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In 2012, celebrating 150 years of science in Canterbury Upcoming Events Oligocene drowning of Zealandia: how wet did it get? Geosciences Society of New Zealand present the Hochstetter Lecture, delivered by Dr Mike Isaac. As the Tasman Sea opened, so our land mass drifted away from Australia and Antarctica and, by about 55 million years ago, it was isolated. We slowly sank beneath the waves and by about 25 million years ago our land area was at a minimum. Was New Zealand completely drowned by the sea or has there always been some land in our part of the world? This isn’t important to geologists but it matters to biologists and botanists. If part of New Zealand has always been land then some plants and animals are “Ghosts of Gondwana” (after George Gibbs) but if New Zealand drowned 25 million years ago then the slate was wiped clean and our plants and animals are recent immigrants. Dallas Mildenhall and Nick Mortimer won a Marsden Fund grant to investigate this and their team studied:
Diversity in plants gives good information but what we learned about pollen zones made us question their usefulness and there are problems with marine microfossil dating too. Paleogeography maps based on the fossil record file may not be soundly based. The present is not always the key to the past and Oligocene rates of change were so slow there may not have been time to "drown" the land before the Early Miocene uplift. Strontium dating of fossil shells could pin down the time of advance and retreat of the sea but so far we have only a few ages. Dr Isaac doesn't believe geology can prove whether New Zealand was drowned in the Oligocene or not – geologists can really only point out the probabilities. If a hypothesis cannot be tested is it only speculation? Mike Isaac is a geologist with GNS in Lower Hutt. He has extensive geological experience in New Zealand with publication covering areas from Northland to Southland. He lists his areas of expertise as geological mapping using GIS and sedimentary basin analysis. ALL WELCOME Mission control, we have a problem: New Zealand and fossil fuel use
New Zealand relies on fossil fuels for transport and the industrial commodities which support our way of life. For electricity generation we are fortunate – a small population, abundant wind and rain, suitable topography and a bonus of geothermal steam ensures only a minor part of our electricity comes from gas and coal. Even if anthropogenic climate change from CO2 emissions were unproven, the precautionary principle should ensure we do our best to reduce emissions because the consequences are potentially severe. Dr Isaac's argument is not about climate change – it is about unwillingness or inability to stop or severely limit the use of fossil fuels. Peak Oil has passed and we are in the age of Hard Oil. Profit-seeking companies drill in difficult, deep water environments because easy oil can no longer supply the world demand. We – you and me – create that demand. New Zealand exports crude oil but we import far more. We buy it on a world market increasingly supplied from deep water oil wells. Is it ethically acceptable to import oil yet ban drilling in our own territory? Where’s the moral high ground in chaining yourself to a drill ship if your lifestyle involves international air travel and cars? Peak Coal is probably 100-200 years away so there's a lot of CO2 emissions to come. Unlike oil, coal is widely distributed around the globe in large quantities, easily accessible. Densely populated, flat, dry countries, rich and poor, rely on coal for their electricity generation and they are not going to give it up. What right do we have to tell people in poor countries that they cannot aspire to a fraction of the lifestyle we take for granted? Should we point them at nuclear power? The manufacture of concrete and steel requires vast quantities of coal and so far there are no practical alternative technologies. It’s been suggested we should close the Glenbrook steel mill – if we did, would we import steel? Would it be ethically acceptable to transfer our share of pollution to a less efficient steel mill in a poor factory country? How can we rebuild Christchurch and prepare Wellington for the Big One without the use of concrete and steel? By the way, processing our clean, green dairy, wool and meat exports uses large quantities of coal and gas. The elephant in the room is transport fuel manufacture from coal – an attractive option economically for the age of extreme oil. Biofuels – great stuff in principle but there’s practical problems. Remember ethanol from corn? Waste gases? Sewage pond bugs? I invite you to do the numbers on volumes. Woody biomass has promise but how much of our country are you prepared to see under pine trees? The point of all this is there are simple reasons why countries will not be prepared or able to reduce emissions sufficiently to meet commitments made under the Kyoto Protocol. New Zealand will be one of them. Mission control, we have a problem. The energy resource, issues and technologies Joint Astronomical-Royal Society event The soil resource: issues facing soil science 150th Anniversary Celebratory Dinner A map of the university can be found here. |
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