Digging into the Past

Justin Borevitz

4/3/07

CO2 is a pollutant?

• 1) Do states have the right to sue the EPA?

• 2) Does the Clean Air Act give the EPA the authority to regulate tailpipe emissions for greenhouse gasses?

• 3) Does EPA have the discretion NOT to regulate those emissions?

Supreme Court Says…

• Arguments heard in October.. • 5-4(John Stevens, Anthony Kennedy, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer)-

• (John Roberts Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas Samuel Anthony Alito)• Clean Air Act gives the Environmental Protection Agency

the power to regulate greenhouse gases and that the EPA has "no reasoned explanation" for not doing so

• To combat this most urgent environmental crisis, strong and comprehensive U.S. action is crucial. EPA must use its existing Clean Air Act authority to require control of greenhouse gas emission - by motor vehicles [the subject of this case] as well as by other sources like power plants," Fox said.

Carbon Tracker…

• Ecosystems in North America have been a net sink of -0.65 ± 0.75 PgC/yr. The sinks are mainly located in the agricultural regions of the Midwest (30%), deciduous forests along the East Coast (32%), and boreal coniferous forests (22%).

Biological January 2001 to December 2005.

CO2 emissions• partially

offsetting emissions of 1.9 PgC/yr from the burning of fossil fuels in the U.S.A., Canada and Mexico combined

http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/carbontracker/summary.html

Prairie record

• Soil is as old as the oil and coal below– 450-100Million years ago

• North America Cranton 600-700Mya– pre Rockies, now at the plate’s edge.

• Crust, lithosphere, thinner than the skin of an apple.

• 3.8Bya cyanobacteria fossils

Making prairie soil

• Granite, several km below

• Sea levels rise and fall, covered the plains with shallow ocean ~500Mya. “tropical” chain of islands

• Mountains, glaciers, de-glaciation, erosion

• Sand, silt, mud, good life stuff, coral reefs of the day

Trilobite

Cambrian explosion!

• Nautiloids marine mollusks

crinoid

• This calyx of the Pennsylvanian crinoid Ulocrinusshows the radial arrangement of the five-sided plates. This specimen is from the Iola Limestone, Allen County, Kansas

This plaster cast of the Pennsylvanian crinoid Delocrinus preserves the segmented arms sitting on top of the calyx. The flower-like shape of this fossil suggests how these animals came to be known as sea lilies. The original specimen was found west of Emporia, Kansas.

http://www.kgs.ku.edu/Extension/fossils/crinoid.html

http://www.geo.ucalgary.ca/~macrae/timescale/timescale.html

Paleozoic

• 300Mya final sea retreat,– Moss, lycopods, the carboniferous period

• Ancient Rockies, eroded to their roots

• Land plants and seed plants take hold– Room for beetles, amphibians, reptiles

• Permian ends in mass extinction

Post Permian/Mesozoic

• Continental changes and the volcanic Rockies are born 250Mya

• Now mountain erosion layers fill plains, pushing the sea out.

• Emergence of gymnosperms!

• Reptiles dominate, some with large bones.

Dino Times

• Geologic grave yards– River beds Dinosaur National Monument in Colorado– Tar Pits in LA

• One last sea creep, Rockies hold strong– Vegi dino, eating ginko, horsetails, ferns, palms!

• Thin white line, 10km meteorite caused mass extinction 65Mya– 180km Yucatan creator, and whitish clay “shocked

quartz” layer visible around the world

• Black hills, eastern Rocky outliers– Wyoming and South Dakota, dome of granite

pushed up~50Mya.– Isolated in the Plaines, rapidly reclaimed, and

buried

• Solid sandstone remains.

• Powder River basin, “clean” coal motherload.

Mount Rushmore is located in the higher elevation of the central Black Hills. This area is where granite outcroppings form the high peaks of the Black Hills. Below the high granite

domes ponderosa pines dominate the landscape http://www.nps.gov/moru/

• Dwarf Rhinoceros, ancestral squirls monkeys

• Mini horse, Titanotheres– Times were warm, dawn redwoods near the

north pole

• But the “good” times didn’t last

Out come the mammals and birds

Cooling began

• Bye bye palms, hello drought specialist

grasses 24-3Mya– Rockies now were rain catchers of a new Jet stream. – Were they tasty? – How to eat grass?

• Carnivores, saber toothed • tigers ate rodents,• paleocastor

Permanent Winter

• 3-2Mya, and the Glaciers advanced• Covered the Northern 3rd of North America• 3km thick ice!

– Nebraskan, Kansan, Illinoisan, Wisconsin glaciations, but there were more

– Glacial silt, loess, deposits meters thick.

• Current interglacial period began 18kya (unless we loose the glaciers!)

• Lakes and rivers unleash, Missouri coteau “dead ice moraine” created prairie potholes

Pleistocene

• 1.6Mya till ~ 18,000ya

• Mastodons Mammoths

• Plains bison,

• Humans come across the Bering strait. – 15kya, 12kya, 4kya