Bears, mosquitoes, salmon, rain, and a bush camp are memories I keep from one of my first jobs as a geologist. A story in the Arizona Daily Star tells of a man who will camp out alone for a year on Latouche Island. It brought back memories of my time on the island.

Latouche Island (12 miles long, 3 miles wide) is located in the Gulf of Alaska about 100 miles southwest of Valdez. A ridge running up the southeast side of the island rises about 2,000 feet above sea level.

In May of 1971, a barge carrying our supplies, towed by an ocean-going tug out of Cordova, arrived at Horseshoe Bay on the west side of the island where we set up camp to explore for copper. There was still snow on the island; our drill rig, left there over the winter was buried under at least 20 feet, but soon became free because of the abundant rainfall. That part of Alaska can be considered a rainforest.

The history of the island is described by Murray Lundberg:

A series of copper prospects were staked on Latouche Island in the late 1890s, and the Beatson copper mine, in the northwest section of the island, started shipping ore in 1904. In 1915, with war needs greatly boosting demand (and prices), the mine was taken over by the Kennecott Corporation. At its peak period in 1917-1918, there were about 300 people working at the Beatson and almost 4,000 people on the island, most in the town of Latouche close to the Beatson mine. Expanded operations required a steady supply of coal, and to supply that need, the Alaska Railroad built spurs into coal mines such as the Janios & Athens operation near Houston.

Most of the copper mines in Alaska closed soon after the end of World War I due to falling prices. The Beatson mine lasted much longer, but with copper prices nearing 5 cents a pound, it closed on November 29, 1930. During its lifetime, the mine had produced a total of 182,600,000 pounds of copper – there were 23 other copper mines in the region, but the total production of all 23 combined was only 26,067,000 pounds.

The earthquake that hit Alaska on March 27, 1964, caused massive changes to the state’s landscape. Latouche Island was raised an average of 9 feet and moved about 60 feet to the southeast, resulting in discoveries such as stumps from a forest that was submerged below sea level and buried in prehistoric times.

Latouche had been abandoned for many years when we arrived. We set up camp on the beach at Horseshoe Bay. That area is now a state marine park. Our water supply was a stream spilling into the bay. Our only contact with the outside world was our weekly food delivery by sea-plane from Cordova, which we supplemented by fishing. Salmon were very easy to catch, especially during the salmon runs at low tide. The tidal portion of the stream was so thick with fish that we could just wade in and grab them. We also managed to catch halibut. We occasionally had the company of passing professional fishermen who were seining for salmon.

There were many very large bears on the island, but we left them alone, and they left us alone. Our camp cook, Jim, was getting jealous of our tales of wildlife encounters. One day a troop of bears passed close to camp. Jim ran out with his camera yelling “Hey bear.” Probably not a wise thing to do. However, as Jim approached the bears, two sat down and posed. Jim got his pictures.

We had a helicopter to move our drill rig around the island, but most travel was by foot or by boat. When traveling by boat, we were often followed by porpoises. We folks from the desert also had to keep track of tide tables. More than once we found our boat stranded high on the beach at low tide. And once we made the opposite mistake, returning to the boat to see it anchored, unreachable in deep cold water. We had to walk several miles back to camp.

After two years of exploration effort, our company decided that the copper deposits were too small to be of interest, so Latouche Island was once again left to itself.

I do have a sad memory of Latouche Island. Three of our company, Berne Baetke, Sal Ramirez, and Mifflin Smith, were traveling back to Arizona aboard Alaska Airlines flight 1866. That flight crashed into a mountain near Juneau on Sep. 4, 1971. There were no survivors.

For more information, I came across a book by Decema Kimball Andresen, a 94-year-old woman recalls her childhood at Latouche Island during the early days of mining there.

See also:

Miss Pickle was no lady

Staying at the Pongola Hotel

We heard that the recent Japanese earthquake measured 8.9. What does that number mean? The number used to refer to the Richter Scale, but now refers to the moment magnitude scale, but the numbers are calculated so that they are the same in both scales. The moment scale measures the size of an earthquake in terms of the rigidity of the earth, the amount of movement and the size of the area affected. In other words, the amount of wiggle on a seismograph. Both the Richter and moment scales are logarithmic, meaning that an earthquake of size 7 is 10 times stronger than an earthquake of size 6. But the amount of energy released is another matter.

Lee Alison, Arizona State Geologist, explains on his blog:

How does the Japan earthquake of magnitude 8.9 compare to other recent large quakes?

The news media do a better job than they used to of noting that each magnitude number is 10 times that of the lower number. But most everyone assumes that refers to the relative amount of energy released by the quake – comparable to measuring the power of atomic bombs for instance.

Not true.

The magnitude is a measure of the amplitude of the seismic waves. But each 1.0 magnitude increase is equal to approximately a 32 times increase in energy release. Each increase of magnitude by 2.0 equals 32 x 32 or (about) 1,000 times increase in energy released.

The M8.9 Japan quake released the equivalent of 336 megatons of TNT. In comparison, last month’s Christchurch, New Zealand M6.3 quake was equal to 43 kilotons, and last year’s M7.0 Haiti quake was equal to 474 kilotons.

The Japan quake was about 7814 times bigger than the Christchurch quake and 709 times larger than the Haiti quake.

I’ve simplified this in regards to Richter magnitude vs moment magnitude but my intent is to emphasize the power of the Japan quake.

 The strongest recorded earthquake was in Valdivia, Chile, May 1960. It measured 9.5. The second largest, measuring 9.2, was in Alaska in 1964. The 1906 earthquake in San Francisco had a moment magnitude of 7.9. The U.S. Geological Survey says that an earthquake of about 8.0 or more occurs on average of once per year.

The Alaskan earthquake is interesting because it demonstrated a certain property of some clays that contributed to the extensive damage in Anchorage. Some clays are thixotropic, meaning that when subject to shear stress, that is, you shake them, they turn to liquid. Thixotropic substances are normally thick and viscous, but turn very liquid under shear stress. You have experienced thixotropy with a ketchup bottle.

Besides shaking and breaking, seismic sea waves, tsunamis, are the greatest danger. Tsunamis are long-wavelength ocean waves with energy extending from the sea surface to the ocean floor. When the wave reaches shallow water near the coast, all that energy is concentrated into a smaller and smaller space, hence its destructive force. In mid-ocean, a tsunami is barely noticeable.

You can see a list of the largest recorded earthquakes here.

Most earthquakes occur near the edges of tectonic plates, but there are some intra-plate quakes as well. For instance, on December, 16, 1811, a large earthquake, estimated strength 7.2-8.1, occurred near New Madrid, Missouri. New York is not immune to earthquakes either. See here for earthquake information by state.

 And some earthquakes are caused by human intervention. I experienced the Denver earthquakes of 1967-1968. The Rocky Mountain Arsenal near Denver was disposing of waste material by pumping it down more than 12,000 feet beneath the surface. That lubricated a deep range-front fault and caused is to slip.

 Here is a map from the US Geological Survey showing locations of major earthquakes since 1900. The pattern describes the boundaries of major tectonic plates and the volcanoes of Hawaii.

Climate alarmists have claimed that global warming will cause massive species extinctions. The geologic record shows the opposite. As “climate change” itself loses traction, green extremists are switching to “biodiversity” as the next bogeyman. The U.N. is launching its “International Year of Biodiversity.” But the current wildlife extinction rate is the lowest in 500 years according to the UN’s own World Atlas of Biodiversity. Environmental groups are beginning to use the Endangered Species Act (ESA) as an excuse to control carbon dioxide emissions. Perhaps the first species to be listed by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) on speculation of the effects of global warming is the polar bear.

On May 14, 2008, FWS listed the polar bear as a “threatened” species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), based on the supposition that carbon dioxide emissions are melting the bear’s Arctic habitat.

In 2007, just prior to listing, the Arctic sea ice reached the lowest level recorded since 1979 when satellites began tracking the ice. However, that same year, Antarctic sea ice reached the maximum extent ever recorded. Did you hear about that?

The Department of the Interior press release on the polar bear claimed, “The listing is based on the best available science, which shows that loss of sea ice threatens and will likely continue to threaten polar bear habitat. This loss of habitat puts polar bears at risk of becoming endangered in the foreseeable future, the standard established by the ESA for designating a threatened species.” Really? Environmental groups are suing to force FWS to upgrade the listing to “endangered.”

The FWS listing is based on computer projections and false assumptions. An article in Science Daily claims, “Federal Polar Bear Research Critically Flawed…” People who live in the Arctic know that polar bear populations have been increasing, mainly due to changes in hunting regulations. Native Inuit hunters say that “The growing population has become ‘a real problem,’especially over the last 10 years.”

The polar bear has been around for a very long time and somehow survived conditions that were warmer than now and warmer than computer projections. It is also telling that the Canadian government, which oversees 14 of the 19 polar bear populations, has not listed the bear as “threatened” or “endangered.” The Alaska Department of Fish & Game opposed the listing claiming that FWS did not use the best available science and that FWS cherry-picked models, choosing only those which supported their case. Alaska fish & game says that polar bear populations “are abundant, stable, and unthreatened by direct human activity.”

FWS has a Climate Change Strategic Plan which is based largely on reports from the now discredited Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). (See my posts The Assumed Authority, and IPCC and Peer Review.)

 Real, on the ground, research into the relationship between global warming, species extinction, and biodiversity paints a picture very different from the speculative computer models. Abundant research shows that warming increases the range for most terrestrial plants and animals, and for most marine creatures. Increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere makes plants more water efficient and more robust. For an introduction to this research seehttp://www.co2science.org/images/pdf/extinction.pdf “The Specter of Species Extinction, Will Global Warming Decimate Earth’s Biosphere?” That report concludes:

The CO2-induced global warming extinction hypothesis claims that as the world warms in response to the ongoing rise in the air’s CO2 content, many species of plants and animals will not be able to migrate either poleward in latitude or upward in elevation fast enough to avoid extinction as they try to escape the stress imposed by the rising temperature. With respect to plants, however, we have shown that as long as the atmosphere’s CO2 concentration rises in tandem with its temperature, most of them will not “feel the heat,” as their physiology will change in ways that make them better adapted to warmer conditions. Hence, although earth’s plants will likely spread poleward and upward at the cold-limited boundaries of their ranges in response to a warming-induced opportunity to do so, their heat-limited boundaries will probably remain pretty much as they are now or shift only slightly. Consequently, in a world of rising atmospheric CO2 concentration, the ranges of most of earth’s plants will likely expand if the planet continues to warm, making plant extinctions even less likely than they are currently.

Animals should react much the same way. In response to concurrent increases in atmospheric temperature and CO2 concentration, they will likely migrate poleward and upward, where cold temperatures prevented them from going in the past, as they follow earth’s plants. Also as with earth’s plants, the heat-limited boundaries of their ranges should in many cases be little affected, as has been observed in several of the real-world studies that have been wrongly cited as providing evidence for impending species extinctions, or their entire ranges may simply shift with the rising temperature, as has been observed in many real-world studies of marine ecosystems.

To summarize, both theory and observation paint the same picture. A goodly portion of earth’s plants and animals should actually expand their ranges and gain a stronger foothold on the planet as the atmosphere’s temperature and CO2 concentration continue to rise. If the air’s CO2 content were suddenly to stop increasing, however, the biosphere could find itself facing a significant challenge, as the world’s plants would cease acquiring the extra physiological protection against heat stress that is afforded them by rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Consequently, the end result of curtailing anthropogenic CO2 emissions might well be just the opposite of what many people are hoping to accomplish by encouraging that policy, i.e., many species might actually be driven to extinction, rather than being saved from such a fate.

For even more information, go to www.CO2Science.org and look in their subject index under “extinction.” There you will find reviews of the scientific literature based on real world observations. This research, as well as geologic history, show that a warmer world increases biodiversity. Habitat destruction from other causes is a separate issue.

Looking at the greater geologic record, we see that major extinctions are associated with ice ages and other cooling events. After each ice age, as the planet warmed, life rebounded with more speciation and greater biodiversity. The geologic record also shows that the “normal” temperature of this planet (when we are not in an ice age, or an interglacial period of an ice age) is about 18 degrees F warmer than now (see chart in this post). Even in our current interglacial period, warm cycles have been up to 10 degrees F warmer than now and we have not seen massive extinctions. (The megafauna extinction of about 10,000 years ago was associated with a rapid cooling period, the Younger Dryas.) The hot and steamy Cretaceous Period saw the development of flowering plants and a great increase in biodiversity.

It seems that the Fish & Wildlife Service is following a political agenda based on junk science.

(For another example of FWS junk science see, Jaguar Listing and Habitat Designation Based on Junk Science)