A Stanford professor’s research casts doubt on previous research about mountain building that could change evidence upon which climate modeling and earthquake predictions are based; which calls to question the continuing certainty upon which important decisions are being made affecting the lives of millions.
It also reminds us of how important it is to keep doing the research.
An excerpt.
High Sierra always deserved its name?
Professor bucks popular view that range started out small.
By Jocelyn Wiener -- Bee Staff WriterPublished 12:01 am PDT Saturday, July 8, 2006
As Page Chamberlain imagines it, 45 million years ago the Sierra stood as tall as it does today, rising in palm-covered heights from a tropical sea that lapped where Yuba City now stands.
The Stanford professor's evidence for an ancient, towering range, detailed in an article in Friday's edition of the journal Science, contradicts the more widely held view that the Sierra gained great height just 3 million to 5 million years ago.
The article has intensified an unfolding debate that has the potential to affect everything from climate modeling to earthquake predictions, researchers say.
"The more we understand about the basic ways everything is assembled, the more we understand how everything works today. That's really important for California," said Craig Jones, a geosciences professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Jones is among those who believe the Sierra was a much lower ridge in the period called the Eocene, roughly 34 million to 55 million years ago, and rose steeply far later.
He has spent two decades trying to understand the origins of the range, probing mysterious descents of heavy materials, and keeping track of studies that have relied on everything from fossil foliage to gas bubbles in lava to try to infer how tall the mountains once were.
If we knew, we'd have much better tools for understanding earthquakes and possibly predicting them, he said.
We'd also have better ideas about how to set up climate models, because we'd know the right mountain height to use for eras when carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was much higher than it is now, said Chamberlain, who is chairman of Stanford University's department of geological and environmental sciences.
But today, no one is certain.
