>In your marvelous account of your experience with Robert G. Currie (who
>incidentally has dropped out of academia after a number of years at The
>Marine Science Research Center at Stoneybrook, and was last reported living
>soemwhere near Alpine Texas, which for those of you unfamiliar with Texas,
>is somewhat equivalent to a Russian moving to Siberia), you recorded his
>efforts to document cycles in the modern environment, which he and many
>others have done for years. Having taught dendrochronology, I would never
>want to deny solar cyclicity in the present environment, nor does Pittock
>deny the possibility of such, just uncritical acceptance of such claims.
But my impression of what you were saying was that Pittock showed that there
was no weather/sunspot connection which would invalidate therefore the
connection between the Green River varves and the sunspot.
>However, Currie could hardly be said to have disproved anything Pittock
>said, since Pittock's paper was a review article, and did not include any
>original work to disprove.
There was the contention that there is not a demonstrable connection which I
believe Currie may have disproven.
The problems Pittock points out still exist and
>in my opinion cast a great cloud over those who would want to establish
>trends from fossil data where the criteria for measurement are dubious at
>best, and the knowledge of the environmental parameters is missing. Even
>in the modern environment, where parameters can be checked and
>cross-checked, such measurements require the most sophisticated kinds of
>techniques to establish the cyclical processes. I guess what I am saying
>is: the supposed 11 year cycles and the longer period Milankovitch cycles
>are extremely dubious in the Green River Shales, and would only find
>uncritical acceptance from believers.
>
Wait. Lets turn the question around. One can count the layers in the Green
River whatever they are. Now if they vary every 22 layers (11-couplets) why
would this not be evidence that they are varves that is yearly deposits?
What other natural system produces this type of cyclicity? We do see it in
the fossil record. A friend of mine found a fossilized tree in Oligocene
from S. Texas. He sliced a slab for me and I measured the rings and did a
fourier spectrum on them. There was an 11 ring periodicity. If the sunspot
cycle can be found in tree rings which respond to weather, why not lake
deposits?
>With respect to the Green River Shales being varved or just laminated, the
>following quote from Bennett's MS Thesis is relevant: "Some authors have
>questioned whether the fine laminations in the Green River Formation
>actually represent annual layering (Eugster and Hardie, 1975; Lundell and
>Surdam, 1975; Anderson and Dean, 1988; Buchheim and Biaggi, 1988). Buchheim
>and Biaggi (1988) show that the number of laminations between two ash
>layers in the Green River Formation in the Fossil Buttes Basin in Wyoming
>is not constant; they report twice as many laminations in basinward
>sections as in more marginal locations. Davis (1964) reports that there are
>typically two major annual algal blooms in lacustrine settings, suggesting
>that varves may be biannual phenomena in some cases. Therefore,
>sedimentation rates determined from varve counts should be viewed with some
>caution." Note also that Eugster, Hardie, Surdam, and Buchheim have been
>some of the most active workers in these deposits over the last 20 years,
>and certainly know as much about the beds as anyone.
However Bennet's work seems to do a good job of finding those cycles. See
his figure with the powerspectrum.
glenn
Adam, Apes, and Anthropology: Finding the Soul of Fossil Man
and
Foundation, Fall and Flood
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm