Interesting information, thanks to all. That being said, until we can reliably purge all of the fanatically anti-conservative ('Crat) participants from science agencies, organizations, any conclusion, conjecture, warning, prediction, explanation or hypothesis must be taken with a grain of salt the size of the Rock of Gibraltar.
See, there is a new scientific axiom at work in our modern world- leftists lie. Constantly, enthusiastically and without the slightest remorse. Leftists who happen to work in technical fields are among the worst of all leftist liars because they believe that they will not be challenged to substantiate their lies by many with the ability to comprehend the technical elements involved.
In all fairness, even liberals
can do good science. Agenda driven liberals, those out to prove a point at the expense of all else, will be far more likely to ignore the data and draw unsupported conclusions, especially if there is money and/or prestige involved.
Doing good science is about half just letting the evidence answer the question, no matter what you thought the answer might be. The rest is asking the right questions, and being able to acquire good and unbiased data. A little luck doesn't hurt, either.
As an undergrad, we'd take field trips and start with a half dozen ideas how a particular sequence of rocks came to be, depositional environments, etc. We'd start eliminating those hypotheses the evidence refuted, or just did not support, and sometimes we'd be left with a blank slate and start over. Usually we got down to a couple of possibilities, and we'd take sides and try to prove or disprove the one we embraced for the moment. If you found evidence that shot down your own idea, you actually got more cred, and when we were done, we had an answer, more often than, not that fit everything before us.
Then we'd go down the road and hit another outcrop and see if it still worked.
Sometimes, like in the cyclothems of Eastern KY, it didn't. Back to the drawing board...sometimes for a more complex model, sometimes for a simpler one, and commonly drawing on the sediments in modern depositional environments to work backwards to figure out what it was like where we stood long, long ago. Fascinating, fun, but not married to a specific hypothesis, and always listening to the story the rocks had to tell, and trying to figure out that language as you go.
But sooner or later, you end up someplace where the only correct answer is "I don't know".
It is why I found geology to be fun, an ongoing brain-teaser, that is everywhere on this planet, and with some changes in fundamental rules, on other planets, too. We'll never have all the answers, and with each one there are more questions. So, there is the ever present paradox: The more we learn, the less we know.
Or, to quote Albert Einstein:
As the diameter of a circle of light increases, so does the circumference of the darkness around it.
