Congressman Joe Burton opens the Bible to find evidence of natural, catastrophic climate change:
“If you believe in the Bible, one would have to say the Great Flood is an example of climate change. That certainly wasn't because man had overdeveloped hydrocarbon energy.”
Climate change and not God's wrath? Commenters give this a bit of the 'har de har' at Buzzfeed, Political Wire, [and elsewhere] but ...hold on!
The notion that epic, Noah-style catastrophic flooding ocurred during recent Ice Ages went from controversial to Conventional Wisdom among geologists after the details of the Glacial Lake Missoula were pinned down:
About 12,000 years ago, the valleys of western Montana lay beneath a lake nearly 2,000 feet deep. Glacial Lake Missoula formed as the Cordilleran Ice Sheet dammed the Clark Fork River just as it entered Idaho. The rising water behind the glacial dam weakened it until water burst through in a catastrophic flood that raced across Idaho, Oregon, and Washington toward the Pacific Ocean. Thundering waves and chunks of ice tore away soils and mountainsides, deposited giant ripple marks, created the scablands of eastern Washington and carved the Columbia River Gorge. Over the course of centuries, Glacial Lake Missoula filled and emptied in repeated cycles, leaving its story embedded in the land.
Flood Facts:
-
- The ice dam was over 2000 feet tall.
- Glacial Lake Missoula was as big as Lakes Erie and Ontario combined.
- The flood waters ran with the force equal to 60 Amazon Rivers.
- Car-sized boulders embedded in ice floated some 500 miles; they can still be seen today!
- The ice dam was over 2000 feet tall.
Mind boggling. And once geologists knew what to look for, they found evidence of other glacial lakes in Europe and Asia. From Discover Magazine:
Recognition of the Missoula flood helped other geologists identify similar landforms in Asia, Europe, Alaska, and the American Midwest, as well as on Mars. There is now compelling evidence for many gigantic ancient floods where glacial ice dams failed time and again: At the end of the last glaciation, some 10,000 years ago, giant ice-dammed lakes in Eurasia and North America repeatedly produced huge floods. In Siberia, rivers spilled over drainage divides and changed their courses. England’s fate as an island was sealed by erosion from glacial floods that carved the English Channel. These were not global deluges as described in the Genesis story of Noah, but were more focused catastrophic floods taking place throughout the world. They likely inspired stories like Noah’s in many cultures, passed down through generations.
Did they mention Noah? So did the NY Times in a 1996 story about how climate change may have led to Noah's flood around the Black Sea:
LONG before the splendid palaces and minarets of Istanbul lined its shore, the Bosporus was little more than a narrow spillway where fresh water from the ancient Black Sea flowed out to the Aegean Sea and on to the Mediterranean. Then rising sea levels worldwide brought about a cataclysmic reversal. Suddenly, sea water cascaded through the Bosporus with a force 400 times mightier than that of Niagara Falls, the terrifying sound of the roar carrying for at least 60 miles.
In perhaps less than a year, the Black Sea turned brackish and rose several hundred feet, inundating former shores and river valleys deep into the interior. The relentless waters encroached on the land at a rate of half a mile to a mile a day. More than 60,000 square miles of land were soon submerged, a 30 percent expansion in the Black Sea's size, which essentially gave the body of water its modern configuration.
An international team of geologists and oceanographers has reconstructed the history of this catastrophic flood from data gathered by a Russian research ship in 1993. Seismic soundings and sediment cores revealed traces of the sea's former shorelines, showing an abrupt 500-foot rise in water levels. Radiocarbon dating of the transition from freshwater to marine organisms in the cores put the time of the event about 7,500 years ago, or 5500 B.C.
...
Could it be, Dr. Ryan and Dr. Pittman speculate, that the people driven from their land by the flood were, in part, responsible for the spread of farming into Europe and advances in agriculture and irrigation to the south, in Anatolia and Mesopotamia? These cultural changes occurred around the same time as the rise of the Black Sea.
Could it also be, they ask, that the Black Sea deluge left such enduring memories that this inspired the later story of a great flood described in the Babylonian epic of Gilgamesh? In the epic, the heroic warrior Gilgamesh makes a dangerous journey to meet the survivor of a great world flood and learn from him the secret of everlasting youth.
If a memory of the Black Sea flood indeed influenced the Gilgamesh story, then it could also be a source of the Noah story in the Book of Genesis. Scholars have long noted striking similarities between the Gilgamesh and Genesis flood accounts and suspected that the Israelites derived their version from the Gilgamesh epic or independently from a common tradition that might have stemmed from a real catastrophe long before.
Dr. Ryan and Dr. Pittman concede that a link between the Black Sea flood and Gilgamesh and Noah may be a bit of a stretch.
Ah, well. Apparently subsequent research has left this hypothesis up in the air. Still, Noah's flood does seem to be a possible example of a catastrophic but natural climate change. Other than to the Glacier Deniers, of course.
TomM-- your readers are Gobsmacked by this post-- they have no idea what to say. Are you well?
Posted by: NK | April 10, 2013 at 04:26 PM
I've photographed evidence of the Missoula floods in our part of the state for a few years now and it's amazingly interesting. Am on a shoot right now but hope to provide some evidence later :)
Posted by: glasater on iPhone | April 10, 2013 at 04:34 PM
In Sunday School they always taught us that the Great Flood was a punishment for sin (a similar fate, but different mechanism, awaited post-Flood funseekers in the Towns of Sodom and Gomorrah) and not a response to post-subsistence farming industrial society. On the other hand, the Rainbow was a sign of the covenant not to destroy the Earth by a Flood again.
Posted by: George Ditter | April 10, 2013 at 04:42 PM
I have a good friend who lives in Missoula. I wondered where such an odd name came from. Per wikipedia,
he name "Missoula" comes from the Salish name for the Clark Fork River, "nmesuletk", which roughly translates to "place of frozen water"
Posted by: peter | April 10, 2013 at 04:43 PM
NBC News reports on similar 4000yo mysteries in the Sea of Galilee: http://science.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/04/10/17688598-mysterious-stone-structure-found-beneath-sea-of-galilee?lite
Posted by: NK | April 10, 2013 at 04:44 PM
TM;
What a fascinating history lesson.I always enjoy learning something new like this information about the great flood out west.I would love to visit Missoula,Montana and Idaho.
Posted by: maryrose | April 10, 2013 at 05:09 PM
Old Testament, huh? Then I'd like to start my very own "Jawbone of an Ass" award to all the climate scammers.
Posted by: lyle | April 10, 2013 at 05:11 PM
I happen to know Missoula and its great little piece of the wild west from my University days - did summer work there and in Lincoln - setting tongs on a logging spread. In Missoula, on the main drag, there is a national treasure called the Oxford Cafe, where for breakfast (all-day) they serve "calves brains and scrambled eggs". Don't think you'll see Guy Fiere there for Diners, Dives and Drive-In's though. Toward the back are the poker tables.
You go in early in the morning and you'll meet the men who work the green chain (Iggy will explain) down at the mill. You don't mess with Texas and you certainly don't mess with a guy who has the job on the green chain. Most of their breakfast consists of steak and eggs and boilermakers, but mostly boilermakers:)
Further down the street is the main rail depot and station. Across from it used to be the seedy Park Hotel and down from that the Double-Front bar because you could come in on either street it faced. If you were uncomfortable defending yourself with your fists then it was not the place you wanted to hang out.
Tough damn little town on the Clark Fork where some pretty nice brownies can be caught.
Posted by: Jim Eagle | April 10, 2013 at 05:51 PM
Ah, ha. The left has now come up with the theory that McConnell taped himself and released it to show the Tea Party how the Left is so scared of him that they would stoop to such thug tactics. In this way, he avoids or diminishes an attack from the Tea Party.
Nixonian? More like Clintonesque
Posted by: Jim Eagle | April 10, 2013 at 06:02 PM
Daily Mail carried this story with multiple sites of civilization and how they moved as the Sea of Galilli filled.(sp?)
Posted by: Melinda Romanoff on Kindle | April 10, 2013 at 06:07 PM
And that one works. WTF?
Posted by: Melinda Romanoff on Kindle | April 10, 2013 at 06:09 PM
Green chain = conveyor system that fed dimensional lumber to guys to sort.
Usually done by machine now in most big mills.
Posted by: Ignatz Ratzkywatzky | April 10, 2013 at 06:36 PM
Many geologists think there was a series of many Missoula floods every fifty or so years as the ice dam failed and reformed over and over.
Posted by: Ignatz Ratzkywatzky | April 10, 2013 at 06:38 PM
The history of flooding is written on mountainsides and valleys all over the world.Just look at the alluvial flood plains and you can start figuring it out. I think that somewhere in the geology 101 course guide.
The Gilgamesh epic is tied to the Noah epic is tied, I believe to the Greek epic written by Pindar in the 5th Century B.C. is tied to the Vedic myths in India. When the same narrative crosses so many cultures and there is real, credible evidence it ain't a myth anymore.
China has their own legends.
So with all of this knowledge of Jurassic and Cretaceous and Paleolithic and all sorts of other periods, they really don't want to admit what they don't know, and the hell of it is that they say it with such conviction.
The land bridges 10,000 - 15,000 years ago might be a hint. And these charlatans want us to believe that a change of inches or even feet in sea level will be completely catastrophic for human existence. I'll still bet on Noah, especially with the current state of humanity.
Posted by: matt | April 10, 2013 at 07:01 PM
Global Warming Update update:
The story I linked this morning about Conoco/Philips canceling their drilling efforts in the Chukchi for 2013/2014, due to uncertainties of evolving federal regulatory requirements, has been updated.
Sounding as if they have an EPA gun to their foreheads they have now issued this clarification: "We welcome the opportunity to work with the federal government and other leaseholders to further define and clarify the requirements for drilling offshore Alaska," Johansen said. "Once those requirements are understood, we will re-evaluate our Chukchi Sea drilling plans. We believe this is a reasonable and responsible approach given the huge investments required to operate offshore in the Arctic."
Lisa Murkowski chips in saying this is disappointing but not unexpected at all.
"We welcome the opportunity to work with the federal government and other leaseholders to further define and clarify the requirements for drilling offshore Alaska," Johansen said. "Once those requirements are understood, we will re-evaluate our Chukchi Sea drilling plans. We believe this is a reasonable and responsible approach given the huge investments required to operate offshore in the Arctic."
Posted by: daddy | April 10, 2013 at 07:02 PM
It does have a certain 'nine days late' feel, but Noah may have been the McCoy - Science Says So!
Posted by: Tom Maguire | April 10, 2013 at 07:05 PM
Oops sorry, Here was Lisa M's sensible quote:
"Companies can't be expected to invest billions of dollars without some assurance that federal regulators are not going to change the rules on them almost continuously," she said in a prepared statement. "The administration has created an unacceptable level of uncertainty when it comes to the rules for offshore exploration that must be fixed if we're going to end our dependence on oil from the Middle East."
No comment yet from Mark begich.
Posted by: daddy | April 10, 2013 at 07:06 PM
Just for some nice to know info, The Norwegians, who are always pointed to by the Left as the sensible example of Scandinavians running their country proper, apparently do all their Oil Drilling offshore. That was mentioned on a local Talk show yesterday, and googling I find this story:
Norway, the largest holder of natural gas and oil reserves in Europe, provides much of the oil and gas consumed on the continent. In fact, Norway was the second largest exporter of natural gas in the world after Russia, and the seventh largest exporter of oil.
Norway had 5.32 billion barrels of proven oil reserves as of January 1, 2012, the largest oil reserves in Western Europe. All of Norway's oil reserves are located offshore on the Norwegian Continental Shelf (NCS), which is divided into three sections: the North Sea, the Norwegian Sea and the Barents Sea. The bulk of Norway's oil production occurs in the North Sea, with smaller amounts in the Norwegian Sea and new exploration and production activity occurring in the Barents Sea.
I post that just so that when our Media always goes apeshit over Offshore Oil Drilling over here, that we at least realize that the exact same Oil companies are over there safely doing the exact same sort of drilling in Arctic waters as is being prohibited in Alaska.
Posted by: daddy | April 10, 2013 at 07:17 PM
daddy-
It's almost as if they don't want corporations to get the proceeds, but for the state to get them.
Is there a name for this bidness model?
Posted by: Melinda Romanoff | April 10, 2013 at 07:22 PM
Is there a name for this bidness model?
Melinda,
I think so, but lem'me go ask Hugo Chavez, then I'll get back to ya'.
Posted by: daddy | April 10, 2013 at 07:27 PM
That MSNBC woman that thinks the State should take your children has a new bit out.
I wonder how much she donates to charity? Does she give extra money to the feds?
The left have it too easy. They never are asked any hard questions. None. They just blather on about how "others" need to be doing things. What does SHE do?
Posted by: Janet | April 10, 2013 at 07:34 PM
Okay dumb question of the day for the lawyer folks to explain to me in easy lay terms:
Had car battery purchased from and installed by AAA in 12/09.
Today car would not start. My son-in-law helped me and removed the battery, took it to be tested, to make certain my problem was battery related, not alternator related. Battery was dead.
He returned the battery to me, but did not put it back in the car, since I was calling AAA for battery service. My full replacement warranty expired 12/12 (36-months), but I had an additional 36 months warranty for partial rebate (total warranty coverage was 72 months).
When the AAA truck shows up, the service man (silver tongue stud, multiple ear piercings and covered in tattoos) immediately informs me that my warranty is null and void, because it says clearly in red print on my original receipt that "removal by a third party" voids the warranty.
If my receipt/warranty is a transaction between AAA and myself, how did I become a "third party?"
I sent him on his way and went to a local auto supply store and purchased a battery from them, making sure that any warranty did not preclude me from removing it to test if need be - lol!
Posted by: centralcal | April 10, 2013 at 08:05 PM
Here's a story for Old Lurker - Maryland Governor Taxes Rain
The tax, officially known as a "storm water management fee,"....
The tax, mandated by the EPA and enforced locally, will be calculated "through satellite surveillance of your property," the statement claims.
Posted by: Janet | April 10, 2013 at 08:26 PM
Loved this comment at the article - "Visit Maryland, when a communist country is too far away."
Posted by: Janet | April 10, 2013 at 08:28 PM
Janet, I gave to pay a drainage assessment on my farm ($/acre) while the City of Milwaukee dumps untreated sewage into Lake Michigan and won't do anything about it unless the "state" pays. Meanwhile the EPA goes after everyone but Milwaukee.
Posted by: henry | April 10, 2013 at 08:34 PM
Janet-
They just lost a case on that fee. Some court called it a new tax. Who knew?
Posted by: Melinda Romanoff | April 10, 2013 at 08:37 PM
Two more details about the Missoula floods:
The volume of water was so great that tributaries of the Columbia backed up, leaving all kinds of evidence high on the hills, like reverse beaches and rocks rafted down on ice floes from Canada.
The man who discovered the floods, J. Harlen Bretz, didn't persuade many geologists he was right, until decades had passed. (Partly, because geologists in the 1920s were almost dogmatically opposed to catastrophic explanations for geologic features. And partly because -- at least initially -- Bretz didn't have an explanation for where the floods had come from.)
Posted by: Jim Miller | April 10, 2013 at 09:49 PM
centralcal, modern cars eat up batteries. You got three years out of yours, which means you got your money's worth.
Posted by: peter | April 10, 2013 at 09:52 PM
henry. Milorganite FREE in the drinking water.
Posted by: Gus | April 10, 2013 at 09:58 PM
Henry, does your farm drain to the canals, or if I recall it drains to a canal and then to the FOX? Or the Rock??
Posted by: Gus | April 10, 2013 at 10:07 PM
Peter, batteries are CARBON NEUTRAL.
Posted by: Gus | April 10, 2013 at 10:11 PM
CC,
The legal explanation is: the prorated value of your warranty is under $100, so we doubt you'd bother to go to small claims court.
FWIW, I've been using NAPA parts for a while now and they've been great about batteries. Just replaced a three-year-old one Monday for 50%, no receipt.
Posted by: Walter | April 10, 2013 at 10:12 PM
The reason for that particular exclusion is that, if you remove a battery and use a cheap charger, you can damage the battery. Obviously, they are misapplying it.
Posted by: Walter | April 10, 2013 at 10:17 PM
daddy, this is all meaningless blather. She's either high or stupid or both:
"We welcome the opportunity to work with the federal government and other leaseholders to further define and clarify the requirements for drilling offshore Alaska," Johansen said. "Once those requirements are understood, we will re-evaluate our Chukchi Sea drilling plans. We believe this is a reasonable and responsible approach given the huge investments required to operate offshore in the Arctic."
Posted by: MarkO | April 10, 2013 at 10:21 PM
The stupid seems to be cross continental;
http://www.egyptindependent.com/news/shale-gas-rich-spanish-region-bans-fracking
hey, it's not like they need any revenue, right.
Posted by: narciso | April 10, 2013 at 10:39 PM
Narciso. They are MARXIST. It's not about revenue, it's about CONTROL.
Posted by: Gus | April 10, 2013 at 10:48 PM
Subtract the destroyed wealth as well
Except that most of that wealth was never cash or moving around much. When all the dollars they created finally start sloshing around--what happens then?
Posted by: Ralph L | April 10, 2013 at 11:12 PM
Know I'm so late with this image but wanted to show some flatlanders how steep some of the wheat ground farmed around here is. And this very deep soil and the hills were formed from the Missoula Floods. Note the plural here:-) There were many of them. If you looked for the jagged dark line through the stubble that's the field road that takes a few turns so that the trucks can get to the main road. These hills are called the Skyrockets and are some of the steepest ground farmed in the whole world.

Posted by: glasater | April 11, 2013 at 03:42 AM
Beautiful photo Glasater,
I love how when I click on it I can expand it until it almost seems as if I'm in the picture.
Have always thought it fascinating how the huge boulders called erratics pushed along in these ancient floods and glacial melts wound up out in the middle of nowhere. Here's Yeagar Rock in Eastern Washington, somewhat near you, which is supposed to have been deposited by an ancient Missoula glacial flood:
There's a neat scene in Darwin's auto-biography that gives insight on these early geology folks trying to understand how these rocks wound up where they did:
First Darwin rights:
During my second year at Edinburgh I attended-'s lectures on Geology and Zoology, but they were incredibly dull. The sole effect they produced on me was the determination never as long as I lived to read a book on Geology, or in any way to study the science. Yet I feel sure that I was prepared for a philosophical treatment of the subject; for an old Mr. Cotton in Shropshire, who knew a good deal about rocks, had pointed out to me two or three years previously a well-known large erratic boulder in the town of Shrewsbury, called the "bell-stone"; he told me that there was no rock of the same kind nearer than Cumberland or Scotland, and he solemnly assured me that the world would come to an end before any one would be able to explain how this stone came where it now lay. This produced a deep impression on me, and I meditated over this wonderful stone. So that I felt the keenest delight when I first read (much later) of the action of icebergs in transporting boulders, and I gloried in the progress of Geology.
I inserted that "much later", because 3 years later, after swapping colleges and graduating from Cambridge, Darwin hiked on a Geological Fieldtrip with Sedgewick, his Geology Professor, straight across England from Cambridge to his home town of Shrewsbury, in order to get field experience. Darwin's writes:
I had a striking instance of how easy it is to overlook phenomena, however conspicuous, before they have been observed by any one. We spent many hours in Cwm Idwal, examining all the rocks with extreme care, as Sedgwick was anxious to find fossils in them; but neither of us saw a trace of the wonderful glacial phenomena all around us; we did not notice the plainly scored rocks, the perched boulders, the lateral and terminal moraines. Yet these phenomena are so conspicuous that, as I declared in a paper published many years afterwards in the 'Philosophical Magazine'* (*'Philosophical Magazine,' 1842.), a house burnt down by fire did not tell its story more plainly than did this valley. If it had still been filled by a glacier, the phenomena would have been less distinct than they now are.
I always find that humble admission of honest cluelessness terrific.
Posted by: daddy | April 11, 2013 at 05:00 AM
Darnok, when the walls fell;
http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2013/04/larwyns-linx-missouri-secretly-shares.html
yes, the deluge metaphor is intentional
Posted by: narciso | April 11, 2013 at 07:06 AM
So Krugman and Blinder are the smart ones at Princeton;
http://legalinsurrection.com/2013/04/what-margaret-thatcher-would-have-tweeted-mharrisperry/#comments
Posted by: narciso | April 11, 2013 at 07:18 AM
daddy @ 5:00 - Cool
Posted by: Brian | April 11, 2013 at 08:13 AM
Amazing photo, gLasater! How did you get the lighting and framing so perfect?
Posted by: Walter | April 11, 2013 at 08:46 AM
How certain are we that Stephen Hawking isn't nuts?
Posted by: Danube of Thought | April 11, 2013 at 10:35 AM
I always enjoy daddy's thoughts on subjects even when they are on the edgy side...
Walter, I've been manipulating photos for awhile and started 'way back when I was scanning print and slide film before digital cameras were around. So have been studying pixels for a long time. Thanks :-)
Posted by: glasater | April 11, 2013 at 12:56 PM
Here in Connecticut the Connecticut River is supposed to have had a major re-routing. The original course would have been from Middletown to New Haven rather than Middltown to Old Saybrook as it is now IIRC.
Posted by: Have Blue | April 12, 2013 at 05:38 PM
glasater - Great effect on the photo. Would have sworn it was a painting.
Posted by: Have Blue | April 12, 2013 at 05:56 PM