The Final Confrontation - Four Revolutions in the Earth Sciences - page 105

Unlike many specialists, to his credit Runcorn reached out to doubting geo-
logists in hopes of convincing them of the validity of paleomagnetism. He and
Professor Walter Bucher of Columbia, who was still obdurately opposed to drift,
agreed to put on a conference to review the evidence from paleoclimatology. One
might have expected the opening speech diplomatically to set the stage, conciliat-
ing paleomagnetism and paleoclimatology and finding merit in each. But Bucher
gave that speech. His title, “The Third Confrontation,” showed that he was in no
mood to make up. 10
“Three times inthelast100years,”Bucherproclaimed, “broadconcepts derived
from geological explorations were confronted with and tested against the results of
geophysical observations.” 11 The first contest had been with Kelvin, he said, and
the geologists had won. He neglected to mention that for several decades there had
been no confrontation, as geologists had had no choice but to accede to Kelvin's
short time scale. Just when they had begun to protest, along came a new physics
to support them: radioactivity. But as we saw, many geologists then objected to the
vastly greater ages from the physicists. Skipping over this bit of inconvenient his-
tory, Bucher declared that Rutherford had vindicated the geologists. Even if this
were true, then Rutherford's physics replaced Kelvin's, so the physicists were still
the winners.