At https://malagabay.wordpress.com/2018/06/22/late-paleocene-thermal-maximum/ … here we have a catastrophic event that has been apprehended by climate scientists in order to create a scare story over CAGW. The late Paleocene/Eocene boundary event is supposed to be a classic case of the earth over heating. As you might expect the CAGW adherents have proposed there wasa lethal injection of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in order to account for the rise in temperatures. This fundamental assumption is mischievously derided by Malaga Bay (Tim Cullen) yet it is amazing how quickly the idea has become consensus opinion – even though this is essentially a geological study (using sediment cores from the sea floor). Climate science is far reaching nowadays and geologists are apparently overruled when the fancy of the climate brigade takes hold. The Wiki is a prime example of this – patrolled by climate science watchdogs that delete or downgrade anything to the contrary.
Tim Cullen has a habit of using the Wiki for information – and it is a quick calling shop that is often reliable (but not when it comes to the subject of climate change). The high priests of CAGW have full on control of anything to do with climate science. In this instance the boundary event has an archaeological and geological point of interest as it was at this time the sandstone cap over the Cretaceous chalk was laid down. This is the sarsen stone that was used at sites such as Avebury and Stonehenge. Did carbon dioxide turn sand into stone? Hardly likely so why is it invoked. We all know the answer to that. Grubby hands and money.
Here we have an event which is of interest to geologists and archaeologists (for different reasons) and yet it has been high jacked by the climate change bandwagon – for nefarious reasons. Supposedly, we are led to believe the thermal maximum lasted for a period of 200,000 years – yet the evidence of it as Tim Cullen points out is a thin layer of clay that may have been laid down quickly. There were no Tonka cars bulldozing there way around the roads in those days, or any diesel emissions – but co2 is said to be the problem.
An interesting post by Tim Cullen but no hint of catastrophism. This is somewhat surprising as in an earlier post he called the Anglian Ice Age (which swept across a large portion of Britain and Ireland) a giant tsunami event (water rather than glaciation). The interesting point of that post is that large numbers of geological layers were wiped from the face of the country at that time – in a general west to east direction. This includes most of the layers in the Vale of Aylesbury – above the Jurassic period, and even more layers when one moves northwards. Where did it all end up – if glacial in origin or a massive flood of water as the sea emptied itself across the land. Tim Cullen's point in that post was to say that glacial erratics such as the blue stones (at Stonehenge) could very well have ended up on the Salisbury Plain (carried there by water from further west). We know what happened on the Cretaceous chalk as the latter is porous to water. The upheaval created the clay and flints layer – a mixture of chalk and clay (and the flints that were washed out of the chalk and broken into pieces by violent action). Tim Cullen is out on a limb with this of course as glaciation and meltwater flooding can also be linked and creat a similar situation (we might imagine) – but onlly if the ice melted rapidly. A gradual thaw would mean a slower onslaught of melt waters – and one that the land could absorb fairly quickly. It's a chicken and egg situation I suppose. How could the ice melt rapidly – if not by a catastrophic event (or a shift at the axis of rotation). We know that huge floods of water ran down river valleys such as those of the Mississippi, the Rhine and the Danube etc, and rapidly filled in the Black Sea (and various other lakes, temporary or otherwise) and we know that the Scablands in the NW of the US are a record of huge floods of melt water (indicating rapid ice melt).