Re: Bas van Geel, a Figment of the Imagination?//Re: PS-S.W.Care?

In article <oXZc7.23$k7.480@reggie.win.bright.net>, Thomas S. McDonald wrote:
>"josX" <joshb@mraha.kitenet.net> wrote in message
>news:9l1juu$r8q$1@news1.xs4all.nl...
><frustration snip>
>
>Jos,
>    I spent a great deal of time outlining the evidence that
>Nancy is wrong in saying the frozen mammoths are evidence of
>sudden climatic change, which she attributes to a "pole
>shift."  You either have not read my posts, or have chosen
>not to understand them.

Your posts are extremely verbous, I didn't read through them to be honest.
I take this to be an debunking strategy, to flood the reader in words so
he doesn't think so hard on the key-issues, exactly what you hold against
Nancy btw.

Here is a quote from the first post I found of you on the subject:

In Article <q6Ca7.276$5z5.19798@reggie.win.bright.net> Thomas wrote:
> In Article <3B6ACF62.C71EBED9@zetatalk.com> Nancy Lieder wrote:
>> 8. Mastodons found frozen solid in the polar circle with
>>    green grass and spring flowers in their stomachs, as
>>    though they had been MOVED there in the midst of
>>    breakfast.
<snip>
>     On what basis do you claim that Arctic (note: the
> specific "polar circle" to which you refer here is the
> Arctic Circle; there is another polar circle as well) tundra
> is unable to sustain grass or vegetation?  Tundra, in the
> Arctic summer, is a rich source of grass and other high
> arctic plant life.  Are you confused by the term
> "permafrost" into thinking that the Arctic never warms
> enough to allow plant growth?  Permafrost refers to the fact
> that, in the high Arctic, while summer sun (24 hours a day!)
> warms and thaws a surface layer of ground, beneath that
> upper layer, the ground is always frozen.  The surface
> layer, however, is home to a flourishing community of plant
> and animal life during the warm weather.
<snip>

With a lot of words you are actually just saying "mammoth could live
in Northern Siberia where they are found today" (at least here). 

Current Northern-Siberia is one of the coldest places on the Earth,
and it freezes if I am correct into the -40 deg Celsius during winter.
Summer is short and there is very little to eat. I've seen footage of
the sites where they expected to find more flash-frozen mammoth /during
summer/, and it was all short grass and water. No bushes or anything.
Admittendly mammoth have fur which keeps them warm, but I can't see
how that is enough for a large herbivor to make it through the winter
which lasts 3/4 of the year, on the short grass they can eat during
summer and the stuff that can be scraped away from under any snow
later. Maybe I am wrong, but take Elephant which is closely related
to Mammoth (yes?), they eat enormous amounts of food a day, and they
live in a warm climate, both are large animals which usually also consume
a large amount of food per day.

>    Let's do this.  I'd like to ask you to tell us what
> YOU think explains the frozen mammoths (and other animals)
> in the arctic.  As a start, perhaps you could define
> "tundra" and "permafrost."

The temperature drop in present-day Siberia was sudden and big. Seeing
the Tunguska-explosion was aparently caused by natural gas, which is
a result of decomposing plant-material and hence there must have been
enough plants there to sink into the aparently not permafrozen soil to
create it, the flash-frozen mammoth is more evidence of this "pole-shift".
The plants creating this gas later could even have been the food for the
mammoth.

>    Give it a try.  I'll be interested in what you come up
> with.

Hope you like it,
Jos