on this topic has been infeasible. Commercial petroleum systems such as those in Alaska being discussed with Sec. Chu exist for reasons which are not necessarily attributable to every source of organic matter. Until you understand why this is so, you are not going to be equipped to discuss this topic.
Peter
If you are really a paleontologist you must be aware of the Mid Cretaceous Oceanic Anoxic Events which created a large proportion of the source rock for extant petroleum systems. Do you imply that these anoxic events were not related to the high temperatures at the time?
There are many interesting issues in geology, including the explanation of anoxic events. Interesting as such explanations may be (and I personally find this sort of stuff very interesting), explaining this sort of event is not material to the examination of Secretary Chu’s theory that plate tectonics moved warm fossils up to the Arctic – as opposed to the conventional geological theory that the preponderance of such fossils were formed in high latitudes during prior warm periods.
I would like to host discussion of this sort of topic, but editorially the policy of this blog is to discourage the presentation of personal theories and to focus as much as possible on “conventional” literature. Accordingly, I have to post the same comment as on the other thread:
Gunnar has admitted that he has no knowledge of any relevant geological literature – putting him in more or less the same position as, seemingly, Secretary Chu. I’ve asked Gunnar to provide references in geological literature for his points, but he has refused. I see little purpose in maintaining a thread for pointless discussion of theories that have no more relevance than abiogenic oil.
Let me summarize a little. There is a vast geological literature on source rock for petroleum. Geologists believe that source rock for petroleum on earth was laid down in very warm climate conditions, including the source rocks presently found in the Arctic. Is it “logically possible” that source rocks could be laid down in cold or cool conditions? Almost anything is “logically possible” – pipelines in the Cretaceous carrying oil from Texas to Alaska are “logically possible”, but there’s no evidence for the proposition and many reasons not to believe that such a pipeline was feasible with the technology available to the dinosaurs, even if Gunnar may wish to argue that it was “logically possible” that dinosaurs had such technology.
The overwhelming view of geologists is that source rock in the Arctic was laid down in very warm climates.
A superficial knowledge of plate tectonics – e.g. that of Secretary Chu’s – may lead a debater to argue that the source rocks were laid down in the low latitudes and moved north through plate tectonics over hundreds of millions of years. That’s “logically possible”. However,geologists have done considerable work over the years (e.g. maps at scotese.com) reconstructing the location of the continents over time and it is pretty much universally believed by geologists that relevant Arctic source rocks were laid down at very northerly latitudes (Cretaceous and Jurassic formations in Alaska and elsewhere) or high north mid-latitudes (Triassic) during periods when there were high temperatures from pole to pole.
It is, of course, “logically possible” that all present-day geological understanding on this matter is incorrect, just as it’s “logically possible” that the dinosaurs, anticipating Gunnar’s interest in the matter, built a pipeline to Alaska.
Geologists believe that Arctic source rocks were laid down at high latitudes under very warm conditions. They do not believe (1) that the relevant source rocks arrived in the north through plate tectonics operating over millions of years; (2) that they were formed under cold or cool Arctic climate conditions.
Secretary Chu’s invocation of plate tectonics in this context was absurd and betrays an unfortunate lack of geological knowledge. As I mentioned above, there were answers open to him – (1) he could have observed that past very warm climate conditions are also believed to have had very high CO2 levels and were simply one more reason for concern over present day increases in COs levels; (2) he could have observed that he was not testifying as a specialist in Alaska geology, but, even as a non-specialist, he was confident that there was no ancient pipeline taking oil form Texas to Alaska and that, if Rep Barton wished further clarification, he would have one of his staff provide him with references on the provenance of Arctic oil and gas-bearing rocks.
It showed poor judgement for Secretary Chu to confidently contradict Barton on a topic where Chu had no personal knowledge or expertise. Most people in organizations learn prudence about venturing opinions being relied on expert opinions and it’s a bit disquieting to see such a poor performance from Secretary Chu. As I mentioned above, let’s hope that he raises his game.
Finally, let me quote from the closing remarks of the Chairman of Chu’s session:
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