From: alex_bourdeau@fws.gov

Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2000 12:02:59 -0800

Poleshifters,

I approached this forum through an exchange with Jim Bowles at EgyptNews.
From what I can gather, he suggests the Sphinx's head and body were carved
at two different times between which one of these "poleshifts" occurred,
causing the carvers to offset the head and body by 4 degrees.
 
So, I started checking out this poleshift thing and found your forum.  This
forum is a wonderful example of how a fundamentally sound idea (plate
tectonics) can be manipulated by purveyors of rubishy alternative
hypotheses to whatever end they seek.  But, as a good friend of mine says
often, the devil is in the details.  Before someone decides they have the
key to the universe, they should go back to school and learn a bit about
what they speak -  including several very significant details about the
nature of the Earth's crust.
 
There is a fundamental flaw in the "ice accumulation cause."  This idea
rests on an unevenly distributed change in mass near the poles due to the
accumulation of ice.  But that isn't what happens.  The crust subsides
under the ice, displacing the underlying crust/mantle (and its mass) away
from areas where ice is accumulating, therefore there is no uneveness in
the distribution of mass. The Earth is a mushy ball, sorta like the blobs
of water you see floating around the Space Shuttle in orbit, push on one
side and the other side bulges out.  Dump a bunch of snow/ice on the poles,
and anything not under the ice bulges out (just a little - ice is pretty
light), but the idea is the same.  Remove the glacial ice and the
crust/mantle rebounds, maintaining equilibrium.  This is called isostatic
rebound. Therefore, if there is no uneveness in the distribution of mass to
destabilize Earth's rotation, the entire premise of the argument collapses.
 
Every first year geology student knows about isostasy . . . education is a
wonderful thing.

Alex Bourdeau USFWS Region 1 Cultural Resources Team

Sherwood, OR 97140 FAX (503)625-4887

Mike

Post this in the Thoughts section as well - but you may not like what it
says . . .
 
   I've perused these other comments and don't quite know where to start.
There are clearly some interesting, not to say odd, ideas out there.  I
realize things like Pole Shifts are really exciting - people like
catastrophic events, which is why rubberneckers are such a pain after an
automobile accident.  BUT, you don't have to resort to Rubbishy Alternative
Hypotheses to evoke some really spectacular disasters out of Earth's
natural history.  These disasters are accepted by "orthodox" scientists and
they will discuss them at length with you as long as you don't try to use
them as proofs for the lost Atlanteans.  For folks who like a little
reality, these are much more interesting and thought provoking than
Fingerprints of the Latest Psuedoscientist.
 
   For example, there are cliff faces in eastern Oregon that stretch over one
hundred miles that were erupted during a single event about 7 million years
ago.  This event left behind the Rattlesnake Formation and is evidence for
an eruption of a magnitude unwitnessed by any human being.  It left behind
a layer of welded tuff up to 30m thick across 12800 square kilometers.  The
ejecta was so hot it was still welding itself together when it stopped
moving 110 kilometers from the vent!  The ash cloud was moving in excess of
90kph - nothing in its path survived.  What caused it?  Not pole shifts or
crustal inversions, just "plain" old plate tectonics - the North American
continent being ripped apart by convection in the mantle.  This same
convection has stretched the western margins of the continent by nearly
100% over the last 20 million years (southern Oregon, Nevada, Utah and
eastern California are twice as big as the used to be!).  How's that for
exciting?
 
   Knowing this isn't the result of some hair-brained, half-baked speculation
by the likes of Hancock, Bauval or West - it's from the work of serious
(unless they've had a few beers) geologists who spent a good part of their
lives learning how the Earth works from other serious geologists.  It's
just plain irritating to them when someone like Hapgood (an historian, for
goodness sake!!!!!), gets press by suggesting something as bizarre as pole
shifts.  The real story is every bit as interesting and, as far as I'm
concerned, more exciting because I can go out and look at the results of
these events.  I don't have to take West's word for it that Atlantis is
buried under the Antarctic ice - I can climb the Rattlesnake Formation and
look at the chunks o' mountain ripped up by the eruption and welded into
the tuff.  And there isn't anything ambiguous about it, like the "walls"
supposedly built by the Atlanteans in the Caribbean (look like pretty
ordinary coral reefs to me).
 
   Finally, the serious geologists are, contrary to popular belief, always
willing to change their minds - IF the data suggests they should.  For
example, when the Missoula Floods were first proposed by Harlan Bretz, most
geologists were very skeptical - sounded too much like Noah's Flood.  But,
when they went up in airplanes and started looking at the Channelled
Scablands it became obvious that eastern Washington had been scoured by
LOTS of running water, and Bretz's idea that they were caused by
catastrophic draining of glacial Lake Missoula was the best possible
explanation.  Since then, literally hundreds of geologists have made their
careers by studying the Missoula Floods, working out the details of these
remarkable events.  Once again, no pole shifts, just the simple fact that
ice floats on water resulted in the second largest floods we know of in
natural history.  Wanna guess which was the largest?

Alex Bourdeau USFWS Region 1 Cultural Resources Team

Sherwood, OR 97140 FAX (503)625-4887 alex_bourdeau@fws.gov