I have been at the pointy end of this process, collecting samples and trying to recreate the geologic and erosive mechanisms that craft the landscape that we see. The rocks don’t talk, and each sample presents several rationale solutions for what we see. This is a very difficult puzzle, and if you suggest some answer that is outside the conventional wisdom, you will get smacked down by people who have the power to decide the course of your career. Don’t rock the boat is the order of the day. Rock politics, which is why I left if behind years ago. The new rock politics is governed by grant revenues, which is completely controlled by the political socialist agenda. Rocks don’t care and they don’t matter anymore.
Read #9, please, and comment if you desire. Perhaps both, not directly related at all? Perhaps there is a relationship, but I tend to think the sun has the bigger lever than the earth.
Being as how this idea of many millions of years low CO2 runs counter to the “correct conclusions” of many in climate science, I’d not expect a lot of people to look further than year to year hysterica.
As a miner, I saw my dad sent back to another mine and lower job over a heated disagreement as to where a series of fault took the “missing” half of a porphyry orebody. He was right and eventually regained what he had lost professionally but it cost the company a lot in purchasing the necessary property they had earlier passed on.
Being a miner and later a supervisor was much less stressful.